I recently got a class action settlement in the mail offering money for memory that I overpaid for back in the early 2000s. The catch is, to receive anything, I need to provide detailed information about how much memory I bought from what merchant, the brand and how much I paid. To receive the hard drive settlement, they want the same info (serial number, proof of purchase, name of retailer, price paid, etc).
I have those receipts... somewhere. Who really keeps receipts for computer parts going back a couple generations though? As an individual, I doubt the money I would receive is worth the hassle of digging up the receipts. Sure, MegaCorp may have purchased 1,000 units and have the receipt of that order and will get a hefty sum at 7% for their trouble, but most people are just going to get a couple dollars.
I'm not sure why they don't offer a token minimum amount for those who can't provide receipts (I don't see all 300 million people in the US clamoring to get a $10 check). Of course, like most class action suits, this was probably just a way for a law firm to cash in on a settlement (they get a cool $1.8 million while you get some free backup software or a couple dollars).
I just grabbed the AMD64 Live DVD of gentoo last night off bittorrent with RoadRunner (Rochester, NY). It took about 90 minutes to snag and I sent about 75 megs of data in that time... usually seeding 3 people at a time, one around 5KBps and the other two grabbing somewhere between 15-30KBps each. The two faster ones held on for most of that session.
From what I've seen of Time Warner, a lot of decisions seem to be made at the local level (speed, whether they block port 25, how bitchy they are about you running personal servers, USENET policies up until last year when they ditched their local per franchise servers and went with a national contracted one, etc). If they are screwing with your BT transfers, it's likely a local franchise decision rather than a national company-wide policy.
A) There is one game bundled, not two. As for this average of 4 games per console, I'm broke, haven't owned a console since the SNES and I'm already up to 7 quality titles on my shelf with several more that I'm waiting for and I haven't even bought all the games I want that are out now.
As for profitable games... Yeah, the first party titles are like printing cash. GOOD third party titles are profitable too (see Resident Evil 4... what did that cost to port? Raymonds sold well too). The developers not making money are the ones pitching shovelware or movie tie-ins. A turd doesn't sell regardless of what platform it's on. It's also cheaper to make games for the Wii. 360 and PS3 games, according to the reason for the $10 price increase this gen, are just too expensive to make. I'll take 20 hours of Metroid 3 rather than 5 hours of Heavenly Sword for my money, thanks.
B) Given the choice between buying a game for a console they already have or a new $400 console for the same game (in addition to the game), people will buy the one for the console they already have. Nintendo is already beating the 360 and PS3 in this gen cumulative sales despite the 360 having a year head start.
As for the Wii not having a franchise market... WTF are you smoking? Zelda, Smash Bros, Metroid, Super Mario, Mario Kart, etc. Half the Wii haters bitch that all Nintendo is is a franchise market producing the same games over and over. Serious gamers buy a 360 or PS3 AND a Wii to get the Wii franchises.
C) Next-gen graphics ($1000 tv and $400 console) + next gen controller (I'll toss it in free) = a lot of people who aren't going to shell out that kind of money for games. The Wii is trying to target a new market. Go play your PS360 and quit whining because the Wii is winning.
PS - The Wii isn't set up for a lucrative product life? They're the only console making money with each sale. They're already way ahead in profit.
I like how it's ok for the Dems threaten to filibuster but it's bad when the Reps do it. Wow, what sort of twisted fucking Fox News world do you live in, you idiotic partisan fuck?
The only comment I've ever heard about GOP filibusters is that people find it pretty fucking ironic that the GOP threatens it after their previous tantrum about how it shouldn't be constitutional. No tantrums, just a mention that GOPers (like you) are pathetic, short-sighted, selfish hypocrites. The Republicans never said filibustering shouldn't be Constitutional, cite your source (dailykos, du, opinion blogs, etc aren't news sources). What they said was, filibustering judicial nominees should be Unconstitutional since the Constitution says that the Senate merely has the power of "advice and consent" in terms of nominees. That is, either vote up or down the President's nominee, the Senate doesn't have the power to pick the nominee. Don't let facts get in the way of your ideology though.
If Congress truly believes something, pass it and make it get vetoed and/or overturned on appeal. This is an idiotic fucking argument that can only be made by somebody who doesn't live in reality.
Available options:
Option 1) Take a compromise position that you don't really like, but is better than the alternative.
Option 2) Take a "stand" that you know will be overturned, thus leaving you worse off than if you did option 1.
Now I know that idiotic partisan fucks (from all sides) love to claim that everybody should take option 2, but that allows for no progress at all and most people feel that some progress is better than cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
Only a complete and total ASSHOLE would claim that it's better to purposefully waste everybody's time in a way that gains nothing than it is to accept a shitty compromise that gains slightly. Person A: I think I'm going to ass rape you
Person B: I don't think you should ass rape me at all
Person A: Ok, I'm willing to compromise with you. I'll ass rape you but I'll use lube.
Person B: Ok. It's better than having no progress on the issue at all.
