You would be outraged if I came by your house at night and painted it without your knowledge or consent and then handed you a bill. I could make the same claim that by failing to pay the bill you were stealing from me. You'd be even more outraged if I told you that I was coming back next month to paint the house and the only way you could refuse this service was to move to a different neighborhood. If you'd call it extortion when I sent a squad of armed goons to your house to extract the bill from you in the above scenario then can not refuse to apply the same label to taxation and remain intellectually honest.
Well, your way of saying it is definitely intended to make it sound like armed goons are showing up at gun point to rob you of the tax money.
But, really, you already live on a street, with mail service, sewage, electricity, telephony, police, fire, with luck some law and order, schools, hospitals, stuff like that. You're already benefiting from the things taxes pay for, but you want to make it out like you're a martyr being robbed at gun point. It's melodramatic, but it's one sided.
You didn't spring up in a vacuum in some alternate Libertarian reality in which you were a fully self-actualized and self-sufficient entity only to have someone show up and paint your house and present a bill. You grew up in a society, and if you're really lucky, you grew up in a mostly good one. That society costs money, and as long as you plan on benefiting from it, you really should expect to help pay for it. If you grew up in it, you've been benefiting from it for a long time.
Quite frankly, I find the libertarian view comes down to all the warmth and humanity of Ebenezer Scrooge... Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? You want to declare yourself sovereign from the society in which you live, and leave paying for all of the parts you enjoy to the rest of us -- and leave those less capable simply fending for themselves.
The "taxes are theft" crowd's explanation of how such public works like roads and schools and government would get paid for sounds pretty much like "Trickle Down Economics" (individuals are free to pay)... But, I'm sure you'll defend that too, it's the same economic theory.
For me, I just needed to have a little more humanism in my life. The logical conclusion of "taxes are theft", to me, is "screw everybody else". You're reality and perception thereof may differ.
Look, before we end up writing a political blog, can we call truce? As I've said... I won't sway you, nor you me. I doubt anyone else much cares.:-P
I notice that you didn't supply your own definition of theft - you simply asserted that what the government does isn't theft.
Because, that more or less assumes that I'm willing to debate this on your terms of reference. I'm not.
If I pay my taxes, and you don't, you are stealing from me and the government, and getting the benefits of a civil society without paying for it. I believe that the government has been granted the moral authority to collect and use taxes by the Constitution, and that it's a natural part of what having a government means.
Why do you hate the Constitution so much? When did you stop beating your wife?
See, you take it as axiomatic that tax is theft... and I take it as axiomatic that tax is a necessary part of a functioning government and society. The Libertarian view is that you should be free to not contribute to paying for what you feel you don't use or don't agree with... I feel that you don't get to selectively opt out of laws you don't want to have apply to you.
Go ahead and buy into the mythos of the completely self-made man who drags himself up from the muck, and in a vacuum completely detached from the society around him. It's a romantic notion, but it leaves out some details.
I believe that people live in the context of a larger society, and they don't get to start from scratch unless they go some place and start their own country, and that they don't get the option of saying it's just not convenient to adhere to the rules. I also believe that a strict Libertarian country and economy would naturally turn in on itself as a lot of assumptions prove to be impractical and theoretical.
If it would be armed robbery for me to do it then it's armed robbery when an IRS agent does the same thing.
I believe that you believe that.
I disagree that tax is theft. That is a point upon which I completely disagree with Libertarians, and where I believe the implied economics of it becomes sheer fantasy that make for interesting thought experiments.
But, I think we've covered that for the most part.;-)
I can't believe that it had a manual that had enough information to actually boost your score. Documentation nowadays is usually pretty lame, and doesn't actually provide anything instructive.
Kudos to the writers of the Civilization II documentation... I bet if you tried it with a modern game manual, the computer's score would go down.;-)
This tells me they actually wrote a comprehensive guide, which was well written.
So if you don't think that I should get shot if I choose not to pay for some government program that I disagree with then you oppose mandatory taxation?
I don't think you should get shot for disagreeing with me... and I think it's too late to debate mandatory taxation since it's practical reality (and I fail to see how optional taxation is supposed to accomplish anything since nobody would pay).
If you plan on armed insurrection against the "revenuers", well, that's a principled stand you can choose to make.
