Except, of course, that e-gold already did, in 1996, but the mediots haven't noticed. Funny how http://stats.e-gold.com/ customers lead the news-media. Again... JMR
NOT speaking for e-gold, just being annoying...And no -- e-gold isn't perfect and I'm sure some people have gripes, but it EXISTS, and e-gold has quietly-kept the promises others so-loudly made about the 'net for a long time with little fanfare...
+1 insightful (albeit obvious to many of us) it needs to be said when Laura Bush can fearlessly make a "milking the MALE horse" joke but Howard Stern is scared to say the word "oral" these days. The first amendment is in even more danger from Bush than the second was in from Slick Willie's goons post-Waco/OKcity (and for the powers that censor, that's going some). JMR
Yes, I'm a partisan-libertarian, and no I'm not speaking for anyone but myself, as always, and if this rant annoys you think about me smirking at that little fact...
Don't worry, nobody wants to know (and your comment got modded down, to make sure they don't do anything dangerous like THINK about it...). I should probably post this anonymously, but I feel annoying today. JMR
Not to further-fuel the endless RKBA debate, but can anyone here imagine ANY product besides guns *not* being forced to adopt "silencers" (actually suppressors, but let's stick with the ignorant Hollyweird-terminology for now!) in the USA if invented yesterday? Instead, getting a silencer in the USA is *much* harder than getting a normal, Title one weapon, and costs $200 along with all the hassle. I can tell everyone who hasn't tried one, suppressors make shooting a LOT more-fun (and safer). And no, plinking with a suppressor didn't magically transform me into a mobster bent on murder.
Does this rarely-questioned policy reduce crime? Dubious (in Finland, you can buy suppressors in a hardware store, and I haven't heard of any crime-wave there.)! Across much of Europe it's actually illegal to shoot WITHOUT suppressors, because of all the noise guns make). Europe muddles along anyway. Does it increase government-control of law-abiding citizen-units while NOT affecting criminals (who'll by-definition break the law!)? Absolutely -- and that's the only purpose of 99.99% of gun-laws, whether or not their authors (who are normally safety-Nazis, at least when it comes to issues like industrial noise-levels being generated in more-politically-correct ways!) will ever directly admit it.
But this particular law, as populations get more-dense, also has the pernicious effect of slowly getting rid of guns & accurate shooting as a hobby due to the noise. Hiram Maxim, who invented both the machinegun and the suppressor back when the USA was a much-freeer country, would probably be mystified today at our politicians' useless anti-fun/anti-gun antics. The NRA, which is supposedly so-powerful, does NOT represent machinegun or "silencer" users because the media will beat them up as representing mobsters rather than looking at the hearing-safety issue. This is because the news media in general are ignorant, bigoted, and biased against individual firearms owners who tell it like it is (ie me). I don't blame them, since I destroy their arguments (see above) I must be unpleasant, so flame-away, leftist-ACs.
Wow. Exactly what I was thinking (the movie is not an exact analogy to the technology here, of course, but Brainstorm was a GREAT movie in a number of ways).
1. Best *non-preachy* anti-tobacco-industry moment (back when it took guts to say anything against big tobacco, too!) when the female scientist dies of a heart attack *WHILE* she's smoking, recording her own death with "the hat." A powerful scene that ends in a focus on her cigarette itself going out, IIRC.
2. A funny (and interesting!) moment when one scientist gives another the experience of "being" one of their research chimpanzees with the hat.
3. Funniest line convincing the girlfriend to have sex, too: "Aw, c'mon honey, do it for science!!" to which she replied those words all guys occasionally long to hear: "Oh, all-right!";^)
4. Various unexplored geekly possibilites that make this a great movie for Slashdotters to watch, even if it weren't Natalie Wood's last movie (she died hot!). This movie lends itself to DVDs/VCRs, and it doesn't seem to require a full movie screen IMO. JMR
Amen. I went to (a large public university in the south I'll spare) for my final 3 years of college. They were JUST getting computers for class registration, and everything was (of course) done by your SSN. One effect of this policy is that ALL students quickly memorized their SSNs (I did the first day or so). Registration by computer was infinitely-easier than it had been in the recent past, and I was very-much pleased that the process no-longer took half a day because in the past it had been excruciating. Anyway...
