Here comes the barter economy. Already starting to take off.
Sadly, there are some pretty severe limitations in a barter economy. For small, local stuff it can be made to function, but anything larger and it simply becomes unworkable. It just doesn't scale well.
I just wanted to point this out, because while I believe that most gays are born that way and are not making a choice, it can definitely be a learned behavior.
1) Anything can be a learned behavior, but that still doesn't prove Ben Carson's point. I know people that hated raw oysters, just hated them...but after enough exposure and trying them, they developed a taste for them. Most people are the same way with beer and liquor- very few people take a their first swig of whiskey and yell, "I love this shit!".
So yes, behavior can be learned, but that's not really what he was saying. And I still don't think the pyramids were used to store grain, unless every archaeologist and Egyptologist in the world is wrong. And I don't think Obamacare is worse than slavery. (Full disclosure: Obamacare literally saved my life. Literally. So I'm a bit hard-pressed to come up with bad shit to say about it.)
2) I hope your situation and your well-being improves, and that you're able to have a better life, however you choose to live it. I mean that sincerely.
And they have a tremendous carbon footprint (cutting down trees, moving logs to mill, mill to paper plant, paper plant to printer, printer to warehouse, warehouse to store, store to home)...
Why, you're totally right- manufacturing a Kindle or an iPad has no carbon footprint and the manufacturing process doesn't produce any toxic materials as byproducts! That just never happens!
Plus, e-readers don't need to be shipped across oceans from the factory, they just magically appear in the store or in your mailbox. It's incredible how they do that!
Also, unlike books, e-readers never break, everybody knows that. E-readers never need updating and they certainly never get thrown away, where they pile up in landfills letting toxic materials leach into the environment. They just don't! That's because everyone in the world dutifully recycles their e-reader gadgets so nothing ever goes to waste. You can't say that about a book printed on paper, now can you?
Another really cool thing about e-readers is that sometimes you can get the author of your e-book to sign it, making it a personalized collectible. Isn't that awesome? No book could ever do that!
And don't forget that e-readers are ideal for places where power is hard to come by, because unlike a book, e-readers never need to be plugged in. On all my trips to Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam we never had a problem finding a place to plug in, not even while camping in the jungle. That's because most trees have hidden outlets at the base, you just have to clear away the bark to find 'em. A lot of people don't know that, but it's totally true!
Another cool thing is that the early e-books (like from the 1700 and 1800s) are super valuable and collectible. Take that, you lousy printed-on-paper books!
The TSA won't make you take them out and "turn them on" when you fly with them.
Is that still a thing? The last 4ish times I've flown I wasn't even asked to turn off my very large tablet. They only asked people with laptops to switch them off.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But they've never asked me to turn my book on.
My take: Parallel construction (i.e. law enforcement criminally lying under oath) and some way to keep Ulbricht quiet about it. Possibly done to hide criminal and possibly unconstitutional snooping practices.
Yes, it's certainly possible that's what happened, but sometimes the answer is just that people are careless, stupid, lazy, or sloppy. It's hard to be perfect, but it only takes one tiny mistake to fuck it all up....and I can tell you from personal experience that fucking up is easy to do. lol
But who knows- it could easily be a combination of the two or just plain illegal activity by the cops. We'll probably never know for sure.
You have to visit a physical store to get a new one
Ever hear of "mail order"? It's a thing, look it up on the google. You can actually get a book delivered right to your house.:)
But I agree, e-books do have some advantages, no doubt about it. As someone else said, "the best choice is both". I occasionally read stuff on my ipad, but overall I prefer a real book in my hands. So I've no problem with people that want e-books, I think they're great, but they aren't the end-all, be-all. Like anything they have their pros and cons.
And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Amazon eventually either forbids the resale of used books in their marketplace, or else makes it so unprofitable that people just won't do it.
I don't think they care, they get their cut either way.
Oh, I think they care. They care about their bottom line, and if they could increase it another 0.1% by stifling sales of used books or real paper books they'd do it in the blink of an eye. They'd do it so fast you'd need one of those million-frame per second cameras to see it.
Like any corporation, it's all about the money. Oh yah, social causes blah blah blah, doing stuff for the good of mankind blah blah blah...don't believe a word of it. Profit is the name of the game. It's a corporation, that's what corporations do.