The society you live in uses mandatory taxation as a way of paying for itself... your options amount to accepting it, moving somewhere else, agitating for change, or rebellion.
You'll note that it's "No Taxation Without Representation", not "No Taxation"... any place without taxation likely doesn't have a functioning government.
That's the most accurate description of a government I've read in this thread.
And, it also describes the logical conclusion of the ideals of Libertarians in terms of being a 'self monitoring' system.
Sadly, I think the divide on this issue is great enough that the two sides will more or less continue to view the other side as un-workable and flawed, resulting in really bad outcomes.
I guess the difference being, I used to believe in your way, and have now mostly concluded it's based on some assumptions which will never come to be true. Society is more than a bunch of privileged people deciding they don't want to have to help pay for the benefits of said society.
You haven't addressed why it's moral and ethical for one group of people to use violence to enforce their will on another group of people regardless of any prosperity that may or may not result.
As much as you like to phrase it like that, the entirety of civil society is founded upon the notion that if you don't play by the rules, there will be consequences.
Murder, rape, theft and all sorts of things have been deemed as things against the public good, and we will lock you up and take away your freedoms if you don't comply. Enforcement of all laws is under threat of violence and punishment by the government, and taxes are part of that system. Those things which have been implemented on behalf of society in order to bring about the public good, are paid for by the public purse.
This Libertarian screed of "ZOMG, I'm being told under the threat of violence I have to help pay for society" is kind of lame -- do you really think that a self organizing bunch of people who all want to keep their money in their pockets are ever actually going to properly fund things like policing and not try to fuck over one another? Do you really believe that people will all play by the rules?
I find the notion that a society would function without being funded as absurd as I find the clinging belief that the free market will always determine solutions which are Right and Good simple because it's a 'free market' and somehow is in and of itself noble.
In your fantasy world where you aren't 'forced' to contribute to society, everybody would be more or less left to protect their own stuff on their own devices. Which, basically devolves into the strong fucking over the weak because there's nobody to help. I completely fail to see how your system doesn't devolve into brutal Darwinism and something out of a Mad Max movie.
It protects the strong and wealthy, and leaves everybody else as grist for the mill... you really thing that would make a better society? Your system is Neitzsche run amok, and will foster an environment in which you will face the threat of violence from every body else who wants your stuff.
I think people who advocate this kind of system should live in some lawless place where people will kill you for your shoes, and see if the logical conclusions of their ideas is something they really want to deal with. Oddly enough, some of the worst parts of Africa or American prisons are what seem to most describe this.
How do you envision such a society working? I'm betting it's based on assumptions that everybody else will play the game according to the lofty rules you figure are obvious.
In most places in the world, people understand why they pay taxes, and what purpose they serve. If the alternative is your Libertarian utopia, I'm happy to keep paying mine.
Look buddy, there are a bunch of us old guys still here (We're not dead yet, get it?). As should be obvious from most of the postings here, our connection to reality is tenuous at best. By taking away those old familiar icons you would be depriving us of one of the few elements of stability in our lives. That's not a nice thing to do to your elders.
*phbtbtbttt* Us 'old guys' have long since learned to turn off those icons because we remember the days of 300 baud modems and line editors and think the screen looks like crap with all of these stupid pictures on it.
We don't want your new-fangled multimedia -- well, except for the porn, we'll take that. Other than that, we mostly long for the old days of steam powered green screens and teletype consoles and green-bar printouts.
Uh, what? Is it time for bingo yet? That damned nurse keeps hiding the scotch.
It's not the Last NASA space walk... It's the last space walk from the Space Shuttle..... I expect better from CmdTaco....
Well, it's the last NASA space walk until they design and build an entirely new launch platform. That's, what, a decade or so away? And, if they lose the political will to do it, possibly even longer.
Once they decommission those shuttles, the US has no capacity to put people into space short of renting it from the Russians (or possibly the Chinese).
It may not be the case that NASA will never again do a space walk, but it's going to be a hell of a long time.
About time one of the bodies stood up to a member trying to turn it into a money tap. Should have started with rambus.
Agreed, I think part of actually sitting on these committees and the like should be a "no submarine patent" clause, and a rule that says that since this stuff is meant to be open, it it inherently something which can't be patented.
