But that doesn't mean I need to give you my money when I disagree with you and think you're an idiot. I won't prevent you from selling your stuff to other people, but I sure as hell won't reward you by buying it.
That's why I started my response with "hmm" because it was like a non-sequitur to begin with. The relationship of money to free speech is much larger than the issue we're talking about, and it has totally different reasoning behind it.
Wait, you have a right to my money? What right would that be again? It's my money
Yeah I do. If I sell the best pizza around, and you want pizza, and in fact you've bought my pizza in the past and agree that it's really good, I would expect you to buy my pizza even though we've had a disagreement on Slashdot. If you refuse to buy my pizza (I'm talking about me, not Orson Scott Card) because of a simple disagreement OUTSIDE of the transaction at hand (buying pizza), then that's a moral fault in you. It's childishness.
And if your free speech offends me, my remedy is to not buy your crap by exercising my freedom of choice.
That's ONE remedy. And it's one remedy that marks you as a childish and intolerant person.
Just like another remedy would be to beat me up. And that remedy would mark you as violent.
Or another remedy would be to write a witty post on Slashdot that beautifully illustrates your side. That remedy would mark you as a passionate intellectual advocate.
I mean.. I don't know why this is so hard for some people to understand. Your actions reflect on you. If you act like an intolerant radical who joins boycotts against people to affect their business just because you disagree with their opinion which has NOTHING to do with their business, then other people see you as an intolerant radical.
Do you think Jews should buy from Nazi's because it would be mean?
I mean this gets back to what I was saying about beliefs outside the immediate transaction. If a Jew feels that the business owner wants to do him harm, in person, and would if he could get away with it... guess what? That's DURING the business transaction. On the other hand, if a Jew said "Wow, I just found out that you once said Israel is wrong to occupy Palestine, so I'm never coming to your shop again" then that is stupid.
Do you think Orson Scott Card is going to leap out of the movie screen and throttle anybody in the audience who supports gay marriage? If so, then you should not go to the movie even if you are interested in the movie itself separate from Card.
Peaceful? Really? "... any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down..."
Yeah. I'm sure he is advocating armed rebellion. In fact, didn't he just get arrested the other day for attempting to kill the Supreme Court justices? Because obviously he's a very violent guy.
Wow, an ad homenim attack -- here's one for you: You sir, are a fucking moron and a douchebag.
What I said wasn't an ad hominem attack on Enigma. I said his mentality is unstable and uncivil. When people adopt a mentality of punishing everybody who disagrees with them, you introduce instability and incivility in your society. Look at a contentious issue like abortion or gay marriage.. if more people said "well I don't want anything to do with those damn pro lifers" and "I am boycotting all the pro choicers" then would society be MORE CIVIL or LESS CIVIL? Would society be MORE STABLE or LESS STABLE?
I was making a legitimate point about what we're talking about, not engaging in ad hominem like you just did.
Not that I expect an apology from someone who says "sir" and then insults me. Do you think that sounds cool because you heard it in a Winston Churchill quote or something? How cutting!
The white boss is saying "Blacks have no expectation or right to my money so I won't give them a job." What's your response? Well you can't change your skin color so that's not fair. Okay well "Muslims have no expectation or right to my money." Now what? Your religion and your stance on gay marriage are both beliefs that can be changed.
Society has decided that people have a right to get fair treatment economically. Making hiring decisions about people based on their religion is considered bad.
Well I believe making purchasing decisions based on the business owner's private beliefs is also bad. I'm sure you would say that someone who refuses to shop at stores where gay people work is a bigot. While the store doesn't have a RIGHT to that person's money, you see how A) the person not shopping there is a punishment, because he's withholding his money and B) it's wrong to punish people who are gay, even if you yourself aren't gay, don't want to be gay, and don't like gays. I mean don't you see the attractiveness of saying "Yeah that guy is gay, but that's okay, I'm going to let him lead his life the way he wants, I'll still shop at that store, even though I think being gay is gross."
Isn't that a better person than "I hate the gays, I won't shop there?" Or do you see no distinction because both of them don't embrace gayness?
You might say Orson Scott Card's beliefs are not private -- well "private" only means "separate from the transaction at hand" not that they can never be shared publicly. Race and religion aren't private either, but most people consider them to have nothing to do with most business transactions, despite being public.