Either you believe in something or you don't. Making a bad law, just for the sake of having made a law, is worse than having no law at all. The DMCA grants safe harbor to service providers who remove copyrighted content when asked, something that they didn't have prior to that law, but most people would say the DMCA sucks ass. Which is the bigger debacle, a world with no DMCA or one with it (because at least they did something)?
PS - if the only comment you've ever heard is that it is ironic that the GOP is filibustering after threatening to eliminate filibusters for jucidial nominees, I suggest you talk to a wider range of people and peruse a wider range of news.
We're talking about Congress' ability to pass a law, not whether or not the law would be signed and pass judicial review. If Congress truly believes something, pass it and make it get vetoed and/or overturned on appeal. If they won't pass it, it's because it doesn't really matter to them.
Blaming the other party for your party's lack of conviction is pretty sad.
PS - The Republicans didn't attempt to outlaw filibuster, they talked about making a vote for cloture require only 51 votes. I like how it's ok for the Dems threaten to filibuster but it's bad when the Reps do it.
110th Congress: House: 202R 233D Senate: 49R 49D 2I (both I caucus Dem giving them a majority)
109th Congress: House: 232R 202D 1I Senate: 55R 44D 1I
108th Congress: House: 229R 205D 1I Senate: 51R 48D 1I
107th Congress: House: 221R 212D 2I Senate: 50R 50D followed by Jeffords jumping aisles to make it 49R 50D 1I, ended up 50R 48D 2I due to Wellstone's death
In the House, the power advantage is exactly opposite as it was in the last Congress. At no point in the Senate, have the Republicans held the super majority of 60 needed to automatically break any filibuster. So, in the interest of civics, how did the Republicans have a strong majority in both houses while the Dems only have a slim majority or is that just your bias slipping in there trying to demonize one party while letting your guys off the hook? If the Dems believe something, pass it and make him veto (like with SCHIP). If they don't pass it, it's because they don't really believe in it and are just using it as a talking point so they can keep getting votes from people like you (like the Republicans keep talking about wanting a small government to get votes from that wing of their party).
Part of the success the Congressional Republicans had in the mid-90s was the fact that they would send bills up knowing they would be vetoed. Clinton vetoed welfare reform twice before he finally signed it in 1996 (an election year) to try to take an issue away from the Republicans. Granted, Bush isn't up for election again next year, but you can at least force him to make a stand (which would bleed over into the Republican party in general via ad hominism) like with SCHIP. The Dems were smart to pass it and force Bush to veto. For his part, Bush bungled the veto and should have gone into depth about why he was vetoing it instead of letting the Dems define the public face of the issue.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more
perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and
secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America.
So, what exactly does "the general Welfare" mean?
From:
FEDERALIST No. 23
The Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed to the Preservation of the Union
Defective as the present Confederation has been proved to be,
this principle appears to have been fully recognized by the framers
of it; though they have not made proper or adequate provision for
its exercise. Congress have an unlimited discretion to make
requisitions of men and money; to govern the army and navy; to
direct their operations. As their requisitions are made
constitutionally binding upon the States, who are in fact under the
most solemn obligations to furnish the supplies required of them,
the intention evidently was that the United States should command
whatever resources were by them judged requisite to the ``common
defense and general welfare.'' It was presumed that a sense of
their true interests, and a regard to the dictates of good faith,
would be found sufficient pledges for the punctual performance of
the duty of the members to the federal head.
FEDERALIST No. 41
General View of the Powers Conferred by The Constitution
A system of
government, meant for duration, ought to contemplate these
revolutions, and be able to accommodate itself to them. Some,
who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have
grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the
language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed,
that the power ``to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and
excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and
general welfare of the United States,'' amounts to an unlimited
commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be
necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger
proof could be given of the distress under which these writers
labor for objections, than their stooping to such a
misconstruction. Had no other enumeration or definition of the
powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the
general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection
might have had some color for it; though it would have been
difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an
authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy
the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate
the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very
singularly expressed by the terms ``to raise money for the
general welfare. ''But what color can the objection have, when a
specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms
immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause
than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument
ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which
will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded
altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more
doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent,
and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification
whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular
powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be
included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural
nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to
explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea
of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor
qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to
confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced
to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection
or o
So I guess you don't live in a democracy then, because in a democracy the idea is that the government should represent as many points of view as possible, and where your view differs from the government you should suck up and deal because, ideally, that means that most of society also disagrees.
Of course, this doesn't work in America any more because American politics these days is six kinds of stupid, which is my way of saying that I'm sick of talking about exactly how messed up it is. I live in a Constitutional Republic where we're supposed to have a weak federal government that mostly ensures basic rights (such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) and regulates interstate and foreign affairs. See, the founders of this country knew that true democracy ended up in the tyranny of the majority where 50.1% of the people can vote to hang the other 49.9% and that a government with unbridled power was a government with unbridled power to control it's citizens. Everyone who advocates expanding the power of the government to be a nanny is pissing on the Constitution (and your rights) as much as those who mount a deliberate and direct assault on them. 50.1% of people voting that it's ok for police to install cameras in everyone's house to "protect the children" doesn't mean that it's ok for government to do it nor does it means that your rights aren't being violated.
