I'm sorry, but the Death Star was mcuh 'cooler' than that dinky little shiny ship.:) As far as the Imperial shuttles are concerned: they appeared much more menacing, and threatening. I mean, those flying foils/wings were cool! You have to admitt that having them fold down for landing was impressive and somewhat menacing.
I don't know about other people, but when I pay the 60 USD a month that it costs to get a connection around here, I'm not terribly interested in paying anything else, ever. That's a lot of money for a home user simply to access the internet, or maybe even set up some personal services - I don't care how much you're making a year. Paying for content and access fees is like renting your cell phone and paying the call fees.
It's called 'hate of superiority'. Our country is superior both economically and militarily over the rest of the world, thus we are seen as the Bad Guys and those who push things on others. It's probably true, to a large extent, but that's why we're hated. Even if actual superiority doesn't exist.
I think that the term, "System Administrator" is being confused here with "someone that has a form of firewalling installed." As a professional System Administrator, this is a slighting remark. Most of the SA's I know take great pride in their work, and truely know their craft. Reporting ident/ftp connections as hostile is... well, something that someone using ZoneAlarm or a default installation of the latest RedHat/Mandrake distro with a firewall script/program that someone else wrote would jump on.
I suspect that this is the case - ignorant linux users trying to be cool and intelligent with their new-found interest. To no fault of their own, really - they're simply not informed yet.
That's just insane. There's no way that this technology would be good for a lan party/lanfest. I'm not sure about your lanfests, but none that I've seen have ever been civil. Here's a somewhat basic idea of how things go:
8PM people start arriving at one of several locations, depending on who is the host (read: parasitic geeks) is for this paticular event. Generally the largest place is picked, if possible, but it's not always possible. Sometimes up to 8 people get crammed into a room the size of a medium bedroom. Card tables and whatever else can be found are set up to place monitors/keyboards on. 10PM about half the people have connected to the network and have their computers completely hooked up. The other half are running about eating food, talking, and goofing around, pulling antics. Those who have their systems up are assisting those less technically endowed. 12AM everyone is now connected, and the hubs are going crazy with activity. People are walking about, over wires, past chairs, squeezing through areas just barely big enough for two guys to get through and still keep their dignity. various foods, such as Dorritos, Dew, and pretty much anything else that can be spilled, are being eaten, while the containers are placed inches from their keyboard or mouse, since there is minimal space to be had. one or two people are streaming MP3's from other's computers and playing them, about a third of the people are conversing, while the rest are yelling at each other and joking about as they play various games. The lights are off in the room, so as to minimize monitor glare and heat. The general atmosphere is one of activity - maybe even confusion.
7AM about half of the attendees start to grow tired and find places on furniture or on the floor where they can sleep. The remaining half stay up and continue to play games.
9AM those still up decide it's time for breakfast, and head for a local diner
11AM those that went to the diner return, and the people that fell asleep are just waking up. The 'diner attendees' take the sleepinig positions that were recently vacated, and fall asleep, while the vacating sleepers pack up their systems and leave, possibly grabbing some files over the network quickly before the other computer is disconnected
I seriously doubt this type of environment would be conductive of optical networking, especially for the price.:) 802.11b would probably work, but it's by far cheaper to use cat5 and a normal hub, which nearly every self respecting geek has ownership of already.
I can't say anything about Debian going the way of the RPM (which I don't personally like the idea of), but I can say that apt has greatly enabled RPM's to become more of a flexible option, as demonistrated in Mandrake 8. It seems to me that RPMs generally (at least with the case of mandrake) have less installation problems, even if they have less configuration options at the time of install, as deb's in debian do.
The fact of the matter is, Mandrake, Redhat, and such far preceed Turbo Linux and Open Linux in popularity. There's no reason to mention those two, really. From what I've seen, people throw linux out the window after using Turbo or Open, and if we're lucky, try something a little bit less like the excrete that comes from rears of cattle.
This is just my personal opinion, of course. I suppose some people might like using Turbo or Open... but when was the last time something was released for them? I seriously don't know of a single geek that uses either. It's quite sad, really, that someone's efforts get wasted in such a manner. (Maybe the people of smaller distros could get together and work on a larger one? Ala, OpenTurbo Linux?)