Sitting in on the development of a standard and then patenting those components is dirty pool. Same, likewise, is the old MS trick of helping to develop the spec and then releasing something which is 'mostly' like the spec so you can have it be proprietary.
Sadly, in an age where patents are used to fight your competitors, actual open standards don't seem to be something companies are interested in fostering.
How hard is it to take the bulbs to your local Lowes or Home Depot? Both offer CFL recycling. What? You didn't know that? Gee, it sure is hard to find answers to questions. Better just sit around blindly criticizing, it sure is doing wonders for our nation.
I didn't say that I don't recycle them... I said that I doubt that most people are recycling them. Learn to respond to what people actually wrote.
Anecdotal check and mate.
Wow, I must concede to your superior debating skills you clever guy with such wit and insightful comments. You've run logical rings around me, you smug little shit.
I simply agreed that I've had a bunch of them fail on me in a short period of time, and for the extra costs, it feels like I'm not saving any actual money. Especially when it costs around $5 for one of the things around here. If that fails in a month or two, it goes a long way to wiping out any savings from reduced consumption, if not actually costing me money in the long run. So, based on my direct experience, I am not personally convinced that this is a better way to go.
So please, go to hell and find someone else's leg to hump.
Complete and utter BS. A CFL runs less than $1.50 each in 4 packs at Home Depot. A regular incandescent is about 10 cents each I suppose. So that's a difference of $1.40, so let's see what it takes to make that up.
Maybe where you live that's true... and I wish that were true because they would be more cost effective. Up here in Canada, the last time I bought a 4 pack of CFLs, it cost $10, and that was on sale of 50% off... I'm looking on a web site for a local retailer, and two pack is $10. That's a $5 lightbulb, and I've seen them for as much as $10 each, and some as much as $15.
I've bought dim-able CFLs, and had them fail within days if not hours, so I've stopped buying them. And I'm not talking off brands, I'm talking major the companies. In my experience, the dim-able ones are complete crap. I'm not prepared to rewire my 7 year old home to put in dimmers to accommodate these things.
Now, some of the other ones I've had that have burned out have been in places where the bulbs actually see a fair amount of hours of usage, so they may have legitimately reached EOL. But some of them haven't lasted nearly as long as I'd hoped.
But, please, unless you've personally bought me some CFLs and actually paid my electric bill, please don't act like you actually know what my experiences with them have been. Because my experience has been that they cost a hell of a lot more, and so far haven't seemed to last any longer than incandescent.
I'd prefer to use them, I'm just not convinced that based on the failure rate I'm seeing, they actually save me any money in the long run. Because I pay a crap load more for them than you apparently do.
I have had several CFL's fail within months, completely destroying any potential long-term savings.
I'm in the same boat... given the massive increase in cost, and the claims for bulb life... even one or two failures basically means you've wiped out any savings for the next decade or so. Which means as soon as they start dying anywhere less than the claimed lifespan, you start replacing with old school bulbs.
And do they really think anyone is properly disposing of these bulbs?
They might think it, but I seriously doubt people are doing it.
I'm definitely not impressed so far with actual bulb life vs claimed.
Or maybe he just needed someone to vent on, and he feels better now that he's used half of his obscene vocabulary?
Sonny, I haven't gotten anywhere near half of my obscene vocabulary, and wouldn't waste it on you.
As for Enterprise support for software - I really don't give a rat's ass.
Well, then maybe when you're all growed up and have a real job and no longer live in your mom's basement, you might understand what people have to do in the real world to keep systems running and what that entails. In the mean time, you go ahead and keep being a snot nosed kid who thinks his 2 years using Linux qualifies him to be knowledgeable about everything else going on in the world. In the mean time, the grown ups are trying to have a conversation.
That's the beautiful thing about freedom, you're free not to use media or software that offends you...
While I agree with you, sometimes these names make it really tough to sell using open source for using within a corporate setting.
I personally would not want to sit in a meeting and say "well, I propose we use the PantyShot and Upskirt components in conjunction with project BigBluePenis to bridge with project PoopyPants. This should allow us to achieve DilatedSphincter on time and under budget". I'm sure as hell not putting some of these names into any documentation with my name attached to it.