Crimes are rarely punished in any way relating to the crime itself. It's not practical or tenable.
It's really weird and dysfunctional that you'd compare an opinion you disagree with to a crime. Just thought I'd mention that in case you didn't realize it.
If you insist on seeing it in pure capitalistic term: Orson Scott Card is a brand of fiction. As the primary representative of that brand
That's ridiculous, Orson Scott Card is a person, not a brand of fiction.
By your logic, if I don't want to hire black people that's fine because really black is just a brand and I'm voting with my wallet.
I don't see how not buying stuff from person X infringes on his free speech either.
Well it doesn't directly, but it has a chilling effect, and it's childish behavior. Most people are more complex than a single issue and singling out someone for widespread punishment (like boycotting every single thing they produce) because of one issue is a sign of small mindedness.
You mean advocating jail time for the "crime" of being gay
Bullshit.. citation?
Anyway, people who aren't consumed with hate can value the things produced by people they disagree with, especially when the thing being produced has nothing to do with the "bad" opinions. I'm not saying people should watch every propaganda film ever produced and praise it for its art out of some duty to free speech.
I mean really, grow up. You guys sound like the mental toddlers who said they'd move to Canada if Bush won, and the other group of toddlers who said they'd move to Canada if Obama won.
So, you think a free and open exchange of ideas should translate into a free and open exchange of money?
Hmm in general yes, you need a free and open exchange of money in order to exchange ideas beyond a certain scale.
Has it occurred to you there are people who do exactly this? Christian groups have called on the boycott of
Of course that's occurred to me, what do you think I've been talking about! You should think about the groups you are aligning with. It's quite clear that your type of economic boycott in retaliation for free speech is a sign of radicalism. Do you think radicalism is healthy?
You have no right to expect people you have publicly stated are evil and should have no rights to buy your product.
You do have that right if you value civility and free speech. Just like I am perfectly entitled to expect that if my boss is a flaming liberal, and finds out that on Facebook I'm a raging conservative, I will be able to keep my job. Because I don't believe it's right to punish people for their peaceful opinions, even when I have the power to do so, even when it involves money.
Your mentality is unstable and uncivil. It's great for people who are in the majority, and it sucks when you're in the minority.
Why do you need to DO anything to Orson Scott Card, regardless of whether you can? If you feel strongly about gay marriage, go advocate for gay marriage. You can do that without targeting people. Just like Orson Scott Card found a way to advocate against gay marriage without being a total dick and doing stuff like ruining pro-gay businesses, trying to get pro-gay people fired, and screening his own employees for their political views -- despite being ABLE to do those things.
He used his fame and money to advocate a bigoted point of view
There are famous and rich people advocating for gay marriage as well.
That has nothing to do with gay marriage because marriage in general already violates equality before the law. Two unmarried people are treated differently than two married people, gay or straight. Divorcees and widows/widowers are also treated differently from never-married people.
Equality before the law is a great concept and I support it, but using it in this argument is pure hypocrisy. You're using equality before the law to promote laws that reinforce non-equality before the law.
providing him additional financial support and publicity for a cause I am directly opposed to is not an action I plan on taking
Presumably you think your actions are morally justified. Do you think it would be morally right for an employer to fire an employee for expressing a political view he disagreed with because he doesn't want to financially support "the enemy?"
People have taken the "vote with your wallet" idea and twisted it into "punish with your wallet." There's a difference -- voting with your wallet is supposed to be about letting businesses know that they have displeased you in some way that is directly related to your transaction with the business. Customer service wasn't good, the quality of the product wasn't good, whatever. Voting with your wallet is positive because it leads to positive changes -- businesses with better customer service and better quality get more customers, and the bad businesses either change or go out of business.
Now it's become "The CEO of Chick Fila is BAD! Vote with your wallets people!!!" The only goal there is to create a more conformist society by punishing dissent which is the opposite of free speech and the open exchange of ideas.
Frankly that general principle is more important than any contemporary social issue which is why it's so disappointing to see people throwing it under the bus.
it's like just because his opinion side lost and the issue is settled in courts
It's not settled in courts.
that somehow his opinions on the issue no longer should matter to other people... did he change his opinion on the issue?