I can come up with more So if I enumerate several government programs which are abusive and are run like shit, it means the entire government is abusive and runs like shit and therefore are incapable of helping anyone? I know that if I don't like a charity or church, I can give my money to someone else... do you know how I can give my money to a competing government if I don't like the way it's run?
(see the farce known as public schools).
See the problem with selective admissions in any form of education. Ironic that to get out of the problem, another one is created (selectivity). So the implication is that if we got rid of private schools, public schools would suddenly start turning out 99% graduation rates full of independent thinking people? More likely, we'll just drag the educational level of those (previously) private school kids down to the level of the public school kids. The problem is public education is fundamentally broken (for a lot of reasons, not the least of which are the parents and government(especially at the federal and state levels)). Doubling school budgets where I live over the last 10 years hasn't improved education at all (actually, todays grads are uniformly dumber than those of 10 years ago) and the only solution the politicians can come up with is to throw more money at the problem, they won't even listen to anything else (ok, so the local paper had an editorial saying we need more racial discrimination in the hiring process in addition to more spending).
The problem with sin taxes is once you start taxing based on perceived negative behavior, you set a precedent to tax other perceived negative behaviors. Sin tax on using net access for more than two hours a day(because you might be at home playing WoW, eating junk food and are likely to have coronary disease)? Sin tax for eating fast food (such as buying a salad at McDonalds while that all you can eat spaghetti over at the local italian joint isn't subject)? Sin taxes (beyond generic sales tax) on all that pop that is rotting your teeth, giving you migraines and disrupting your sleep? Sin taxes on television since it means you're likely to spend 4 hours a day watching it instead of doing something to benefit yourself or your community?
If you want to do anything other than live in a hut in the woods, growing your own food and jogging for recreation, negative effects of your behavior can be found. Crap, you said anti-social behavior behavior is lumped in with the sins so I guess we have to sin tax your hut too.
My point is that there will always be (more or less valid) reasons to modify other people's behaviours. If you don't like my behavior, ignore it! Nobody is forcing you to consume a big mac with me. Nobody is forcing you to be gay just because that couple over there is. What, you don't want to pay for the long term effects of my (not really) smoking habit? How about the government not be responsible for my health care to begin with? Problem solved... you don't need to worry about what I'm doing to my body then. As long as I'm not harming you, walk away and mind your own business. My right to swing my fist ends at your nose and all that.
If police and criminal law is the only tool people have, that's the tool they'll use, with possibly unintended consequences (see prohibition in the 30's and how it fostered the rise of organized crime). So saying you only want to pay for police and FD doesn't fix the underlying problem of excessive government intervention. Prohibition... ah yes, the ultimate ideology behind the sin tax. It's so bad for you that you flat out can't have it at all. You know what, people from NY drive to VA to buy cigarettes, people from PA come to NY to get booze, people from the US go to Canada to get booze with higher alcohol content, etc. Sin taxes just help drive the business underground. Sin taxes, excess taxation, big government and thwarting of your civil liberties all go hand and hand.
I would rather that the government have a range of tools at its disposal. I wouldn't impose on a contractor that the only tools he's allowed to use to build a house is a hammer and a chisel. I would be a lot more concerned about enough oversight to make sure he's honest and sufficiently experienced to use power tools and cranes if appropriate instead of charging me for doing everything with a hammer and chisel. Why is it the government's job to fix you? What's wrong with charities, church groups, 12 step programs, etc? What you advocate is saying the government should be the one contractor that you can hire to build your house (because he'll work for no extra charge) and he can use any tools as he wants but there's no guarantee that he won't do a crap job because the funding will never dry up even if he sucks at it (see the farce known as public schools).
Police and fire departments are generally local organizations. I know of no national fire department, do you? The FBI, DEA, ATF, etc are federal police agencies, yes, but most people refer to them as feds or by department rather than the generic police. Local cops never solve things like murder and rape, they're all just eating doughnuts until they can find your stash. I'm waiting for the fire department to tap my phone too since you include them with the wire tapping agencies.
Careful with the sin taxes too... one man's sin is another man's pleasure and if you want want to encourage sin taxes, don't be surprised if someone advocates an extra tax for your guilty pleasure. I say that as someone who doesn't drink, smoke, or gamble (well, outside family card games and whatnot).
If you consider that taxation is an encroachment on your (monetary) freedom, then taxation is a limit on freedom. As such, there should need to be a justification in exchange for the limitation of your freedom. Paying the police and fire department? Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people can agree reasonable taxation to provide for that is fair. Sin taxes to try to control someone else's behavior? Not so good, IMO. Everything in between is subjective and, as such, should be left to states and local communities to prevent 218 Representatives + 51 Senators + 1 President from imposing burdensome ideologies on the tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of people who don't support those ideologies.
