I agree adverse possession is stupid. Except IP owners continually try to gain all the advantages of property law. If they get the advantages, they should get the disadvantages too.
You just made my overall point - people are making stupid decisions. But they are doing it in public, private, and for profit schools. And the for profits shouldnt be singled out when the problem is endemic to the entire system/industry.
Average nationwide tuition at a 4 year public school is 7.6k per year (30k total) 4 year private school averages 30k per year (120k! total!) google says ITT costs 30k per year google says devry costs 14k per year
Traditionally people at public/private schools are also going to pay for room and board as well, which many places double the cost. However, Since everyone has the option to stay at home or rent we can ignore that.
So these schools are more expensive than state school, and up to as expensive as the average private school (but significantly less than the elite private schools)
So i will admit my cost estimates were off, but I still hold that job prospects for the public school people are pretty bad too. For the masses/sheeple, going to community college or straight out into the workforce is quite often cost effective.
Those who can specialize in areas with shortages will be better off.
I absolutely agree that education leads to higher earnings and better employment options. My point (perhaps poorly made) was that even accounting for your 2-3x better job prospects, employment in the chosen field (especially for "soft" degrees) is still bad (even though you are better off than someone with no degree), and the cost of that degree was huge.
My fiance has a masters in art history and metalsmithing. 80k in debt, and her one department (highly ranked and respected) turns out about 10-15 people like her every year. A few thousand of them across the country.
Nationwide, there are a handful of (mostly academic) positions, some industrial positions, and the rest are the proverbial "starving artist"
Other departments like english, the humanities, womens studies, etc are the same, except they don't have the industrial positions.
Liberal arts colelges, for the most part, dump out hundreds of thousands of interchangeable people with no real skills. There are of course exceptions. Doctors, engineers, some of the scientists (although many are just recycled into faculty), some of the tech people (although in my experience any person with a masters or phd in comp sci is 100% worthless on the job)
Tech schools are focusing on areas where there are more shortages of workers (or at least the impression of shortages of workers). Now, they of course have a perverse incentive to make the shortage appear worse than it is, and continue its existence even after the shortage is no longer there. But they are responding to at least some level of market dynamics, which by and large traditional schools are insulated from completely.
There is a reason all schools (private and public) do not publish good salary or job sector data. They just give the number of people having any job. You might have gone to school for engineering, and be serving fries - thats a win to the school
But you also can't trust public colleges, and for the same reason.
Public colleges in general cost SIGNIFICANTLY more than these tech schools, and the job prospects for 4 year grads are dismal. Go to grad school (especially in something like English, Art, and the Humanities), and your only job prospects are probably working for the same school that gave you the degree.
Even formally "instant upper class" things like law school are not a good payout anymore.
by definition you cannot have water in solid form at a temperature higher than freezing. That is what freezing means. The freezing point (as well as the boiling point) is not a fixed value though, and can change based on pressure and any impurities in the water. Technically your teacher was right, according to the words you and he were using.
Not proving a negative has nothing to do with reasoning. It has to do with proof. (Hence the proving). In your example of God. If God shows up one day, well, then you have proven he exists. If God doesn't show up one day, you DIDNT prove anything, maybe he will show up tommorow.
Beyond that level of logic, there is no more complicated reasoning that is applicable to "proving a negative"
Well, nobody can force you to upgrade your equipment. But in 2009, I hope you have all the content you want, because they are going to stop transmiting SD. There will be downconverters available (at a cost) that will let you show HD content on an SD set, but obviously you won't get the HD quality. DVDs might make it to 2009. How long ago did DVDs come out? And when did VHS disappear? You will be on the edge maybe. I give HD-DVD/blue ray around 5 years before it totally replaces standard DVD. But it will be in the majority significantly before that.
If you are old enough, you replaced LPs with 8 track, 8 track with cassettes, casettes with CDs. There is no law saying you have to upgrade, but I hope you are happy with the old stuff, cause they aren't making new stuff in the old formats.
