What about the wires running through all the schools walls that rattle all their kids brains with a 60Hz EM field? Oh no, it at home too!?!?
We should survey the parents behind the lawsuit to see how many of them have cordless telephones and microwaves at home. How about the x-rays from their home computers? Or the radiation from grandpa's clock's paint? Do they drive by any cell towers in town? What about the cosmic background radiation coming from space? Tell them how many neutrinos pass through them each day and watch them freak out!
There ain't such thing as Toyota Camry in Japan since 1999. What is sold in ther rest of the world as Camry is actually a Daihatsu Altis. But you would not buy a pensioner brand such as Daihatsu, would you?
Well, if the Daihatsu lives up to the Camry's reputation (corroborated in Consumer Reports, et. al.), then the marketing fluff is digestible. Toyota is about branding and reputation more than anything else in the US. Otherwise, more people would be buying Chevrolet mid-sized sedans for $3,000 less.
I like the world as it is now, where you can actually still buy software and hardware based on spec, not on Brand.
And that is fine. In the car realm, instead of a Toyota, people are still free--given money and time--to build a street-legal race car, complete with adjustible shocks, suspension, and engine programming. Its just that most people simply go out and get the Toyota/Honda/Subaru/.../Pontiac/Chevy from a dealer and drive it until it dies or they get tired of it.
No, just not so many of them that we have to seek a lawyer for every trivial decision. For example, the US Constitution is written to be pretty agnostic regarding special interests. The only amendments regarding race or gender dealt with the inclusion of massive groups of people without much nitpicking. It was probably the income tax and prohibition that really started the the whole thing downhill, where people now feel that any minor complaint or percieved hardship can be written away via legislation.
People don't need a huge amount of help to stay on the straight and narrow; most everything of importance boils down to being able to deal with contracts, anyway. There's enough contract boilerplate out there to fill most people's needs, and, if people sign into things they don't understand or actually believe what a salesman tells them, then that's just modern natural selection at work.
I'm far from an expert in anything, so I could be blabbering hot air for all I know.
Ah, so what you're actually saying is that there shouldn't be exceptions to the law, not that it shouldn't exist.
Well, in a way, yes, but politics guarantees that to be an impossible outcome. There is more blatant racial, economic, and social discrimination in our nations laws than in all of our society, even when considering crap like the KKK.
What's the big attraction about spending $30/year or whatever on the latest-and-greatest tax software, or paying some suit at H&R Block to do simple arithmetic for you?
Perhaps, in the USA, it is the satisfaction of even having paid professionals and computer software getting stumped as to how to classify the sale of a used car that was purchased for a dollar from a family member who intended it as a gift. The US tax code is a terrible terrible mess.
this law fills the same function as a "no trespassing" sign. You then made an irrelevant throwaway remark.
My point is that the law isn't truly a "no trespassing" sign. You'll still get the leeches from charities and political campaigns not to mention the three-month delays and probably other loopholes we have yet to discover. The only real protection is that which the people provide for themselves, because the government solution will always be the half-assed solution. The challenge is to find the telephone-equivalent to the gun, and, in fact, various solutions are appearing on the market giving people a variety of ways to tell telemarketers to rot in hell.
Are we really going to go with the cheap $1.00 solution?
Brush: $1.00 Specially-formulated repair compound developed after three-years of intense R&D by a fully-funded two-way competition between contractors: $6,450,000/oz.
Because it's easier than typing ALT-F2, konsole, su, foobar, cd Desktop/download, rpm -i -v i-hope-this-is-the-package-i-think-it-is.rpm, and then watching two screens of missing dependencies scroll past them.
You are reinforcing my point, where people really think Bill Gates is the only "easy way," when, in fact, Bill Gates slew the competition and appointed himself king. Microsoft is a lot like some third-world dictatorships, where there appears to be only one way and everyone appears to be happy when the reality is that the dictator created an island of information and propaganda and the people are fools. There was a lot of competition back in the day, and there is a lot of competition emerging, now. Perhaps this state of mass denial will finally be ended.
He is very suspicious of the fact that I use something not-Windows on our computers; I think he thinks I'm a closet commie or something...
It's ironic that many people equate Microsoft with capitalitic success when they are actually a tyrant about to fall by the hands of the marketplace.
