I don't think having a keen ability to anticipate potential problems has jack all to do with whether one's personality is optimistic or pessimistic. I'm an optimist by nature, but I have a highly refined ability to anticipate counterarguments (good lawyering) and the myriad ways that users can screw up an app (good programming). I don't expect bad things to happen, which would be pessimistic, I simply anticipate them and deal with it accordingly.
I also try to avoid correlating things that have no substantive connection to one another, like the bad psychoanalysis cited above.
Insightful? More like unmitigated HORSESHIT. On average, pharma companies spend more than TWICE as much on marketing as they do R&D. And a good chunk of their R&D money comes from, guess who? TAXPAYERS. Can you say NIH grants? Pray tell, kind shill, how is it that a drug that is manufactured in the US and then shipped to Canada sells for HALF as much there as it does here? Let me answer that for you. Because the Canadian government won't allow the drug companies to blatantly RIP OFF their citizens. Our government, on the other hand, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the pharma industry. How else can you explain the new Medicare "reforms" that specifically PROHIBIT the government from negotiating lower drug prices with the manufacturers? Restoring some sanity to U.S. prescription drug costs should start with beating down the preposterous propaganda campaign of the major pharma companies. Consider this my personal shot across the bow.
OK, I've reloaded a couple times already and still no one has gone for the FP so what the hell, right? Where IS everyone? I know you're not all on dates, and this thread IS about beer. What gives? Let's hear it for making your own suds!
Our local weather forecasters use "sophisticated computer models" to predict the weather, too, and it doesn't seem to do them much good. They only get it right about half the time. If road maintenance services were tied to their predictions, we'd be in a world of hurt. No matter how fancy your models may be, nothing beats the old-fashioned -- "hey look, it's snowing outside, better dispatch the plows." Or for a somewhat more predictive approach -- "hey look, the doppler says it's raining an hour upwind from here and the temp is below freezing! Better salt the roads."
...they're going to realize that the game isn't to get people to click more ads. That's never going to happen no matter how big they make the ads.
Internet advertising will come into its own only when they realize that the best approach is to count eyeballs, just like magazines sell ads based on circulation and TV sells them based on viewership.
Unrealistic expectations are killing online advertising, along with the websites that depend on them. They need to just get over it and stop finding new ways of abusing us.
Underdog congressional candidate Billy Bob Budweiser is making waves with his renegade single-issue campaign platform: free beer for everyone.
Across America, millions of beer lovers have coalesced behind his effort to put free brewskies in every refrigerator. The incredible outpouring of support for the little-known but aptly named candidate has all the markings of a movement, maybe even a revolution, that could change the System forever.
Even though he doesn't have any money, Billy Bob has asked his supporters to send him the cap from every beer they drink to indicate their support for his campaign. So far he's collected several million caps, which he says he plans to take to Washington and "leave 'em in a big ole pile on the President's desk. That'll show 'em!"
Budweiser's opponent, a 30-year incumbent with a multi-million dollar war chest, said he isn't concerned about Budweiser's beer-based campaign. "People in this district prefer Miller Lite," he said. "It tastes great and it's less filling."
Political pundits say Budweiser has no chance whatsoever to win the race, but that hasn't dimmed the frothy enthusiasm of his beer-addled supporters. "Ah'm a-gonna keep shendin' Billy mah beer capsh," said one wildly intoxicated supporter, who claims to have drank more than 40 cases of Budweiser in the last two weeks. "If everbuddy wood jess shend Billy their capsh, them fellersh that runsh the gubbament wood hafta lishen! An if they don't, me an Billy gonna go up dare ta Warshinton and kick shome ash!"
Of course, the voters in Budweiser's district will have the last word. The latest poll shows Budweiser is likely to top out at 3-5 percent of the vote. Budweiser says he isn't worried. "If I lose, I'm gonna take these here bottle caps to the aluminum recycler. That should get me a good $20 or so. Then I'll head over to the Do Drop Inn and get a good buzz on. That's what America's all about, ain't it?"
Yeah, so it predates a lot of the newfangled CGI stuff, but it is hands down one of the best suspense sci-fi flicks ever made. I wanna see the part where the astronaut looks down into the alien egg case and the thing blasts out of the case, melts through his helmet and attaches itself to his face. I tossed a bucket of popcorn over my head on a regular screen for that one. I'd probably wet my pants with IMAX. And then the part where the fetal alien pops out of the dude's chest at breakfast. Easily one of the most memorable scenes in sci-fi moviedom.
Re:The concept of intellectual property has got to
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 1
Sorry, friend, but your argument is deeply flawed. I agree, of course, that the explicit purpose of copyright law is to promote the public good. I never suggested otherwise in my post.