Why do you want to punish people for their opinion in a way that has nothing at all to do with the opinion? You think that's how free and open exchange of ideas works, that you're supposed to financially punish everybody you disagree with, instead of just voicing your own opinion? It's totally insane. Luckily only a small number of people on EITHER side of these social issues are so extremist and intolerant that they let it consume their entire life with hate.
I don't support gay marriage, but honestly it's never even occurred to me to boycott movies by director who do support gay marriage. I mean who cares? They support gay marriage. Oh no, I'm so threatened I have to shut them down!!! They can't be allowed to ever have a successful movie again!!
If by "kid" you mean a thug with gold teeth who had been doing drugs close to the time of the event.. yeah.
I agree with the claim that Trayvon was standing his ground, just like Zimmerman did... there is no guilty party here either way. Certainly nobody was murdered. Two guys stood their ground and one died. End of story. If we weren't such a PC, litigious society, charges wouldn't have been filed.. just like they weren't initially. Not every death is a "murder" that needs to be prosecuted!
That seems pretty clearly self defense, isn't it? Pulling a gun on someone (doubly if you steal someone's gun and pull it on them) is certainly a deadly attack.
remember F=ma, F is constant due to the cars weight so accel of the wheel depends solely on its mass
Isn't F due to the springs or hydraulics in the shock absorbers? That's also affected by the weight of the car in a passive system, but there's no reason you couldn't control F more directly with an electromagnetic suspension.
In a normal suspension, if you hit a bump, the wheel travels upwards and the spring compresses. The spring begins to uncompress upwards as well, which causes the car to start rising. Hopefully by now the bump has ended and the wheel is moving down, allowing the spring to uncompress downwards. The ratio of mass between the car and the wheel determines how much of the bump is transmitted to the car.
But in an electromagnetic system, there's no need to transmit force to the car body at all. Say the "shock" is 10 cm tall. The wheel wants to move up 8 cm after hitting a bump. So let it. The electromagnet weakens, but the shorter distance makes the force stronger.. it's calculated to balance out so that F_electromagnet = F_gravity and the car body doesn't move at all due to the bump.
Now you have to have some protection from the cases where the wheel wants to move 12 cm even though you only have 10 cm to play with. So it can't be a perfect ride the whole time.
But I don't see why with that type of suspension the wheel weight matters that much in terms of ride quality. You may be right about wear and tear on the road though.
Google has already monetized Voice by charging for international calling. I buy credit occasionally. I don't know how meaningful it is in terms of total revenue, but it *should* be a pretty healthy business. The calling card industry is pretty big. Apparently 20% of international calls are made with calling cards.
Google has another opportunity to make money by letting Voice act as a pure voip service over a data connection on cell phones. If it worked well over data connections as low as "Edge" quality I'd at least attempt to get a cheaper data-only plan and use Google Voice for all my calls. I'd pay maybe up to 1/10 cent per minute though a flat rate like $10/year would be nicer.
So.. say I'm on the FAR FAR FAR right wing. Like, I have the gall to listen to Rush Limbaugh, and be anti-communist. Shocking I know.
Now.. what do you think I would call the FAR right wing, like Obama, who wants to socialize major industries like healthcare?
Well it's confusing to distinguish between every group by the number of "fars". How about I just call them left wing? And then the crazy communists and socialists in Europe.. I know, I'll call them FAR FAR FAR left wing and not bother distinguishing between them because they're all so far left!
AMAZING how that works out. Almost like it's symmetrical and you don't even realize it.
Perhaps I'm disagreeing with you and you don't even realize it. Yeah, I'm arguing that the UN's peacekeeping role is like militarized police. Where we disagree is that that is bad.
The funny thing about the two of us is we both don't like the UN even though I'm defending their purpose. You don't like them because they're too "military" like or whatever.. I don't like them because they're too soft.
The codecs you listed have nice technical sounding names, except Dirac. Daala is like Dirac but more "dull." It's subjective obviously but I agree with OP, it's a terrible sounding name.
However, many end users will end up only knowing the container format. If it's packaged as mp4 or mkv, they won't know the difference. If it has its own container format, who knows -- hopefully it'll have a better name, though I doubt it (Ogg instantly springs to mind).