Anyway, to keep on topic... This standards base thing is good, however, what are we going to do about the differentials between current distros? For instance, the contingency between Mandrake/Redhat and Debian, where the initscripts are in/etc/rc.d/init.d vs./etc/init.d? Will the offending parties (I'm going to guess it's mandrake/redhat on this one, but I'm not sure) change what they're doing for standard's sake, or will they keep doing it the way the have been, so as to not 'confuse the users' or something else silly?
Where does Mr. Taco get off siting the 3 most important applications on the web? That's insane. Not only is he wrong, he's also blatantly wrong, making this a case that, if he were to be killed in the process of saying it, would be a prime example for a Darwin award.
I mean, really, you can argue any 3 items are the '3 most important'... I'm not entirely sure how Usenet got up there with web and email applications. Instant messaging and IRC are obviously more 'important' to the majority of people. But are we talking about the most important, financially? Usenet would be on the bottom, web and email on the top, alongside things like remote administration and such.
I mean, really... everyone knows that pr0n, warez, and f00derz are the 3 most important parts of the internet.:)~
Actually, while this is probably more useful for the non-skin variety of image than images.google.com, I somehow feel that Mr. Taco was talking about the 'pink' variety of image. I don't recall there being much media on Scour besides the pornographic variety, sadly.
I might as well provide Taco with a link to help him out. KaZaA (despite the gay name) has all the functionality of scour, plus some.
...except when MS takes the source code that free programmers worked long hours on to perfect, and re-integrated it into their corporate products, calling it their own, and making large amounts of money by resellling it, since their company name means more than anything 'open source' or 'linux'.
You seem to ignore that many people that bash MS for bloated code,
1) are too busy
2) aren't being paid / don't have the finances
3) don't have hundreds/thousands of the 'best' programmers from around the world working in parallel
Now, if you ignore these facts, your arguement might be somewhat convincing. I'm not sure if you've ever written any code before, but contrary to pop culture belief, a single person can NOT write enough functional, non-bloated code in a year to produce 10 megs worth of binaries. Let alone the 800 megs or whatever the minimal Windows install is nowadays.
I'm sure there would be a lot of people that would complain a lot less if MS products would do the same thing every time. Even crash in the same manner. But they don't. I'm constantly fixing MS products at work simply because the user's config changed, or this or that file is 'missing'... And it's not like these people have Admin access on their computers, either. (Heaven forbid!)
It's really quite unfortunate that there's not at least an option for a battery. If it had one of those, I can think of some totally awesome applications. For instance, a truely portable, full computer comes into mind. (It'd be slicker if it had 802.11 instead of plain ol' boring ethernet, though. *sigh*)
Take this baby, slap on an optional 4 (or so) hour battery, give it 802.11, and I'd be willing to shell out the very-expensive price for the baseline system. I don't even have half that much money right now to my name, but I'd find the funds for it. I know I certainly wanted to get one of the Espressos. Yum.
The perfect peripherals would consist of a pair of LCD glasses (I've seen them here and there - pretty exhorbinant, but I'd say worth it with one of these puppies). For input, you could get something like a split keyboard, or one of those black IBM Model M keyboards that have the eraser pointing device that is stereotypical of IBM laptops. I personally think a split keyboard, with each half velcro'd around your upper thighs would be the best place to have it. For an independent pointer, you could quite possibly get away with something like a modified optical mouse on your stomach.... put it in a type of coral to keep it from falling off, but not hindering your use... putting a switch on the keyboard somewhere to turn input on or off would be a good idea, too. (such as most CD player's "Hold" feature.)
As far as the actual device, that could go in a small padded (and ventelated) fabric bag on your lower back (not upper back, so as to avoid causing back pain). Under one's arm on their side would also be a good, out of the way, place to have it, allowing someone to transit on a subway, etc, giving you more comfort and the device more security. (if you're wearing a 'trench coat' or equivilant, nobody would even know it's there.
I'm not sure where Katz has been, but companies have been paying for people to pay attention to their products for a long time. For quite some some time we've had this thing called 'advertising'. They've been trying for who-knows how long what we should thing, what we should buy, and the like.
As far as people's assessments, advice, and the like governing people's purchases is concerned: what the heck? I mean, really, people have been senselessly buying things based on the product's image for decades (at least).