One day, after registering for my classes, I was walking away and throwing something away, and for some reason something caught my eye in the trash bin. It was a giant printout of EVERYONE's name & SSN. I guess someone in administration had spilled coffee on it or something. Anyway, as near as I could tell, it was complete (it included ME, anyway) so I took it. At the time, I was only mildly alarmed that they'd leave it like that, and I can't even recall what I did with that giant list, but I'm VERY sure I got rid of it and no-longer have it today! (This happened in the early 1980s, and identity theft was much-less of an issue back then.) JMR
Every citizen of the United States is required to have an SSN....
Hmm. Not from what I've heard. The Amish, for example, don't believe in that sort of thing. My boss has 2 kids, one has an SSN and one doesn't but both were born here and are therefore citizens of the USA. It's very hard NOT to have an SSN in the modern USA, but I don't think it's a requirement and I've seen no such law. Yet.
Anyway, I've thought about the removal of the text in question, and I've decided it's almost certain that it was a bureaucratic rather than congressional decision. IOW, I'll NEVER get a name to pin responsibility onto and there was never any vote on the issue, unfortunately, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about the inherent dishonesty of the expanding-government situation.... JMR
All very true, but at some point, they removed the proviso I felt the need to put in bold text.
I want to know why, when, & who voted for the inconvenient-ID-proviso going off the cards, but I doubt I ever get to find out who made that important decision. I'm not even sure if it was ever debated in the congress (and there was certainly no C-Span back then!). JMR
PS Not everyone has an SSN, believe it or not! It IS more common than driver licenses in the USA, though.
I said classical liberal. It's a way of saying "libertarian" without angering the far-left, who tend to key on that particular word for some reason... (I have to make allowances in other fora to keep from angering the far-right with things like my "tax-&-spend drugwar" meme, which I'm happy to say is spreading!)
Anyway, I don't trust the current system at all, and don't want ANY mandated system, but if there must be one it's a lot better if Trent Lott & Robert Byrd* can't get their greedy meathooks on the money, and that's why the partly-private system you like is less-evil, but less-evil is still FAR from good, IMO. JMR
* Yes, I picked those two because of bipartisan race-issues I have with Social "Security." It's effectively a wealth transfer program from blacks to long-lived whites (and I'm a mostly-white guy, from a VERY-long-lived family, who was born with the wrong name to make this argument, but it's true!).
I still have my SS card issued in the 1960s. It says, and I quote:
"FOR SOCIAL SECURITY AND TAX PURPOSES -- NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION."
(The ALL CAPS is what's on my original card, I'm not "shouting"!)
I'm sure there are reams of Social "Security" (ok, my classical-liberal bias is showing with the quote-marks, but bear with me. After all, there's NO TRUST FUND, it's all a BUNCH OF I.O.U.s!!!) documents which form various interpretive rules and laws that can't be fathomed by mere mortal nonlawyers, but ask yourself a couple of questions:
1. Why would so many folks think it's illegal, if it's not?
2. Why does my card say what it says, but modern cards make NO MENTION of the fact that it's allegedly "not for identification"? Did something change? When?!? Who voted for it???!!!
Expanding government, when you lie to do it (and the lie was that the SSN was/is not gonna be used as a de-facto National ID card/number) is morally-wrong. Various events/excuses (I can see a 9/11 thread looming, so I'm trying to pre-squelch that now) don't make the moral-wrong of lying to expand government suddenly become right. If you want to expand government, say "I will make the government bigger, and this is why..." and then make an HONEST argument for once! Ok, rant-over. Back to work. JMR
Actually, if I were forced to pick a party, I'd probably choose the Libertarian party. My philosophies come closest to theirs. It's just this hypocrisy and stupid behavior that turns me off from them....
