What's the chance of a person in the U.S. being killed or harmed by any sort of terrorist attack? I don't remember exactly, but I know I'm far more likely to die or get hurt every time I hop into my car, so I hope Uncle Sam will forgive me for not jumping up and shitting my pants in fear this very second.
Address the root causes, and the market for the drugs evaporates. The last thing drug companies want is for you to take responsibility for your lifestyle and actually be healthy.
What would be nice is to see a couple of prominent figures come out and endorse a third-party candidate. Hell, maybe other people would start to follow suit and we would actually have something more resembling an actual, like, democracy, rather than the ridiculous excuse for "choices" we have now. Coke or Pepsi, McDonald's or Burger King, FOX or MSNBC, Crest or Colgate, Romney or Obama.
AFAICT, in the US, most kids don't ride bikes that much from an early age, the result being that there isn't an ingrained consciousness about biking as they grow up. They end up being drivers who don't really think about biking as a valid mode of transportation. Contrast this to Japan, where it's common for the parents in a household to commute by bike, shop by bike, and do everything by bike, and the kids are riding bikes to school when they're five, so the "bike consciousness" is developed from an early age.
The other issue that keeps people from riding bikes in the US is that you are forced to share the road with cars, rather than ride on sidewalks. I haven't bought a bike since moving back to the US for that very reason; I don't trust the drivers around me enough to watch out for me. It has nothing to do with a helmet. If the US infrastructure wasn't so hopelessly automobile-oriented, and was more accommodating for bikes (wider sidewalks, bike lanes, etc.), I would buy one in a second.
In Japan, though, the law states that you must cycle on the sidewalk, and sidewalks tend to be built big enough to accommodate both pedestrians and bicycles. In the US -- or at least in my state -- the law says you must bike in the road with the other motor vehicles. We also have a culture that is centered on automobiles, and doesn't have the traditionally bike-friendly attitude that Japan has. (FWIW, I lived in Japan for more than ten years, and I never owned a car the entire time I was there, and I also never wore a helmet when biking. Back in Freedomland, I never bike, because I'm forced to ride in the road with a bunch of shitwits who seem to think it's God's given right to plow through anything smaller than their SUV.)
Hahaha... amazing how bringing my daughter to see her first movie in the theater has somehow been twisted into me being a shitty parent. Gotta love the Internet.
Just FYI, I've read more books with my daughter in the last six months than you've probably read in your entire life.
I will use my current version of Office until it is absolutely and completely obsolete, and I will switch to something else before I buy into this "pay indefinitely for something" BS. Try increasing sales the old-fashioned way, by actually offering new and innovative products, instead of using this rent-a-program crap to leech off your customers.
Guess what? Computing power has increased exponentially in the last three decades. If this surprises you you're an idiot. I mean, ten years ago I paid $2,000 for a Toshiba laptop with a whopping 1 GB of RAM and a 20G hard disk; now I can get a Tracfone with better specs than that.
Slashdot sure seems to have its collective mouth wrapped tightly around the iSchlong lately.
...Tim Cook says that we are living in a post-PC era. Does it really surprise anyone that people with an interest in seeing things change are advocating for such changes?
Practices like this indicate not only indicate a disregard for basic human decency, but a general incompetence in managing employees as well: micromanaging your employees like this will only make them work hard enough to avoid getting fired. My advice is to avoid giving these incompetence assholes any more of your life's time, and start sending out resumes.
Better yet, start developing a skill set that will enable you to be self-employed someday. It's not an easy life and there are a lot of sacrifices to be made, but not having to put up with this kind of garbage on a daily basis more than makes up for it, IMO.
The "entirely different game" that the content industries seem to be playing is lobbying politicians into passing extremely restrictive legislation, and unfortunately, I think the evidence shows that this is a game they can win, at least in terms of getting the legislation passed. Yes, SOPA was tabled after a large outcry, but agreements like the TPP, ACTA, and so on and so forth continue to be pushed forward by governments with direct support from all those intellectual property and content industry groups. As I said in a comment on another thread, I don't think it will be too long before, for example, some judge somewhere decides that simply having a bit torrent client on your computer, or just clicking on a link on the Pirate Bay, constitutes conspiracy to commit copyright fraud... I think the real "Whac-a-mole" game is going to be played by citizens, who have to keep beating down laws like SOPA and their ilk each time a new one pops up, because these guys are not going to give up.
I think it's less that, and more that in Japan, customer loyalty tends to be a two-way street. Giving their own populace the first shot at the console doesn't strike me as so odd in that country. I don't know if that factors into their reasoning, but I lived and worked in Japan long enough to know that "Japan, Inc." and Team Japan are extremely important concepts to a major portion of the population.