This type of thing has been going on for a long, long time. Out here in SD, farmers and land owners (of the many-acre variety) have to get permits do things like burn piles of yard waste, tear down trees, and the like, have to get a permit from Ye Ol' Gov't Office at the local/nearest county seat. I've heard of cases where people have, say, cleaned out a section of a tree strip (placed on property to block wind out here, gov't and private) on their property of the dead trees. Several months later, there is a gov't official on the phone, letting them know that they will be fined for not purchasing a permit.
... is completely unoriginal. The bit about not having to play in his bathroom is a direct quote from something that Tycho of Penny Arcade re: the GBA on his site when that specific comic was first posted. My goodness people, talk about prickish plagarism.
Granted, that part of PA is no longer there, since he updates that every two days and deletes the old stuff... but still.
Heh... greed is unfathomable... Bill Gates still goes after wealth/fame/whatever, even though he has more than anyone else alive. (Or dead, maybe.) Besides, the greed could have been from somewhere else, too. I mean, really... the toys came out before/at the same time as the movie. That's rediculous.
Thank you for the specifics concerning the whole situation surrounding the direction of Episode I. I wasn't aware of the situation, mainly because the film itself made me too ill to look into it; I was simply postulating as to why it might have been so bad.
As far as McGregor and Neeson being bad actors: maybe they aren't. However, they were in Episode I, and here's why: there was no report between any of the characters (except for the small amount of sickening report between Anakin and the Princess, but that hardly reports). All the talking seemed quite dull, as if they were rattling off memorized lines. (I'll draw you to the schenes where the two Jedi meet JarJar, and where Gui Quan (or whatever the heck it was) explained to Anakin (what the heck are they doing calling him 'Annie' for? I mean, really people!) what metacloreans (wtf? this was pulled from which orifice? never mind that it's a weak take on metacondrea) were.
Contrast the dialog and character relationship development to that of, say, the schene on the Falcon in Star Wars, right after the destruction of Alderaan, when Han is giving Luke a hard time, and they're conversing. Not terribly good acting, but a HECK of a lot better than Episode I. There was real human emotion and depth in the trilogy and it's characters, even in the non-humans! There was NONE of that in Episode I, really. That's what makes films good - the portrayal of human strengths and weaknesses through trials, the display of human emotion, and various other elements of life which we can identify with. The Gungans? What, exactly, did they add to the film besides an excuse to render something extra? Nothing.
I could go on and on about the contrast between Star Wars and Episode I . They're black and white - two completely contrary films. While the Trilogy demonstrates what is good, and what all film artists seem to try and live up to now, Episode I seems to set a counter-example - don't effing do anything like it!
I always thought those wily bastards were full of crap when they said that neutrinos had no mass. I thought common sense would tell you that they'd have to. (Using the logic that, "If A has a mass of X, then the complete mass of the particles in A is X as well.")
I'm not trying to be a troll, or start a flame war... but I feel that Episode I really sucked. Not just "it didn't measure up to the Trilogy," but "this is so poorly done it's nearly indescent." There was no plot, no character interaction, Gore-like acting, totally meaningless dialog, and purely catchy items that little children would like. The Trilogy didn't do that - it had all of those items in excess (except for good acting - that was kind of lacking in the first one, I believe.)
It makes one wonder what happened. I'm not sure of specifics, but I took a look at the credits for Episode I. Mr. Lucas didn't direct this film completely. It appears as if he had a 'co-producer' that did all the work, and simply ran it by George. Also, from my perceptions, they threw so much budget money and emphasis was thrown into special effects, that no time or effort was spent on picking good actors, or developing a coherrent story line.
I have a hard time believing that the story behind Episode I was around since the initial Star Wars. It feels plastic and commericial, simply produced to sell toys. Even the key factor of the film - the special effects - grew terribly old by the end.
So as to keep this somewhat on-topic... I was of the understanding that the Trilogy would be released at the same time as Episode I. I also ponder whether the 'extra material' is thrown in there so that adults can feel justified for buying the disk, due to the poor quality of the film. (Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Star Wars fan. I just really don't consider Episode I to be even close to Star Wars in any aspect besides the lightsabers.)