The tax law issue DOES justify this particular kind of trespassing, period (retaliatory force, not initiation of force). Look at it this way, they steal LOTS of taxes (my taxes are my property, and I have SPECIAL rights when they get wasted on politics! They have wasted $40 million on their own conventions in addition to what they're wasting on these "debates"!) so they trespassed first.
Fine, the candidate's trespassing was, in a perfect world, wrong, and I'm a horrible-hypocrite. Look at the results -- the media, try as they might, were almost-unable, for a moment, to ignore the LP and Green candidates. Is that a bad thing??
None of your other points seem to even need addressing, frankly... JMR
Neoconservative VP-Cheney-aide massively after Saddam before the Iraq-war (more@google). I agree that the sudden hyper-concern about trespassing seems to be a dodge.
I believe Badnarik is on the ballot in all states but OK, but IIRC that too is the subject of a lawsuit. JMR
While it's fantastic to see this suddenly-hyperactive respect for property rights from non-Libertarians, it's also a fact that diminishing property rights aren't much of a problem for universities. Candidates rarely trespass, and when they do nothing happens. OTOH, there's plenty of silence when "emminent domain" takes an old lady's home for Donald Trump's casino... Yes, it's ok to step on the university's property if that's the only way to force the biased media to notice -- it's tough but the university will survive. The tax law issue would NOT justify trespassing if the BIpartisan commission would accept process-service at their Washington, DC headquarters. They didn't, and called guards instead, hence the arrests that night.
The speech component is shorthand (always dangerous here) for their refusal to even have Cobb in the *audience*, and just a jab at the "free speech zones" the SS started under Clinton and vastly-expanded under Bush. JMR
The lawsuit headline on www.badnarik.org reads "a private debate with public funds?"
NEWSFLASH: Despite denials from Arizona State University (ASU) officials, this campaign and Arizona Libertarians continue to maintian that public funds have been used in preparation for the Bush-Kerry debate in Tempe. A letter from the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) dated September 15 specifically states that Arizona State University "spent substantial resources" on preparation for the Tempe debate.
University officials have lied to me plenty of times. Libertarian officials tend to tell the truth (even when it's painful...)!
If the bipartisan group loses their tax-status (which also imparts an unfair official depiction of lack-of-bias, because they've lied plenty of times in the media about that very issue!) we'd be happy -- that is, we'd go back to bitching about other big-government stuff -- but at the moment serving their asses with a nice lawsuit gives my side an excuse to get-arrested (and therefore FORCE the biased news media to notice we exist) and property-rights have little to do with it. It's a tax-law (and free-speech, as if that still exists outside special "zones"...) issue. JMR
It's a "501c3" corporation that styles itself as nonpartisan when it's clearly only BIpartisan in make-up and in bias toward keeping the duopoly firmly in power and keeping politically-incorrect ideas OUT of the heads of the average voter. As long as they're taking the tax-benefits, they're NOT like an ordinary private corporation in the least!
Issues like the racist, tax-&-spend drugwar are kept out of the debates despite the fact that we have an immense percentage of the US population -- especially blacks -- in jail due to this failed war. Instead, the "debates" (really bi-partisan news-conferences) are busy on the other failing war, which both "Skull" & "Bones" supported at the time. Propagandists like "Scooter" Libby were easily able to get minds off of Osama and onto Saddam, in part because Saddam made it so easy for them by bribing a large percentage of the UN in a criminal scheme which exceeded even Enron (which nobody remembers because there's Democrat-dirt there, too!) in size and scope.
I'll admit, Bush has been incredibly-lucky in many ways after drinking the kool aid of empire -- Libya's WMDs come to mind -- but in the end it's all about oil/money, as we'll be seeing at our local gas pumps for quite some time, I fear. JMR
Perhaps starbucks should be careful they don't get added to the list, especially serving columbian blends !