On the flip side, I remember the utterly ridiculous launch the Xbox 360 had in Japan -- the only games I could find at my local electronics shop in Osaka were Ridge Racer and Tetris, for God's sake. So it's not just Nintendo that flips the proverbial bird at a foreign gaming population.
And it's usually the iLovers who label anybody and everybody that levels the slightest bit of criticism at an Apple product an "iHater." Case in point: your reply, and the fact that my comment was modded down despite being a perfectly valid point.
It cracks me up because I'm not an iHater at all. I still have my Mac Classic tucked away somewhere, and I've owned a Macbook and an iMac before my current MB Pro, as well as numerous iPods and an iPhone 3G. At the same time, I'm reasonable enough to see through the marketing noise and oohs and aahs and silvery shiny facade and say hey, this is really nothing new.
But whatever -- lesson learned; you simply do NOT criticize Apple on Slashdot.
How can people get excited by this stuff? The original iPhone was amazing, but surely these 20% thinner/faster/smaller/wider/etc. incremental changes should not be causing the tech world to collectively cream in their pants.
I understand the various issues quite well. I was looking at it more from the standpoint of your average P2P user, I guess. But even focusing solely on the issue of uploading, there are a slew of reasons why this punishment is grossly excessive.
As for civil versus criminal: keep in mind that it's the industry that is benefiting from unchecked punishments in civil cases that is constantly trying to convince everyone that piracy is theft (a criminal case). To that I say, fine, but the punishments should be at least within rumor of each other.
This is obviously nothing more than trying to make an example out of someone, basically ruining someone's life for what is a relatively miniscule offense.
Slashdot Mirror
"Respectable magazine?" Have you actually read Newsweek in the past, oh, ten years?
5 iPads and 4 iPhones in one household?
Something about that is just soul-crushingly depressing.
Tune in tomorrow for part II, where Tim Cook gives us an in-depth review of the upcoming iPad mini!
What's the chance of a person in the U.S. being killed or harmed by any sort of terrorist attack? I don't remember exactly, but I know I'm far more likely to die or get hurt every time I hop into my car, so I hope Uncle Sam will forgive me for not jumping up and shitting my pants in fear this very second.
Address the root causes, and the market for the drugs evaporates. The last thing drug companies want is for you to take responsibility for your lifestyle and actually be healthy.
Fuck you, and your religion too.
Your pal,
OldSport
What would be nice is to see a couple of prominent figures come out and endorse a third-party candidate. Hell, maybe other people would start to follow suit and we would actually have something more resembling an actual, like, democracy, rather than the ridiculous excuse for "choices" we have now. Coke or Pepsi, McDonald's or Burger King, FOX or MSNBC, Crest or Colgate, Romney or Obama.
"The unintended acceleration in the car provided is considered normal behavior for Toyota's automobiles," a Toyota executive said.
AFAICT, in the US, most kids don't ride bikes that much from an early age, the result being that there isn't an ingrained consciousness about biking as they grow up. They end up being drivers who don't really think about biking as a valid mode of transportation. Contrast this to Japan, where it's common for the parents in a household to commute by bike, shop by bike, and do everything by bike, and the kids are riding bikes to school when they're five, so the "bike consciousness" is developed from an early age.
The other issue that keeps people from riding bikes in the US is that you are forced to share the road with cars, rather than ride on sidewalks. I haven't bought a bike since moving back to the US for that very reason; I don't trust the drivers around me enough to watch out for me. It has nothing to do with a helmet. If the US infrastructure wasn't so hopelessly automobile-oriented, and was more accommodating for bikes (wider sidewalks, bike lanes, etc.), I would buy one in a second.
In Japan, though, the law states that you must cycle on the sidewalk, and sidewalks tend to be built big enough to accommodate both pedestrians and bicycles. In the US -- or at least in my state -- the law says you must bike in the road with the other motor vehicles. We also have a culture that is centered on automobiles, and doesn't have the traditionally bike-friendly attitude that Japan has. (FWIW, I lived in Japan for more than ten years, and I never owned a car the entire time I was there, and I also never wore a helmet when biking. Back in Freedomland, I never bike, because I'm forced to ride in the road with a bunch of shitwits who seem to think it's God's given right to plow through anything smaller than their SUV.)
...friend of democracy. And the implications of that bother the hell out of me.
...is how much health care costs in the first place.
