Yep, forgot to add that in there. Netflix is wonderful. Particularly since I live about 5 miles from a distribution center. But again, it doesn't solve the "Live Sporting Events Only Available on Cable" dilemma.
The fact that you can run thie Lithium battery pack into the side of a car and have nothing happen to it is quite impressive.
The Slashdot crowd is already familiar with exploding laptop batteries, and electric RC news groups are filled with horror stories of houses and cars burning down from LiPo batteries that "randomly" burst into flame. Just this weekend my brother-in-law and I flew our electric RC planes with LiPo packs in them. On the way back into the house, he dropped a battery pack on the sidewalk from about 3 feet in the air. It instantly started spewing smoke and flames, and kept going for about a minute. We were lucky that it was sitting on concrete.
The moral of the story is, I wouldn't trust anything as volitile as the LiPo's that I use for RC sitting between my legs or in the trunk of my car. While the injury is unfortunate, the publicity of a safe LiPo might do good things for the KillaCycle.
This is a pretty excellent system, I used it myself for quite a while. In my personal setup I've cut out XBMC by running an HDTV as my computer monitor. With the addition of OTA HDTV broadcasts it's a pretty nifty and affordable setup. The only downfall is the inability to watch live sporting events that are broadcast only on Cable, e.g. Monday Night Football.
The obvious way for the cable company to battle back against this is A La Carte Cable. All the programs I want to watch are on 4-5 channels, but to get those channels in HD I'd have to pay at least $60/mo with with 70 other channels that I'll never watch. Add affordable A La Carte programming and the Cable providers have essentially eliminated any reason for me to pirate shows.
Now to the question of what's affordable: Right now Time Warner Cable offers A La Carte packages in San Antonio that work out to be about $0.80 per channel per month. Say more than double that for the ability to choose exactly what channels you want, and my 5 cable channels cost me $10 / mo. Piracy problem solved. I get to watch what I want and the Cable company gets my money.
I'm sure there wouldn't be subsidized DVR's and the like under a system like this, but I'd want a cable card in my PC anyway. Though I suppose a fully functional cable card is another pipe-dream.
NBC has only offered selected, generally less popular, primetime shows on its website, not all of them like on ABC. No Office, and I think no Heroes.
I personally think that web-delivered ad-supported tv shows are an excellent way to go. My only beef, (since I work at a regional ad agency), is that I wish they'd geographically target ads so that local advertisers could take advantage of the medium. I mean, really, who doesn't want to be screamed at by Big Bob of Big Bob's Used Car Bonanza?
I have few qualms about torrenting tv shows, but ABC's streaming is done so well that I often choose to watch that instead of downloading a show from that network.
Grammar Nazi says, "Fewer! Anything that can be counted is Fewer! Less is for things that can't be counted, like water. Less water. Fewer smart people."
Far less than 1% of the population is totally color blind. The other 99.995% of us will be able to see it just fine. Probably not a serious issue.
I also fall into the 9% of the partially colorblind population, and apart from occasionally getting confused about whether the pants I'm wearing are dark green or brown, it's not too much of a hassle. Oh, also I'm an extremely slow cherry and strawberry picker.
HD DVD is 15GB (I have no idea what a gb is) You sir, are inspiration to us all.
Not only did you notice that harryk had improperly capitalized the abbreviation for Gigabyte, you went above and beyond the call of duty and snidely used hyperbole to assure that the rest of the Slashdot community recognized both your brilliance and harryk's error.
[real men of genius music] We salute you Mr. needlessly belittling others for their insignificant mistakes man. [/real men of genius music]
*Note: By nastily pointing out GreatDrok's belittling, did I just become a Meta-Nerd-Belittler? Interesting.
Quite true. Sometimes Netflix is just too much effort (I mean, they expect me to put the DVD back in the sleeve, put that sleeve back into the container, and then walk all the way out to my mailbox before they'll send me another movie? What do they think I am, some kind of masochist?) and downloading a ripped DVD is so much easier. But, I went all out and bought a "Special Box Set" of the first two Bourne movies for my wife. Last night we sat down to watch the first one. Halfway through, in the middle of a driving scene, Windows Media Player pops up with a little message that says something like, "This movie is unable to continue due to Copy Protection on the disc".