As for DRM risk and Aspect ratio change, those are both inevitable. Standard def transmissions are going away in 2009. The aspect ratio is great for movies, and most primetime tv is already shown in 16x9, letterboxed. It may have been pointeless, but now it is inevitable (and you are living with letterboxing so are getting a smaller picture, and less scan lines actually dedicated to your picture) Equipment cost - maybe... My HD set (a 30" widescreen CRT) was only $800. I live in a small apartment, so a 40"-60" would be wasted. Its only high cost if you want to go to a huge screen.
As for the letterboxing, that actually magnifies the quality difference between HD and SD. For a show like Lost, The full vertical HDTV resolution is dedicated to the show (thats 720 or 1080 lines depending on your particular transmission).
SD is 486 lines, but you dont get 486 lines worth of quality. Your picture only gets 400 or so lines as the actual picture, so almost 1/5 of the resolution is wasted by letterboxing!
It may have been a pointless change, but now that its changed, you are shooting yourself in the foot by not moving along.
The DRM is sucky yes. But what are you going to do in 2009?
It is fairly common that SD content looks worse on HD than on an SD tv, because HD is showing more detail, that is blurred out by an SD set. That could be it.
The electronics stores are very stupid. They don't configure the Tvs correctly, and they dont send a Hidef signal all the time. (Best buy is better than this than some). It is a HUGE difference when you watch it for real. If you watch a show like Lost, or Battlestar Gallactica in HD, then watch it in SD, the SD looks like a horribly compressed MPEG. It is an insane difference.
Interestingly, SD movie content (HBO/showtime) is significanly better quality than SD TV. Also, there is less of a difference if your source is a DVD.
It is a huge difference. Sucks that your monitor won't work tho. The appeal is a much clearer picture. If you get your HD over cable, the cable companies all come with HD DVRs now, and you can record OTA HD content with an HD capture card.
The missing piece right now is HD capture for cable or sat using your own capture hardware or Tivo or something. That capability will be out later this summer when the cablecard capible HD capture cards and Tivos come out.
Frame for frame, sony had a better product. But they lost because VHS came out with tapes that could hold more. Doesn't matter for rentals, but when you stick your tape in, and want to record the superbowl, or a movie that with commercials has been stretched out to 3 hours, it made a difference.
Uh, have you ever watched HDTV? It is insanely better quality for network TV. The difference is smaller for premium (HBO etc) content, but is still significant. Or do you mean why would you pay for cable when you can get OTA? But OTA isn't analog, so your comment is confusing.
As I posted elsewhere, these two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Things can get worse for job seekers, while demand is actually increasing (real demand, not just nominal demand)
If demand drops 50% (which is about what the tech bubble burst probably meant), there is a lag to when actual employement reflects the new demand. This is based on contracts, and just overhead of letting people quit, vs laying them off. During this entire time, there is a surplus of employement, and there will be layoffs. During this period, which could last several years, if demand subsequently goes up to 60% of the original demand - an actual increase in demand - there is still a surplus, and the lay offs will continue.
Jobs are being cut because there is excess supply. Actual employment does not respond immediately to changes in demand, if demand fell by 50% overnight, the surplus would last for several years, and there would be cuts lasting for several years.
If after demand dropped 50%, it later increased back to 60% of the original value (so indeed, demand did increase) there is still a surplus, and jobs would continue to be cut, but at a reduced rate. Jobs will not stop being cut until either
1) actual employement falls to the level of actual demand 2) actual demand increases to the level of employment 3) some combination of the 1 and 2
But the fact that there is still a gap does not mean that demand isn't increasing.
This is not the same as "cuts" in medicare etc, which are just cuts in the rate of growth, but an actual increase in demand. Its just that the employement level is sticky.
You are quite right, it would be the MPAA for movies, the RIAA for music, and I don't know who for TV, Maybe the MPAA pulls double duty. However the substantive portion of my argument was 100% correct.
The RIAA will try to sue people based on just this. They will get lots of settlments. A few people will fight it. Those who fight it will have this attempted download (though not actually illegal) be used as probably cause for a discovery search of the user's computers, where they will find ACTUAL infringment, and log files documenting when, the source, and how the files got to be there. In the end the user is still busted, even though this is not illegal.