Sure, those names are kind of cute and funny... but it's also sometimes to take this software seriously and try to use it for commercial purposes. It's like they're trying to make this stuff sound ridiculous.
I'm sure that you're posting from an AMD Socket 7 machine, running Windows 98, right? Or, did you get a mainboard that supports enough memory to run WinXP?
No, dipshit. I'm not saying I don't want things to move forward, I'm saying I don't want this to reach a point where there is no version number and that Firefox continuously updates itself, which is what the poster I replied to suggested -- that there would be no version number, and constant updates.
You can feel free to run whatever the hell you want, and be a smug asshole about it. But, as someone who actually works in a large organization supporting things that affect literally thousands of users, I'm just pointing out that for organizations like the ones I work for, having something which gets a new version every 2-3 months, and no support for older versions is a huge problem... this new trend is going to make certain kinds of software much more difficult to support.
Software which is a rolling target makes for a lot of troubles in terms of supporting systems... one of the projects I'm working on is bumping up against an initiative to roll out new Windows 7 desktops to something like 6,000 people in two countries. We need to be building desktop images now for a deployment in about 8 months or so... if half of the software we installed became unsupported in that process, we'd be forever upgrading components and re-doing regression tests, because we can't risk having the actual business of the corporation grind to a halt because something didn't work. Environments like this have policies that require a huge investment in resources and testing to make damned sure that things work. And, they have extensive procedures in place to ensure there are no outages.
IT is there to support business, and doesn't get to tell the company that they need to change the way they do things... the tail doesn't wag the dog, and people who think it does get an awful rude surprise when they discover that the people who do the things that actually make the money don't like to be told they need to upgrade their components every 3 months. To them, it's merely plumbing that is supposed to work.
So, please, take your snide tone, and your seven digit ID and fuck off. You obviously haven't worked in the industry long enough to have more than a passing clue about how this could pose problems for other people.
You and people like you are wasting bandwidth and valuable time posting this nonsense to the web. Guess what? More than 99% of the people in the world just don't give a damn.
Oh, the fucking irony. Before you go around whining about the bandwidth that the rest of the world is wasting, why don't you read the crap you type?
The idea is to eventually implement silent background updates, so you won't even know which version of Firefox you are using. It will just be "Firefox".
I can guarantee you that at any sufficiently large corporation, Firefox will cease to exist if they go that route.
Because the moment one of these 'silent updates' leaves several thousand users dead in the water, and someone in IT gets chewed out for it... the next step will be to block Firefox from desktops so they don't have to support it. It's not the people who are ultimately responsible for maintaining an environment who make these decisions.
Same will go for vendors... if you can't tell me a version of the software you're saying has an issue so I can try to run that version and repeat your issue, I am forced to decide that Firefox is something I can support. If your software could break and die at any point, I'll just short circuit the process and get rid of it.
And, even on my desktop machine, I'm not sure I'm willing to accept something which is constantly changing and doesn't have a definable version number.
I'm afraid despite people claiming that "standards will fix this", or that we should just get used to big integer version numbers this is only going to lead to making headaches enough for IT people that they just eventually pull the plug and say it's too much hassle.
The whole purpose of the point system is to separate major changes from trivial changes. 4.01 is a bug fix. 4.1 is an upgrade. 5.0 means you gave your program a whole new look (or possibly a complete rewrite).
Apparently people who agree with that (like me) are old fashioned and haven't caught up with how the young, hip kids are numbering things today. I'm told that major and minor versions are so passe, because apparently this is how Google counts versions of Chrome, so all of the cool kids are doing it too.
However, having spent the last 15 years or so in the software industry, I have to say, I think these integer version numbers are incredibly stupid, and don't convey any meaningful information.
The fact that they're supporting a version now for about 3 months or whatever it is... well, that's going to make life hell on IT departments. The places I've worked, it takes months longer than that to get it into production. I've even seen vendors nowadays who are doing almost weekly releases of their software, and won't deal with you if you're not running the latest... the problem is that if you run a production system that requires a higher level of stability, the process to promote something to production is way longer than that release cycle.
I don't want the steaming turd that is a weekly build... I want something which has been tested and has demonstrated itself to be somewhat stable. I sure as hell don't want the latest build because some guy decided to add a new feature and expects me to upgrade my production system to try it out for him.