Seriously, this is how you repay me for buying a movie? I had to run AnyDVD just to watch the 2nd half of the movie. Never had that problem with movies I stole off of BitTorrent.
It's been said before on Slashdot (probably several times already today) but they key to successfully getting people to buy media isn't better copy protection, it's better products and more realistic pricing.
Netflix seems to be getting it right with their rental subscriptions and "Watch It Now". I even subscribe to Napster because, while I could bittorrent music easily, typing in an artist in Napster's search box is so much easier, and their subscription plan is reasonable. I just hope that the RIAA and MPAA will get a clue and let great services like these expand in the ways they need to.
As someone who work at an ad agency, let me say, I would be freaking thrilled to come up with an idea half this good. Not only do these clips entertain the viewers, they also highlight what's excellent about the product being sold. Compare that to something like the Subservient Chicken, which is entertaining but really says nothing about Burger King's product.
I hope Blendtec sticks with whatever agency/marketing intern came up with this concept. It's solid gold.
Even if this round of problems were due to ATT's customer service, the buck still stops at Apple because they chose to go exclusively with ATT, which makes it all Apple's problem.
Certainly, they also chose to go with CMDA, which basically limits them to ATT or T-Mobile, but just about every other phone in the US market seems to be able to produce both a GSM and CMDA version, so why couldn't the iPhone? Producing a couple models of the iPhone that could were sold contract-independent, were sold in the Apple store and would work with all the major US carriers would have been a step towards revolutionizing the cellphone industry. As it is now, Apple's just produced more of the same with a pretty and intuitive UI.
AT&T, through the depths of its incompetence, could derail the iPhone. It's not as though anyone put a gun to Apple's head and forced them to go with ATT. I'm sure that all of the major cellphone providers would have been Thrilled to be able to offer the iPhone. Nothing was forcing their exclusivity to one provider. They Chose to go exclusively with ATT, so any blame for problems with that provider rest solely on Apple's shoulders.
Tim Wu over at Slate.com makes a pretty good argument that the decision to make the iPhone a ATT exclusive, along with a few other things like limiting the software that can be developed for the phone, mean that the iPhone isn't revolutionary at all.
I'm sure it has a beautiful UI and makes things pleasantly intuitive, but I think I'll be waiting for version 2, or a particularly good "iPhone Killer".
Which well never happen. It makes people feel very uncomfortable to have to think about the ethical choices they make before they buy
I disagree, or at least sort of disagree with this. It's true that ethical obligations probably come pretty low on the list of priorities when people make purchases, far below concerns like quality and price. But, all other things being equal, ethics can be a wonderful marketing tool.
If you saw two t-shirts on the shelf, both indistinguishable in terms of quality and style and identically priced, and one claimed to be produced using ethical practices (whether that means environmentally friendly, treating its workers well, etc...), I'm guessing you - along with most of the American public - would choose the ethically produced product.
The problem with DRM is that most of the public doesn't care, or at least hasn't cared in the past. They'll care when either marketing tells them to care, or the arduous restrictions of DRM force them to care.
Maybe I should put my profession to good use and do some pro-bono marketing for DRM-free options.
Embedded ads work well in some things and not in others. Applications like ABC's online video player work well. ABC embeds 30 second ads into the TV show you're watching every 10 minutes or so. Consumers are already used to watching ads in the middle of their TV shows so it's not a big inconvenience.
In contrast, We7 embeds short ads at the beginning of every song. This isn't something consumers are used to, and seems a bit annoying. I wouldn't advise any of the clients our agency works with to use a format that was likely to annoy their customers. If there were a way that We7 could replicate the radio station listening experience that many consumers accept - embedding ads every 4 or 6 songs - I could imagine this gaining some traction. But, since that would require a propriety player and format, I don't see it happening any time soon.
