They compared a device to other devices that it's not really meant to be compared against. I mean seriously, it's in the very first paragraph: "better off buying a high end smartphone"...
really? I want a game console, but this one is slower than a smartphone so i should buy a smart phone instead? How does that make any sense?
Oh I know, I'm in the market for a new truck for work, so let me compare it against these Vespas first...
1) no one owes you anything. live or die on your own merits. 2) that is the exact definition of a handout.
and 3) (long winded): the free market, or those portions of the economy that still qualify as such, are self policing and work quite well. you'll see it mostly at the local small business level.
the portions you're complaining about aren't "free". the "free"-ness of a market is directly related to the number of actors in the market, ie the level of competition. more actors, more free. fewer actors, less free. additionally regulation plays a role as well (too much or too little, both hurt the "free"-ness)
Airlines, telcos, etc, are good examples. 3 or 4 major players and a handful of minor ones (which are actually controlled by the majors via partnerships). aircraft manufacturers another good one (used to 50 of them, now there's only 2 big ones in this country, and 1 in europe). cable companies would qualify except for the tacit, shady but not in the open and not quite illegal no-compete agreements. big box stores.
thus it extends that as companies merge and conquer competitors and go from hundreds of local companies to one or two mega companies, the market is no longer "free". so while it's a natural consequence of business competition (not governement) for companies to acquire competitors and grow in size, it also is a natural consequence that a market will become less free over time.
its supposed to replace an incandescent bulb, which does this by default without any special design. such bulds when they need directed typically put in a light ficture with a reflector of some sort. the idea is to make a simple drop in replacement that doesnt require a compelte design shift of the entire light fixture industry.
my worry is, when everyone is being paid for by everyone else's dime, all of sudden it becomes, from one point of view, fair and even logical to dictate to other people "no you cant have that soda", "no, you need to exercise", and "uh uh no more smoking for you". since after all, we're paying for each other, why should you get to waste my money to keep your fat, smoking, disgusting ass alive ?
and that to me is no fun. and scary. i like my steak. my bacon. my ice cream. my soda. and even though i keep myself fit, sometimes i wanna just say fuck it, and not exercise that day or week, and I do so.
so while i dont think it would start out that way, i can see it quickly being eroded, and the restrictions (because "we're all paying for it") setting in.
again. you, like almost everyone here on/., know nothing about libertarian views and constantly put false words in their mouths. you are a moron spouting nothing but bullshit. and its particularly low quality bullshit. and naturally, again being typical/. bullshit, gets modded insightful.
exactly. this is not "hijacking", and people are forgetting that there is still a pilot on board, who believe it or not does have some say in what in the aircraft actually does, as well as teh ability to look out the window and go "nope, there's no plane there".
you need to learn the difference between discretionary spending, and mandatory spending. all the increases are in mandatory spending, which the sequestration doesnt even affect. the sequestration cuts are all in discretionary spending. you should really learn your subject matter before pontificating.
oops. i split that paragrah in two and introduced an error. should say that the veterans affairs portion of the defense budget is mandatory spending, not personel pay. personel pay is still under the discretionary side.
800K people are taking a 20% pay cut via furloughs, in the DoD alone, just for the hell of it? Thats over 9 billion dollars in lost wages, for the hell of it? Its nonsense?
No you jsut dont know what youre talking about. All of you ignorant "its not a cut" morons know nothing about the budget or the sequestration. If you did, you wouldnt keep spewing that BS.
It's simple. There is Discretionary spending and Mandatory spending. And most of the agencies of the government are funded by a combination of both Mandatory and Discretionary monies, in various ratios. this includes the defense budget. The sequestration ONLY DEALS WITH DISCRETIONARY SPENDING. But when you talk about "everyone having more money" you are talking about THE ENTIRE BUDGET. You are conflating two whole pies, and ignoring the changes in how all the little individual pieces are spent.