By the way, entrapment doesnt mean you can't be tricked. Police use undercover hookers, drug dealers, online "13 year old girls" all the time to catch johns, druggies, and pedophiles. Its only entrapment if they initiate the offer or conversation. Making something available and letting you make the first move is perfectly legal.
There may be some (of all political pursuasions) that are very patriotic, and put the nation above all. I think I might have heard a quote from one of them once. Something about "ask not..."
However, I find very few people (of any political pursuasion) putting "the party" above all. In fact, the very fact that there are two parties duking it out, and several smaller parties grabbing up crumbs really blows that argument out of the water.
America has time and time again been accused of being too individualistic; that everyone puts "me" first. That doesn't sound very fascist.
There are hundreds of "leaders" in the US. The concept of a single charismatic leader that everyone worshiped hasn't been around since JFK, and to a SIGNIFICANLY lesser degree Clinton. Bush is no where in the ballpark. The vast majority of even conservatives said he was pretty mediocre, but the alternitives were worse. That being said, he is the president, and yes everyone follows his lead. They do that in england, germany, france, and everywhere else too. Having a leader does not make you fascist.
There is a single culture forming, but I personally think that has more to do with national and worldwide media, and media conglomeration, along with franchise development and urban sprawl. The unified culture doesn't have much to do with politics, except in a select few hot-topics (gay issues, abortion, etc) The very fact that they ARE hot topics again shows that there is not a single unified culture.
On the last point, again you are ignoring my central issue. Yes corporations are doing bad things. but they aren't creating fascism. And the bad things they are doing are the exact same bad things that every other special interest group is doing. I am not defending them in the slightest for their corruption. Im just sayin it isnt fascism.
Of course I do not claim that the US is communist, and yes Fascism rose to power as a bulwark against Bolshevism. However, the two philosophies as implemented (not as idealized) are pretty similar.
Im not saying corporate takeover of government is a good thing, I'm just saying its not Fascism.
Fascism has a few critera to make a society fascist. (from wikipedia):
* exalts the nation and party above the individual, with the state apparatus being supreme.
* stresses loyalty to a single leader, and submission to a single culture.
* engages in economic totalitarianism through the creation of a Corporatist State, where the divergent economic and social interests of different races and classes are combined with the interests of the State.
And none of that really fits with the current US situation. Corporations trying to get advantagous tax cuts or regulations is no different than old people trying to get higher social security. You dont accuse the US of being a gerentocracy
Corporations getting everything they want is a "Bad Thing (tm)", but that does not equal a totalitarian state. As your original parent stated, if we were in a totalitarian state, you wouldn't be allowed to say so.
I think you are alluding to a Mussolini quote here (although there is some debate on if Mussolini actually said this or not)
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."
However, the meaning of the word corporate here has almost exactly the opposite of the way we think of the word today.
Rather than meaning a ".inc" business, industry, zaibatsu, what have you
in mid-century Italian, "corporate" had a meeting much more like "cooperative" and in fact was refering to unionization of workers, IE socialism.
Fascism requires government control of the means of production, and in fact is prety darn close to actual implementations of socialism. (The dream of socializm, never materializing except for small 1960's communes and kibbutz)
In america you certainly have corrupt politicians, and business buying power in government, but that is sort of the reverse of fascism. Not that it is a good thing, but it does nobody any good (regardless of where you are in the political spectrum) to use the wrong vocabulary.
The left often likes accusing Bush et al of being fascists, or NAZIs. Its debatable if NAZIism is in fact fascism, or if the two groups just had common enough goals to get along, but remember, the NAZIs were National SOCIALISTS.
Anyway, to bring the conversation full circle, nobody in bush's circle wants government control of business. If anything, they want the opposite - business controlling government. But thats what almost everyone wants (not business, but whatever your own interests are)
Thats what democracy is, everyone fighting for themselves. Now, you can say people should fight for the greater good, and avoid tragedies of the commons, but that is a flaw with democracy and capitolism itself, not a sign that the US is fascist
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I agree adverse possession is stupid. Except IP owners continually try to gain all the advantages of property law. If they get the advantages, they should get the disadvantages too.