Plus, if the ads play for a set amount of time at the beginning of every DRM-free mp3, wouldn't it be ridiculously easy to strip them out?
IAAAG (I Am An Advertising Guy), but that doesn't mean my opinion on this matter holds any particular validity.
4 years ago people would have been hooking up their Apple TV to a SD set and 640x480 would have looked just fine. I can second the motion that iTunes video looks awful on an HDTV.
I have a 32" LCD 720P HDTV that I use as a monitor. A few weeks ago I bought an episode of Desperate Housewives off iTunes (don't judge me!), watched it on the HDTV, and was severely disappointed. The quality was quite bad. I later downloaded the same episode off Bittorrent to compare the quality. The file sizes were similar, and the version I stole off Bittorrent encoded with XVID looked much better. I'm not sure why video on the iTunes store can't be encoded to look as good as video encoded by a 13 year old 1337 Haxor. Perhaps it has something to do with being able to play on an iPod.
As to the bandwidth issue, why not use P2P distribution? If I could get better quality video from the iTunes store by agreeing to share my bandwidth, I'd be happy to do it. If people can share HD content for free on BT, why can't Apple figure it out with their millions?
I have to agree here. Iridium is one of the devices from the list that comes into the "Awesome and useful, but still too expensive" catagory. The current Iridium phone costs over $1,000 and about $0.80/min, keeping it in the range of people who really need it, or have too much money. If it were to come down to an affordable price I'd love to have one for remote travels.
Another one is the Sony Reader. I've played with a couple of those, and they're excellent. E-ink serves the device extremely well, it's very readable, and customizable. Sure, there's something to be said about holding a paper book in your hands, but there's also something to be said for downloading.pdf books from Bittorrent, or digital magazine subscriptions. The problem is that at something like $300, that's quite an investment in books. Sony has yet to partner with a digital book store that subsidizes the reader's purchase with a subscription fee, which could be one answer. The other answer is rumors and an FCC filing of an upcoming $50 ebook reader from Amazon.
Meanwhile, a huge number of people get a quality-of-life boost from the extra daylight in the evening, which makes it more pleasant to walk home from work, to run late-afternoon errands, or just to enjoy some time outdoors on nice spring and autumn days.
How is losing my excuse for not exerciseing when I come home from work (darkness being that excuse) a quality of life boost. Now I have to feel guilty every day when I come home and sit around instead of being able to say, "I certainly do wish it were light out so I could go ride my bicycle. This darkness is a real shame."
I agree completely. I have most of my expensive possessions (digital camera, musical instruments, laptop) insured as a no-deductible addon to homeowners insurance. It only costs $30/yr/item, and they're all protected for everything: my dropping them, getting stolen, etc... They refuse to insure some things I'd like insured, like iPods and bicycles, but for the things they will insure, it's wonderful. It's well worth it for the piece of mind and flexibility.
A few years ago my $4,000 cello developed a crack that would be more expensive to repair than to replace. I took the cello into the insurance office and had a check from them with me the next weekend when I went to buy a new insturment. It was excellent.
This doesn't solve the question of whether it's better to be connected or unconnected for a year, or whether the weight and space of a laptop is worth it, but it along with some sort of hard-drive encryption and backing up your data, it means that you don't have to worry about breaking or losing your laptop.
Also, it's worth contacting your credit card company to check what sort of coverage your laptop has through them. American Express is pretty extensive with some of their cards.
This only applies if my health insurance rates don't get raised because you have to have an angioplasty after eating your fucking pound of bacon. The truth is every self-endangering activity affects the rest of society through its impact on health care costs. When I go skiing, I don't mind that part of the my lift ticket's cost pays the salary of the ski-patrol who will haul me down the mountain if I break my neck.
I agree with parts of your rant, but you fail to see the significant difference between regulating marriage because "homosexuality is a sin" and taxing cigarettes to offset the cost of lung cancer treatment. Your C.S. Lewis quote applies to one, not the other.
To bring this back OT, it seems like just taxing incandescent bulbs to offset the costs of CFL's would be a good thing. Too stubborn to make the switch? Go ahead and subsidize me as I eat my Tofurky and Bean Sprouts under my CFL's.