However, to claim that copyright law has nothing to do with protecting authors is clearly erroneous. Forget about your unspecified "frequently affirmed by the courts" assertion, which is no doubt true, but completely irrelevant both to the original post and my response. No less than the U.S. Supreme Court itself wrote: "The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an 'author's' creative labor."
And what was the point of my post? That eliminating copyright protection would threaten the ability of creators to secure a fair return for their labor. So your claim that my analogy is not on point is, for lack of a better term, horseshit.
Furthermore, to suggest that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution didn't explicitly intend to protect authors, even if it is merely a means to an end (enhancing the public good), is to misread the Constitution itself. Article I, Section 8, clause 8 grants Congress the power "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Thus the original poster's suggestion that there should be no IP law, and your tacit agreement with that position, is not only contrary to the explicitly stated intentions of the Framers, it also flies in the face of your own claim to want to enhance the public good by encouraging the creation of new works. As the Framers so wisely foresaw (as they did in many other areas), to fail to protect authors is to fail to achieve the stated goal of promoting the public good.
As for your claim to be an artist, yeah, well, so is my 2-year-old niece. Her art hangs on my refrigerator. From a commercial standpoint, it isn't worth a dime. Which I suspect is also the case with your "art", otherwise your view of copyright protection for artists would be quite different indeed.
One final thought -- I fully agree that copyright law is completely out of control. But that isn't an argument for abolishing it -- it's a call for rational reform that pushes things back toward the original intent of the Framers.
Re:The concept of intellectual property has got to
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 1
Most reasonable people acknowledge that there is a very valid reason for limited copyright protection -- so the creator can reap some reward for their WORK. You know, that "making a living" thing? If you had the talent to make music that millions of people love to hear, or take photographs that people will pay thousands of dollars to hang on their walls, or write code that becomes the next killer app, don't you suppose you might want to have some say in whether or not the fruits of your labor are just taken and used by anyone who wants to, for whatever purpose they wish, for free? If your answer is "no" you are either an idiot or a liar, or both.
Sorry I won't bother to read your essay since it presumably contains the same crap as your post.
... we walked 5,280 feet to school! Without any shoes! In the snow! Took over 5 boxes of 1000ft Cat5 to lay a cable so we could find our way home again! And we STILL came up a football field short of the front door! But we LIKED IT!
You must be joking. You'd have to be living under a rock not to get that reference. For chrissakes the original BF quote is posted on every friggin' thread that has even the remotest connection to privacy issues. Usually with a few bastardized variations, which inevitably provokes someone to haul out the "actual" BF quote, which is then inevitably modded "informative." ACK. Can we get some original thought in here please?
Must be some of that new math, eh chris? One of the linked articles was published 25 MONTHS AGO, so the experiment must have been started well before then. "News" indeed.
Let's remember this is an ELECTION YEAR. This bill is just one drop of water in a friggin tidal wave of crapola that will be introduced over the next few months, all of it aimed at making it look like our elected officials are actually doing something useful. In this case, the congresscritter can put together a nifty piece of campaign literature that says "I'm working hard to protect our kids from Internet porn." It's pure propaganda, and certainly not worth all the attention it's getting here. If and when it gets a committee hearing, moves to the House floor and stands for a vote, THEN you MIGHT have something to be concerned about. Even then it still would have to go to the Senate, get a committee referral, get a hearing, get voted to the floor, debated and voted upon. Methinks all this ranting is just a little bit premature.
Even though they disgraced themselves in the presidential election, they've restored at least a small shred of my faith in their ability to look at explosive political issues like child porn and still manage to give the constitutional issues a fair and thoughtful hearing. Let's hope they do the same when all these privacy-shredding "antiterrorist" laws make it to their chambers.
You say the cost of Flash software is prohibitive for your unspecified "community groups." That may be the least of your worries. Do you plan to train these folks how to use it? Flash ain't rocket science, but the learning curve is steep, steep, steep. If you're thinking these people will be able to just open up your SWF files and make any sense out of timelines, events and symbols, then you're not thinking.
Uhhh...that would be safety "on". Safety "off" means ready-to-fire. And you can bet those "finger on the trigger" guards you saw elsewhere have their safety "on" for... *drum roll please*... SAFETY purposes. Not to mention the fact that subbies are pathetically inaccurate and make those guards no less vulnerable to a surprise attack than the dudes slinging M-16s across their back. They may look like bad asses, but I could take 'em at 100 yards with my.22 squirrel rifle (theoretically of course) and they'd never know what hit 'em.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think having a keen ability to anticipate potential problems has jack all to do with whether one's personality is optimistic or pessimistic. I'm an optimist by nature, but I have a highly refined ability to anticipate counterarguments (good lawyering) and the myriad ways that users can screw up an app (good programming). I don't expect bad things to happen, which would be pessimistic, I simply anticipate them and deal with it accordingly.