For every bit of power you cede to the government, you also cede an equivalent amount of freedom. Don't complain when the other guy taxes you to fund his pet project that you disagree with if you're a proponent of your guy taxing people to fund your pet project. Sooner or later, each of your guys will eventually take everything.
1) I seem to remember two different versions (at least for OS/2 Warp 3 which is what I used), a red box and a blue box. The red box required you to have Win 3.1 for Windows support and the blue box came with it build in. I want to say that I paid $89 for the red box and the blue box was $139. However, as my red box notes (yeah, I still have it): "New! Plus BonusPak Internet, FAX, IBM Works, Multimedia and more (see top of box for more info)"
BonusPak includes: IBM Information Superhighway (IBM Internet Connection for OS/2, CompuServe Information Manager for OS/2, HyperAccess Lite for OS/2)
Multimedia (IBM Person to Person for OS/2, Multimedia Viewer, Video In for OS/2)
IBM Works (Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Charting, Database, Report Writer, Personal Information Manager)
So, your purchase was buying a full OS with a TCP/IP stack (versus having to install winsock for Windows), a full office suite, etc for a comparable price to just Win95 alone. Along with the internet tools, there was a decent news reader, gopher tools, PPP client, etc.
2) As for minimum system requirements, my box says:
Intel 386 SX or higher (I was using a 486DX/4 100 that I bought working part time at McDonalds for reference)
4 MB RAM (I was a god among my friends with 32 MB but most of them had 16. I want to say I paid $80/8 meg stick)
35-55 MB free hard disk space (I think I had a 2 or 4GB drive)
1.44 drive (back when we needed a boot disk to get to CDROM)
VGA video support
IBM compatible mouse
An OS/2 compatible CD-ROM drive
Multimedia-ready systems for sound (Creative Vibra16 in my case)
Windows 3.1 or 3.11 is required for Windows applications support. Windows for Work Groups are supported in the same manner (again, blue box was built in)
BonusPak requires up to 30MB additional free space (user selectable) and 9600 baud or higher modem for online access
OS/2. It was backwards compatible with DOS and Win 3.x, had built in internet connectivity, had pre-emptive multitasking, etc. It's the OS that bridged the gap between the DOS 5 days and when I finally switched over to Linux full time. I also remember MS extorting IBM telling them they'd better stop offering OS/2 for their PC sales division or else they'd lose their OEM license for Windows. Memory says MS went around bribing third party dev houses to switch targets from OS/2 to Win32 houses but I'm too lazy to look for references right now. Stardock was the only company I can remember really keeping a commitment to OS/2.
I seem to remember, back around 2000ish, a lot of non-US Slashdotters bitching that Slashdot was too US-centric and didn't cover enough international stories... After the sellout to Andover/VA, people complained that it was too corporate and that the editors and story selection sucked. The "solution" was Kuro5hin where you could vote on the stories, pick what went to the front page, etc. Quite a few Slashdotters seemed to have dual-citizenship, if you will. It had a lot of hype for a while and even Slashdot covered stories about K5. I remember K5 getting DDOSed and VA donating a new server for them.
For a while they were pretty successful, but eventually, the flames burned out. I stopped visiting sometime back in 2001 or so when the site became overly political and have checked in on it a few times a year since. It seems pretty dead these days. Slashdot started becoming pretty partisan about the same time (with nearly every story having to have at least one comment about how Bush stole the election), but it was more in check since users weren't decided what stories everyone got to see. The advent of the politics section and the hiring of a particular editor has Slashdot pushing it in the same direction. I left Slashdot for a while last year but decided I wasn't going to let one editor ruin a site, one I've visted for nearly a decade, for me.
Who says nothing is wrong with the exit poll and/or election? An exit poll is more subject to rigging than the election is, making it a lousy indicator of whether or not the election results are correct. The GP wanted to claim exit polls were de facto proof that the election result was opposite of what it should have been and, implicitly, that the election should be overturned in favor of the election polls because they're always right (as long as GWB isn't running).
As long as people trot out "the election didn't match the exit poll," manipulating the exit polls will always be worth the bother. If you can't win at the real polls, make them look fraudulent.
One more thing I forgot to add... I got the idea of exit poll poisoning from this thing called the internet, which was already gaining importance prior to the 2000 election, that lets people easily organize groups and campaigns to do something. For proof of the effectiveness of internet organizing, see Joe Lieberman's loss to Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary, which was largely organized online. Ditto for Dean's rise in 2004, the attention Ron Paul is getting right now, all of those flash mobs, etc.