I disagree. We could still see 'technological breakthrough at a large scale' if certain corporations were not price gouging the American society. (I'm paticularly talking about the lower class here, but the middle class is also heavily taxed, bringing them closer towards 'lower' class. That, and there really aren't many social distinction between middle class and lower class nowadays. It simply seems to be doctors/lawyers/politicians/top businessmen on one side, with everyone else on the other.
I'm no more of a communist than Hitler was.
I'm also no more socialist than Stalin was.
You really should get your basic governmental systems in line. Saying I'm an out-and-out communist followed by saying I have a basic Green/Socialist party line is pretty hillarious and contradictory.
What I'm saying is, quite simply, that commericialism has gotten out of hand. As a way of managing things, it is probably one of the best, but when allowed to get out of hand (this is what the government deems as 'monopoly' - such as AOL/TW, MS, and such large companies or corporations) things do not work as they should, and are corrupted.
Fundamentally, Communism is really a much 'better' system than that of commericialism, were it to ever work. However, the failure of the system lies in lazyness, as opposed to greed being the falure of commericialism. It takes a lot longer for greed to get a dickhold on commericialism and choke out competition than it takes communism to die due to lazyness and corruption.
... hrm, you mean like those mice that MS started releasing about a year ago? The Intellimouse Optical, was it? If I recall correctly, there's a pretty severe defect with those that causes them to fail after about 3 or so months. I know of several people who have them - and have had to have them replaced several times each.
I don't call that a high quality product. Besides that, these mice feel light and weak, as if they were made with a subgrade plastic. I'll stick with my Logitech, thanks.
On another note, doesn't MS primarily produce an operating system or two and an office suite? I could be mistaken, but their mice and joysticks aren't the primary product of Microsoft, Inc....
Many people do believe that the economy is bursting at the seams, looking for highly tallented - and even those only semi-tallented - to fill jobs that are just waiting for them, unfilled. The people that believe this are led on by relatives that want their kin to sucseed, by the businesses themselves that want the workforce to be flooded with tallent and cheap labor, and by their own disillusions of greatness.
The employment in our country is truely in a tragic state. I can not quote any figures, but I have read in various locations, as well as heard on the news, that the standard of living in America is lower than it has been in some time. It simply costs more to survive. Housing costs, the price of food, and pretty much everything else, in combination with businesses greed and desire for money, push the 'working class' - everyone from McD's workers to the experienced System Administrator/Everything Including the Kitchen Sink Programmer - towards the lower end of the income spectrum. Meanwhile, corporation owners, investors, and the social elite manage to stay on top of the game by charging excessive, extortive rates for products which were produced using the cheapest labor possible, irregardless of the quality that such labor provides.
My mom is a registered nurse and graduated from Duke University's School of Nursing magna cum laude. (In 1981, I think.)She is an incredibly intelligent person, able to converse philosophically or theoretically on nearly any topic immaginable. She is well versed in her trade. However, the economy where we live (South Dakota) is so depressed that she only makes hourly wage of $14/hour.
My father also graduated from Duke University, but from the School of Engineering. (In '81, again, with a pretty decent GPA.) At the time of his graduation, the economy was doing quite well for progessonal engineers. However, like our current tech. situation, the market was saturated with engineering graduates who thought the money would be good. The economy obviously didn't have enough jobs for all the PE's, and wages dropped. Now, engineers don't make much money at all - 30k to 50k, generally, with Senior Engineers getting paid 60k if they're fortunate at the end of their career. As a result, engineers are generally considered (from my perspective) as poor workers, slackers, and do-nothings, simply putting in their hours for the pay. Engineers are generally not terribly tallented or valued anymore, as they once were, and it's simply seen as 'another technical job' and not something requiring too much skill or ability.
Contrast this to what the economy was like 40 years ago. An individual could own a small store - say, a hardware and surplus store - and make a healthy living for them and their family. Not only that, but they might be able to pass their company on to their children while they were still relatively young (50 or so), and retire, living off of substantial savings (provided they were wise with their money.) Quite simply put, such companies don't exist anymore, at least not in quantity or quality. Large chain stores, or large corporations, are able to provide similarly appearing products and services to those of the Mom 'n' Pop variety at a fraction of the cost, riding the lows of the economy, killing their competition, and cheapening the cost of hired labor all at the same time.