"...but some used-bookstore owners have made a shrewd move: widening their customer base by listing their inventories on Amazon’s third-party marketplace, an idea many new-book retailers despise."
New-book retailers: "But won't someone think of muh profits?!"
That's one reason they hate the idea of "real" books- there's no DRM, so they can be resold, traded, or loaned without interference.
And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Amazon eventually either forbids the resale of used books in their marketplace, or else makes it so unprofitable that people just won't do it.
Pretty much everything the FBI and the NYT says is a lie. Does anyone believe that Ross Ulbricht would just go chatroom to chatroom posting "Have all you guys heard of my super secret illegal website?!"
Yes, I think it's entirely possible. Some people are just plain stupid even when they're smart*, and some people have a hard time thinking forward in time.
Or, more likely, he may just not have given much thought to covering his tracks, especially early on.
So yeah, although the FBI and NYT do indeed lie, I think it's quite plausible that he made some mistakes that led to his unmasking.
-
*Ben Carson, for example. He's supposedly a skilled brain surgeon, and yet he's a complete fucking imbecile about literally every other subject in the known universe. For example, here are just a few of the things he's said: "The pyramids were used to store grain." Err, no. "Israel's Knesset should just move to a 2-party system." Err, no. "The Earth is 6,000 years old." Err, no. "Satan created the Big Bang." Err, no. "Gayness must be a choice, because prisoners who are raped come out gay." Err, no. "Obamacare is worse than slavery." Err, no. "Planned Parenthood is a plot to kill black babies." Err, no.
They are DRM free. You can share them with whomever you want. You can beat up people that don't return them. Go watch The Princess Bride. Lot's of reasons they are still read, and therefore produced.
And...
They don't need a battery. Ever. They don't break when you drop them, even from heights that would turn a Kindle into a bag of shards. The feel good in your hands. The TSA won't make you take them out and "turn them on" when you fly with them. You can share them with your children and instill a love of reading in them.
Unless I'm mistaken, it's still legal. The difference appears to be that the local cops won't get to keep any of the profits- it just all goes to the feds now. They can still seize whatever they like without any real evidence of any illegal activity or laws being broken.
My guess is that they'll just find some new way to err, "compensate" local police departments that seize stuff, some sort of "reimbursement" or kick back under a fancy new title.
The reason they suck is they now have very weak motors - to change that out is not an easy modification.
^^^^ This. The Energy Star program has effectively turned most modern appliances into expensive bookends. The motors, pumps, heaters, etc etc are all smaller, and by "smaller" I mean "too small to work effectively".
Yes, I'm all for saving energy, but not at the price of reducing and/or destroying functionality. My old Kenmore dishwasher worked for 17 years, no problems, and it cleaned the living hell out of anything we put in it. Newer dishwashers need hotter water and longer cycles because the pussified pumps and motors just don't do the job as well (if at all).
I suspect that with appliances like dishwashers and washing machines that in the end there is often little or no savings realized, and possibly the overall energy cost is actually greater.
Slashdot Mirror
The evil actors in the book publishing business are primarily publishers and secondarily agents and top-selling authors;
News Flash: Pretty much everyone and everything is "evil", depending on what your values are or the lens you view life through.
The fact is that very few of us are in it just for the love of the game, okay?
Taxes are simply needed because some form of government is needed and governments need money.
Believe it or not, I'm fine with paying taxes. I know the government (and therefore the country) doesn't run on magic pixie dust or unicorn farts.
But if every transaction is trackable, say goodbye to any semblance of freedom or anonymity other than what they choose to give you.
Here comes the barter economy. Already starting to take off.
Sadly, there are some pretty severe limitations in a barter economy. For small, local stuff it can be made to function, but anything larger and it simply becomes unworkable. It just doesn't scale well.
I just wanted to point this out, because while I believe that most gays are born that way and are not making a choice, it can definitely be a learned behavior.
1) Anything can be a learned behavior, but that still doesn't prove Ben Carson's point. I know people that hated raw oysters, just hated them...but after enough exposure and trying them, they developed a taste for them. Most people are the same way with beer and liquor- very few people take a their first swig of whiskey and yell, "I love this shit!".
