It's neither a breech of "do no evil" nor an example of their love of work... it's a legitimate way of avoiding paying tax which is standard practice for business leaders everywhere.
Forgoing $150,000 in income to avoid (rough estimate) $40,000 in income and payroll taxes? IANAA, but this does not sound fiscally prudent.
These guys are wealth creators though; without them and other entrepreneurs there would be no society as there would be no jobs.
That's interesting. I would have thought that without workers, there would also be no society, no jobs, and for that matter, no wealth and no entrepreneurs.
It's also worth bering in mind that there pay tax on their dividend, which here in the UK rests at 40% for most directors.
It's considerably different in the US. They will most likely pay capital gains tax, which is considerably lower than income tax (I believe it's 15 percent?) They'll pay a much smaller percentage of their income in tax than their secretaries. Also, payroll taxes are capped at the first $80,000 or so of income. So they were already paying a smaller proportion of their income into social security, medicare, and unemployment insurance than their employees. Now that they no longer draw salaries, their contributions into these system would I guess become nil.
But hey. If we taxed them at the same rate as their employees, they'd have no incentive to become billionaires, right? So ultimately this is a tremendously good deal for the rest of us serfs--er, I mean taxpayers.
Keep in mind that without the wealth creator, the Macdonalds chap wouldn;t even have a job...
Yada yada yada. And without people to raise the beef, transport the beef, grill it, serve it, manage the store, clean the place and buy the hamburgers, there would be no wealth for the McDonald's chap.
I think Bill's promise to give away 90+% of his net worth is more noble than anything any slashdotter will ever accomplish.
On a sidenote: Do you realize that if he did this now, he'd still be near the top of the Forbes 500 wealthiest individuals? I actually did the calculation about a year ago. Haven't done it recently, but I imagine he'd still be somewhere near 30th on the list. And this is *after* Microsoft's stock went down due to the dotcom crash and antitrust hearings.
You've contributed hugely to the popularity of BitTorrent, making it easier for me, an American, to download episodes of the West Wing. As always, the misery of people overseas works to my benefit! I hope Australian TV continues to suck.
Speaking of lousy TV: I can't even get NBC without subscribing to a pay service. I live in San Francisco. KRON-4, formerly the local NBC affiliate, decided they didn't need NBC anymore, or something like that, and *poof*, Channel 11 in San Jose became our local affiliate. San Jose is 60 miles away, and San Francisco's hills impede reception. So now, instead of the West Wing, we get locally produced filler such as hastily thrown together archive footage of the 1906 earthquake and such. Yay.
I used to subscribe to digital cable, but now it would cost me like 80 bucks a month to get all the channels I want. And there's really only 5 channels I want, but of course cable is structured so that you also have to pay for a bunch of channels you don't want. In better times I would have sucked it up, but these days, if I have to choose between DSL and cable TV. Well... it's not a difficult choice.
There are numerous exclusive rights compromising copyright. One is distribution, but reproduction is another. Read 17 USC 106
I never said I had an affirmative right to make copies for personal use. The reason I can legally make copies for personal use isn't a specific "fair use" exception; rather, it's that since these copies do not diminish the value of the copyright, they aren't actionable. Therefore, this isn't a fair use as it isn't specifically exempted. It's simply unregulated.
If the music industry could prove their business is damaged by people ripping CDs to listen to on their iPods, this might be actionable. But they have treaded lightly here. Perhaps they are afraid of a backlash that would end with an affirmative "right to copy for personal use" being written into the law. Instead they've made sneaky end-runs such as the DMCA. They don't want to openly demand that you pay once for the CD and again for a copy you can listen to on your iPod, so they'll try to make that the de facto situation through DRM.
For the thousandth time: Copyright regulates *distribution*. It simply doesn't apply to making a copy for my own use. I can make as many copies as I want for myself and the copyright holder has no right to any control over this, provided I don't distribute the copies. I don't need a "fair use" exemption--the law simply doesn't apply.
"Fair use" is an exception to the law. This is what permits me to reprint verbatim part of a copyrighted work in, say, a book review, and publish that review without violating copyright.