All of the increases are in the Mandatory spending, and they happen because...its "mandatory". Stuff like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, congressional salaries, military personel pay. Laid down by law, no choice, must be in the budget, and it must paid. the only way to change this side of the budget is by changing the laws requiring the money be spent, which the sequester didnt do.
All of the cuts (ie, sequestration) is in the Discretionary spending. this is the stuff that actually gets negotiated every year when the congress and prez get together and try to pass a budget; the mandatory stuff is in the budget too, but since they cant change that, they dont argue about it. This is the only part they actually fight over. the DoD (the civilian agency in charge of hte miliatry) falls largely under Discretionary. That's why the 800,000 (800k) civil service employees of the DoD are ALL taking mandatory furloughs of 1 day a week, resulting in a 20% pay cuts. For ALL of them. The air shows (being public relations stuff, not essential to operations) also falls under the discretionary portion of the defense budget. Also under discretionary spending is most of the funding for scientific research, and education.
so again: the overall budget is bigger because the mandatory side, laid down by law, got bigger (mostly because social security). the discretionary side is the only thing the sequester affects, and is where all the cuts are.
They're civil service. They dont get a choice when this happens, even when unionized (its part of the agreement). but several have already left to find other work; 20% pay cut is very dramatic and they got families to feed too.
But for the DoD (the only one I can speak to directly), it has ~800,000 civil service employees, each of which is taking the mandated 1 nopay, nowork, no compensation of any kind (ie, furlough) day a week. The only exceptions being essential personel (ie, safety and health workers), and even that almost didnt happen.
you realize that most of what you call camping is bullspit? why go camping to play video games? you can do that at home, without the rain, without the bugs, without the discomfort. if youre gonna go be outdoors, then BE outdoors. Enjoy the outdoors, the trees, the wildlife, the night sky. Look around you. Be in the moment.
You tried to direct the debate at myself and disqualify my opinion according to/. biases against luddites. So I stated my reasons for not taking it with me because you implied that I was "afraid of technology", when that could not possibly be farther from teh truth.
But in general, yes, taking video games, and tv's and dusch "camping" is like people that go to a restruant to hangout....and each stare into their phone. It's not enjoying nature, its enjoying TV and video games in some place other than home. if you need video games to enjoy camping, you're doing it wrong. im done with you, you're a fool who still misses the point.
you focus on the compeltely wrong part of the post. (forest for the trees situation) the fact i went to the local catholic school isnt really relevant; thats simply where I went, and they happened to have 3 lit teachers al.
the important part was that there is more to the world than "after the phd comes prefessorship". like I said, (in simpler terms since you missed it) everyone wants to be an astronaut, but someones still got to shovel sh*t.
i would argue that staying within the walls of the university your whole life is no more than preaching to the choir. if anything, its going from being in the choir, to preaching to it. also, you dont know me so dont try to tell me about my qualifications to talk about the teaching jobs.
maybe, since you couldnt get a job, you just suck at teaching? (see, i can be presumptious too)
another typical/. who wants to bash libertarians without actually knowing anything about it. it has nothing to do with libertarian thoughts.
the simple truth is EA is not all bad. Not everything they make is horrible. Enough of it is successful enough to cover the failures and missteps. and in the end more people are willing to live with things like the always on drm than those who arent. and people arent irrational simply because they disagree with you and made a different choice.
Bullshit. Tell that to the people taking a forced 20% pay cut for the rest of the year and likely into the next, via mandated furloughs. If there are no cuts then there's no need to change anything, and you can just keep spendign like the year before. No need for furloughs, no need to ground planes, etc.
You are conflating one whole pie with another whole pie, and ignoring the changes to all the little pieces. This "there are no cuts" BS is just that: BS.
There are no cuts in the so-called "sequester cuts".
Bullshit. Tell that to the people taking a forced 20% pay cut for the rest of the year and likely into the next, via mandated furloughs. If there are no cuts then there's no need to change anything, and you can just keep spendign like the year before. No need for furloughs, no need to ground planes, etc.