I've never been to arbitration.... Does arbitration likewise offer the opportunity to cite a prior case?
My understanding is no... it's not a court of law, and it doesn't have the same rules, so there are no precedents which can be cited.
There's the two sides, and the arbitrator... who in a case like this is likely chosen by the corporation as part of the agreement that forced arbitration in the first place. The arbitrator will basically listen to the two sides and try to come up with a resolution... which, if you're cynical enough, you believe is likely highly circumscribed and limited.
This really is a process which exists outside of the courts, and which doesn't have to play by those rules... which is why you end up with 'settlements' whereby they give a large number of people a $20 credit or the company promises to make a donation to charity -- in the end, the settlement from the company is chump change, nothing really punative.
It's ends up being a token gesture to make it look like they've tried to make up for whatever crap they pulled that pissed off all the customers in the first place.
A lot of people feel that the mandatory arbitration in the case of dispute basically allows the company to keep it out of the courts, and not be subject to anything legally binding... and, as a result, have far less accountability.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, your way of saying it is definitely intended to make it sound like armed goons are showing up at gun point to rob you of the tax money.
But, really, you already live on a street, with mail service, sewage, electricity, telephony, police, fire, with luck some law and order, schools, hospitals, stuff like that. You're already benefiting from the things taxes pay for, but you want to make it out like you're a martyr being robbed at gun point. It's melodramatic, but it's one sided.
You didn't spring up in a vacuum in some alternate Libertarian reality in which you were a fully self-actualized and self-sufficient entity only to have someone show up and paint your house and present a bill. You grew up in a society, and if you're really lucky, you grew up in a mostly good one. That society costs money, and as long as you plan on benefiting from it, you really should expect to help pay for it. If you grew up in it, you've been benefiting from it for a long time.
Quite frankly, I find the libertarian view comes down to all the warmth and humanity of Ebenezer Scrooge ... Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? You want to declare yourself sovereign from the society in which you live, and leave paying for all of the parts you enjoy to the rest of us -- and leave those less capable simply fending for themselves.
The "taxes are theft" crowd's explanation of how such public works like roads and schools and government would get paid for sounds pretty much like "Trickle Down Economics" (individuals are free to pay) ... But, I'm sure you'll defend that too, it's the same economic theory.
For me, I just needed to have a little more humanism in my life. The logical conclusion of "taxes are theft", to me, is "screw everybody else". You're reality and perception thereof may differ.
Look, before we end up writing a political blog, can we call truce? As I've said ... I won't sway you, nor you me. I doubt anyone else much cares. :-P
Because, that more or less assumes that I'm willing to debate this on your terms of reference. I'm not.
If I pay my taxes, and you don't, you are stealing from me and the government, and getting the benefits of a civil society without paying for it. I believe that the government has been granted the moral authority to collect and use taxes by the Constitution, and that it's a natural part of what having a government means.
Why do you hate the Constitution so much? When did you stop beating your wife?
See, you take it as axiomatic that tax is theft ... and I take it as axiomatic that tax is a necessary part of a functioning government and society. The Libertarian view is that you should be free to not contribute to paying for what you feel you don't use or don't agree with ... I feel that you don't get to selectively opt out of laws you don't want to have apply to you.
Go ahead and buy into the mythos of the completely self-made man who drags himself up from the muck, and in a vacuum completely detached from the society around him. It's a romantic notion, but it leaves out some details.
I believe that people live in the context of a larger society, and they don't get to start from scratch unless they go some place and start their own country, and that they don't get the option of saying it's just not convenient to adhere to the rules. I also believe that a strict Libertarian country and economy would naturally turn in on itself as a lot of assumptions prove to be impractical and theoretical.
I also believe that it's dinner time. :-P
I believe that you believe that.
I disagree that tax is theft. That is a point upon which I completely disagree with Libertarians, and where I believe the implied economics of it becomes sheer fantasy that make for interesting thought experiments.
But, I think we've covered that for the most part. ;-)
I can't believe that it had a manual that had enough information to actually boost your score. Documentation nowadays is usually pretty lame, and doesn't actually provide anything instructive.
Kudos to the writers of the Civilization II documentation ... I bet if you tried it with a modern game manual, the computer's score would go down. ;-)
This tells me they actually wrote a comprehensive guide, which was well written.