Why is it that so many people will advocate freedom of speech and other essential rights, yet will bend right over and take it hard by Bill Gates?!? It seems there is something very non-obvious to people about software that keeps their minds clouded on these issues. If suddenly only one make and model of car was available, people would be up in arms!
...the USA's dysfunctional software industry perfectly.
The software industry is going through the growing pains that all industries go through. Right now, we are just getting past the "Model T" phase (e.g., UNIX is the worst OS on the planet, except for all other OSes). Perhaps, in another century or so, we will finally have the Toyota Camry of software, easy, functional, and reliable. Until then, we will have to keep our own mechanics (IT staff) around to fix every breakdown as it occurs.
I mean, where else is little Cindy going to go for that latest Brittney Spears record?
It's telling that the only people that the RIAA truly and successfully locks into their business model are 12-year-olds, yet they will even sue them, too.
As an adult, I have come to fully appreciate the value of going without if it means sticking it to someone, if only for the sake of negotiation. Most 12-year-olds haven't learned this, yet, hence N'Sync and Britney Spears. Yes, these bands are products sold to a demographic of insecure children. God bless the RIAA.
he must, since healthcare works better in just about every other modernized country than it does in the u.s.
1) The US still has most of the best hospitals in the world.
2) Most of the problems can be traced directly to either government regulation, corruption, or frivolous lawsuits.
3) The remaining problems are due to unionization and the fact that the medical industry requires that many people work nights and weekends.
None of these problems require government-based solutions, except for normal and traditional policing to curb corruption and perhaps some lawsuits.
I know this may sound un-intuitive, but there is a monetary value to health. The checks and balances in a market-based health care system are: 1) insurance companies want people to be healthy 2) doctors want people to be sick 3) people don't want to pay either high insurance premiums or high doctor bills. If you follow the money trail, then it forces doctors to be honest to a reasonable degree, if they want to earn a decent living.
I think most people really want to believe that doctors look out for the patient's best interests, which is unfortunate and naive. Nationalized healthcare really will only succeed in perverting the system into a form where quality and timeliness of service declines while prices at best stay the same if not go up. Nationalized healthcare will probably turn the US into a third-world country, medically speaking. Also, don't forget that political motivations will infect a national system with exclusions and allowances, and there will be a mandatory payroll deduction that carries a prison term for failure of payment. Yes, national healthcare will become a system of extortion. I hope that makes everyone really cozy.
For people that absolutely cannot afford health care, then there's always room for church missions to pick up some of the slack. There is no way to remove charity from a market system, but it simply isn't the government's job to be a philanthropist.
Thanks for the feedback. I can't offer any reading suggestions beyond what you already know, as my only background is one semester of asian philosophy from college (basic stuff: Lao Tzu, Confucious, some poetry, etc.).
I don't believe anybody has a right to use my phone (which I own) or my phone service (which I pay the phone company for) as the vehicle for their freedom of speech when I don't want them to.
Thus, we have technological "no trespassing" signs, such as screening calls, those fancy machines that deliver different messages based on caller ID, the TeleZapper, etc. The DNC list really only adds more regulatory burden to both the government and the private sector, making it a lose-lose proposition. Also, the DNC list has political exclusions still allowing trash like charities and politicians to pester you ad nauseum.
For the doorbell problem, there are physical "no trespassing" and "no soliciting" signs. For the mailbox, there are "opt out" check boxes on registration forms and most companies you do business with. For those that get through, you can enjoy the satisfaction of putting the mail through a confetti-cut shredder.
Slashdot Mirror
What about the wires running through all the schools walls that rattle all their kids brains with a 60Hz EM field? Oh no, it at home too!?!?
We should survey the parents behind the lawsuit to see how many of them have cordless telephones and microwaves at home. How about the x-rays from their home computers? Or the radiation from grandpa's clock's paint? Do they drive by any cell towers in town? What about the cosmic background radiation coming from space? Tell them how many neutrinos pass through them each day and watch them freak out!
It's clear spammers have no regard for the law.
So, if in the 1950's we had westerns, what will the 1990's-era spammer tales be called in the 2050's?