God bless America, because quite frankly, the American people have once again screwed things up, this time well beyond a miracle. Corporations with more power than the government now rule America. Everyone else has to grovel for money, including the government.
If you don't believe me, contrast what a factory worker makes (16$/hour or so) to what your average 4-year graduate earns after several years of work (maybe 20$/hour or equivilant, if they're fortunate). Either the collegate educational system is a crock, or corporations are abusing the abundance of 'educated' indivuals, whether in the tech industry or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Trolls should take this kind of work in mind, and try to do so well themselves.
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Caimlas
I suspect that this is the case - ignorant linux users trying to be cool and intelligent with their new-found interest. To no fault of their own, really - they're simply not informed yet.
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Caimlas
8PM people start arriving at one of several locations, depending on who is the host (read: parasitic geeks) is for this paticular event. Generally the largest place is picked, if possible, but it's not always possible. Sometimes up to 8 people get crammed into a room the size of a medium bedroom. Card tables and whatever else can be found are set up to place monitors/keyboards on.
10PM about half the people have connected to the network and have their computers completely hooked up. The other half are running about eating food, talking, and goofing around, pulling antics. Those who have their systems up are assisting those less technically endowed.
12AM everyone is now connected, and the hubs are going crazy with activity. People are walking about, over wires, past chairs, squeezing through areas just barely big enough for two guys to get through and still keep their dignity. various foods, such as Dorritos, Dew, and pretty much anything else that can be spilled, are being eaten, while the containers are placed inches from their keyboard or mouse, since there is minimal space to be had. one or two people are streaming MP3's from other's computers and playing them, about a third of the people are conversing, while the rest are yelling at each other and joking about as they play various games. The lights are off in the room, so as to minimize monitor glare and heat. The general atmosphere is one of activity - maybe even confusion.
7AM about half of the attendees start to grow tired and find places on furniture or on the floor where they can sleep. The remaining half stay up and continue to play games.
9AM those still up decide it's time for breakfast, and head for a local diner
11AM those that went to the diner return, and the people that fell asleep are just waking up. The 'diner attendees' take the sleepinig positions that were recently vacated, and fall asleep, while the vacating sleepers pack up their systems and leave, possibly grabbing some files over the network quickly before the other computer is disconnected
I seriously doubt this type of environment would be conductive of optical networking, especially for the price. :) 802.11b would probably work, but it's by far cheaper to use cat5 and a normal hub, which nearly every self respecting geek has ownership of already.
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Caimlas
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Caimlas
This is just my personal opinion, of course. I suppose some people might like using Turbo or Open... but when was the last time something was released for them? I seriously don't know of a single geek that uses either. It's quite sad, really, that someone's efforts get wasted in such a manner. (Maybe the people of smaller distros could get together and work on a larger one? Ala, OpenTurbo Linux?)
Anyway, to keep on topic... This standards base thing is good, however, what are we going to do about the differentials between current distros? For instance, the contingency between Mandrake/Redhat and Debian, where the initscripts are in /etc/rc.d/init.d vs. /etc/init.d? Will the offending parties (I'm going to guess it's mandrake/redhat on this one, but I'm not sure) change what they're doing for standard's sake, or will they keep doing it the way the have been, so as to not 'confuse the users' or something else silly?
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Caimlas
I mean, really, you can argue any 3 items are the '3 most important'... I'm not entirely sure how Usenet got up there with web and email applications. Instant messaging and IRC are obviously more 'important' to the majority of people. But are we talking about the most important, financially? Usenet would be on the bottom, web and email on the top, alongside things like remote administration and such.
I mean, really... everyone knows that pr0n, warez, and f00derz are the 3 most important parts of the internet. :)~
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Caimlas
I might as well provide Taco with a link to help him out. KaZaA (despite the gay name) has all the functionality of scour, plus some.
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Caimlas
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Caimlas
You seem to ignore that many people that bash MS for bloated code,
1) are too busy 2) aren't being paid / don't have the finances 3) don't have hundreds/thousands of the 'best' programmers from around the world working in parallel
Now, if you ignore these facts, your arguement might be somewhat convincing. I'm not sure if you've ever written any code before, but contrary to pop culture belief, a single person can NOT write enough functional, non-bloated code in a year to produce 10 megs worth of binaries. Let alone the 800 megs or whatever the minimal Windows install is nowadays.