If any polls (exit, telephone, mail, internet, take your pick) were good enough to give us absolute results, there's no reason for us to actually go cast a ballot. Exit polls are not infallible and are subject to selection bias (say, college kids picking attractive people around their age to poll rather than a broader cross section of people), sample bias (polling during the day which gets a lot of retired people and stay at home parents while ignoring people who vote later because they have to start crunching numbers in order to prepare for the immediate prediction of winners as soon as the polls close), people have a tendency to tell the questioner what they think the questioner wants to hear rather than how they actually voted to avoid confrontation(for example, you're black and are polled by a black pollster and are asked whether you voted for the black candidate or his opponent), are subject to people outright lying to skew the polls (I've never been polled, but as a 30 year old white male registered republican from a town that votes 80/20 republican, if enough of us said we were voting for the democrat/green/whatever, they would see a trend in the exit poll that would disagree with our actual vote (still voted republican, I just poisoned their data)), exit poll data and predictions being leaked before polls close can skew the vote (oh, my guy has already lost so I'll just go home or my guy is so far ahead that he doesn't need my vote so I'll just go home), etc.
Now, pollsters know that the above type stuff will happen, so they need to normalize their data. The thing about that is, no normalization is perfect and you'll always end up with some margin of error. Even then, if your data is poisoned enough (intentionally or not) and/or skewed enough due to sample/selection bias, your real error may exceed your margin of error. The 2000 election came down to a couple thousand votes out of millions cast in Florida. It was statistically within the margin of error of the exit polls and thus the exit polls were pretty meaningless at attempting to predict the winner. Trying to use national exit polling data to predict the overall popular vote winner is useless and only serves as a point of FUD to undermine our government to begin with since the popular vote has never mattered, in any way, for the Presidency.
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I recently got a class action settlement in the mail offering money for memory that I overpaid for back in the early 2000s. The catch is, to receive anything, I need to provide detailed information about how much memory I bought from what merchant, the brand and how much I paid. To receive the hard drive settlement, they want the same info (serial number, proof of purchase, name of retailer, price paid, etc).
I have those receipts... somewhere. Who really keeps receipts for computer parts going back a couple generations though? As an individual, I doubt the money I would receive is worth the hassle of digging up the receipts. Sure, MegaCorp may have purchased 1,000 units and have the receipt of that order and will get a hefty sum at 7% for their trouble, but most people are just going to get a couple dollars.
I'm not sure why they don't offer a token minimum amount for those who can't provide receipts (I don't see all 300 million people in the US clamoring to get a $10 check). Of course, like most class action suits, this was probably just a way for a law firm to cash in on a settlement (they get a cool $1.8 million while you get some free backup software or a couple dollars).
I just grabbed the AMD64 Live DVD of gentoo last night off bittorrent with RoadRunner (Rochester, NY). It took about 90 minutes to snag and I sent about 75 megs of data in that time... usually seeding 3 people at a time, one around 5KBps and the other two grabbing somewhere between 15-30KBps each. The two faster ones held on for most of that session.
From what I've seen of Time Warner, a lot of decisions seem to be made at the local level (speed, whether they block port 25, how bitchy they are about you running personal servers, USENET policies up until last year when they ditched their local per franchise servers and went with a national contracted one, etc). If they are screwing with your BT transfers, it's likely a local franchise decision rather than a national company-wide policy.
A) There is one game bundled, not two. As for this average of 4 games per console, I'm broke, haven't owned a console since the SNES and I'm already up to 7 quality titles on my shelf with several more that I'm waiting for and I haven't even bought all the games I want that are out now.
As for profitable games... Yeah, the first party titles are like printing cash. GOOD third party titles are profitable too (see Resident Evil 4... what did that cost to port? Raymonds sold well too). The developers not making money are the ones pitching shovelware or movie tie-ins. A turd doesn't sell regardless of what platform it's on. It's also cheaper to make games for the Wii. 360 and PS3 games, according to the reason for the $10 price increase this gen, are just too expensive to make. I'll take 20 hours of Metroid 3 rather than 5 hours of Heavenly Sword for my money, thanks.
B) Given the choice between buying a game for a console they already have or a new $400 console for the same game (in addition to the game), people will buy the one for the console they already have. Nintendo is already beating the 360 and PS3 in this gen cumulative sales despite the 360 having a year head start.
As for the Wii not having a franchise market... WTF are you smoking? Zelda, Smash Bros, Metroid, Super Mario, Mario Kart, etc. Half the Wii haters bitch that all Nintendo is is a franchise market producing the same games over and over. Serious gamers buy a 360 or PS3 AND a Wii to get the Wii franchises.
C) Next-gen graphics ($1000 tv and $400 console) + next gen controller (I'll toss it in free) = a lot of people who aren't going to shell out that kind of money for games. The Wii is trying to target a new market. Go play your PS360 and quit whining because the Wii is winning.
PS - The Wii isn't set up for a lucrative product life? They're the only console making money with each sale. They're already way ahead in profit.
If Congress truly believes something, pass it and make it get vetoed and/or overturned on appeal. This is an idiotic fucking argument that can only be made by somebody who doesn't live in reality. Available options: Option 1) Take a compromise position that you don't really like, but is better than the alternative. Option 2) Take a "stand" that you know will be overturned, thus leaving you worse off than if you did option 1. Now I know that idiotic partisan fucks (from all sides) love to claim that everybody should take option 2, but that allows for no progress at all and most people feel that some progress is better than cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Only a complete and total ASSHOLE would claim that it's better to purposefully waste everybody's time in a way that gains nothing than it is to accept a shitty compromise that gains slightly. Person A: I think I'm going to ass rape you
Person B: I don't think you should ass rape me at all
Person A: Ok, I'm willing to compromise with you. I'll ass rape you but I'll use lube.