Exactly. I just graduated with a BA in English this spring, and my teachers would have marked me off if I had cited Wikipedia in papers; but they also would have marked me off for citing the Encyclopedia Britannica in papers. Wikipedia, the EB, and many other encyclopedias are great places to start researching a subject, but only so far as they give you an overview and lead you to primary sources.
As the son of a physician and husband of a medical student, TheMohel's attitude isn't particularly surprising. All too often, physicians have to watch as patients eschew real medicine for "naturopathic" remedies. Even I've seen a friend stop treatment for multiple sclerosis and spend thousands of dollars on magic "natural" pills being sold by a huckster. It's disgusting to see seriously sick people preyed on. I would guess that's where TheMohel's negativity comes from.
On the other hand, there's a big difference between trying to cure cancer with St. John's Wart and trying to stave off cancer by eating healthfully.
Compile it? Do you realize the pain and suffering every work by Mozart puts the cello section through?
F****** Mozart can keep his f****** sheet-music to himself. The man must have hated cellists. Maybe one slept with his girlfriend or stole his parking spot. Mozart's idea of a good cello line is the same four f****** notes repeated throughout the entire twelve-hour-long piece, at least it felt like twelve hours sitting there, watching the violins have the time of their life, while us f***** cellists played the same four f****** notes, over and over again. There were times when I would have happily gouged my eyes out with my own end-pin just to avoid looking at another page of the same four f******* notes penned by Mozart. The man may have been a genius, but he was a damn sadistic one.
Now, "free" Mozart scores are going to be one more reason for underfunded music departments everywhere to force more of the damnedable man on their already abused cellists.
Apparently I have a lot of pent up Mozart-related anger. Perhaps I should see someone about that.
I've never really understood paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for pieces of art, but I could imagine buying things from this action had I the means. Maybe I'm more of a boorish nerd than I previously imagined.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, forgot to add that in there. Netflix is wonderful. Particularly since I live about 5 miles from a distribution center. But again, it doesn't solve the "Live Sporting Events Only Available on Cable" dilemma.
The fact that you can run thie Lithium battery pack into the side of a car and have nothing happen to it is quite impressive.
The Slashdot crowd is already familiar with exploding laptop batteries, and electric RC news groups are filled with horror stories of houses and cars burning down from LiPo batteries that "randomly" burst into flame. Just this weekend my brother-in-law and I flew our electric RC planes with LiPo packs in them. On the way back into the house, he dropped a battery pack on the sidewalk from about 3 feet in the air. It instantly started spewing smoke and flames, and kept going for about a minute. We were lucky that it was sitting on concrete.
The moral of the story is, I wouldn't trust anything as volitile as the LiPo's that I use for RC sitting between my legs or in the trunk of my car. While the injury is unfortunate, the publicity of a safe LiPo might do good things for the KillaCycle.
This is a pretty excellent system, I used it myself for quite a while. In my personal setup I've cut out XBMC by running an HDTV as my computer monitor. With the addition of OTA HDTV broadcasts it's a pretty nifty and affordable setup. The only downfall is the inability to watch live sporting events that are broadcast only on Cable, e.g. Monday Night Football.
The obvious way for the cable company to battle back against this is A La Carte Cable. All the programs I want to watch are on 4-5 channels, but to get those channels in HD I'd have to pay at least $60/mo with with 70 other channels that I'll never watch. Add affordable A La Carte programming and the Cable providers have essentially eliminated any reason for me to pirate shows.
Now to the question of what's affordable: Right now Time Warner Cable offers A La Carte packages in San Antonio that work out to be about $0.80 per channel per month. Say more than double that for the ability to choose exactly what channels you want, and my 5 cable channels cost me $10 / mo. Piracy problem solved. I get to watch what I want and the Cable company gets my money.
I'm sure there wouldn't be subsidized DVR's and the like under a system like this, but I'd want a cable card in my PC anyway. Though I suppose a fully functional cable card is another pipe-dream.