This is what is so evil about the DMCA. It enables copyright holders to invent new rights for themselves--such as the right to prevent me from making copies for personal use--with DRM technology, then enforce that new right by making it illegal for me to circumvent the DRM.
I usually support Democrats, but this is one area where Clinton's attempting to have his cake and eat it too led to an incredibly bad law.
Clinton accepted that most of the good manufacturing jobs would move overseas. America's strength, as he saw it, was in intellectual property. Therefore, a vote to strenghten holders of copyrights was in America's interest, right?
Oops.
Signing this was one of his biggest blunders after his support for deregulating radio and welfare reform.
Who the hell said you have the right to determine what is "adequate compensation"? So you're effectively putting a cap on what artists are allowed to earn?
Not really. I think Dave Grohl should be able to charge as much as he likes for performing live. But I do think we should limit how much he can earn without working for it: from a legally enforced monoply. I think 10 years is plenty of time to artificially limit how people distribute Nirvana's music, so that Nirvana can milk every last drop of profit out of their creativity. That should give them enough money so that they'll live in luxury for the rest of their lives even if they never accomplish anything again. I think that's adequate compensation. Sure, call me an asshole if you like, but someone has to draw the line somewhere. I mean, hell. How much is enough for ripping off the Pixies?
After that, anyone should be able to make as many copies of Nevermind as they like without sending any more money to David Geffen, Cobain's widow, and their lawyers. What's the problem with that? If you want to send money to them to obtain the official, authorized copy, that's your business.
As it stands, copyright extends to something like 70 years after the death of the creator. That's just ridiculous.
Apple has placed DRM on iTunes songs. This is not a subsidy. Not a tax. It is a business model. If you don't like it, then don't support it. It's that simple.
No, it's not. Because while you're waiting for the magic of the marketplace to sort everything out, the 5 corporations that own most of the distribution channels are writing the rules of that marketplace. While you're voting with your dollars, Disney is buying Congress. Who do you think is going to win if this situation continues?
For that matter, why are we still paying royalties on Nirvana's music that was released over 10 years ago? Cobain's dead. The rest of the band + Courtney have been more than adequately compensated. Why isn't this stuff in the public domain yet? Does anyone think they wouldn't have recorded it for less than the millions they've made (and the hundreds of millions their record companies have made) off it?
Come on, folks, we're gettin' hosed!
I shouldn't have to pay for this stuff on iTunes. I should pay, maybe, a quarter for the bandwith it costs to transmit it + some reasonable profit. And that's a steep markup.
To follow-up my own post: Imagine if the Star Wars movies were all in the public domain, as they would be soon if copyright law had remained unchanged from 100 years ago. Or apply this to any other movie you like. (I waited for years for La Dolce Vita to come out on DVD, and when it eventually did... Eh. The extras left something to be desired. They did a half-assed job when you consider the breadth of scholarship that has been done on this movie over the past 40 years.) Anyone could release their own box sets. The box sets would sell based on how much they cost, how good they were, and how much value they added, rather than on who owns the rights to the original. As the person who created the series, George Lucas would still have a lot of sway and probably still sell a lot of copies because his would be the "official" version, but he wouldn't be a monopolist.
Copyright isn't a moral imperative or a "right" in the sense of a basic human right. It's a license granted by society in exchange for some public good. We grant this license, and expect to get something in return. The current arrangements are a shitty deal. Does anyone believe that Lucas wouldn't have had incentive to create Star Wars if he'd only had 30 years of copyright protection instead of 150, or whatever it stands at now? Come on! We're gettin' hosed! Wake up, losers, current copyright law is a bad deal!
You have no legal right to "listen to the song on the device of your choice"
True. And they have no legal right to prevent me from doing so. However, they can put whatever DRM they want on the song. And if I try to circumvent that DRM, I'm breaking the law. In effect DMCA allows copyright holders to use technology to invent whatever rights they want for themselves and have that right become legally enforceable, whether it's in the public interest or not.
If this ever becomes the norm, it will lead to much more restrictive copyright law than we've had in our entire history, thus undermining a potential for information sharing that would be much more in the public interest.