Wow. You are so fing clueless about PBS, and TV network structure in general. Essentially nothing you said is actually true.
PBS, like many "networks" is composed of a supplier of content and thousands of member "affiliates" that take that content and then actually broadcast it. (incidentally, it's why they are called "networks").
Your tax money, less than a whopping $1 a year, only goes to fund that central body, and allow it to purchase broadcast rights to content, and then supply (ie: resell/redistribute) said content downstream to the affiliates.
Meanwhile those local affiliates are completely seperate business entities themselves. Some are operated by non-profits. Some are operated as a sister station to another local affiliate station. Here in Oklahoma the PBS affiliate is OETA and it's run by the state. Each of these (and there are other possibilities too) derives its funding from different sources, which they then use to license content frm the main PBS body.
However none of them get that funding from your federal taxes (possibly your local or state ones though, like in my case).
The two biggest providers of the content on the PBS network are actually the affiliates in Boston and New York. They actually make and produce a large portion of the content PBS redistributes across the netowrk (meaning their own costs are probably close to break even).
What's more, like any affiliate setup, affiliates across the country don't have to show all the PBS content. Many of them buy content from other places, or sources, or buy locally produced stuff.
furthermore, to dispel this myth: Sesame Street is not paid for by your taxes. At all. Its paid for by licensing fees from toy companies and has been since the 70s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Workshop
TL:DR version: 1) your a completely misinformed idiot 2) you dont know what you're talking about 3) you need to learn some basic research skills
Slashdot Mirror
They compared a device to other devices that it's not really meant to be compared against. I mean seriously, it's in the very first paragraph: "better off buying a high end smartphone" ...
really? I want a game console, but this one is slower than a smartphone so i should buy a smart phone instead? How does that make any sense?
Oh I know, I'm in the market for a new truck for work, so let me compare it against these Vespas first...
Just more useless clickbait.
ZDNet is proclaiming the death of the PC / Windows...
again...
Just more clickbait fodder.
this is /.
expecting reason and logic in the place alternately known as Bash USA For Instant +5 Insightfulis a waste of time.
bring me a giant tub of garlic butter and a sautee pan and I'll show you.
whoooosh.
do you even understand what CAD stands for?
1) no one owes you anything. live or die on your own merits.
2) that is the exact definition of a handout.
and 3) (long winded):
the free market, or those portions of the economy that still qualify as such, are self policing and work quite well. you'll see it mostly at the local small business level.
the portions you're complaining about aren't "free".
the "free"-ness of a market is directly related to the number of actors in the market, ie the level of competition.
more actors, more free. fewer actors, less free. additionally regulation plays a role as well (too much or too little, both hurt the "free"-ness)
Airlines, telcos, etc, are good examples. 3 or 4 major players and a handful of minor ones (which are actually controlled by the majors via partnerships). aircraft manufacturers another good one (used to 50 of them, now there's only 2 big ones in this country, and 1 in europe). cable companies would qualify except for the tacit, shady but not in the open and not quite illegal no-compete agreements. big box stores.
thus it extends that as companies merge and conquer competitors and go from hundreds of local companies to one or two mega companies, the market is no longer "free". so while it's a natural consequence of business competition (not governement) for companies to acquire competitors and grow in size, it also is a natural consequence that a market will become less free over time.
its supposed to replace an incandescent bulb, which does this by default without any special design. such bulds when they need directed typically put in a light ficture with a reflector of some sort. the idea is to make a simple drop in replacement that doesnt require a compelte design shift of the entire light fixture industry.
my worry is, when everyone is being paid for by everyone else's dime, all of sudden it becomes, from one point of view, fair and even logical to dictate to other people "no you cant have that soda", "no, you need to exercise", and "uh uh no more smoking for you". since after all, we're paying for each other, why should you get to waste my money to keep your fat, smoking, disgusting ass alive ?
and that to me is no fun. and scary.
i like my steak. my bacon. my ice cream. my soda.
and even though i keep myself fit, sometimes i wanna just say fuck it, and not exercise that day or week, and I do so.
so while i dont think it would start out that way, i can see it quickly being eroded, and the restrictions (because "we're all paying for it") setting in.