It's not as farfetched as it might seem (although the article is refreshingly-honest about the underlying reasons for the ban -- fear of political discussion and dissenting thought by authoritarians in control of others' lives). JMR
With Magnatune & e-gold, we have 4. (Others are welcome too! I'll click some e-gold to anyone who sends me an account number to show Slashdot users how it works.) What I like about Magnatune is the deal for artists is SO much better than the RIAA quintopoly's deal it's not even funny... It's my sincere hope that voluntary payment can work, but I need programmers' help to achieve this goal. Thanks. JMR
Yes, apparently there's a "slow" mode, the normal mode is a lot more fun, both are safe as hell IMO (safer than walking, almost).
Everybody anticipates a lower price on them, and Segway has done not-the-best-job of marketing at times, but they'll survive. I want one, but not at this price. JMR
That was my reaction, too. I'd have to own at least 3 of the things to risk destroying even one of them. And I'd want it to do something useful, like bring me a beer from the fridge, not chase some ball! Anyway,
http://www.pbase.com/wherley/first_2002
has pics of me riding on a somewhat-neutered Segway, it's a blast even when it's crippled... JMR
Anyway, one way of avoiding problems with stock markets is to just roll your own market, like the gold casino did (with very-good results) a bit over a year ago.
Interestingly, their share prices have remained stable at around 100 grams, which was the original IPO price. TGC is said to regularly pay dividends, which have regularly risen as more players find the casino, but it's hard to know much about TGC. JMR
Slashdot Mirror
Except, of course, that e-gold already did, in 1996, but the mediots haven't noticed. Funny how http://stats.e-gold.com/ customers lead the news-media. Again...
JMR
NOT speaking for e-gold, just being annoying...And no -- e-gold isn't perfect and I'm sure some people have gripes, but it EXISTS, and e-gold has quietly-kept the promises others so-loudly made about the 'net for a long time with little fanfare...
I never have mod-points when I REALLY want them.
+1 insightful (albeit obvious to many of us) it needs to be said when Laura Bush can fearlessly make a "milking the MALE horse" joke but Howard Stern is scared to say the word "oral" these days. The first amendment is in even more danger from Bush than the second was in from Slick Willie's goons post-Waco/OKcity (and for the powers that censor, that's going some).
JMR
Yes, I'm a partisan-libertarian, and no I'm not speaking for anyone but myself, as always, and if this rant annoys you think about me smirking at that little fact...
Don't worry, nobody wants to know (and your comment got modded down, to make sure they don't do anything dangerous like THINK about it...). I should probably post this anonymously, but I feel annoying today.
JMR
Speaking ONLY for myself.
Not to further-fuel the endless RKBA debate, but can anyone here imagine ANY product besides guns *not* being forced to adopt "silencers" (actually suppressors, but let's stick with the ignorant Hollyweird-terminology for now!) in the USA if invented yesterday? Instead, getting a silencer in the USA is *much* harder than getting a normal, Title one weapon, and costs $200 along with all the hassle. I can tell everyone who hasn't tried one, suppressors make shooting a LOT more-fun (and safer). And no, plinking with a suppressor didn't magically transform me into a mobster bent on murder.
Does this rarely-questioned policy reduce crime? Dubious (in Finland, you can buy suppressors in a hardware store, and I haven't heard of any crime-wave there.)! Across much of Europe it's actually illegal to shoot WITHOUT suppressors, because of all the noise guns make). Europe muddles along anyway. Does it increase government-control of law-abiding citizen-units while NOT affecting criminals (who'll by-definition break the law!)? Absolutely -- and that's the only purpose of 99.99% of gun-laws, whether or not their authors (who are normally safety-Nazis, at least when it comes to issues like industrial noise-levels being generated in more-politically-correct ways!) will ever directly admit it.