There ain't such thing as Toyota Camry in Japan since 1999. What is sold in ther rest of the world as Camry is actually a Daihatsu Altis. But you would not buy a pensioner brand such as Daihatsu, would you?
Well, if the Daihatsu lives up to the Camry's reputation (corroborated in Consumer Reports, et. al.), then the marketing fluff is digestible. Toyota is about branding and reputation more than anything else in the US. Otherwise, more people would be buying Chevrolet mid-sized sedans for $3,000 less.
I like the world as it is now, where you can actually still buy software and hardware based on spec, not on Brand.
And that is fine. In the car realm, instead of a Toyota, people are still free--given money and time--to build a street-legal race car, complete with adjustible shocks, suspension, and engine programming. Its just that most people simply go out and get the Toyota/Honda/Subaru/.../Pontiac/Chevy from a dealer and drive it until it dies or they get tired of it.
we shouldn't have laws"?
No, just not so many of them that we have to seek a lawyer for every trivial decision. For example, the US Constitution is written to be pretty agnostic regarding special interests. The only amendments regarding race or gender dealt with the inclusion of massive groups of people without much nitpicking. It was probably the income tax and prohibition that really started the the whole thing downhill, where people now feel that any minor complaint or percieved hardship can be written away via legislation.
People don't need a huge amount of help to stay on the straight and narrow; most everything of importance boils down to being able to deal with contracts, anyway. There's enough contract boilerplate out there to fill most people's needs, and, if people sign into things they don't understand or actually believe what a salesman tells them, then that's just modern natural selection at work.
I'm far from an expert in anything, so I could be blabbering hot air for all I know.
(You hear me RedHat?!)
OT: Does anyone actually like Disk Druid? If you do, did you use it only for a single-boot box without a pre-existing installation of any other OS?
Ah, so what you're actually saying is that there shouldn't be exceptions to the law, not that it shouldn't exist.
Well, in a way, yes, but politics guarantees that to be an impossible outcome. There is more blatant racial, economic, and social discrimination in our nations laws than in all of our society, even when considering crap like the KKK.
What's the big attraction about spending $30/year or whatever on the latest-and-greatest tax software, or paying some suit at H&R Block to do simple arithmetic for you?
Perhaps, in the USA, it is the satisfaction of even having paid professionals and computer software getting stumped as to how to classify the sale of a used car that was purchased for a dollar from a family member who intended it as a gift. The US tax code is a terrible terrible mess.
What took them so long?
It took them four months along with two market research firms to determine that, in fact, customers don't like getting screwed.
this law fills the same function as a "no trespassing" sign. You then made an irrelevant throwaway remark.
My point is that the law isn't truly a "no trespassing" sign. You'll still get the leeches from charities and political campaigns not to mention the three-month delays and probably other loopholes we have yet to discover. The only real protection is that which the people provide for themselves, because the government solution will always be the half-assed solution. The challenge is to find the telephone-equivalent to the gun, and, in fact, various solutions are appearing on the market giving people a variety of ways to tell telemarketers to rot in hell.
Are we really going to go with the cheap $1.00 solution?
Brush: $1.00
Specially-formulated repair compound developed after three-years of intense R&D
by a fully-funded two-way competition between contractors: $6,450,000/oz.
Because it's easier than typing ALT-F2, konsole, su, foobar, cd Desktop/download, rpm -i -v i-hope-this-is-the-package-i-think-it-is.rpm, and then watching two screens of missing dependencies scroll past them.
You are reinforcing my point, where people really think Bill Gates is the only "easy way," when, in fact, Bill Gates slew the competition and appointed himself king. Microsoft is a lot like some third-world dictatorships, where there appears to be only one way and everyone appears to be happy when the reality is that the dictator created an island of information and propaganda and the people are fools. There was a lot of competition back in the day, and there is a lot of competition emerging, now. Perhaps this state of mass denial will finally be ended.
Though the Really Extreme Programming (XXXProgramming) where one developer sits on another developer's lap does show some promise...
Yeah, but each time a developer quits you have to throw out his chair.
the line down the middle would drive most people nuts
Especially those who think they don't have a complete picture without the belly button showing.
He is very suspicious of the fact that I use something not-Windows on our computers; I think he thinks I'm a closet commie or something...