Perspective AC. Perspective. You need some.
there is big vast gulf of a difference between copyright and threatening nuclear war.
again. /., know nothing about libertarian views and constantly put false words in their mouths. /. bullshit, gets modded insightful.
you, like almost everyone here on
you are a moron spouting nothing but bullshit.
and its particularly low quality bullshit.
and naturally, again being typical
exactly. this is not "hijacking", and people are forgetting that there is still a pilot on board, who believe it or not does have some say in what in the aircraft actually does, as well as teh ability to look out the window and go "nope, there's no plane there".
its mostly overblown for most users. if you got the extra money to blow on it, go for it. but if not, no big loss.
you need to learn the difference between discretionary spending, and mandatory spending.
all the increases are in mandatory spending, which the sequestration doesnt even affect.
the sequestration cuts are all in discretionary spending.
you should really learn your subject matter before pontificating.
oops. i split that paragrah in two and introduced an error. should say that the veterans affairs portion of the defense budget is mandatory spending, not personel pay. personel pay is still under the discretionary side.
800K people are taking a 20% pay cut via furloughs, in the DoD alone, just for the hell of it? Thats over 9 billion dollars in lost wages, for the hell of it? Its nonsense?
No you jsut dont know what youre talking about.
All of you ignorant "its not a cut" morons know nothing about the budget or the sequestration. If you did, you wouldnt keep spewing that BS.
It's simple.
There is Discretionary spending and Mandatory spending. And most of the agencies of the government are funded by a combination of both Mandatory and Discretionary monies, in various ratios. this includes the defense budget. The sequestration ONLY DEALS WITH DISCRETIONARY SPENDING. But when you talk about "everyone having more money" you are talking about THE ENTIRE BUDGET. You are conflating two whole pies, and ignoring the changes in how all the little individual pieces are spent.
All of the increases are in the Mandatory spending, and they happen because...its "mandatory". Stuff like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, congressional salaries, military personel pay. Laid down by law, no choice, must be in the budget, and it must paid. the only way to change this side of the budget is by changing the laws requiring the money be spent, which the sequester didnt do.
All of the cuts (ie, sequestration) is in the Discretionary spending. this is the stuff that actually gets negotiated every year when the congress and prez get together and try to pass a budget; the mandatory stuff is in the budget too, but since they cant change that, they dont argue about it. This is the only part they actually fight over. the DoD (the civilian agency in charge of hte miliatry) falls largely under Discretionary. That's why the 800,000 (800k) civil service employees of the DoD are ALL taking mandatory furloughs of 1 day a week, resulting in a 20% pay cuts. For ALL of them. The air shows (being public relations stuff, not essential to operations) also falls under the discretionary portion of the defense budget. Also under discretionary spending is most of the funding for scientific research, and education.
so again: the overall budget is bigger because the mandatory side, laid down by law, got bigger (mostly because social security). the discretionary side is the only thing the sequester affects, and is where all the cuts are.
They're civil service. They dont get a choice when this happens, even when unionized (its part of the agreement).
but several have already left to find other work; 20% pay cut is very dramatic and they got families to feed too.
But for the DoD (the only one I can speak to directly), it has ~800,000 civil service employees, each of which is taking the mandated 1 nopay, nowork, no compensation of any kind (ie, furlough) day a week. The only exceptions being essential personel (ie, safety and health workers), and even that almost didnt happen.
you realize that most of what you call camping is bullspit? why go camping to play video games? you can do that at home, without the rain, without the bugs, without the discomfort. if youre gonna go be outdoors, then BE outdoors. Enjoy the outdoors, the trees, the wildlife, the night sky. Look around you. Be in the moment.