I don't think you should get shot for disagreeing with me ... and I think it's too late to debate mandatory taxation since it's practical reality (and I fail to see how optional taxation is supposed to accomplish anything since nobody would pay).
If you plan on armed insurrection against the "revenuers", well, that's a principled stand you can choose to make.
The society you live in uses mandatory taxation as a way of paying for itself ... your options amount to accepting it, moving somewhere else, agitating for change, or rebellion.
You'll note that it's "No Taxation Without Representation", not "No Taxation" ... any place without taxation likely doesn't have a functioning government.
Wow, as someone old enough to have had to learn to read with books ... just wow.
I can't imagine having learned to read on a video game ... we had Dr. Seuss and "Little Golden Books" and the like.
Rocks and snow, uphill, both ways ... we had it tough I tell you. ;-)
*lol* No, not at all. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
And, yes, the fact that Voltaire was a libertarian is not lost on me. ;-)
And, it also describes the logical conclusion of the ideals of Libertarians in terms of being a 'self monitoring' system.
Sadly, I think the divide on this issue is great enough that the two sides will more or less continue to view the other side as un-workable and flawed, resulting in really bad outcomes.
I guess the difference being, I used to believe in your way, and have now mostly concluded it's based on some assumptions which will never come to be true. Society is more than a bunch of privileged people deciding they don't want to have to help pay for the benefits of said society.
Cheers
As much as you like to phrase it like that, the entirety of civil society is founded upon the notion that if you don't play by the rules, there will be consequences.
Murder, rape, theft and all sorts of things have been deemed as things against the public good, and we will lock you up and take away your freedoms if you don't comply. Enforcement of all laws is under threat of violence and punishment by the government, and taxes are part of that system. Those things which have been implemented on behalf of society in order to bring about the public good, are paid for by the public purse.
This Libertarian screed of "ZOMG, I'm being told under the threat of violence I have to help pay for society" is kind of lame -- do you really think that a self organizing bunch of people who all want to keep their money in their pockets are ever actually going to properly fund things like policing and not try to fuck over one another? Do you really believe that people will all play by the rules?
I find the notion that a society would function without being funded as absurd as I find the clinging belief that the free market will always determine solutions which are Right and Good simple because it's a 'free market' and somehow is in and of itself noble.
In your fantasy world where you aren't 'forced' to contribute to society, everybody would be more or less left to protect their own stuff on their own devices. Which, basically devolves into the strong fucking over the weak because there's nobody to help. I completely fail to see how your system doesn't devolve into brutal Darwinism and something out of a Mad Max movie.
It protects the strong and wealthy, and leaves everybody else as grist for the mill ... you really thing that would make a better society? Your system is Neitzsche run amok, and will foster an environment in which you will face the threat of violence from every body else who wants your stuff.
I think people who advocate this kind of system should live in some lawless place where people will kill you for your shoes, and see if the logical conclusions of their ideas is something they really want to deal with. Oddly enough, some of the worst parts of Africa or American prisons are what seem to most describe this.
How do you envision such a society working? I'm betting it's based on assumptions that everybody else will play the game according to the lofty rules you figure are obvious.
In most places in the world, people understand why they pay taxes, and what purpose they serve. If the alternative is your Libertarian utopia, I'm happy to keep paying mine.
*phbtbtbttt* Us 'old guys' have long since learned to turn off those icons because we remember the days of 300 baud modems and line editors and think the screen looks like crap with all of these stupid pictures on it.
We don't want your new-fangled multimedia -- well, except for the porn, we'll take that. Other than that, we mostly long for the old days of steam powered green screens and teletype consoles and green-bar printouts.
Uh, what? Is it time for bingo yet? That damned nurse keeps hiding the scotch.
Well, it's the last NASA space walk until they design and build an entirely new launch platform. That's, what, a decade or so away? And, if they lose the political will to do it, possibly even longer.
Once they decommission those shuttles, the US has no capacity to put people into space short of renting it from the Russians (or possibly the Chinese).
It may not be the case that NASA will never again do a space walk, but it's going to be a hell of a long time.
Agreed, I think part of actually sitting on these committees and the like should be a "no submarine patent" clause, and a rule that says that since this stuff is meant to be open, it it inherently something which can't be patented.