Person B: Ok. It's better than having no progress on the issue at all.
Either you believe in something or you don't. Making a bad law, just for the sake of having made a law, is worse than having no law at all. The DMCA grants safe harbor to service providers who remove copyrighted content when asked, something that they didn't have prior to that law, but most people would say the DMCA sucks ass. Which is the bigger debacle, a world with no DMCA or one with it (because at least they did something)?
PS - if the only comment you've ever heard is that it is ironic that the GOP is filibustering after threatening to eliminate filibusters for jucidial nominees, I suggest you talk to a wider range of people and peruse a wider range of news.
We're talking about Congress' ability to pass a law, not whether or not the law would be signed and pass judicial review. If Congress truly believes something, pass it and make it get vetoed and/or overturned on appeal. If they won't pass it, it's because it doesn't really matter to them.
Blaming the other party for your party's lack of conviction is pretty sad.
PS - The Republicans didn't attempt to outlaw filibuster, they talked about making a vote for cloture require only 51 votes. I like how it's ok for the Dems threaten to filibuster but it's bad when the Reps do it.
110th Congress: House: 202R 233D Senate: 49R 49D 2I (both I caucus Dem giving them a majority)
109th Congress: House: 232R 202D 1I Senate: 55R 44D 1I
108th Congress: House: 229R 205D 1I Senate: 51R 48D 1I
107th Congress: House: 221R 212D 2I Senate: 50R 50D followed by Jeffords jumping aisles to make it 49R 50D 1I, ended up 50R 48D 2I due to Wellstone's death
In the House, the power advantage is exactly opposite as it was in the last Congress. At no point in the Senate, have the Republicans held the super majority of 60 needed to automatically break any filibuster. So, in the interest of civics, how did the Republicans have a strong majority in both houses while the Dems only have a slim majority or is that just your bias slipping in there trying to demonize one party while letting your guys off the hook? If the Dems believe something, pass it and make him veto (like with SCHIP). If they don't pass it, it's because they don't really believe in it and are just using it as a talking point so they can keep getting votes from people like you (like the Republicans keep talking about wanting a small government to get votes from that wing of their party).
Part of the success the Congressional Republicans had in the mid-90s was the fact that they would send bills up knowing they would be vetoed. Clinton vetoed welfare reform twice before he finally signed it in 1996 (an election year) to try to take an issue away from the Republicans. Granted, Bush isn't up for election again next year, but you can at least force him to make a stand (which would bleed over into the Republican party in general via ad hominism) like with SCHIP. The Dems were smart to pass it and force Bush to veto. For his part, Bush bungled the veto and should have gone into depth about why he was vetoing it instead of letting the Dems define the public face of the issue.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more
perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and
secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America.
So, what exactly does "the general Welfare" mean?
From:
FEDERALIST No. 23
The Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed to the Preservation of the Union
Defective as the present Confederation has been proved to be, this principle appears to have been fully recognized by the framers of it; though they have not made proper or adequate provision for its exercise. Congress have an unlimited discretion to make requisitions of men and money; to govern the army and navy; to direct their operations. As their requisitions are made constitutionally binding upon the States, who are in fact under the most solemn obligations to furnish the supplies required of them, the intention evidently was that the United States should command whatever resources were by them judged requisite to the ``common defense and general welfare.'' It was presumed that a sense of their true interests, and a regard to the dictates of good faith, would be found sufficient pledges for the punctual performance of the duty of the members to the federal head.
FEDERALIST No. 41
General View of the Powers Conferred by The Constitution
A system of government, meant for duration, ought to contemplate these revolutions, and be able to accommodate itself to them. Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power ``to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,'' amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction. Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms ``to raise money for the general welfare. ''But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or o
Government is supposed to be our mother? I'm an adult, I'll pass thanks.
Of course, this doesn't work in America any more because American politics these days is six kinds of stupid, which is my way of saying that I'm sick of talking about exactly how messed up it is. I live in a Constitutional Republic where we're supposed to have a weak federal government that mostly ensures basic rights (such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) and regulates interstate and foreign affairs. See, the founders of this country knew that true democracy ended up in the tyranny of the majority where 50.1% of the people can vote to hang the other 49.9% and that a government with unbridled power was a government with unbridled power to control it's citizens. Everyone who advocates expanding the power of the government to be a nanny is pissing on the Constitution (and your rights) as much as those who mount a deliberate and direct assault on them. 50.1% of people voting that it's ok for police to install cameras in everyone's house to "protect the children" doesn't mean that it's ok for government to do it nor does it means that your rights aren't being violated.