I'm sure there would be a lot of people that would complain a lot less if MS products would do the same thing every time. Even crash in the same manner. But they don't. I'm constantly fixing MS products at work simply because the user's config changed, or this or that file is 'missing'... And it's not like these people have Admin access on their computers, either. (Heaven forbid!)
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Caimlas
Take this baby, slap on an optional 4 (or so) hour battery, give it 802.11, and I'd be willing to shell out the very-expensive price for the baseline system. I don't even have half that much money right now to my name, but I'd find the funds for it. I know I certainly wanted to get one of the Espressos. Yum.
The perfect peripherals would consist of a pair of LCD glasses (I've seen them here and there - pretty exhorbinant, but I'd say worth it with one of these puppies). For input, you could get something like a split keyboard, or one of those black IBM Model M keyboards that have the eraser pointing device that is stereotypical of IBM laptops. I personally think a split keyboard, with each half velcro'd around your upper thighs would be the best place to have it. For an independent pointer, you could quite possibly get away with something like a modified optical mouse on your stomach.... put it in a type of coral to keep it from falling off, but not hindering your use... putting a switch on the keyboard somewhere to turn input on or off would be a good idea, too. (such as most CD player's "Hold" feature.)
As far as the actual device, that could go in a small padded (and ventelated) fabric bag on your lower back (not upper back, so as to avoid causing back pain). Under one's arm on their side would also be a good, out of the way, place to have it, allowing someone to transit on a subway, etc, giving you more comfort and the device more security. (if you're wearing a 'trench coat' or equivilant, nobody would even know it's there.
To bed with me, argg!
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Caimlas
As far as people's assessments, advice, and the like governing people's purchases is concerned: what the heck? I mean, really, people have been senselessly buying things based on the product's image for decades (at least).
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Caimlas
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Caimlas
Granted, that part of PA is no longer there, since he updates that every two days and deletes the old stuff... but still.
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Caimlas
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Caimlas
As far as McGregor and Neeson being bad actors: maybe they aren't. However, they were in Episode I, and here's why: there was no report between any of the characters (except for the small amount of sickening report between Anakin and the Princess, but that hardly reports). All the talking seemed quite dull, as if they were rattling off memorized lines. (I'll draw you to the schenes where the two Jedi meet JarJar, and where Gui Quan (or whatever the heck it was) explained to Anakin (what the heck are they doing calling him 'Annie' for? I mean, really people!) what metacloreans (wtf? this was pulled from which orifice? never mind that it's a weak take on metacondrea) were.
Contrast the dialog and character relationship development to that of, say, the schene on the Falcon in Star Wars, right after the destruction of Alderaan, when Han is giving Luke a hard time, and they're conversing. Not terribly good acting, but a HECK of a lot better than Episode I. There was real human emotion and depth in the trilogy and it's characters, even in the non-humans! There was NONE of that in Episode I, really. That's what makes films good - the portrayal of human strengths and weaknesses through trials, the display of human emotion, and various other elements of life which we can identify with. The Gungans? What, exactly, did they add to the film besides an excuse to render something extra? Nothing.
I could go on and on about the contrast between Star Wars and Episode I . They're black and white - two completely contrary films. While the Trilogy demonstrates what is good, and what all film artists seem to try and live up to now, Episode I seems to set a counter-example - don't effing do anything like it!
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Caimlas
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Caimlas
It makes one wonder what happened. I'm not sure of specifics, but I took a look at the credits for Episode I. Mr. Lucas didn't direct this film completely. It appears as if he had a 'co-producer' that did all the work, and simply ran it by George. Also, from my perceptions, they threw so much budget money and emphasis was thrown into special effects, that no time or effort was spent on picking good actors, or developing a coherrent story line.
I have a hard time believing that the story behind Episode I was around since the initial Star Wars. It feels plastic and commericial, simply produced to sell toys. Even the key factor of the film - the special effects - grew terribly old by the end.