Sitting in on the development of a standard and then patenting those components is dirty pool. Same, likewise, is the old MS trick of helping to develop the spec and then releasing something which is 'mostly' like the spec so you can have it be proprietary.
Sadly, in an age where patents are used to fight your competitors, actual open standards don't seem to be something companies are interested in fostering.
I didn't say that I don't recycle them ... I said that I doubt that most people are recycling them. Learn to respond to what people actually wrote.
Wow, I must concede to your superior debating skills you clever guy with such wit and insightful comments. You've run logical rings around me, you smug little shit.
I simply agreed that I've had a bunch of them fail on me in a short period of time, and for the extra costs, it feels like I'm not saving any actual money. Especially when it costs around $5 for one of the things around here. If that fails in a month or two, it goes a long way to wiping out any savings from reduced consumption, if not actually costing me money in the long run. So, based on my direct experience, I am not personally convinced that this is a better way to go.
So please, go to hell and find someone else's leg to hump.
Maybe where you live that's true ... and I wish that were true because they would be more cost effective. Up here in Canada, the last time I bought a 4 pack of CFLs, it cost $10, and that was on sale of 50% off ... I'm looking on a web site for a local retailer, and two pack is $10. That's a $5 lightbulb, and I've seen them for as much as $10 each, and some as much as $15.
I've bought dim-able CFLs, and had them fail within days if not hours, so I've stopped buying them. And I'm not talking off brands, I'm talking major the companies. In my experience, the dim-able ones are complete crap. I'm not prepared to rewire my 7 year old home to put in dimmers to accommodate these things.
Now, some of the other ones I've had that have burned out have been in places where the bulbs actually see a fair amount of hours of usage, so they may have legitimately reached EOL. But some of them haven't lasted nearly as long as I'd hoped.
But, please, unless you've personally bought me some CFLs and actually paid my electric bill, please don't act like you actually know what my experiences with them have been. Because my experience has been that they cost a hell of a lot more, and so far haven't seemed to last any longer than incandescent.
I'd prefer to use them, I'm just not convinced that based on the failure rate I'm seeing, they actually save me any money in the long run. Because I pay a crap load more for them than you apparently do.
I'm in the same boat ... given the massive increase in cost, and the claims for bulb life ... even one or two failures basically means you've wiped out any savings for the next decade or so. Which means as soon as they start dying anywhere less than the claimed lifespan, you start replacing with old school bulbs.
They might think it, but I seriously doubt people are doing it.
I'm definitely not impressed so far with actual bulb life vs claimed.
Speaking of lampshades, I think I'll have the tuna salad on whole wheat.
Isn't he Australian?
Then stop acting like you're some smarmy little teenager who thinks he knows how everything in the world works.
Actual grown ups are usually far less likely to start their posting to someone being quite so confrontational and closed minded.
You want a sir or a mister, you need to earn it. You act like a punk, you get treated like one.
Sonny, I haven't gotten anywhere near half of my obscene vocabulary, and wouldn't waste it on you.
Well, then maybe when you're all growed up and have a real job and no longer live in your mom's basement, you might understand what people have to do in the real world to keep systems running and what that entails. In the mean time, you go ahead and keep being a snot nosed kid who thinks his 2 years using Linux qualifies him to be knowledgeable about everything else going on in the world. In the mean time, the grown ups are trying to have a conversation.
Run along now, I think your mommy is calling.
While I agree with you, sometimes these names make it really tough to sell using open source for using within a corporate setting.
I personally would not want to sit in a meeting and say "well, I propose we use the PantyShot and Upskirt components in conjunction with project BigBluePenis to bridge with project PoopyPants. This should allow us to achieve DilatedSphincter on time and under budget". I'm sure as hell not putting some of these names into any documentation with my name attached to it.
Sure, those names are kind of cute and funny ... but it's also sometimes to take this software seriously and try to use it for commercial purposes. It's like they're trying to make this stuff sound ridiculous.
No, dipshit. I'm not saying I don't want things to move forward, I'm saying I don't want this to reach a point where there is no version number and that Firefox continuously updates itself, which is what the poster I replied to suggested -- that there would be no version number, and constant updates.