If you want to do anything other than live in a hut in the woods, growing your own food and jogging for recreation, negative effects of your behavior can be found. Crap, you said anti-social behavior behavior is lumped in with the sins so I guess we have to sin tax your hut too.
My point is that there will always be (more or less valid) reasons to modify other people's behaviours. If you don't like my behavior, ignore it! Nobody is forcing you to consume a big mac with me. Nobody is forcing you to be gay just because that couple over there is. What, you don't want to pay for the long term effects of my (not really) smoking habit? How about the government not be responsible for my health care to begin with? Problem solved... you don't need to worry about what I'm doing to my body then. As long as I'm not harming you, walk away and mind your own business. My right to swing my fist ends at your nose and all that.
If police and criminal law is the only tool people have, that's the tool they'll use, with possibly unintended consequences (see prohibition in the 30's and how it fostered the rise of organized crime). So saying you only want to pay for police and FD doesn't fix the underlying problem of excessive government intervention. Prohibition... ah yes, the ultimate ideology behind the sin tax. It's so bad for you that you flat out can't have it at all. You know what, people from NY drive to VA to buy cigarettes, people from PA come to NY to get booze, people from the US go to Canada to get booze with higher alcohol content, etc. Sin taxes just help drive the business underground. Sin taxes, excess taxation, big government and thwarting of your civil liberties all go hand and hand.
I would rather that the government have a range of tools at its disposal. I wouldn't impose on a contractor that the only tools he's allowed to use to build a house is a hammer and a chisel. I would be a lot more concerned about enough oversight to make sure he's honest and sufficiently experienced to use power tools and cranes if appropriate instead of charging me for doing everything with a hammer and chisel. Why is it the government's job to fix you? What's wrong with charities, church groups, 12 step programs, etc? What you advocate is saying the government should be the one contractor that you can hire to build your house (because he'll work for no extra charge) and he can use any tools as he wants but there's no guarantee that he won't do a crap job because the funding will never dry up even if he sucks at it (see the farce known as public schools).
Police and fire departments are generally local organizations. I know of no national fire department, do you? The FBI, DEA, ATF, etc are federal police agencies, yes, but most people refer to them as feds or by department rather than the generic police. Local cops never solve things like murder and rape, they're all just eating doughnuts until they can find your stash. I'm waiting for the fire department to tap my phone too since you include them with the wire tapping agencies.
Careful with the sin taxes too... one man's sin is another man's pleasure and if you want want to encourage sin taxes, don't be surprised if someone advocates an extra tax for your guilty pleasure. I say that as someone who doesn't drink, smoke, or gamble (well, outside family card games and whatnot).
If you consider that taxation is an encroachment on your (monetary) freedom, then taxation is a limit on freedom. As such, there should need to be a justification in exchange for the limitation of your freedom. Paying the police and fire department? Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people can agree reasonable taxation to provide for that is fair. Sin taxes to try to control someone else's behavior? Not so good, IMO. Everything in between is subjective and, as such, should be left to states and local communities to prevent 218 Representatives + 51 Senators + 1 President from imposing burdensome ideologies on the tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of people who don't support those ideologies.
For every bit of power you cede to the government, you also cede an equivalent amount of freedom. Don't complain when the other guy taxes you to fund his pet project that you disagree with if you're a proponent of your guy taxing people to fund your pet project. Sooner or later, each of your guys will eventually take everything.
Molasses is faster than you think, at least in January. 21 killed, 150 injured.
1) I seem to remember two different versions (at least for OS/2 Warp 3 which is what I used), a red box and a blue box. The red box required you to have Win 3.1 for Windows support and the blue box came with it build in. I want to say that I paid $89 for the red box and the blue box was $139. However, as my red box notes (yeah, I still have it): "New! Plus BonusPak Internet, FAX, IBM Works, Multimedia and more (see top of box for more info)"
BonusPak includes: IBM Information Superhighway (IBM Internet Connection for OS/2, CompuServe Information Manager for OS/2, HyperAccess Lite for OS/2)
Multimedia (IBM Person to Person for OS/2, Multimedia Viewer, Video In for OS/2)
IBM Works (Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Charting, Database, Report Writer, Personal Information Manager)
So, your purchase was buying a full OS with a TCP/IP stack (versus having to install winsock for Windows), a full office suite, etc for a comparable price to just Win95 alone. Along with the internet tools, there was a decent news reader, gopher tools, PPP client, etc.
2) As for minimum system requirements, my box says:
Intel 386 SX or higher (I was using a 486DX/4 100 that I bought working part time at McDonalds for reference)
4 MB RAM (I was a god among my friends with 32 MB but most of them had 16. I want to say I paid $80/8 meg stick)
35-55 MB free hard disk space (I think I had a 2 or 4GB drive)
1.44 drive (back when we needed a boot disk to get to CDROM)
VGA video support
IBM compatible mouse
An OS/2 compatible CD-ROM drive
Multimedia-ready systems for sound (Creative Vibra16 in my case)
Windows 3.1 or 3.11 is required for Windows applications support. Windows for Work Groups are supported in the same manner (again, blue box was built in)
BonusPak requires up to 30MB additional free space (user selectable) and 9600 baud or higher modem for online access
The only copy of Windows I own is XP (came with the laptop) so I don't have a box to look the specs up on myself.