But this particular law, as populations get more-dense, also has the pernicious effect of slowly getting rid of guns & accurate shooting as a hobby due to the noise. Hiram Maxim, who invented both the machinegun and the suppressor back when the USA was a much-freeer country, would probably be mystified today at our politicians' useless anti-fun/anti-gun antics. The NRA, which is supposedly so-powerful, does NOT represent machinegun or "silencer" users because the media will beat them up as representing mobsters rather than looking at the hearing-safety issue. This is because the news media in general are ignorant, bigoted, and biased against individual firearms owners who tell it like it is (ie me). I don't blame them, since I destroy their arguments (see above) I must be unpleasant, so flame-away, leftist-ACs.
I still know I'm right.
JMR
Wow. Exactly what I was thinking (the movie is not an exact analogy to the technology here, of course, but Brainstorm was a GREAT movie in a number of ways).
;^)
1. Best *non-preachy* anti-tobacco-industry moment (back when it took guts to say anything against big tobacco, too!) when the female scientist dies of a heart attack *WHILE* she's smoking, recording her own death with "the hat." A powerful scene that ends in a focus on her cigarette itself going out, IIRC.
2. A funny (and interesting!) moment when one scientist gives another the experience of "being" one of their research chimpanzees with the hat.
3. Funniest line convincing the girlfriend to have sex, too: "Aw, c'mon honey, do it for science!!" to which she replied those words all guys occasionally long to hear: "Oh, all-right!"
4. Various unexplored geekly possibilites that make this a great movie for Slashdotters to watch, even if it weren't Natalie Wood's last movie (she died hot!). This movie lends itself to DVDs/VCRs, and it doesn't seem to require a full movie screen IMO.
JMR
All opinions mine-ONLY! Nobody else's!!
Amen. I went to (a large public university in the south I'll spare) for my final 3 years of college. They were JUST getting computers for class registration, and everything was (of course) done by your SSN. One effect of this policy is that ALL students quickly memorized their SSNs (I did the first day or so). Registration by computer was infinitely-easier than it had been in the recent past, and I was very-much pleased that the process no-longer took half a day because in the past it had been excruciating. Anyway...
One day, after registering for my classes, I was walking away and throwing something away, and for some reason something caught my eye in the trash bin. It was a giant printout of EVERYONE's name & SSN. I guess someone in administration had spilled coffee on it or something. Anyway, as near as I could tell, it was complete (it included ME, anyway) so I took it. At the time, I was only mildly alarmed that they'd leave it like that, and I can't even recall what I did with that giant list, but I'm VERY sure I got rid of it and no-longer have it today! (This happened in the early 1980s, and identity theft was much-less of an issue back then.)
JMR
Every citizen of the United States is required to have an SSN. ...
Hmm. Not from what I've heard. The Amish, for example, don't believe in that sort of thing. My boss has 2 kids, one has an SSN and one doesn't but both were born here and are therefore citizens of the USA. It's very hard NOT to have an SSN in the modern USA, but I don't think it's a requirement and I've seen no such law. Yet.
Anyway, I've thought about the removal of the text in question, and I've decided it's almost certain that it was a bureaucratic rather than congressional decision. IOW, I'll NEVER get a name to pin responsibility onto and there was never any vote on the issue, unfortunately, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about the inherent dishonesty of the expanding-government situation....
JMR
All very true, but at some point, they removed the proviso I felt the need to put in bold text.
I want to know why, when, & who voted for the inconvenient-ID-proviso going off the cards, but I doubt I ever get to find out who made that important decision. I'm not even sure if it was ever debated in the congress (and there was certainly no C-Span back then!).
JMR
PS Not everyone has an SSN, believe it or not! It IS more common than driver licenses in the USA, though.
I said classical liberal. It's a way of saying "libertarian" without angering the far-left, who tend to key on that particular word for some reason... (I have to make allowances in other fora to keep from angering the far-right with things like my "tax-&-spend drugwar" meme, which I'm happy to say is spreading!)