For most of US history, copyright protection was limited to 30 years. If that copyright law had remained unchanged, we'd be getting close to the point where someone could release DVD versions of the original Star Wars movies, without Lucas's awful changes. Is that a bad thing? Has he made enough money off his creativity of 30 years ago?
Yes, I did just read Lawrence Lessig's _Free Culture_.
If you don't like their terms, simply don't shop there, and don't buy Apple's music.
It's not just that I don't like their terms for myself. Copyright law has been completely hijacked by corporate interests to the point where it goes far beyond what the public good requires. Our government is corrupt and doesn't even pretend to do anything on behalf of ordinary people anymore. The DMCA is bad law which came into being by illegitimate means, and if it's necessary to break the law to undermine it, so be it. I feel like this is the only means ordinary people have to fight back in a game that has been rigged against them on a massive scale.
I don't understand why it isn't possible to set up something that looks, to the operating system and to iTunes, like a CD drive, but which is actually on the hard drive. I watch DVDs that are stored on my hard drive this way using a program called Alcohol.
The reason for setting up a virtual CD drive is, of course, is to exploit the fact that the DRM is removed when you rip the file to CD. If you didn't have to physically stick a CD in the CD player, the process of stripping DRM could be made virtually seamless.
Yes, there are some on the way way way far left that think capitalism is a bad thing, but most folks liberal or not know it is the best system out there.
I wouldn't say I *know* that. I would paraphrase what Winston Churchill said about democracy: It's the worst system out there, except for the others we've tried.
Pixar is an outlier. You can find examples of luxury in any economic system. The Soviets did a pretty good job with the Moscow subway, and I wouldn't have objected to living under their system, provided I had a high rank in the Party. I wouldn't have minded feudalism, either, provided I was a lord.
Sweatshops are the norm for unregulated capitalism--not something to take a lot of pride in. Under our system of regulated capitalism, safe mediocrity is the norm. Not ideal, but quite a bit better than most of the alternatives.
Re:Good LORD it's got some useless stuff!
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KDE 3.4 Released
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· Score: 2, Funny
Moon Phase Display?!?!?!?! Who in the hell needs a dynamic MOON PHASE display???
Those are some tricky situations you described, but my situation was not tricky at all. I did not seek any special accommodation--I arrived two hours early and expected to be able to check my bags and board my flight. They couldn't do it. I understand that airports have weather delays and other factors that can't be predicted with perfect accuracy. I'd even understand if they were overbooked. But this is not what happened. They simply economized to the point where they didn't have enough staff to provide the service that a reasonable person would expect them to provide--unless you think it's reasonable to expect that it will take more than two hours just to check your bags, not even including going through security or waiting in line for a boarding pass. In all, I spent more time waiting in line than I did on the damn flight! With the missed flight, it took me longer to fly to Utah than it would have taken me to drive! And this was on a day when the weather was perfect. Oakland to Utah, Southwest, can you get me there? In under 10 hours? Come on, it can't be that hard. Damn, I wish this country had a decent train system. I'd board in downtown San Francisco, 5 minutes from my apartment... get off in Salt Lake. Buy the ticket at the station on the day I'm traveling. No cavity search from the Dept. of Homeland Security... plenty of legroom.
The other airlines are getting to be as bad as Southwest, now that they're all bankrupt. But Southwest definitely led the way. It puts a tear in my eye to think I used to actually look forward to flying somewhere.
How can they do that? Thanksgiving and Christmas are the two most traveled days in the US buy a large percentage. They are not enough employees, parking spots, ticket counters or planes for those days. Are you saying the entire airline industry should expand their operations but a factor of 2 just to meet the demand of those two short periods consisting of maybe 2 days each?