386DX, 4MB, 70 MB hard drive, CD-ROM, etc
So I'd say the specs were almost exactly the same.
OS/2. It was backwards compatible with DOS and Win 3.x, had built in internet connectivity, had pre-emptive multitasking, etc. It's the OS that bridged the gap between the DOS 5 days and when I finally switched over to Linux full time. I also remember MS extorting IBM telling them they'd better stop offering OS/2 for their PC sales division or else they'd lose their OEM license for Windows. Memory says MS went around bribing third party dev houses to switch targets from OS/2 to Win32 houses but I'm too lazy to look for references right now. Stardock was the only company I can remember really keeping a commitment to OS/2.
I seem to remember, back around 2000ish, a lot of non-US Slashdotters bitching that Slashdot was too US-centric and didn't cover enough international stories... After the sellout to Andover/VA, people complained that it was too corporate and that the editors and story selection sucked. The "solution" was Kuro5hin where you could vote on the stories, pick what went to the front page, etc. Quite a few Slashdotters seemed to have dual-citizenship, if you will. It had a lot of hype for a while and even Slashdot covered stories about K5. I remember K5 getting DDOSed and VA donating a new server for them.
For a while they were pretty successful, but eventually, the flames burned out. I stopped visiting sometime back in 2001 or so when the site became overly political and have checked in on it a few times a year since. It seems pretty dead these days. Slashdot started becoming pretty partisan about the same time (with nearly every story having to have at least one comment about how Bush stole the election), but it was more in check since users weren't decided what stories everyone got to see. The advent of the politics section and the hiring of a particular editor has Slashdot pushing it in the same direction. I left Slashdot for a while last year but decided I wasn't going to let one editor ruin a site, one I've visted for nearly a decade, for me.
Slashdot had quite a few stories on Project Echelon too.
(just a small selection)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/10/18/1419245
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/06/04/1915248
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/05/1044228
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=98/09/30/1429227
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/11/03/1258257
I seem to remember there being quite the uproar back then...
Let's not forget it would make it illegal for doctors (or their families) to own hospitals. How dare some otologist, cardiologist, or plastic surgeon have their own operating room. Filthy pig-dog capitalists!
Who says nothing is wrong with the exit poll and/or election? An exit poll is more subject to rigging than the election is, making it a lousy indicator of whether or not the election results are correct. The GP wanted to claim exit polls were de facto proof that the election result was opposite of what it should have been and, implicitly, that the election should be overturned in favor of the election polls because they're always right (as long as GWB isn't running).
As long as people trot out "the election didn't match the exit poll," manipulating the exit polls will always be worth the bother. If you can't win at the real polls, make them look fraudulent.
One more thing I forgot to add... I got the idea of exit poll poisoning from this thing called the internet, which was already gaining importance prior to the 2000 election, that lets people easily organize groups and campaigns to do something. For proof of the effectiveness of internet organizing, see Joe Lieberman's loss to Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary, which was largely organized online. Ditto for Dean's rise in 2004, the attention Ron Paul is getting right now, all of those flash mobs, etc.
If any polls (exit, telephone, mail, internet, take your pick) were good enough to give us absolute results, there's no reason for us to actually go cast a ballot. Exit polls are not infallible and are subject to selection bias (say, college kids picking attractive people around their age to poll rather than a broader cross section of people), sample bias (polling during the day which gets a lot of retired people and stay at home parents while ignoring people who vote later because they have to start crunching numbers in order to prepare for the immediate prediction of winners as soon as the polls close), people have a tendency to tell the questioner what they think the questioner wants to hear rather than how they actually voted to avoid confrontation(for example, you're black and are polled by a black pollster and are asked whether you voted for the black candidate or his opponent), are subject to people outright lying to skew the polls (I've never been polled, but as a 30 year old white male registered republican from a town that votes 80/20 republican, if enough of us said we were voting for the democrat/green/whatever, they would see a trend in the exit poll that would disagree with our actual vote (still voted republican, I just poisoned their data)), exit poll data and predictions being leaked before polls close can skew the vote (oh, my guy has already lost so I'll just go home or my guy is so far ahead that he doesn't need my vote so I'll just go home), etc.
Now, pollsters know that the above type stuff will happen, so they need to normalize their data. The thing about that is, no normalization is perfect and you'll always end up with some margin of error. Even then, if your data is poisoned enough (intentionally or not) and/or skewed enough due to sample/selection bias, your real error may exceed your margin of error. The 2000 election came down to a couple thousand votes out of millions cast in Florida. It was statistically within the margin of error of the exit polls and thus the exit polls were pretty meaningless at attempting to predict the winner. Trying to use national exit polling data to predict the overall popular vote winner is useless and only serves as a point of FUD to undermine our government to begin with since the popular vote has never mattered, in any way, for the Presidency.