Anyway, I don't trust the current system at all, and don't want ANY mandated system, but if there must be one it's a lot better if Trent Lott & Robert Byrd* can't get their greedy meathooks on the money, and that's why the partly-private system you like is less-evil, but less-evil is still FAR from good, IMO.
JMR
* Yes, I picked those two because of bipartisan race-issues I have with Social "Security." It's effectively a wealth transfer program from blacks to long-lived whites (and I'm a mostly-white guy, from a VERY-long-lived family, who was born with the wrong name to make this argument, but it's true!).
I still have my SS card issued in the 1960s. It says, and I quote:
"FOR SOCIAL SECURITY AND TAX PURPOSES -- NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION."
(The ALL CAPS is what's on my original card, I'm not "shouting"!)
I'm sure there are reams of Social "Security" (ok, my classical-liberal bias is showing with the quote-marks, but bear with me. After all, there's NO TRUST FUND, it's all a BUNCH OF I.O.U.s!!!) documents which form various interpretive rules and laws that can't be fathomed by mere mortal nonlawyers, but ask yourself a couple of questions:
1. Why would so many folks think it's illegal, if it's not?
2. Why does my card say what it says, but modern cards make NO MENTION of the fact that it's allegedly "not for identification"? Did something change? When?!? Who voted for it???!!!
Expanding government, when you lie to do it (and the lie was that the SSN was/is not gonna be used as a de-facto National ID card/number) is morally-wrong. Various events/excuses (I can see a 9/11 thread looming, so I'm trying to pre-squelch that now) don't make the moral-wrong of lying to expand government suddenly become right. If you want to expand government, say "I will make the government bigger, and this is why..." and then make an HONEST argument for once! Ok, rant-over. Back to work.
JMR
I agree, but the average voter isn't going to think about 1999-history, they're going to think about Bush. Life's not fair.
JMR
Actually, if I were forced to pick a party, I'd probably choose the Libertarian party. My philosophies come closest to theirs. It's just this hypocrisy and stupid behavior that turns me off from them. ...
The tax law issue DOES justify this particular kind of trespassing, period (retaliatory force, not initiation of force). Look at it this way, they steal LOTS of taxes (my taxes are my property, and I have SPECIAL rights when they get wasted on politics! They have wasted $40 million on their own conventions in addition to what they're wasting on these "debates"!) so they trespassed first.
Fine, the candidate's trespassing was, in a perfect world, wrong, and I'm a horrible-hypocrite. Look at the results -- the media, try as they might, were almost-unable, for a moment, to ignore the LP and Green candidates. Is that a bad thing??
None of your other points seem to even need addressing, frankly...
JMR
Neoconservative VP-Cheney-aide massively after Saddam before the Iraq-war (more@google). I agree that the sudden hyper-concern about trespassing seems to be a dodge.
I believe Badnarik is on the ballot in all states but OK, but IIRC that too is the subject of a lawsuit.
JMR
While it's fantastic to see this suddenly-hyperactive respect for property rights from non-Libertarians, it's also a fact that diminishing property rights aren't much of a problem for universities. Candidates rarely trespass, and when they do nothing happens. OTOH, there's plenty of silence when "emminent domain" takes an old lady's home for Donald Trump's casino... Yes, it's ok to step on the university's property if that's the only way to force the biased media to notice -- it's tough but the university will survive. The tax law issue would NOT justify trespassing if the BIpartisan commission would accept process-service at their Washington, DC headquarters. They didn't, and called guards instead, hence the arrests that night.
The speech component is shorthand (always dangerous here) for their refusal to even have Cobb in the *audience*, and just a jab at the "free speech zones" the SS started under Clinton and vastly-expanded under Bush.
JMR
The lawsuit headline on www.badnarik.org reads "a private debate with public funds?"
NEWSFLASH: Despite denials from Arizona State University (ASU) officials, this campaign and Arizona Libertarians continue to maintian that public funds have been used in preparation for the Bush-Kerry debate in Tempe. A letter from the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) dated September 15 specifically states that Arizona State University "spent substantial resources" on preparation for the Tempe debate.