I fly every year during the holidays and the only time I've ever had to wait more than half an hour to check my bags was the one time I flew Southwest. Moreover, none of the other airlines had this problem on the day that I traveled. Believe it or not, it actually is possible to plan for fluctuating demand--especially when most of the demand is scheduled several weeks in advance! Businesses do it all the time. Most maintain excess capacity so they aren't forced to screw over their customers when demand peaks. Southwest could have hired temps, paid overtime, kept a few more employees than they needed during non-peak periods, automated some procedures, or done some of the normal things other airlines do to keep their service within acceptable limits, but they decided dicking me around until I'm within 5 seconds of throttling a hapless ticket agent who's as much a victim as I am is an acceptable cost-cutting move. So screw 'em. I'll never fly them again, and I tell everyone I know about my experience every chance I get! I imagine it's pretty tiresome:-)
I mean, I expect longer waits during the holidays. But to get to the airport two hours early and still miss my flight? Unacceptable. I can't even begin to describe what an ugly scene it was. I saw two firstfights take place, and nearly got in one myself when some guy tried to cut in line ahead of me. No wonder no Southwest employees stuck around to help. If one of their famous standup comic flight attendants had shown up and started cracking jokes, I would have gleefully joined the mob in a game of "let's kick the Southwest employee in the ribs." If they need to expand their capacity two-fold just to keep waits under two hours, then they don't have enough capacity, period.
I didn't even mention this before, but this was BEFORE 9/11, and all the security-related delays that brought on. I'm happy to say they've lost thousands of dollars of my business just for pissing me off this one time. They haven't exactly folded up their tent and quit the airline business, but not for lack of trying on my part.
I had a really bad experience flying them out of the Oakland airport a few years ago. It was a few days before Christmas. The line to check baggage extended way out into the parking lot, and there was no airline employee to break into the line for people who were about to miss their flights. In spite of arriving 2 hours before my flight, I wasn't able to check my bag in time to board the plane.
So, after waiting 2 hours to check my bag, I dutifully waited in line for another hour to book myself on another flight. When I got to the front, the agent informed me that I'd have to fly standby on the next available flight--meaning the time I just spent waiting was utterly wasted. I'd have to wait in line again. I am not ordinarily someone who flies off the handle, but at this point I started yelling and pounding my fist on the counter. The agent said something to the effect of "Well maybe if you got here on time you wouldn't miss your flight," to which I responded "I WAS TWO HOURS EARLY!" to which she responded "Well it's Christmas..." to which I said "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!" or something to that effect. She did let me skip to the head of the line when it started, but she wouldn't have done it without me screaming at her.
There's no excuse for this. Christmas is the SAME DAY every year. They knew how many people were traveling. All they had to do was have enough employees to handle the crowds, and they did not. In my mind, they didn't provide the service I paid for. I don't expect to be waited on hand-and-foot, but I do think it's reasonable to expect that the price of a ticket includes having your baggage checked in less than 2 hours. Not with Southwest, apparently.
In addition to this experience, I just hate their system generally. I hate waiting in line for an hour to get an aisle seat--I'd rather reserve. I hate taking 10 hours to fly from San Francisco to Chicago, because they make 4 stops along the way. I hate their corporate culture that tries to mask lousy service with PR that casts their CEO as a "rebel" and their flight attendants as stand-up comics.
And then there's the fact that they purchased southwestsucks.com to keep anyone else from getting it, then posted this message:
"Southwest Airlines strives to maintain a high level of Customer Service and is proud of its corporate reputation and responsiveness to its Customers. As part of that effort, Southwest wants to control the release of inaccurate and irresponsible information about the Company via the Internet. If you would like more information on Southwest, please go to www.southwest.com."
Who writes this crap: the Bush administration press office?
They seem to follow this logic:
1) If we say it, it's true 2) If we're wrong, see rule 1
They're a Texas Republican company that sums up what I hate about Texas Republicanism.
Denying them admission is pretty harsh. I think a lot of otherwise ethical people would be tempted to take this opportunity if it presented itself. It's not like they were out to steal, defraud, or otherwise hurt anyone.
Slashdot Mirror
It's neither a breech of "do no evil" nor an example of their love of work... it's a legitimate way of avoiding paying tax which is standard practice for business leaders everywhere.
Forgoing $150,000 in income to avoid (rough estimate) $40,000 in income and payroll taxes? IANAA, but this does not sound fiscally prudent.