The UN is never going to convince these people that they are the good guys, because to them they're not the good guys. The UN should be trying to convince the rest of the world that they are the good guys. And that means killing the bad guys.
You're drawing the wrong conclusion from your analogy. Most people don't personally know drug dealers. They don't need to. If an abandoned house in your neighborhood is being used by drug addicts, you know what you do? You call the cops and they clear it out. If the cops are interested (usually they're not, they'll just break up the "party" to placate the people who called them), they can find out who is selling drugs in that area. It's so trivial it's a joke. I'm guessing you're not from the US or you'd know that jails are full to bursting with drug dealers and drug users.
So the point is, 99.99% of the population of the city (let alone the country) didn't need to know about that house. The 100 people in the neighborhood knew about that house, and out of that 100, it took a handful to call it in and make enough noise that the cops would show up.
Since the UN doesn't go around taking over wealthy, stable countries (which would be more profitable), that's a stupid analogy. They're not burgling houses. They're like the cops who go into a violent area of the city and try to prevent crime.
Your line of thought is more like people living in a ghetto who buy into the "no snitch" program because they hate cops more than each other.
but businesses don't want to lose money to pirates and the used games market.
Of course they don't, but the fears of pirates and used games are stupid when it comes to these huge companies like MS, Sony, and the big game publishers. Some people are going to pirate games. Whoop de doo. Look how many people pirate mp3s. At one time people predicted the end of superstars because there wouldn't be any way for a band to sell millions of albums. Who would buy a popular band's album when they can get it for free?? New huge bands like One Direction put together and marketed by a corporation aren't supposed to exist. They don't even have the pity factor of people purposely buying multiple copies of their album to support them financially. And they're a raging success. What's the explanation for that in an industry that is one of the most vulnerable to both piracy and used sales?
Slashdot Mirror
But that doesn't mean I need to give you my money when I disagree with you and think you're an idiot. I won't prevent you from selling your stuff to other people, but I sure as hell won't reward you by buying it.
That's why I started my response with "hmm" because it was like a non-sequitur to begin with. The relationship of money to free speech is much larger than the issue we're talking about, and it has totally different reasoning behind it.
Wait, you have a right to my money? What right would that be again? It's my money
Yeah I do. If I sell the best pizza around, and you want pizza, and in fact you've bought my pizza in the past and agree that it's really good, I would expect you to buy my pizza even though we've had a disagreement on Slashdot. If you refuse to buy my pizza (I'm talking about me, not Orson Scott Card) because of a simple disagreement OUTSIDE of the transaction at hand (buying pizza), then that's a moral fault in you. It's childishness.
And if your free speech offends me, my remedy is to not buy your crap by exercising my freedom of choice.
That's ONE remedy. And it's one remedy that marks you as a childish and intolerant person.
Just like another remedy would be to beat me up. And that remedy would mark you as violent.
Or another remedy would be to write a witty post on Slashdot that beautifully illustrates your side. That remedy would mark you as a passionate intellectual advocate.
I mean.. I don't know why this is so hard for some people to understand. Your actions reflect on you. If you act like an intolerant radical who joins boycotts against people to affect their business just because you disagree with their opinion which has NOTHING to do with their business, then other people see you as an intolerant radical.
Do you think Jews should buy from Nazi's because it would be mean?
I mean this gets back to what I was saying about beliefs outside the immediate transaction. If a Jew feels that the business owner wants to do him harm, in person, and would if he could get away with it... guess what? That's DURING the business transaction. On the other hand, if a Jew said "Wow, I just found out that you once said Israel is wrong to occupy Palestine, so I'm never coming to your shop again" then that is stupid.
Do you think Orson Scott Card is going to leap out of the movie screen and throttle anybody in the audience who supports gay marriage? If so, then you should not go to the movie even if you are interested in the movie itself separate from Card.
Peaceful? Really? "... any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down ..."
Yeah. I'm sure he is advocating armed rebellion. In fact, didn't he just get arrested the other day for attempting to kill the Supreme Court justices? Because obviously he's a very violent guy.
Wow, an ad homenim attack -- here's one for you: You sir, are a fucking moron and a douchebag.