You just made my overall point - people are making stupid decisions. But they are doing it in public, private, and for profit schools. And the for profits shouldnt be singled out when the problem is endemic to the entire system/industry.
Average nationwide tuition at a 4 year public school is 7.6k per year (30k total)
4 year private school averages 30k per year (120k! total!)
google says ITT costs 30k per year
google says devry costs 14k per year
Traditionally people at public/private schools are also going to pay for room and board as well, which many places double the cost. However, Since everyone has the option to stay at home or rent we can ignore that.
So these schools are more expensive than state school, and up to as expensive as the average private school (but significantly less than the elite private schools)
So i will admit my cost estimates were off, but I still hold that job prospects for the public school people are pretty bad too. For the masses/sheeple, going to community college or straight out into the workforce is quite often cost effective.
Those who can specialize in areas with shortages will be better off.
I absolutely agree that education leads to higher earnings and better employment options. My point (perhaps poorly made) was that even accounting for your 2-3x better job prospects, employment in the chosen field (especially for "soft" degrees) is still bad (even though you are better off than someone with no degree), and the cost of that degree was huge.
My fiance has a masters in art history and metalsmithing. 80k in debt, and her one department (highly ranked and respected) turns out about 10-15 people like her every year. A few thousand of them across the country.
Nationwide, there are a handful of (mostly academic) positions, some industrial positions, and the rest are the proverbial "starving artist"
Other departments like english, the humanities, womens studies, etc are the same, except they don't have the industrial positions.
I agree, and this somewhat reinforces my point.
Liberal arts colelges, for the most part, dump out hundreds of thousands of interchangeable people with no real skills. There are of course exceptions. Doctors, engineers, some of the scientists (although many are just recycled into faculty), some of the tech people (although in my experience any person with a masters or phd in comp sci is 100% worthless on the job)
Tech schools are focusing on areas where there are more shortages of workers (or at least the impression of shortages of workers). Now, they of course have a perverse incentive to make the shortage appear worse than it is, and continue its existence even after the shortage is no longer there. But they are responding to at least some level of market dynamics, which by and large traditional schools are insulated from completely.
There is a reason all schools (private and public) do not publish good salary or job sector data. They just give the number of people having any job. You might have gone to school for engineering, and be serving fries - thats a win to the school
But you also can't trust public colleges, and for the same reason.
Public colleges in general cost SIGNIFICANTLY more than these tech schools, and the job prospects for 4 year grads are dismal. Go to grad school (especially in something like English, Art, and the Humanities), and your only job prospects are probably working for the same school that gave you the degree.
Even formally "instant upper class" things like law school are not a good payout anymore.
by definition you cannot have water in solid form at a temperature higher than freezing. That is what freezing means. The freezing point (as well as the boiling point) is not a fixed value though, and can change based on pressure and any impurities in the water. Technically your teacher was right, according to the words you and he were using.
Americans deserving jobs in America more than people not from America? Obviously a racist point of view...
Not proving a negative has nothing to do with reasoning. It has to do with proof. (Hence the proving). In your example of God. If God shows up one day, well, then you have proven he exists. If God doesn't show up one day, you DIDNT prove anything, maybe he will show up tommorow.
Beyond that level of logic, there is no more complicated reasoning that is applicable to "proving a negative"
Cable will possibly work. Its just broadcast TV that is mandated to be shut off in 2009. (was 2007 but they pushed it back)
Well, nobody can force you to upgrade your equipment. But in 2009, I hope you have all the content you want, because they are going to stop transmiting SD. There will be downconverters available (at a cost) that will let you show HD content on an SD set, but obviously you won't get the HD quality. DVDs might make it to 2009. How long ago did DVDs come out? And when did VHS disappear? You will be on the edge maybe. I give HD-DVD/blue ray around 5 years before it totally replaces standard DVD. But it will be in the majority significantly before that.
If you are old enough, you replaced LPs with 8 track, 8 track with cassettes, casettes with CDs. There is no law saying you have to upgrade, but I hope you are happy with the old stuff, cause they aren't making new stuff in the old formats.