It's ironic that many people equate Microsoft with capitalitic success when they are actually a tyrant about to fall by the hands of the marketplace.
Why is it that so many people will advocate freedom of speech and other essential rights, yet will bend right over and take it hard by Bill Gates?!? It seems there is something very non-obvious to people about software that keeps their minds clouded on these issues. If suddenly only one make and model of car was available, people would be up in arms!
...the USA's dysfunctional software industry perfectly.
The software industry is going through the growing pains that all industries go through. Right now, we are just getting past the "Model T" phase (e.g., UNIX is the worst OS on the planet, except for all other OSes). Perhaps, in another century or so, we will finally have the Toyota Camry of software, easy, functional, and reliable. Until then, we will have to keep our own mechanics (IT staff) around to fix every breakdown as it occurs.
I mean, where else is little Cindy going to go for that latest Brittney Spears record?
It's telling that the only people that the RIAA truly and successfully locks into their business model are 12-year-olds, yet they will even sue them, too.
As an adult, I have come to fully appreciate the value of going without if it means sticking it to someone, if only for the sake of negotiation. Most 12-year-olds haven't learned this, yet, hence N'Sync and Britney Spears. Yes, these bands are products sold to a demographic of insecure children. God bless the RIAA.
No one said that freedom was easy.
he must, since healthcare works better in just about every other modernized country than it does in the u.s.
1) The US still has most of the best hospitals in the world.
2) Most of the problems can be traced directly to either government regulation, corruption, or frivolous lawsuits.
3) The remaining problems are due to unionization and the fact that the medical industry requires that many people work nights and weekends.
None of these problems require government-based solutions, except for normal and traditional policing to curb corruption and perhaps some lawsuits.
I know this may sound un-intuitive, but there is a monetary value to health. The checks and balances in a market-based health care system are: 1) insurance companies want people to be healthy 2) doctors want people to be sick 3) people don't want to pay either high insurance premiums or high doctor bills. If you follow the money trail, then it forces doctors to be honest to a reasonable degree, if they want to earn a decent living.
I think most people really want to believe that doctors look out for the patient's best interests, which is unfortunate and naive. Nationalized healthcare really will only succeed in perverting the system into a form where quality and timeliness of service declines while prices at best stay the same if not go up. Nationalized healthcare will probably turn the US into a third-world country, medically speaking. Also, don't forget that political motivations will infect a national system with exclusions and allowances, and there will be a mandatory payroll deduction that carries a prison term for failure of payment. Yes, national healthcare will become a system of extortion. I hope that makes everyone really cozy.
For people that absolutely cannot afford health care, then there's always room for church missions to pick up some of the slack. There is no way to remove charity from a market system, but it simply isn't the government's job to be a philanthropist.
The last time I got caught speeding, I didn't do $80 in damages to anyone, but I still got ticketed for that.
:)
So, the trick is to not get caught speeding 130,000 times
How can I be redundant, when I was the first post on this subject? Oh well.
Thanks for the feedback. I can't offer any reading suggestions beyond what you already know, as my only background is one semester of asian philosophy from college (basic stuff: Lao Tzu, Confucious, some poetry, etc.).
I don't believe anybody has a right to use my phone (which I own) or my phone service (which I pay the phone company for) as the vehicle for their freedom of speech when I don't want them to.
Thus, we have technological "no trespassing" signs, such as screening calls, those fancy machines that deliver different messages based on caller ID, the TeleZapper, etc. The DNC list really only adds more regulatory burden to both the government and the private sector, making it a lose-lose proposition. Also, the DNC list has political exclusions still allowing trash like charities and politicians to pester you ad nauseum.
For the doorbell problem, there are physical "no trespassing" and "no soliciting" signs. For the mailbox, there are "opt out" check boxes on registration forms and most companies you do business with. For those that get through, you can enjoy the satisfaction of putting the mail through a confetti-cut shredder.
"Maximum penalties: 471 years in federal prison, $117 million in fines."
if there code was a hurricane, it would be at least a catagory 4.
Actually, a hurricane is a pretty highly-organized weather system. I'm not sure this analogy works all the way through.
Are there a bike racks at the train station?
Vandals will cut your spokes. Trust me on this one.
If not the spokes, it'll be your brake lines or a hole in your tires.
Vandals suck.