I also try to avoid correlating things that have no substantive connection to one another, like the bad psychoanalysis cited above.
Insightful? More like unmitigated HORSESHIT. On average, pharma companies spend more than TWICE as much on marketing as they do R&D. And a good chunk of their R&D money comes from, guess who? TAXPAYERS. Can you say NIH grants? Pray tell, kind shill, how is it that a drug that is manufactured in the US and then shipped to Canada sells for HALF as much there as it does here? Let me answer that for you. Because the Canadian government won't allow the drug companies to blatantly RIP OFF their citizens. Our government, on the other hand, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the pharma industry. How else can you explain the new Medicare "reforms" that specifically PROHIBIT the government from negotiating lower drug prices with the manufacturers? Restoring some sanity to U.S. prescription drug costs should start with beating down the preposterous propaganda campaign of the major pharma companies. Consider this my personal shot across the bow.
Yup.
OK, I've reloaded a couple times already and still no one has gone for the FP so what the hell, right? Where IS everyone? I know you're not all on dates, and this thread IS about beer. What gives? Let's hear it for making your own suds!
google cache
TV....broken.....help....me....
Our local weather forecasters use "sophisticated computer models" to predict the weather, too, and it doesn't seem to do them much good. They only get it right about half the time. If road maintenance services were tied to their predictions, we'd be in a world of hurt. No matter how fancy your models may be, nothing beats the old-fashioned -- "hey look, it's snowing outside, better dispatch the plows." Or for a somewhat more predictive approach -- "hey look, the doppler says it's raining an hour upwind from here and the temp is below freezing! Better salt the roads."
Anybody got Taco's snail mail address? ;-)
...they're going to realize that the game isn't to get people to click more ads. That's never going to happen no matter how big they make the ads.
Internet advertising will come into its own only when they realize that the best approach is to count eyeballs, just like magazines sell ads based on circulation and TV sells them based on viewership.
Unrealistic expectations are killing online advertising, along with the websites that depend on them. They need to just get over it and stop finding new ways of abusing us.
Underdog congressional candidate Billy Bob Budweiser is making waves with his renegade single-issue campaign platform: free beer for everyone.
Across America, millions of beer lovers have coalesced behind his effort to put free brewskies in every refrigerator. The incredible outpouring of support for the little-known but aptly named candidate has all the markings of a movement, maybe even a revolution, that could change the System forever.
Even though he doesn't have any money, Billy Bob has asked his supporters to send him the cap from every beer they drink to indicate their support for his campaign. So far he's collected several million caps, which he says he plans to take to Washington and "leave 'em in a big ole pile on the President's desk. That'll show 'em!"
Budweiser's opponent, a 30-year incumbent with a multi-million dollar war chest, said he isn't concerned about Budweiser's beer-based campaign. "People in this district prefer Miller Lite," he said. "It tastes great and it's less filling."
Political pundits say Budweiser has no chance whatsoever to win the race, but that hasn't dimmed the frothy enthusiasm of his beer-addled supporters. "Ah'm a-gonna keep shendin' Billy mah beer capsh," said one wildly intoxicated supporter, who claims to have drank more than 40 cases of Budweiser in the last two weeks. "If everbuddy wood jess shend Billy their capsh, them fellersh that runsh the gubbament wood hafta lishen! An if they don't, me an Billy gonna go up dare ta Warshinton and kick shome ash!"
Of course, the voters in Budweiser's district will have the last word. The latest poll shows Budweiser is likely to top out at 3-5 percent of the vote. Budweiser says he isn't worried. "If I lose, I'm gonna take these here bottle caps to the aluminum recycler. That should get me a good $20 or so. Then I'll head over to the Do Drop Inn and get a good buzz on. That's what America's all about, ain't it?"
... it was just the FBI breaking down their door instead of an F-16 swooping down and turning their facility into a parking lot.
Yeah, so it predates a lot of the newfangled CGI stuff, but it is hands down one of the best suspense sci-fi flicks ever made. I wanna see the part where the astronaut looks down into the alien egg case and the thing blasts out of the case, melts through his helmet and attaches itself to his face. I tossed a bucket of popcorn over my head on a regular screen for that one. I'd probably wet my pants with IMAX. And then the part where the fetal alien pops out of the dude's chest at breakfast. Easily one of the most memorable scenes in sci-fi moviedom.
Sorry, friend, but your argument is deeply flawed. I agree, of course, that the explicit purpose of copyright law is to promote the public good. I never suggested otherwise in my post.