As for DRM risk and Aspect ratio change, those are both inevitable. Standard def transmissions are going away in 2009. The aspect ratio is great for movies, and most primetime tv is already shown in 16x9, letterboxed. It may have been pointeless, but now it is inevitable (and you are living with letterboxing so are getting a smaller picture, and less scan lines actually dedicated to your picture) Equipment cost - maybe... My HD set (a 30" widescreen CRT) was only $800. I live in a small apartment, so a 40"-60" would be wasted. Its only high cost if you want to go to a huge screen.
As for the letterboxing, that actually magnifies the quality difference between HD and SD. For a show like Lost, The full vertical HDTV resolution is dedicated to the show (thats 720 or 1080 lines depending on your particular transmission).
SD is 486 lines, but you dont get 486 lines worth of quality. Your picture only gets 400 or so lines as the actual picture, so almost 1/5 of the resolution is wasted by letterboxing!
It may have been a pointless change, but now that its changed, you are shooting yourself in the foot by not moving along.
The DRM is sucky yes. But what are you going to do in 2009?
It is fairly common that SD content looks worse on HD than on an SD tv, because HD is showing more detail, that is blurred out by an SD set. That could be it.
The electronics stores are very stupid. They don't configure the Tvs correctly, and they dont send a Hidef signal all the time. (Best buy is better than this than some). It is a HUGE difference when you watch it for real. If you watch a show like Lost, or Battlestar Gallactica in HD, then watch it in SD, the SD looks like a horribly compressed MPEG. It is an insane difference.
Interestingly, SD movie content (HBO/showtime) is significanly better quality than SD TV. Also, there is less of a difference if your source is a DVD.
It is a huge difference. Sucks that your monitor won't work tho. The appeal is a much clearer picture. If you get your HD over cable, the cable companies all come with HD DVRs now, and you can record OTA HD content with an HD capture card.
The missing piece right now is HD capture for cable or sat using your own capture hardware or Tivo or something. That capability will be out later this summer when the cablecard capible HD capture cards and Tivos come out.
I was specifically refering to OTA HD, but I was ambiguous.
Frame for frame, sony had a better product. But they lost because VHS came out with tapes that could hold more. Doesn't matter for rentals, but when you stick your tape in, and want to record the superbowl, or a movie that with commercials has been stretched out to 3 hours, it made a difference.
Uh, have you ever watched HDTV? It is insanely better quality for network TV. The difference is smaller for premium (HBO etc) content, but is still significant. Or do you mean why would you pay for cable when you can get OTA? But OTA isn't analog, so your comment is confusing.
As I posted elsewhere, these two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Things can get worse for job seekers, while demand is actually increasing (real demand, not just nominal demand)
If demand drops 50% (which is about what the tech bubble burst probably meant), there is a lag to when actual employement reflects the new demand. This is based on contracts, and just overhead of letting people quit, vs laying them off. During this entire time, there is a surplus of employement, and there will be layoffs. During this period, which could last several years, if demand subsequently goes up to 60% of the original demand - an actual increase in demand - there is still a surplus, and the lay offs will continue.
Jobs are being cut because there is excess supply. Actual employment does not respond immediately to changes in demand, if demand fell by 50% overnight, the surplus would last for several years, and there would be cuts lasting for several years.
If after demand dropped 50%, it later increased back to 60% of the original value (so indeed, demand did increase) there is still a surplus, and jobs would continue to be cut, but at a reduced rate. Jobs will not stop being cut until either
1) actual employement falls to the level of actual demand
2) actual demand increases to the level of employment
3) some combination of the 1 and 2
But the fact that there is still a gap does not mean that demand isn't increasing.
This is not the same as "cuts" in medicare etc, which are just cuts in the rate of growth, but an actual increase in demand. Its just that the employement level is sticky.
You are quite right, it would be the MPAA for movies, the RIAA for music, and I don't know who for TV, Maybe the MPAA pulls double duty. However the substantive portion of my argument was 100% correct.
The RIAA will try to sue people based on just this. They will get lots of settlments. A few people will fight it. Those who fight it will have this attempted download (though not actually illegal) be used as probably cause for a discovery search of the user's computers, where they will find ACTUAL infringment, and log files documenting when, the source, and how the files got to be there. In the end the user is still busted, even though this is not illegal.