You can feel free to run whatever the hell you want, and be a smug asshole about it. But, as someone who actually works in a large organization supporting things that affect literally thousands of users, I'm just pointing out that for organizations like the ones I work for, having something which gets a new version every 2-3 months, and no support for older versions is a huge problem ... this new trend is going to make certain kinds of software much more difficult to support.
Software which is a rolling target makes for a lot of troubles in terms of supporting systems ... one of the projects I'm working on is bumping up against an initiative to roll out new Windows 7 desktops to something like 6,000 people in two countries. We need to be building desktop images now for a deployment in about 8 months or so ... if half of the software we installed became unsupported in that process, we'd be forever upgrading components and re-doing regression tests, because we can't risk having the actual business of the corporation grind to a halt because something didn't work. Environments like this have policies that require a huge investment in resources and testing to make damned sure that things work. And, they have extensive procedures in place to ensure there are no outages.
IT is there to support business, and doesn't get to tell the company that they need to change the way they do things ... the tail doesn't wag the dog, and people who think it does get an awful rude surprise when they discover that the people who do the things that actually make the money don't like to be told they need to upgrade their components every 3 months. To them, it's merely plumbing that is supposed to work.
So, please, take your snide tone, and your seven digit ID and fuck off. You obviously haven't worked in the industry long enough to have more than a passing clue about how this could pose problems for other people.
Oh, the fucking irony. Before you go around whining about the bandwidth that the rest of the world is wasting, why don't you read the crap you type?
I can guarantee you that at any sufficiently large corporation, Firefox will cease to exist if they go that route.
Because the moment one of these 'silent updates' leaves several thousand users dead in the water, and someone in IT gets chewed out for it ... the next step will be to block Firefox from desktops so they don't have to support it. It's not the people who are ultimately responsible for maintaining an environment who make these decisions.
Same will go for vendors ... if you can't tell me a version of the software you're saying has an issue so I can try to run that version and repeat your issue, I am forced to decide that Firefox is something I can support. If your software could break and die at any point, I'll just short circuit the process and get rid of it.
And, even on my desktop machine, I'm not sure I'm willing to accept something which is constantly changing and doesn't have a definable version number.
I'm afraid despite people claiming that "standards will fix this", or that we should just get used to big integer version numbers this is only going to lead to making headaches enough for IT people that they just eventually pull the plug and say it's too much hassle.
Apparently people who agree with that (like me) are old fashioned and haven't caught up with how the young, hip kids are numbering things today. I'm told that major and minor versions are so passe, because apparently this is how Google counts versions of Chrome, so all of the cool kids are doing it too.
However, having spent the last 15 years or so in the software industry, I have to say, I think these integer version numbers are incredibly stupid, and don't convey any meaningful information.
The fact that they're supporting a version now for about 3 months or whatever it is ... well, that's going to make life hell on IT departments. The places I've worked, it takes months longer than that to get it into production. I've even seen vendors nowadays who are doing almost weekly releases of their software, and won't deal with you if you're not running the latest ... the problem is that if you run a production system that requires a higher level of stability, the process to promote something to production is way longer than that release cycle.
I don't want the steaming turd that is a weekly build ... I want something which has been tested and has demonstrated itself to be somewhat stable. I sure as hell don't want the latest build because some guy decided to add a new feature and expects me to upgrade my production system to try it out for him.
My understanding is no ... it's not a court of law, and it doesn't have the same rules, so there are no precedents which can be cited.
There's the two sides, and the arbitrator ... who in a case like this is likely chosen by the corporation as part of the agreement that forced arbitration in the first place. The arbitrator will basically listen to the two sides and try to come up with a resolution ... which, if you're cynical enough, you believe is likely highly circumscribed and limited.
This really is a process which exists outside of the courts, and which doesn't have to play by those rules ... which is why you end up with 'settlements' whereby they give a large number of people a $20 credit or the company promises to make a donation to charity -- in the end, the settlement from the company is chump change, nothing really punative.
It's ends up being a token gesture to make it look like they've tried to make up for whatever crap they pulled that pissed off all the customers in the first place.
A lot of people feel that the mandatory arbitration in the case of dispute basically allows the company to keep it out of the courts, and not be subject to anything legally binding ... and, as a result, have far less accountability.
You, sir, are a cunning linguist. ;-)