What I said wasn't an ad hominem attack on Enigma. I said his mentality is unstable and uncivil. When people adopt a mentality of punishing everybody who disagrees with them, you introduce instability and incivility in your society. Look at a contentious issue like abortion or gay marriage.. if more people said "well I don't want anything to do with those damn pro lifers" and "I am boycotting all the pro choicers" then would society be MORE CIVIL or LESS CIVIL? Would society be MORE STABLE or LESS STABLE?
I was making a legitimate point about what we're talking about, not engaging in ad hominem like you just did.
Not that I expect an apology from someone who says "sir" and then insults me. Do you think that sounds cool because you heard it in a Winston Churchill quote or something? How cutting!
I don't think that's what Enigma2175 was referring to. That quote does not advocate jail time for the "crime" of being gay.
Card has no expectation or right to my money
The white boss is saying "Blacks have no expectation or right to my money so I won't give them a job." What's your response? Well you can't change your skin color so that's not fair. Okay well "Muslims have no expectation or right to my money." Now what? Your religion and your stance on gay marriage are both beliefs that can be changed.
Society has decided that people have a right to get fair treatment economically. Making hiring decisions about people based on their religion is considered bad.
Well I believe making purchasing decisions based on the business owner's private beliefs is also bad. I'm sure you would say that someone who refuses to shop at stores where gay people work is a bigot. While the store doesn't have a RIGHT to that person's money, you see how A) the person not shopping there is a punishment, because he's withholding his money and B) it's wrong to punish people who are gay, even if you yourself aren't gay, don't want to be gay, and don't like gays. I mean don't you see the attractiveness of saying "Yeah that guy is gay, but that's okay, I'm going to let him lead his life the way he wants, I'll still shop at that store, even though I think being gay is gross."
Isn't that a better person than "I hate the gays, I won't shop there?" Or do you see no distinction because both of them don't embrace gayness?
You might say Orson Scott Card's beliefs are not private -- well "private" only means "separate from the transaction at hand" not that they can never be shared publicly. Race and religion aren't private either, but most people consider them to have nothing to do with most business transactions, despite being public.
Crimes are rarely punished in any way relating to the crime itself. It's not practical or tenable.
It's really weird and dysfunctional that you'd compare an opinion you disagree with to a crime. Just thought I'd mention that in case you didn't realize it.
If you insist on seeing it in pure capitalistic term: Orson Scott Card is a brand of fiction. As the primary representative of that brand
That's ridiculous, Orson Scott Card is a person, not a brand of fiction.
By your logic, if I don't want to hire black people that's fine because really black is just a brand and I'm voting with my wallet.
I don't see how not buying stuff from person X infringes on his free speech either.
Well it doesn't directly, but it has a chilling effect, and it's childish behavior. Most people are more complex than a single issue and singling out someone for widespread punishment (like boycotting every single thing they produce) because of one issue is a sign of small mindedness.
You mean advocating jail time for the "crime" of being gay
Bullshit.. citation?
Anyway, people who aren't consumed with hate can value the things produced by people they disagree with, especially when the thing being produced has nothing to do with the "bad" opinions. I'm not saying people should watch every propaganda film ever produced and praise it for its art out of some duty to free speech.
I mean really, grow up. You guys sound like the mental toddlers who said they'd move to Canada if Bush won, and the other group of toddlers who said they'd move to Canada if Obama won.
So, you think a free and open exchange of ideas should translate into a free and open exchange of money?
Hmm in general yes, you need a free and open exchange of money in order to exchange ideas beyond a certain scale.
Has it occurred to you there are people who do exactly this? Christian groups have called on the boycott of
Of course that's occurred to me, what do you think I've been talking about! You should think about the groups you are aligning with. It's quite clear that your type of economic boycott in retaliation for free speech is a sign of radicalism. Do you think radicalism is healthy?
You have no right to expect people you have publicly stated are evil and should have no rights to buy your product.
You do have that right if you value civility and free speech. Just like I am perfectly entitled to expect that if my boss is a flaming liberal, and finds out that on Facebook I'm a raging conservative, I will be able to keep my job. Because I don't believe it's right to punish people for their peaceful opinions, even when I have the power to do so, even when it involves money.