NBC has only offered selected, generally less popular, primetime shows on its website, not all of them like on ABC. No Office, and I think no Heroes.
I personally think that web-delivered ad-supported tv shows are an excellent way to go. My only beef, (since I work at a regional ad agency), is that I wish they'd geographically target ads so that local advertisers could take advantage of the medium. I mean, really, who doesn't want to be screamed at by Big Bob of Big Bob's Used Car Bonanza?
I have few qualms about torrenting tv shows, but ABC's streaming is done so well that I often choose to watch that instead of downloading a show from that network.
Grammar Nazi says, "Fewer! Anything that can be counted is Fewer! Less is for things that can't be counted, like water. Less water. Fewer smart people."
Thank you Grammar Nazi.
Far less than 1% of the population is totally color blind. The other 99.995% of us will be able to see it just fine. Probably not a serious issue.
I also fall into the 9% of the partially colorblind population, and apart from occasionally getting confused about whether the pants I'm wearing are dark green or brown, it's not too much of a hassle. Oh, also I'm an extremely slow cherry and strawberry picker.
Not only did you notice that harryk had improperly capitalized the abbreviation for Gigabyte, you went above and beyond the call of duty and snidely used hyperbole to assure that the rest of the Slashdot community recognized both your brilliance and harryk's error.
[real men of genius music] We salute you Mr. needlessly belittling others for their insignificant mistakes man. [/real men of genius music]
*Note: By nastily pointing out GreatDrok's belittling, did I just become a Meta-Nerd-Belittler? Interesting.
Quite true. Sometimes Netflix is just too much effort (I mean, they expect me to put the DVD back in the sleeve, put that sleeve back into the container, and then walk all the way out to my mailbox before they'll send me another movie? What do they think I am, some kind of masochist?) and downloading a ripped DVD is so much easier. But, I went all out and bought a "Special Box Set" of the first two Bourne movies for my wife. Last night we sat down to watch the first one. Halfway through, in the middle of a driving scene, Windows Media Player pops up with a little message that says something like, "This movie is unable to continue due to Copy Protection on the disc".
Seriously, this is how you repay me for buying a movie? I had to run AnyDVD just to watch the 2nd half of the movie. Never had that problem with movies I stole off of BitTorrent.
It's been said before on Slashdot (probably several times already today) but they key to successfully getting people to buy media isn't better copy protection, it's better products and more realistic pricing.
Netflix seems to be getting it right with their rental subscriptions and "Watch It Now". I even subscribe to Napster because, while I could bittorrent music easily, typing in an artist in Napster's search box is so much easier, and their subscription plan is reasonable. I just hope that the RIAA and MPAA will get a clue and let great services like these expand in the ways they need to.
As someone who work at an ad agency, let me say, I would be freaking thrilled to come up with an idea half this good. Not only do these clips entertain the viewers, they also highlight what's excellent about the product being sold. Compare that to something like the Subservient Chicken, which is entertaining but really says nothing about Burger King's product.
I hope Blendtec sticks with whatever agency/marketing intern came up with this concept. It's solid gold.
Seriously Mr. Stephenson, isn't it time you registered for a Slashdot account?
Even if this round of problems were due to ATT's customer service, the buck still stops at Apple because they chose to go exclusively with ATT, which makes it all Apple's problem.
Certainly, they also chose to go with CMDA, which basically limits them to ATT or T-Mobile, but just about every other phone in the US market seems to be able to produce both a GSM and CMDA version, so why couldn't the iPhone? Producing a couple models of the iPhone that could were sold contract-independent, were sold in the Apple store and would work with all the major US carriers would have been a step towards revolutionizing the cellphone industry. As it is now, Apple's just produced more of the same with a pretty and intuitive UI.
Nifty, not revolutionary.
Tim Wu over at Slate.com makes a pretty good argument that the decision to make the iPhone a ATT exclusive, along with a few other things like limiting the software that can be developed for the phone, mean that the iPhone isn't revolutionary at all.
I'm sure it has a beautiful UI and makes things pleasantly intuitive, but I think I'll be waiting for version 2, or a particularly good "iPhone Killer".