These guys are wealth creators though; without them and other entrepreneurs there would be no society as there would be no jobs.
That's interesting. I would have thought that without workers, there would also be no society, no jobs, and for that matter, no wealth and no entrepreneurs.
It's also worth bering in mind that there pay tax on their dividend, which here in the UK rests at 40% for most directors.
It's considerably different in the US. They will most likely pay capital gains tax, which is considerably lower than income tax (I believe it's 15 percent?) They'll pay a much smaller percentage of their income in tax than their secretaries. Also, payroll taxes are capped at the first $80,000 or so of income. So they were already paying a smaller proportion of their income into social security, medicare, and unemployment insurance than their employees. Now that they no longer draw salaries, their contributions into these system would I guess become nil.
But hey. If we taxed them at the same rate as their employees, they'd have no incentive to become billionaires, right? So ultimately this is a tremendously good deal for the rest of us serfs--er, I mean taxpayers.
Keep in mind that without the wealth creator, the Macdonalds chap wouldn;t even have a job...
Yada yada yada. And without people to raise the beef, transport the beef, grill it, serve it, manage the store, clean the place and buy the hamburgers, there would be no wealth for the McDonald's chap.
I think Bill's promise to give away 90+% of his net worth is more noble than anything any slashdotter will ever accomplish.
On a sidenote: Do you realize that if he did this now, he'd still be near the top of the Forbes 500 wealthiest individuals? I actually did the calculation about a year ago. Haven't done it recently, but I imagine he'd still be somewhere near 30th on the list. And this is *after* Microsoft's stock went down due to the dotcom crash and antitrust hearings.
Thanks, lame non-US broadcasters!
You've contributed hugely to the popularity of BitTorrent, making it easier for me, an American, to download episodes of the West Wing. As always, the misery of people overseas works to my benefit! I hope Australian TV continues to suck.
Speaking of lousy TV: I can't even get NBC without subscribing to a pay service. I live in San Francisco. KRON-4, formerly the local NBC affiliate, decided they didn't need NBC anymore, or something like that, and *poof*, Channel 11 in San Jose became our local affiliate. San Jose is 60 miles away, and San Francisco's hills impede reception. So now, instead of the West Wing, we get locally produced filler such as hastily thrown together archive footage of the 1906 earthquake and such. Yay.
I used to subscribe to digital cable, but now it would cost me like 80 bucks a month to get all the channels I want. And there's really only 5 channels I want, but of course cable is structured so that you also have to pay for a bunch of channels you don't want. In better times I would have sucked it up, but these days, if I have to choose between DSL and cable TV. Well... it's not a difficult choice.
They don't say a word about limiting actionable reproduction where damages result:
They don't have to. It's torts 101. You're not really a lawyer, are you?
There are numerous exclusive rights compromising copyright. One is distribution, but reproduction is another. Read 17 USC 106
I never said I had an affirmative right to make copies for personal use. The reason I can legally make copies for personal use isn't a specific "fair use" exception; rather, it's that since these copies do not diminish the value of the copyright, they aren't actionable. Therefore, this isn't a fair use as it isn't specifically exempted. It's simply unregulated.
If the music industry could prove their business is damaged by people ripping CDs to listen to on their iPods, this might be actionable. But they have treaded lightly here. Perhaps they are afraid of a backlash that would end with an affirmative "right to copy for personal use" being written into the law. Instead they've made sneaky end-runs such as the DMCA. They don't want to openly demand that you pay once for the CD and again for a copy you can listen to on your iPod, so they'll try to make that the de facto situation through DRM.
For the thousandth time: Copyright regulates *distribution*. It simply doesn't apply to making a copy for my own use. I can make as many copies as I want for myself and the copyright holder has no right to any control over this, provided I don't distribute the copies. I don't need a "fair use" exemption--the law simply doesn't apply.
"Fair use" is an exception to the law. This is what permits me to reprint verbatim part of a copyrighted work in, say, a book review, and publish that review without violating copyright.