So yes, behavior can be learned, but that's not really what he was saying. And I still don't think the pyramids were used to store grain, unless every archaeologist and Egyptologist in the world is wrong. And I don't think Obamacare is worse than slavery. (Full disclosure: Obamacare literally saved my life. Literally. So I'm a bit hard-pressed to come up with bad shit to say about it.)
2) I hope your situation and your well-being improves, and that you're able to have a better life, however you choose to live it. I mean that sincerely.
If a government *actually* wanted to force all transactions to be cashless, they would stop printing cash.
I don't know if they will, but they certainly could.
I mean, they're the ones printing it, but nothing says they have to keep printing it, or even honor the bills past a certain date.
you left out the best part.
track and control and TAX every aspect. Just like the mafia, they want a piece of all the action
Of course, that's just part of it.
Seriously, control ALL transactions and you pretty much have a lock on everything.
If you don't know why they're doing this, you haven't been paying attention.
This is how the government manages to track and control every aspect of your life, and I do mean every.
And they have a tremendous carbon footprint (cutting down trees, moving logs to mill, mill to paper plant, paper plant to printer, printer to warehouse, warehouse to store, store to home)...
Why, you're totally right- manufacturing a Kindle or an iPad has no carbon footprint and the manufacturing process doesn't produce any toxic materials as byproducts! That just never happens!
Plus, e-readers don't need to be shipped across oceans from the factory, they just magically appear in the store or in your mailbox. It's incredible how they do that!
Also, unlike books, e-readers never break, everybody knows that. E-readers never need updating and they certainly never get thrown away, where they pile up in landfills letting toxic materials leach into the environment. They just don't! That's because everyone in the world dutifully recycles their e-reader gadgets so nothing ever goes to waste. You can't say that about a book printed on paper, now can you?
Another really cool thing about e-readers is that sometimes you can get the author of your e-book to sign it, making it a personalized collectible. Isn't that awesome? No book could ever do that!
And don't forget that e-readers are ideal for places where power is hard to come by, because unlike a book, e-readers never need to be plugged in. On all my trips to Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam we never had a problem finding a place to plug in, not even while camping in the jungle. That's because most trees have hidden outlets at the base, you just have to clear away the bark to find 'em. A lot of people don't know that, but it's totally true!
Another cool thing is that the early e-books (like from the 1700 and 1800s) are super valuable and collectible. Take that, you lousy printed-on-paper books!
Internet of Things devices could watch me while I listen to the Backstreet Boys.
You sick bastard, the Backstreet Boys? Really?
Off with your head.
The TSA won't make you take them out and "turn them on" when you fly with them.
Is that still a thing? The last 4ish times I've flown I wasn't even asked to turn off my very large tablet. They only asked people with laptops to switch them off.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But they've never asked me to turn my book on.
My take: Parallel construction (i.e. law enforcement criminally lying under oath) and some way to keep Ulbricht quiet about it. Possibly done to hide criminal and possibly unconstitutional snooping practices.
Yes, it's certainly possible that's what happened, but sometimes the answer is just that people are careless, stupid, lazy, or sloppy. It's hard to be perfect, but it only takes one tiny mistake to fuck it all up....and I can tell you from personal experience that fucking up is easy to do. lol
But who knows- it could easily be a combination of the two or just plain illegal activity by the cops. We'll probably never know for sure.
You have to visit a physical store to get a new one
Ever hear of "mail order"? It's a thing, look it up on the google. You can actually get a book delivered right to your house. :)
But I agree, e-books do have some advantages, no doubt about it. As someone else said, "the best choice is both". I occasionally read stuff on my ipad, but overall I prefer a real book in my hands. So I've no problem with people that want e-books, I think they're great, but they aren't the end-all, be-all. Like anything they have their pros and cons.
And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Amazon eventually either forbids the resale of used books in their marketplace, or else makes it so unprofitable that people just won't do it.
I don't think they care, they get their cut either way.
Oh, I think they care. They care about their bottom line, and if they could increase it another 0.1% by stifling sales of used books or real paper books they'd do it in the blink of an eye. They'd do it so fast you'd need one of those million-frame per second cameras to see it.