I disagree, or at least sort of disagree with this. It's true that ethical obligations probably come pretty low on the list of priorities when people make purchases, far below concerns like quality and price. But, all other things being equal, ethics can be a wonderful marketing tool.
If you saw two t-shirts on the shelf, both indistinguishable in terms of quality and style and identically priced, and one claimed to be produced using ethical practices (whether that means environmentally friendly, treating its workers well, etc...), I'm guessing you - along with most of the American public - would choose the ethically produced product.
The problem with DRM is that most of the public doesn't care, or at least hasn't cared in the past. They'll care when either marketing tells them to care, or the arduous restrictions of DRM force them to care.
Maybe I should put my profession to good use and do some pro-bono marketing for DRM-free options.
Royally pissed off? Explain your viewpoint to the school.
The School's site is here.
Principal: Kevin Moran - Kevin.Moran@fortbend.k12.tx.us - 281-634-2156
Assistant Principal: Lorri Hubert, Lorri.Hubert@fortbend.k12.tx.us - 281-634-2164
Lead Counselor: Alice Ledford - Alice.Ledford@fortbend.k12.tx.us - 281-634-2157
Fort Bend ISD's site is here.
Superintendent: Timothy R. Jenney, Ph.D. - superintendent@fortbend.k12.tx.us -
The entire board of directors of the Fort Bend ISD can be reached here. (Google Cache in anticipation of slashdotting).
Embedded ads work well in some things and not in others. Applications like ABC's online video player work well. ABC embeds 30 second ads into the TV show you're watching every 10 minutes or so. Consumers are already used to watching ads in the middle of their TV shows so it's not a big inconvenience.
In contrast, We7 embeds short ads at the beginning of every song. This isn't something consumers are used to, and seems a bit annoying. I wouldn't advise any of the clients our agency works with to use a format that was likely to annoy their customers. If there were a way that We7 could replicate the radio station listening experience that many consumers accept - embedding ads every 4 or 6 songs - I could imagine this gaining some traction. But, since that would require a propriety player and format, I don't see it happening any time soon.
Plus, if the ads play for a set amount of time at the beginning of every DRM-free mp3, wouldn't it be ridiculously easy to strip them out?
IAAAG (I Am An Advertising Guy), but that doesn't mean my opinion on this matter holds any particular validity.
4 years ago people would have been hooking up their Apple TV to a SD set and 640x480 would have looked just fine. I can second the motion that iTunes video looks awful on an HDTV.
I have a 32" LCD 720P HDTV that I use as a monitor. A few weeks ago I bought an episode of Desperate Housewives off iTunes (don't judge me!), watched it on the HDTV, and was severely disappointed. The quality was quite bad. I later downloaded the same episode off Bittorrent to compare the quality. The file sizes were similar, and the version I stole off Bittorrent encoded with XVID looked much better. I'm not sure why video on the iTunes store can't be encoded to look as good as video encoded by a 13 year old 1337 Haxor. Perhaps it has something to do with being able to play on an iPod.
As to the bandwidth issue, why not use P2P distribution? If I could get better quality video from the iTunes store by agreeing to share my bandwidth, I'd be happy to do it. If people can share HD content for free on BT, why can't Apple figure it out with their millions?
I have to agree here. Iridium is one of the devices from the list that comes into the "Awesome and useful, but still too expensive" catagory. The current Iridium phone costs over $1,000 and about $0.80/min, keeping it in the range of people who really need it, or have too much money. If it were to come down to an affordable price I'd love to have one for remote travels.
.pdf books from Bittorrent, or digital magazine subscriptions. The problem is that at something like $300, that's quite an investment in books. Sony has yet to partner with a digital book store that subsidizes the reader's purchase with a subscription fee, which could be one answer. The other answer is rumors and an FCC filing of an upcoming $50 ebook reader from Amazon.
Another one is the Sony Reader. I've played with a couple of those, and they're excellent. E-ink serves the device extremely well, it's very readable, and customizable. Sure, there's something to be said about holding a paper book in your hands, but there's also something to be said for downloading
Great devices, just too expensive for now.