By the way, entrapment doesnt mean you can't be tricked. Police use undercover hookers, drug dealers, online "13 year old girls" all the time to catch johns, druggies, and pedophiles. Its only entrapment if they initiate the offer or conversation. Making something available and letting you make the first move is perfectly legal.
There may be some (of all political pursuasions) that are very patriotic, and put the nation above all. I think I might have heard a quote from one of them once. Something about "ask not..."
However, I find very few people (of any political pursuasion) putting "the party" above all. In fact, the very fact that there are two parties duking it out, and several smaller parties grabbing up crumbs really blows that argument out of the water.
America has time and time again been accused of being too individualistic; that everyone puts "me" first. That doesn't sound very fascist.
There are hundreds of "leaders" in the US. The concept of a single charismatic leader that everyone worshiped hasn't been around since JFK, and to a SIGNIFICANLY lesser degree Clinton. Bush is no where in the ballpark. The vast majority of even conservatives said he was pretty mediocre, but the alternitives were worse. That being said, he is the president, and yes everyone follows his lead. They do that in england, germany, france, and everywhere else too. Having a leader does not make you fascist.
There is a single culture forming, but I personally think that has more to do with national and worldwide media, and media conglomeration, along with franchise development and urban sprawl. The unified culture doesn't have much to do with politics, except in a select few hot-topics (gay issues, abortion, etc) The very fact that they ARE hot topics again shows that there is not a single unified culture.
On the last point, again you are ignoring my central issue. Yes corporations are doing bad things. but they aren't creating fascism. And the bad things they are doing are the exact same bad things that every other special interest group is doing. I am not defending them in the slightest for their corruption. Im just sayin it isnt fascism.
Well, things can have more than one opposite :)
Of course I do not claim that the US is communist, and yes Fascism rose to power as a bulwark against Bolshevism. However, the two philosophies as implemented (not as idealized) are pretty similar.
Im not saying corporate takeover of government is a good thing, I'm just saying its not Fascism.
Fascism has a few critera to make a society fascist. (from wikipedia):
* exalts the nation and party above the individual, with the state apparatus being supreme.
* stresses loyalty to a single leader, and submission to a single culture.
* engages in economic totalitarianism through the creation of a Corporatist State, where the divergent economic and social interests of different races and classes are combined with the interests of the State.
And none of that really fits with the current US situation. Corporations trying to get advantagous tax cuts or regulations is no different than old people trying to get higher social security. You dont accuse the US of being a gerentocracy
Corporations getting everything they want is a "Bad Thing (tm)", but that does not equal a totalitarian state. As your original parent stated, if we were in a totalitarian state, you wouldn't be allowed to say so.
I think you are alluding to a Mussolini quote here (although there is some debate on if Mussolini actually said this or not)
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."
However, the meaning of the word corporate here has almost exactly the opposite of the way we think of the word today.
Rather than meaning a ".inc" business, industry, zaibatsu, what have you
in mid-century Italian, "corporate" had a meeting much more like "cooperative" and in fact was refering to unionization of workers, IE socialism.
Fascism requires government control of the means of production, and in fact is prety darn close to actual implementations of socialism. (The dream of socializm, never materializing except for small 1960's communes and kibbutz)
In america you certainly have corrupt politicians, and business buying power in government, but that is sort of the reverse of fascism. Not that it is a good thing, but it does nobody any good (regardless of where you are in the political spectrum) to use the wrong vocabulary.
The left often likes accusing Bush et al of being fascists, or NAZIs. Its debatable if NAZIism is in fact fascism, or if the two groups just had common enough goals to get along, but remember, the NAZIs were National SOCIALISTS.
Anyway, to bring the conversation full circle, nobody in bush's circle wants government control of business. If anything, they want the opposite - business controlling government. But thats what almost everyone wants (not business, but whatever your own interests are)
Thats what democracy is, everyone fighting for themselves. Now, you can say people should fight for the greater good, and avoid tragedies of the commons, but that is a flaw with democracy and capitolism itself, not a sign that the US is fascist