Like any corporation, it's all about the money. Oh yah, social causes blah blah blah, doing stuff for the good of mankind blah blah blah...don't believe a word of it. Profit is the name of the game. It's a corporation, that's what corporations do.
"...but some used-bookstore owners have made a shrewd move: widening their customer base by listing their inventories on Amazon’s third-party marketplace, an idea many new-book retailers despise."
New-book retailers: "But won't someone think of muh profits?!"
That's one reason they hate the idea of "real" books- there's no DRM, so they can be resold, traded, or loaned without interference.
And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Amazon eventually either forbids the resale of used books in their marketplace, or else makes it so unprofitable that people just won't do it.
Pretty much everything the FBI and the NYT says is a lie. Does anyone believe that Ross Ulbricht would just go chatroom to chatroom posting "Have all you guys heard of my super secret illegal website?!"
Yes, I think it's entirely possible. Some people are just plain stupid even when they're smart*, and some people have a hard time thinking forward in time.
Or, more likely, he may just not have given much thought to covering his tracks, especially early on.
So yeah, although the FBI and NYT do indeed lie, I think it's quite plausible that he made some mistakes that led to his unmasking.
-
*Ben Carson, for example. He's supposedly a skilled brain surgeon, and yet he's a complete fucking imbecile about literally every other subject in the known universe. For example, here are just a few of the things he's said:
"The pyramids were used to store grain." Err, no.
"Israel's Knesset should just move to a 2-party system." Err, no.
"The Earth is 6,000 years old." Err, no.
"Satan created the Big Bang." Err, no.
"Gayness must be a choice, because prisoners who are raped come out gay." Err, no.
"Obamacare is worse than slavery." Err, no.
"Planned Parenthood is a plot to kill black babies." Err, no.
"...altoid asked for some programming help and gave his email address: rossulbricht@gmail.com."
Whoopsie.
They are DRM free. You can share them with whomever you want. You can beat up people that don't return them. Go watch The Princess Bride. Lot's of reasons they are still read, and therefore produced.
And...
They don't need a battery. Ever.
They don't break when you drop them, even from heights that would turn a Kindle into a bag of shards.
The feel good in your hands.
The TSA won't make you take them out and "turn them on" when you fly with them.
You can share them with your children and instill a love of reading in them.
This is 2015. Why are books still being printed on paper?
Because a lot of people like them that way.
But here's a puzzler: This is 2015. Why are people still asking stupid questions?
$231 million? Shit, that wouldn't even pay for a single Marine Corps F-35B.
(Which is still a fucking bargain compared to the Navy version (the F-35C) that weighs in at ~$337 million.)
But hey, it's only money, no sense on wasting it on schools or medical research or feeding hungry people, right?
If you're in Lynnwood WA, there's no need to post to me on slashdot- you could probably just lean out the window and yell and I'd hear you, lol. :)
(I'm just down the street from Lynnwood, so to speak.)
Actually, this whole asset forfeiture thing was an invention of George H.W. Bush's War On Drugs, but don't let facts get in your way.
For the record, this is correct. The forfeiture and asst seizure programs were developed and launched under Bush.
Unless I'm mistaken, it's still legal. The difference appears to be that the local cops won't get to keep any of the profits- it just all goes to the feds now. They can still seize whatever they like without any real evidence of any illegal activity or laws being broken.
My guess is that they'll just find some new way to err, "compensate" local police departments that seize stuff, some sort of "reimbursement" or kick back under a fancy new title.
Just call it what is was: Legalized Theft, backed by the power of law.
The reason they suck is they now have very weak motors - to change that out is not an easy modification.
^^^^ This. The Energy Star program has effectively turned most modern appliances into expensive bookends. The motors, pumps, heaters, etc etc are all smaller, and by "smaller" I mean "too small to work effectively".
Yes, I'm all for saving energy, but not at the price of reducing and/or destroying functionality. My old Kenmore dishwasher worked for 17 years, no problems, and it cleaned the living hell out of anything we put in it. Newer dishwashers need hotter water and longer cycles because the pussified pumps and motors just don't do the job as well (if at all).
I suspect that with appliances like dishwashers and washing machines that in the end there is often little or no savings realized, and possibly the overall energy cost is actually greater.
I hope the 23,846 examples below are sufficient.