University officials have lied to me plenty of times. Libertarian officials tend to tell the truth (even when it's painful...)!
If the bipartisan group loses their tax-status (which also imparts an unfair official depiction of lack-of-bias, because they've lied plenty of times in the media about that very issue!) we'd be happy -- that is, we'd go back to bitching about other big-government stuff -- but at the moment serving their asses with a nice lawsuit gives my side an excuse to get-arrested (and therefore FORCE the biased news media to notice we exist) and property-rights have little to do with it. It's a tax-law (and free-speech, as if that still exists outside special "zones"...) issue.
JMR
It's a "501c3" corporation that styles itself as nonpartisan when it's clearly only BIpartisan in make-up and in bias toward keeping the duopoly firmly in power and keeping politically-incorrect ideas OUT of the heads of the average voter. As long as they're taking the tax-benefits, they're NOT like an ordinary private corporation in the least!
Issues like the racist, tax-&-spend drugwar are kept out of the debates despite the fact that we have an immense percentage of the US population -- especially blacks -- in jail due to this failed war. Instead, the "debates" (really bi-partisan news-conferences) are busy on the other failing war, which both "Skull" & "Bones" supported at the time. Propagandists like "Scooter" Libby were easily able to get minds off of Osama and onto Saddam, in part because Saddam made it so easy for them by bribing a large percentage of the UN in a criminal scheme which exceeded even Enron (which nobody remembers because there's Democrat-dirt there, too!) in size and scope.
I'll admit, Bush has been incredibly-lucky in many ways after drinking the kool aid of empire -- Libya's WMDs come to mind -- but in the end it's all about oil/money, as we'll be seeing at our local gas pumps for quite some time, I fear.
JMR
Definitely speaking ONLY for myself this time!
Perhaps starbucks should be careful they don't get added to the list, especially serving columbian blends !
It's not as farfetched as it might seem (although the article is refreshingly-honest about the underlying reasons for the ban -- fear of political discussion and dissenting thought by authoritarians in control of others' lives).
JMR
(Speaking ONLY for me!!!)
With Magnatune & e-gold, we have 4. (Others are welcome too! I'll click some e-gold to anyone who sends me an account number to show Slashdot users how it works.) What I like about Magnatune is the deal for artists is SO much better than the RIAA quintopoly's deal it's not even funny... It's my sincere hope that voluntary payment can work, but I need programmers' help to achieve this goal. Thanks.
JMR
Yes, apparently there's a "slow" mode, the normal mode is a lot more fun, both are safe as hell IMO (safer than walking, almost).
Everybody anticipates a lower price on them, and Segway has done not-the-best-job of marketing at times, but they'll survive. I want one, but not at this price.
JMR
That was my reaction, too. I'd have to own at least 3 of the things to risk destroying even one of them. And I'd want it to do something useful, like bring me a beer from the fridge, not chase some ball! Anyway,
http://www.pbase.com/wherley/first_2002
has pics of me riding on a somewhat-neutered Segway, it's a blast even when it's crippled...
JMR
Ya think it might be an election-year in the USA???!
JMR
Heh. Funny, and I like your sigfile, too! :)
Anyway, one way of avoiding problems with stock markets is to just roll your own market, like the gold casino did (with very-good results) a bit over a year ago.
Interestingly, their share prices have remained stable at around 100 grams, which was the original IPO price. TGC is said to regularly pay dividends, which have regularly risen as more players find the casino, but it's hard to know much about TGC.
JMR
The moderator thinks "funny," and I'm sitting here thinking, "insightful!"
JMR
Ladbroke's sportsbook. (I always hit this one and ignore the Gallup/Roper bullcrap!)
JMR
Yeah, but can it pinch the crooks' fingers? :)
No, seriously...
That's interesting, and I've heard a lot of good things about Audis in the last few years, so it's not even surprising that it was them. Thanks.
JMR