Your mentality is unstable and uncivil. It's great for people who are in the majority, and it sucks when you're in the minority.
Because it's what we can do.
Why do you need to DO anything to Orson Scott Card, regardless of whether you can? If you feel strongly about gay marriage, go advocate for gay marriage. You can do that without targeting people. Just like Orson Scott Card found a way to advocate against gay marriage without being a total dick and doing stuff like ruining pro-gay businesses, trying to get pro-gay people fired, and screening his own employees for their political views -- despite being ABLE to do those things.
He used his fame and money to advocate a bigoted point of view
There are famous and rich people advocating for gay marriage as well.
Being equal under the law, on the other hand...
That has nothing to do with gay marriage because marriage in general already violates equality before the law. Two unmarried people are treated differently than two married people, gay or straight. Divorcees and widows/widowers are also treated differently from never-married people.
Equality before the law is a great concept and I support it, but using it in this argument is pure hypocrisy. You're using equality before the law to promote laws that reinforce non-equality before the law.
providing him additional financial support and publicity for a cause I am directly opposed to is not an action I plan on taking
Presumably you think your actions are morally justified. Do you think it would be morally right for an employer to fire an employee for expressing a political view he disagreed with because he doesn't want to financially support "the enemy?"
People have taken the "vote with your wallet" idea and twisted it into "punish with your wallet." There's a difference -- voting with your wallet is supposed to be about letting businesses know that they have displeased you in some way that is directly related to your transaction with the business. Customer service wasn't good, the quality of the product wasn't good, whatever. Voting with your wallet is positive because it leads to positive changes -- businesses with better customer service and better quality get more customers, and the bad businesses either change or go out of business.
Now it's become "The CEO of Chick Fila is BAD! Vote with your wallets people!!!" The only goal there is to create a more conformist society by punishing dissent which is the opposite of free speech and the open exchange of ideas.
Frankly that general principle is more important than any contemporary social issue which is why it's so disappointing to see people throwing it under the bus.
it's like just because his opinion side lost and the issue is settled in courts
It's not settled in courts.
that somehow his opinions on the issue no longer should matter to other people... did he change his opinion on the issue?
Why do you want to punish people for their opinion in a way that has nothing at all to do with the opinion? You think that's how free and open exchange of ideas works, that you're supposed to financially punish everybody you disagree with, instead of just voicing your own opinion? It's totally insane. Luckily only a small number of people on EITHER side of these social issues are so extremist and intolerant that they let it consume their entire life with hate.
I don't support gay marriage, but honestly it's never even occurred to me to boycott movies by director who do support gay marriage. I mean who cares? They support gay marriage. Oh no, I'm so threatened I have to shut them down!!! They can't be allowed to ever have a successful movie again!!
Yeah but he also said "mass shootings" which your link didn't address at all.
If by "kid" you mean a thug with gold teeth who had been doing drugs close to the time of the event.. yeah.
I agree with the claim that Trayvon was standing his ground, just like Zimmerman did... there is no guilty party here either way. Certainly nobody was murdered. Two guys stood their ground and one died. End of story. If we weren't such a PC, litigious society, charges wouldn't have been filed.. just like they weren't initially. Not every death is a "murder" that needs to be prosecuted!
That seems pretty clearly self defense, isn't it? Pulling a gun on someone (doubly if you steal someone's gun and pull it on them) is certainly a deadly attack.
That would be true if the world had a free market, but in reality there are treaties, sanctions, embargoes, bribes, foreign aid conditions, etc.
remember F=ma, F is constant due to the cars weight so accel of the wheel depends solely on its mass
Isn't F due to the springs or hydraulics in the shock absorbers? That's also affected by the weight of the car in a passive system, but there's no reason you couldn't control F more directly with an electromagnetic suspension.
In a normal suspension, if you hit a bump, the wheel travels upwards and the spring compresses. The spring begins to uncompress upwards as well, which causes the car to start rising. Hopefully by now the bump has ended and the wheel is moving down, allowing the spring to uncompress downwards. The ratio of mass between the car and the wheel determines how much of the bump is transmitted to the car.