This is what is so evil about the DMCA. It enables copyright holders to invent new rights for themselves--such as the right to prevent me from making copies for personal use--with DRM technology, then enforce that new right by making it illegal for me to circumvent the DRM.
Matt Frewer was Edison Carter / Max Headroom in both the US and British versions of Max Headroom, was he not? What's your point?
I usually support Democrats, but this is one area where Clinton's attempting to have his cake and eat it too led to an incredibly bad law.
Clinton accepted that most of the good manufacturing jobs would move overseas. America's strength, as he saw it, was in intellectual property. Therefore, a vote to strenghten holders of copyrights was in America's interest, right?
Oops.
Signing this was one of his biggest blunders after his support for deregulating radio and welfare reform.
Who the hell said you have the right to determine what is "adequate compensation"? So you're effectively putting a cap on what artists are allowed to earn?
Not really. I think Dave Grohl should be able to charge as much as he likes for performing live. But I do think we should limit how much he can earn without working for it: from a legally enforced monoply. I think 10 years is plenty of time to artificially limit how people distribute Nirvana's music, so that Nirvana can milk every last drop of profit out of their creativity. That should give them enough money so that they'll live in luxury for the rest of their lives even if they never accomplish anything again. I think that's adequate compensation. Sure, call me an asshole if you like, but someone has to draw the line somewhere. I mean, hell. How much is enough for ripping off the Pixies?
After that, anyone should be able to make as many copies of Nevermind as they like without sending any more money to David Geffen, Cobain's widow, and their lawyers. What's the problem with that? If you want to send money to them to obtain the official, authorized copy, that's your business.
As it stands, copyright extends to something like 70 years after the death of the creator. That's just ridiculous.
Apple has placed DRM on iTunes songs. This is not a subsidy. Not a tax. It is a business model. If you don't like it, then don't support it. It's that simple.
No, it's not. Because while you're waiting for the magic of the marketplace to sort everything out, the 5 corporations that own most of the distribution channels are writing the rules of that marketplace. While you're voting with your dollars, Disney is buying Congress. Who do you think is going to win if this situation continues?
For that matter, why are we still paying royalties on Nirvana's music that was released over 10 years ago? Cobain's dead. The rest of the band + Courtney have been more than adequately compensated. Why isn't this stuff in the public domain yet? Does anyone think they wouldn't have recorded it for less than the millions they've made (and the hundreds of millions their record companies have made) off it?
Come on, folks, we're gettin' hosed!
I shouldn't have to pay for this stuff on iTunes. I should pay, maybe, a quarter for the bandwith it costs to transmit it + some reasonable profit. And that's a steep markup.
To follow-up my own post: Imagine if the Star Wars movies were all in the public domain, as they would be soon if copyright law had remained unchanged from 100 years ago. Or apply this to any other movie you like. (I waited for years for La Dolce Vita to come out on DVD, and when it eventually did... Eh. The extras left something to be desired. They did a half-assed job when you consider the breadth of scholarship that has been done on this movie over the past 40 years.) Anyone could release their own box sets. The box sets would sell based on how much they cost, how good they were, and how much value they added, rather than on who owns the rights to the original. As the person who created the series, George Lucas would still have a lot of sway and probably still sell a lot of copies because his would be the "official" version, but he wouldn't be a monopolist.
Copyright isn't a moral imperative or a "right" in the sense of a basic human right. It's a license granted by society in exchange for some public good. We grant this license, and expect to get something in return. The current arrangements are a shitty deal. Does anyone believe that Lucas wouldn't have had incentive to create Star Wars if he'd only had 30 years of copyright protection instead of 150, or whatever it stands at now? Come on! We're gettin' hosed! Wake up, losers, current copyright law is a bad deal!
You have no legal right to "listen to the song on the device of your choice"
True. And they have no legal right to prevent me from doing so. However, they can put whatever DRM they want on the song. And if I try to circumvent that DRM, I'm breaking the law. In effect DMCA allows copyright holders to use technology to invent whatever rights they want for themselves and have that right become legally enforceable, whether it's in the public interest or not.
If this ever becomes the norm, it will lead to much more restrictive copyright law than we've had in our entire history, thus undermining a potential for information sharing that would be much more in the public interest.