You tried to direct the debate at myself and disqualify my opinion according to /. biases against luddites. So I stated my reasons for not taking it with me because you implied that I was "afraid of technology", when that could not possibly be farther from teh truth.
But in general, yes, taking video games, and tv's and dusch "camping" is like people that go to a restruant to hangout....and each stare into their phone. It's not enjoying nature, its enjoying TV and video games in some place other than home. if you need video games to enjoy camping, you're doing it wrong. im done with you, you're a fool who still misses the point.
you focus on the compeltely wrong part of the post. (forest for the trees situation) the fact i went to the local catholic school isnt really relevant; thats simply where I went, and they happened to have 3 lit teachers al.
the important part was that there is more to the world than "after the phd comes prefessorship". like I said, (in simpler terms since you missed it) everyone wants to be an astronaut, but someones still got to shovel sh*t.
i would argue that staying within the walls of the university your whole life is no more than preaching to the choir. if anything, its going from being in the choir, to preaching to it. also, you dont know me so dont try to tell me about my qualifications to talk about the teaching jobs.
maybe, since you couldnt get a job, you just suck at teaching? (see, i can be presumptious too)
yes, thats it. mod down the truth. davester is clueless, the flights ARE already paid for as training. jackknife is correct.
another typical /. who wants to bash libertarians without actually knowing anything about it.
it has nothing to do with libertarian thoughts.
the simple truth is EA is not all bad. Not everything they make is horrible. Enough of it is successful enough to cover the failures and missteps. and in the end more people are willing to live with things like the always on drm than those who arent. and people arent irrational simply because they disagree with you and made a different choice.
Bullshit. Tell that to the people taking a forced 20% pay cut for the rest of the year and likely into the next, via mandated furloughs.
If there are no cuts then there's no need to change anything, and you can just keep spendign like the year before. No need for furloughs, no need to ground planes, etc.
You are conflating one whole pie with another whole pie, and ignoring the changes to all the little pieces.
This "there are no cuts" BS is just that: BS.
There are no cuts in the so-called "sequester cuts".
Bullshit. Tell that to the people taking a forced 20% pay cut for the rest of the year and likely into the next, via mandated furloughs.
If there are no cuts then there's no need to change anything, and you can just keep spendign like the year before. No need for furloughs, no need to ground planes, etc.
This "there are no cuts" BS is just that: BS.
a lot of them go on to become mechanics on the birds if they cant qualify for flying them.
this. /. who doesnt actually know what he's talking about.
davester is simply another ignorant
Wow.
You are so fing clueless about PBS, and TV network structure in general.
Essentially nothing you said is actually true.
PBS, like many "networks" is composed of a supplier of content and thousands of member "affiliates" that take that content and then actually broadcast it. (incidentally, it's why they are called "networks").
Your tax money, less than a whopping $1 a year, only goes to fund that central body, and allow it to purchase broadcast rights to content, and then supply (ie: resell/redistribute) said content downstream to the affiliates.
Meanwhile those local affiliates are completely seperate business entities themselves. Some are operated by non-profits. Some are operated as a sister station to another local affiliate station. Here in Oklahoma the PBS affiliate is OETA and it's run by the state. Each of these (and there are other possibilities too) derives its funding from different sources, which they then use to license content frm the main PBS body.
However none of them get that funding from your federal taxes (possibly your local or state ones though, like in my case).
The two biggest providers of the content on the PBS network are actually the affiliates in Boston and New York. They actually make and produce a large portion of the content PBS redistributes across the netowrk (meaning their own costs are probably close to break even).
What's more, like any affiliate setup, affiliates across the country don't have to show all the PBS content. Many of them buy content from other places, or sources, or buy locally produced stuff.
furthermore, to dispel this myth: Sesame Street is not paid for by your taxes. At all.
Its paid for by licensing fees from toy companies and has been since the 70s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Workshop
TL:DR version:
1) your a completely misinformed idiot
2) you dont know what you're talking about
3) you need to learn some basic research skills