But in an electromagnetic system, there's no need to transmit force to the car body at all. Say the "shock" is 10 cm tall. The wheel wants to move up 8 cm after hitting a bump. So let it. The electromagnet weakens, but the shorter distance makes the force stronger.. it's calculated to balance out so that F_electromagnet = F_gravity and the car body doesn't move at all due to the bump.
Now you have to have some protection from the cases where the wheel wants to move 12 cm even though you only have 10 cm to play with. So it can't be a perfect ride the whole time.
But I don't see why with that type of suspension the wheel weight matters that much in terms of ride quality. You may be right about wear and tear on the road though.
Google has already monetized Voice by charging for international calling. I buy credit occasionally. I don't know how meaningful it is in terms of total revenue, but it *should* be a pretty healthy business. The calling card industry is pretty big. Apparently 20% of international calls are made with calling cards.
Google has another opportunity to make money by letting Voice act as a pure voip service over a data connection on cell phones. If it worked well over data connections as low as "Edge" quality I'd at least attempt to get a cheaper data-only plan and use Google Voice for all my calls. I'd pay maybe up to 1/10 cent per minute though a flat rate like $10/year would be nicer.
So.. say I'm on the FAR FAR FAR right wing. Like, I have the gall to listen to Rush Limbaugh, and be anti-communist. Shocking I know.
Now.. what do you think I would call the FAR right wing, like Obama, who wants to socialize major industries like healthcare?
Well it's confusing to distinguish between every group by the number of "fars". How about I just call them left wing? And then the crazy communists and socialists in Europe.. I know, I'll call them FAR FAR FAR left wing and not bother distinguishing between them because they're all so far left!
AMAZING how that works out. Almost like it's symmetrical and you don't even realize it.
Perhaps I'm disagreeing with you and you don't even realize it. Yeah, I'm arguing that the UN's peacekeeping role is like militarized police. Where we disagree is that that is bad.
The funny thing about the two of us is we both don't like the UN even though I'm defending their purpose. You don't like them because they're too "military" like or whatever.. I don't like them because they're too soft.
The codecs you listed have nice technical sounding names, except Dirac. Daala is like Dirac but more "dull." It's subjective obviously but I agree with OP, it's a terrible sounding name.
However, many end users will end up only knowing the container format. If it's packaged as mp4 or mkv, they won't know the difference. If it has its own container format, who knows -- hopefully it'll have a better name, though I doubt it (Ogg instantly springs to mind).
Because religion over there has nothing to do with tribalism, politics, and power?
The UN is never going to convince these people that they are the good guys, because to them they're not the good guys. The UN should be trying to convince the rest of the world that they are the good guys. And that means killing the bad guys.
You're drawing the wrong conclusion from your analogy. Most people don't personally know drug dealers. They don't need to. If an abandoned house in your neighborhood is being used by drug addicts, you know what you do? You call the cops and they clear it out. If the cops are interested (usually they're not, they'll just break up the "party" to placate the people who called them), they can find out who is selling drugs in that area. It's so trivial it's a joke. I'm guessing you're not from the US or you'd know that jails are full to bursting with drug dealers and drug users.
So the point is, 99.99% of the population of the city (let alone the country) didn't need to know about that house. The 100 people in the neighborhood knew about that house, and out of that 100, it took a handful to call it in and make enough noise that the cops would show up.
Since the UN doesn't go around taking over wealthy, stable countries (which would be more profitable), that's a stupid analogy. They're not burgling houses. They're like the cops who go into a violent area of the city and try to prevent crime.
Your line of thought is more like people living in a ghetto who buy into the "no snitch" program because they hate cops more than each other.
but businesses don't want to lose money to pirates and the used games market.
Of course they don't, but the fears of pirates and used games are stupid when it comes to these huge companies like MS, Sony, and the big game publishers. Some people are going to pirate games. Whoop de doo. Look how many people pirate mp3s. At one time people predicted the end of superstars because there wouldn't be any way for a band to sell millions of albums. Who would buy a popular band's album when they can get it for free?? New huge bands like One Direction put together and marketed by a corporation aren't supposed to exist. They don't even have the pity factor of people purposely buying multiple copies of their album to support them financially. And they're a raging success. What's the explanation for that in an industry that is one of the most vulnerable to both piracy and used sales?
Yep if you define everything you don't like as "the right" then "the right" does everything you don't like. Amazing!