So as to keep this somewhat on-topic... I was of the understanding that the Trilogy would be released at the same time as Episode I. I also ponder whether the 'extra material' is thrown in there so that adults can feel justified for buying the disk, due to the poor quality of the film. (Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Star Wars fan. I just really don't consider Episode I to be even close to Star Wars in any aspect besides the lightsabers.)
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Caimlas
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Caimlas
I'm also no more socialist than Stalin was.
You really should get your basic governmental systems in line. Saying I'm an out-and-out communist followed by saying I have a basic Green/Socialist party line is pretty hillarious and contradictory.
What I'm saying is, quite simply, that commericialism has gotten out of hand. As a way of managing things, it is probably one of the best, but when allowed to get out of hand (this is what the government deems as 'monopoly' - such as AOL/TW, MS, and such large companies or corporations) things do not work as they should, and are corrupted.
Fundamentally, Communism is really a much 'better' system than that of commericialism, were it to ever work. However, the failure of the system lies in lazyness, as opposed to greed being the falure of commericialism. It takes a lot longer for greed to get a dickhold on commericialism and choke out competition than it takes communism to die due to lazyness and corruption.
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Caimlas
I don't call that a high quality product. Besides that, these mice feel light and weak, as if they were made with a subgrade plastic. I'll stick with my Logitech, thanks.
On another note, doesn't MS primarily produce an operating system or two and an office suite? I could be mistaken, but their mice and joysticks aren't the primary product of Microsoft, Inc....
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Caimlas
The employment in our country is truely in a tragic state. I can not quote any figures, but I have read in various locations, as well as heard on the news, that the standard of living in America is lower than it has been in some time. It simply costs more to survive. Housing costs, the price of food, and pretty much everything else, in combination with businesses greed and desire for money, push the 'working class' - everyone from McD's workers to the experienced System Administrator/Everything Including the Kitchen Sink Programmer - towards the lower end of the income spectrum. Meanwhile, corporation owners, investors, and the social elite manage to stay on top of the game by charging excessive, extortive rates for products which were produced using the cheapest labor possible, irregardless of the quality that such labor provides.
My mom is a registered nurse and graduated from Duke University's School of Nursing magna cum laude. (In 1981, I think.)She is an incredibly intelligent person, able to converse philosophically or theoretically on nearly any topic immaginable. She is well versed in her trade. However, the economy where we live (South Dakota) is so depressed that she only makes hourly wage of $14/hour.
My father also graduated from Duke University, but from the School of Engineering. (In '81, again, with a pretty decent GPA.) At the time of his graduation, the economy was doing quite well for progessonal engineers. However, like our current tech. situation, the market was saturated with engineering graduates who thought the money would be good. The economy obviously didn't have enough jobs for all the PE's, and wages dropped. Now, engineers don't make much money at all - 30k to 50k, generally, with Senior Engineers getting paid 60k if they're fortunate at the end of their career. As a result, engineers are generally considered (from my perspective) as poor workers, slackers, and do-nothings, simply putting in their hours for the pay. Engineers are generally not terribly tallented or valued anymore, as they once were, and it's simply seen as 'another technical job' and not something requiring too much skill or ability.
Contrast this to what the economy was like 40 years ago. An individual could own a small store - say, a hardware and surplus store - and make a healthy living for them and their family. Not only that, but they might be able to pass their company on to their children while they were still relatively young (50 or so), and retire, living off of substantial savings (provided they were wise with their money.) Quite simply put, such companies don't exist anymore, at least not in quantity or quality. Large chain stores, or large corporations, are able to provide similarly appearing products and services to those of the Mom 'n' Pop variety at a fraction of the cost, riding the lows of the economy, killing their competition, and cheapening the cost of hired labor all at the same time.
God bless America, because quite frankly, the American people have once again screwed things up, this time well beyond a miracle. Corporations with more power than the government now rule America. Everyone else has to grovel for money, including the government.
If you don't believe me, contrast what a factory worker makes (16$/hour or so) to what your average 4-year graduate earns after several years of work (maybe 20$/hour or equivilant, if they're fortunate). Either the collegate educational system is a crock, or corporations are abusing the abundance of 'educated' indivuals, whether in the tech industry or not.
Heck, at this point, I'd be happy for 15$/hour.
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Caimlas