Meanwhile, a huge number of people get a quality-of-life boost from the extra daylight in the evening, which makes it more pleasant to walk home from work, to run late-afternoon errands, or just to enjoy some time outdoors on nice spring and autumn days.
How is losing my excuse for not exerciseing when I come home from work (darkness being that excuse) a quality of life boost. Now I have to feel guilty every day when I come home and sit around instead of being able to say, "I certainly do wish it were light out so I could go ride my bicycle. This darkness is a real shame."
Damn you DST.
I agree completely. I have most of my expensive possessions (digital camera, musical instruments, laptop) insured as a no-deductible addon to homeowners insurance. It only costs $30/yr/item, and they're all protected for everything: my dropping them, getting stolen, etc... They refuse to insure some things I'd like insured, like iPods and bicycles, but for the things they will insure, it's wonderful. It's well worth it for the piece of mind and flexibility.
A few years ago my $4,000 cello developed a crack that would be more expensive to repair than to replace. I took the cello into the insurance office and had a check from them with me the next weekend when I went to buy a new insturment. It was excellent.
This doesn't solve the question of whether it's better to be connected or unconnected for a year, or whether the weight and space of a laptop is worth it, but it along with some sort of hard-drive encryption and backing up your data, it means that you don't have to worry about breaking or losing your laptop.
Also, it's worth contacting your credit card company to check what sort of coverage your laptop has through them. American Express is pretty extensive with some of their cards.
I agree with parts of your rant, but you fail to see the significant difference between regulating marriage because "homosexuality is a sin" and taxing cigarettes to offset the cost of lung cancer treatment. Your C.S. Lewis quote applies to one, not the other.
To bring this back OT, it seems like just taxing incandescent bulbs to offset the costs of CFL's would be a good thing. Too stubborn to make the switch? Go ahead and subsidize me as I eat my Tofurky and Bean Sprouts under my CFL's.
I guarantee that 99% of them will react to the news of a merger with absolute horror
It feels good to be in the 1% minority on something.
Now maybe I can get the NPR stations I love (Sirius) as well as MLB games (XM).
Exactly. I just graduated with a BA in English this spring, and my teachers would have marked me off if I had cited Wikipedia in papers; but they also would have marked me off for citing the Encyclopedia Britannica in papers. Wikipedia, the EB, and many other encyclopedias are great places to start researching a subject, but only so far as they give you an overview and lead you to primary sources.
As the son of a physician and husband of a medical student, TheMohel's attitude isn't particularly surprising. All too often, physicians have to watch as patients eschew real medicine for "naturopathic" remedies. Even I've seen a friend stop treatment for multiple sclerosis and spend thousands of dollars on magic "natural" pills being sold by a huckster. It's disgusting to see seriously sick people preyed on. I would guess that's where TheMohel's negativity comes from.
On the other hand, there's a big difference between trying to cure cancer with St. John's Wart and trying to stave off cancer by eating healthfully.
Compile it? Do you realize the pain and suffering every work by Mozart puts the cello section through?
F****** Mozart can keep his f****** sheet-music to himself. The man must have hated cellists. Maybe one slept with his girlfriend or stole his parking spot. Mozart's idea of a good cello line is the same four f****** notes repeated throughout the entire twelve-hour-long piece, at least it felt like twelve hours sitting there, watching the violins have the time of their life, while us f***** cellists played the same four f****** notes, over and over again. There were times when I would have happily gouged my eyes out with my own end-pin just to avoid looking at another page of the same four f******* notes penned by Mozart. The man may have been a genius, but he was a damn sadistic one.
Now, "free" Mozart scores are going to be one more reason for underfunded music departments everywhere to force more of the damnedable man on their already abused cellists.
Apparently I have a lot of pent up Mozart-related anger. Perhaps I should see someone about that.
I've never really understood paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for pieces of art, but I could imagine buying things from this action had I the means.
Maybe I'm more of a boorish nerd than I previously imagined.