For most of US history, copyright protection was limited to 30 years. If that copyright law had remained unchanged, we'd be getting close to the point where someone could release DVD versions of the original Star Wars movies, without Lucas's awful changes. Is that a bad thing? Has he made enough money off his creativity of 30 years ago?
Yes, I did just read Lawrence Lessig's _Free Culture_.
If you don't like their terms, simply don't shop there, and don't buy Apple's music.
It's not just that I don't like their terms for myself. Copyright law has been completely hijacked by corporate interests to the point where it goes far beyond what the public good requires. Our government is corrupt and doesn't even pretend to do anything on behalf of ordinary people anymore. The DMCA is bad law which came into being by illegitimate means, and if it's necessary to break the law to undermine it, so be it. I feel like this is the only means ordinary people have to fight back in a game that has been rigged against them on a massive scale.
But they, and the content owners - you know, those people who actually have LEGAL RIGHTS to the content - don't intend to do that.
Legal rights which they obtained by bribing legislators.
I don't understand why it isn't possible to set up something that looks, to the operating system and to iTunes, like a CD drive, but which is actually on the hard drive. I watch DVDs that are stored on my hard drive this way using a program called Alcohol.
The reason for setting up a virtual CD drive is, of course, is to exploit the fact that the DRM is removed when you rip the file to CD. If you didn't have to physically stick a CD in the CD player, the process of stripping DRM could be made virtually seamless.
Yes, there are some on the way way way far left that think capitalism is a bad thing, but most folks liberal or not know it is the best system out there.
I wouldn't say I *know* that. I would paraphrase what Winston Churchill said about democracy: It's the worst system out there, except for the others we've tried.
Pixar is an outlier. You can find examples of luxury in any economic system. The Soviets did a pretty good job with the Moscow subway, and I wouldn't have objected to living under their system, provided I had a high rank in the Party. I wouldn't have minded feudalism, either, provided I was a lord.
Sweatshops are the norm for unregulated capitalism--not something to take a lot of pride in. Under our system of regulated capitalism, safe mediocrity is the norm. Not ideal, but quite a bit better than most of the alternatives.
Moon Phase Display?!?!?!?! Who in the hell needs a dynamic MOON PHASE display???
I'm a werewolf, you insensitive clod!
$4.2 million... let's see. That buys us about half an hour in the Iraq war, right? Where we spend $6 billion per month? I think that's right.
Those are some tricky situations you described, but my situation was not tricky at all. I did not seek any special accommodation--I arrived two hours early and expected to be able to check my bags and board my flight. They couldn't do it. I understand that airports have weather delays and other factors that can't be predicted with perfect accuracy. I'd even understand if they were overbooked. But this is not what happened. They simply economized to the point where they didn't have enough staff to provide the service that a reasonable person would expect them to provide--unless you think it's reasonable to expect that it will take more than two hours just to check your bags, not even including going through security or waiting in line for a boarding pass. In all, I spent more time waiting in line than I did on the damn flight! With the missed flight, it took me longer to fly to Utah than it would have taken me to drive! And this was on a day when the weather was perfect. Oakland to Utah, Southwest, can you get me there? In under 10 hours? Come on, it can't be that hard. Damn, I wish this country had a decent train system. I'd board in downtown San Francisco, 5 minutes from my apartment... get off in Salt Lake. Buy the ticket at the station on the day I'm traveling. No cavity search from the Dept. of Homeland Security... plenty of legroom.
The other airlines are getting to be as bad as Southwest, now that they're all bankrupt. But Southwest definitely led the way. It puts a tear in my eye to think I used to actually look forward to flying somewhere.
How can they do that? Thanksgiving and Christmas are the two most traveled days in the US buy a large percentage. They are not enough employees, parking spots, ticket counters or planes for those days. Are you saying the entire airline industry should expand their operations but a factor of 2 just to meet the demand of those two short periods consisting of maybe 2 days each?