However, to claim that copyright law has nothing to do with protecting authors is clearly erroneous. Forget about your unspecified "frequently affirmed by the courts" assertion, which is no doubt true, but completely irrelevant both to the original post and my response. No less than the U.S. Supreme Court itself wrote: "The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an 'author's' creative labor."
And what was the point of my post? That eliminating copyright protection would threaten the ability of creators to secure a fair return for their labor. So your claim that my analogy is not on point is, for lack of a better term, horseshit.
Furthermore, to suggest that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution didn't explicitly intend to protect authors, even if it is merely a means to an end (enhancing the public good), is to misread the Constitution itself. Article I, Section 8, clause 8 grants Congress the power "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Thus the original poster's suggestion that there should be no IP law, and your tacit agreement with that position, is not only contrary to the explicitly stated intentions of the Framers, it also flies in the face of your own claim to want to enhance the public good by encouraging the creation of new works. As the Framers so wisely foresaw (as they did in many other areas), to fail to protect authors is to fail to achieve the stated goal of promoting the public good.
As for your claim to be an artist, yeah, well, so is my 2-year-old niece. Her art hangs on my refrigerator. From a commercial standpoint, it isn't worth a dime. Which I suspect is also the case with your "art", otherwise your view of copyright protection for artists would be quite different indeed.
One final thought -- I fully agree that copyright law is completely out of control. But that isn't an argument for abolishing it -- it's a call for rational reform that pushes things back toward the original intent of the Framers.
Most reasonable people acknowledge that there is a very valid reason for limited copyright protection -- so the creator can reap some reward for their WORK. You know, that "making a living" thing? If you had the talent to make music that millions of people love to hear, or take photographs that people will pay thousands of dollars to hang on their walls, or write code that becomes the next killer app, don't you suppose you might want to have some say in whether or not the fruits of your labor are just taken and used by anyone who wants to, for whatever purpose they wish, for free? If your answer is "no" you are either an idiot or a liar, or both.
Sorry I won't bother to read your essay since it presumably contains the same crap as your post.
... we walked 5,280 feet to school! Without any shoes! In the snow! Took over 5 boxes of 1000ft Cat5 to lay a cable so we could find our way home again! And we STILL came up a football field short of the front door! But we LIKED IT!
You must be joking. You'd have to be living under a rock not to get that reference. For chrissakes the original BF quote is posted on every friggin' thread that has even the remotest connection to privacy issues. Usually with a few bastardized variations, which inevitably provokes someone to haul out the "actual" BF quote, which is then inevitably modded "informative." ACK. Can we get some original thought in here please?
Must be some of that new math, eh chris? One of the linked articles was published 25 MONTHS AGO, so the experiment must have been started well before then. "News" indeed.
Let's remember this is an ELECTION YEAR. This bill is just one drop of water in a friggin tidal wave of crapola that will be introduced over the next few months, all of it aimed at making it look like our elected officials are actually doing something useful. In this case, the congresscritter can put together a nifty piece of campaign literature that says "I'm working hard to protect our kids from Internet porn." It's pure propaganda, and certainly not worth all the attention it's getting here. If and when it gets a committee hearing, moves to the House floor and stands for a vote, THEN you MIGHT have something to be concerned about. Even then it still would have to go to the Senate, get a committee referral, get a hearing, get voted to the floor, debated and voted upon. Methinks all this ranting is just a little bit premature.
Even though they disgraced themselves in the presidential election, they've restored at least a small shred of my faith in their ability to look at explosive political issues like child porn and still manage to give the constitutional issues a fair and thoughtful hearing. Let's hope they do the same when all these privacy-shredding "antiterrorist" laws make it to their chambers.
You say the cost of Flash software is prohibitive for your unspecified "community groups." That may be the least of your worries. Do you plan to train these folks how to use it? Flash ain't rocket science, but the learning curve is steep, steep, steep. If you're thinking these people will be able to just open up your SWF files and make any sense out of timelines, events and symbols, then you're not thinking.
LOL2 I been fooled! Ah well, glad I could contribute to the day's chuckles. At least I got some karma points for it. :)
Come again partner.
Uhhh...that would be safety "on". Safety "off" means ready-to-fire. And you can bet those "finger on the trigger" guards you saw elsewhere have their safety "on" for... *drum roll please*... SAFETY purposes. Not to mention the fact that subbies are pathetically inaccurate and make those guards no less vulnerable to a surprise attack than the dudes slinging M-16s across their back. They may look like bad asses, but I could take 'em at 100 yards with my .22 squirrel rifle (theoretically of course) and they'd never know what hit 'em.
It looks to me like two STATE senators in California's legislature have introduced these bills.
If you hurry, you might still be in the running for the free ThinkGeek t being offered above.