Hahaha... amazing how bringing my daughter to see her first movie in the theater has somehow been twisted into me being a shitty parent. Gotta love the Internet.
Just FYI, I've read more books with my daughter in the last six months than you've probably read in your entire life.
I'll be bringing my 4-year-old daughter to that one -- time to start the indoctrination into geekery...
(My first memory was seeing Return of the Jedi in the theater at age 4.)
Fuck that.
I will use my current version of Office until it is absolutely and completely obsolete, and I will switch to something else before I buy into this "pay indefinitely for something" BS. Try increasing sales the old-fashioned way, by actually offering new and innovative products, instead of using this rent-a-program crap to leech off your customers.
Guess what? Computing power has increased exponentially in the last three decades. If this surprises you you're an idiot. I mean, ten years ago I paid $2,000 for a Toshiba laptop with a whopping 1 GB of RAM and a 20G hard disk; now I can get a Tracfone with better specs than that.
Slashdot sure seems to have its collective mouth wrapped tightly around the iSchlong lately.
...Tim Cook says that we are living in a post-PC era. Does it really surprise anyone that people with an interest in seeing things change are advocating for such changes?
Practices like this indicate not only indicate a disregard for basic human decency, but a general incompetence in managing employees as well: micromanaging your employees like this will only make them work hard enough to avoid getting fired. My advice is to avoid giving these incompetence assholes any more of your life's time, and start sending out resumes.
Better yet, start developing a skill set that will enable you to be self-employed someday. It's not an easy life and there are a lot of sacrifices to be made, but not having to put up with this kind of garbage on a daily basis more than makes up for it, IMO.
The "entirely different game" that the content industries seem to be playing is lobbying politicians into passing extremely restrictive legislation, and unfortunately, I think the evidence shows that this is a game they can win, at least in terms of getting the legislation passed. Yes, SOPA was tabled after a large outcry, but agreements like the TPP, ACTA, and so on and so forth continue to be pushed forward by governments with direct support from all those intellectual property and content industry groups. As I said in a comment on another thread, I don't think it will be too long before, for example, some judge somewhere decides that simply having a bit torrent client on your computer, or just clicking on a link on the Pirate Bay, constitutes conspiracy to commit copyright fraud... I think the real "Whac-a-mole" game is going to be played by citizens, who have to keep beating down laws like SOPA and their ilk each time a new one pops up, because these guys are not going to give up.
I think it's less that, and more that in Japan, customer loyalty tends to be a two-way street. Giving their own populace the first shot at the console doesn't strike me as so odd in that country. I don't know if that factors into their reasoning, but I lived and worked in Japan long enough to know that "Japan, Inc." and Team Japan are extremely important concepts to a major portion of the population.
On the flip side, I remember the utterly ridiculous launch the Xbox 360 had in Japan -- the only games I could find at my local electronics shop in Osaka were Ridge Racer and Tetris, for God's sake. So it's not just Nintendo that flips the proverbial bird at a foreign gaming population.
You just aren'tageddon it.
And it's usually the iLovers who label anybody and everybody that levels the slightest bit of criticism at an Apple product an "iHater." Case in point: your reply, and the fact that my comment was modded down despite being a perfectly valid point.
It cracks me up because I'm not an iHater at all. I still have my Mac Classic tucked away somewhere, and I've owned a Macbook and an iMac before my current MB Pro, as well as numerous iPods and an iPhone 3G. At the same time, I'm reasonable enough to see through the marketing noise and oohs and aahs and silvery shiny facade and say hey, this is really nothing new.
But whatever -- lesson learned; you simply do NOT criticize Apple on Slashdot.
How can people get excited by this stuff? The original iPhone was amazing, but surely these 20% thinner/faster/smaller/wider/etc. incremental changes should not be causing the tech world to collectively cream in their pants.
The Onion of course nails this phenomenon perfectly -- starting at 0:21. http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-unveils-muchanticipated-iphone-4se,29489/
I understand the various issues quite well. I was looking at it more from the standpoint of your average P2P user, I guess. But even focusing solely on the issue of uploading, there are a slew of reasons why this punishment is grossly excessive.
As for civil versus criminal: keep in mind that it's the industry that is benefiting from unchecked punishments in civil cases that is constantly trying to convince everyone that piracy is theft (a criminal case). To that I say, fine, but the punishments should be at least within rumor of each other.
This is obviously nothing more than trying to make an example out of someone, basically ruining someone's life for what is a relatively miniscule offense.
iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5. iPad, iPad 2, the New iPad. iBooks, iPod, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iWork, iAmgoingtogocrazyif iWriteanymoreofthese