:-)
I fly every year during the holidays and the only time I've ever had to wait more than half an hour to check my bags was the one time I flew Southwest. Moreover, none of the other airlines had this problem on the day that I traveled. Believe it or not, it actually is possible to plan for fluctuating demand--especially when most of the demand is scheduled several weeks in advance! Businesses do it all the time. Most maintain excess capacity so they aren't forced to screw over their customers when demand peaks. Southwest could have hired temps, paid overtime, kept a few more employees than they needed during non-peak periods, automated some procedures, or done some of the normal things other airlines do to keep their service within acceptable limits, but they decided dicking me around until I'm within 5 seconds of throttling a hapless ticket agent who's as much a victim as I am is an acceptable cost-cutting move. So screw 'em. I'll never fly them again, and I tell everyone I know about my experience every chance I get! I imagine it's pretty tiresome
I mean, I expect longer waits during the holidays. But to get to the airport two hours early and still miss my flight? Unacceptable. I can't even begin to describe what an ugly scene it was. I saw two firstfights take place, and nearly got in one myself when some guy tried to cut in line ahead of me. No wonder no Southwest employees stuck around to help. If one of their famous standup comic flight attendants had shown up and started cracking jokes, I would have gleefully joined the mob in a game of "let's kick the Southwest employee in the ribs." If they need to expand their capacity two-fold just to keep waits under two hours, then they don't have enough capacity, period.
I didn't even mention this before, but this was BEFORE 9/11, and all the security-related delays that brought on. I'm happy to say they've lost thousands of dollars of my business just for pissing me off this one time. They haven't exactly folded up their tent and quit the airline business, but not for lack of trying on my part.
I had a really bad experience flying them out of the Oakland airport a few years ago. It was a few days before Christmas. The line to check baggage extended way out into the parking lot, and there was no airline employee to break into the line for people who were about to miss their flights. In spite of arriving 2 hours before my flight, I wasn't able to check my bag in time to board the plane.
So, after waiting 2 hours to check my bag, I dutifully waited in line for another hour to book myself on another flight. When I got to the front, the agent informed me that I'd have to fly standby on the next available flight--meaning the time I just spent waiting was utterly wasted. I'd have to wait in line again. I am not ordinarily someone who flies off the handle, but at this point I started yelling and pounding my fist on the counter. The agent said something to the effect of "Well maybe if you got here on time you wouldn't miss your flight," to which I responded "I WAS TWO HOURS EARLY!" to which she responded "Well it's Christmas..." to which I said "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!" or something to that effect. She did let me skip to the head of the line when it started, but she wouldn't have done it without me screaming at her.
There's no excuse for this. Christmas is the SAME DAY every year. They knew how many people were traveling. All they had to do was have enough employees to handle the crowds, and they did not. In my mind, they didn't provide the service I paid for. I don't expect to be waited on hand-and-foot, but I do think it's reasonable to expect that the price of a ticket includes having your baggage checked in less than 2 hours. Not with Southwest, apparently.
In addition to this experience, I just hate their system generally. I hate waiting in line for an hour to get an aisle seat--I'd rather reserve. I hate taking 10 hours to fly from San Francisco to Chicago, because they make 4 stops along the way. I hate their corporate culture that tries to mask lousy service with PR that casts their CEO as a "rebel" and their flight attendants as stand-up comics.
And then there's the fact that they purchased southwestsucks.com to keep anyone else from getting it, then posted this message:
"Southwest Airlines strives to maintain a high level of Customer Service and is proud of its corporate reputation and responsiveness to its Customers. As part of that effort, Southwest wants to control the release of inaccurate and irresponsible information about the Company via the Internet. If you would like more information on Southwest, please go to www.southwest.com."
Who writes this crap: the Bush administration press office?
They seem to follow this logic:
1) If we say it, it's true
2) If we're wrong, see rule 1
They're a Texas Republican company that sums up what I hate about Texas Republicanism.
Because I reeeeeeeeeeeealy hate Southwest.
Denying them admission is pretty harsh. I think a lot of otherwise ethical people would be tempted to take this opportunity if it presented itself. It's not like they were out to steal, defraud, or otherwise hurt anyone.