This is exactly the problem with communists, they have this unfortunate disposition to honestly believe that anyone who disagrees with them is being stupid.
They also tend to believe in the paranormal and ESP.
See, this commie thinks that a) if we thought about this we would agree with him and b) he can read your mind and thus knows that this phenomenon is true.
Murder, lying to prevent a sexual harassment lawsuit, sexual harassment itself, rape, tax fraud, insider trading.
CATTLE FUTURES. VINCE FOSTER.
Reagan's alleged crimes were done for the expressed purpose of helping those fighting for their freedom against communism. He had nothing to gain. Nothing to hide from his wife. He didn't make any money. Congress had no authority to prevent the commander in chief from giving military arms to whomever he wishes. That power is vested in the President in the constitution.
The suggestan that Reagan had any contact with the Iranians was pure insanity, an outright lie that even the NY Times retracted due to its insanity. So much so, that Iran-Contra is the wrong name. It just the Nicaragua Contras story now. And of course, no one even knows who the contras are.
Nixon. Some two bit espionage done by an underling, that very likely occured without his knowledge. What was he guilty of? covering up a stupid move by someone acting without his authority. If anything, it is the same thing as Clinton covering up his sexual misconduct. They were both petty crimes. At least Nixon got us out of the Vietnam war, and saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Clinton just pissed off our enemies, and now the World Trade Center is gone.
Clinton's crimes were crimes for his personal gain, crimes against private citizens to deprive them of their property, sexual propriety, or very life, so he could enrich his power and personal gain.
Reagan did none of this. Hell, even Nixon got us out of Vietnam, something Democrats always forget.
What did Clinton do? Nothing, but rape the american people for whatever he wanted. Money. Sex. Power. He was a tyrannical criminal in the truest sense of the word.
We don't hear about the scandals because there weren't any.
Iran-contra? anyone remember how that got started? The New York Times printing an article on the FRONT PAGE suggesting that George Bush, the VP candidate for president flew to Iran to convince the iranians to NOT release the hostages so that Carter would lose the election? After criticisms that Bush didn't have the time to do any of that, they then suggested he flew in an SR-71?
The list goes on. What Reagan ALLEGEDLY did was very questionably illegal, and no evidence ever came of it. However, Clinton in fact committed crimes, recognized throughout history as being crimes.
How does a simple story like laser powered aircraft strike up the communist naderite fury?
Why do these people think anyone gives a fuck about the majority of the worthless scum that inhabits this earth? We just want laser powered ANYTHING dammit. We remember laser tag. We remember buck rogers. We want lasers and we want them now.
The sooner we can toast some third world excuse for humanity, the better. Then snivelling fools like this won't have any more sob stories to take up our bandwidth.
Yeah, I live in a city too, but my apartment faces elevated train tracks. I feel like I am in Kansas next to the local freight train when I am sleeping in during rush hour. If it wasn't for the drunks and prostitutes getting busy underneath those tracks, I might even be able to fantasize there are some cows back there... Hell, if it wasn't for all the condoms on the ground, I might mistake that sucking sound for some bovine feeding frenzy.
Sometimes, the vomitting does sound like a big CO2 cow fart.
It would be nice to at least *pretend* I am actually living on the 50th floor of a nice high rise, in a 5000 square foot condo, in my hot tub, with five hot ladies, instead of transvestite whores, staring out at the beautiful skyline I paid $1,000,000 to see...
Having used non-Intel chips since the NexGen Nx586, this is all very true. It is a new phenomonen that is entirely VIA fault however. The Athlon was hit hard by terrible taiwanese chipsets. My first athlon mobo had a VIA KT133 chipset, and I ultimately had to retire it due to excessive system instability and incompatibility with other major component manufacturers like ATi and Creative.
That said, my new nvidia based ASUS board is fast and incredibly stable. With a SB Audigy Ex and an ATI Radeon 8500 AIW, I have not had a single crash since I turned this puppy on.
Of course, my personal anecdotal evidence means nothing, but read any review on the web and the Nvidia chipsets are fast and rock solid. The Intel chipset advantage is now gone. Nvidia and AMD are going to completely dominate the home market, and hopefully the professional market.
I have to say thats true, but to use any other graphics format, you had to use separate graphics and menus for ANSI/AVATAR/RIP.. that was a pain in the ass to to.
Personally, I ran Oblivion/2. I do admit, my elite attitude still pervades to this day. I am amazed no one here is writing about Vision-x obv/2 or anything else like that.
It has been ten years since I have used renegade, but as I recall too many aspects of it were hard coded and you had to hack the overlay file to really make it look like anything but plain old renegade.
Oh I just love europeans and their funny little dialects. Its so quaint! I always wonder if they talk that way in their little cottages after the town fair where they all got completely wasted.
Ahh, nothing beats a drunken european.
Especially in Spain where the age of consent is still 12!
What happened to all those folks lamenting the terrible state of affairs here in the US due to the monopolistic practices of big corporations.
I thought it was IMPOSSIBLE to have a new internet provider due to these monopolistic practices.
Amazing, eh? Perhaps quick innovations like this will help statists of all varities to think twice before they claim the free market is incapable of serving the needs of the people. This is just a few WEEKS after provisions of the 1996 telecommunications act was struck down by the supreme court.
The only people who used Avatar graphics were gay losers running Renegade.
Yeah, every terminal program supported them, but no one bothered. Same thing with RIP graphics.
Just look at the works from ACiD, iCE and whatever other groups keep their old distros online. No one even bothered to make anything with Avatar. Its a nice thought, but it is up there with every other failed technology.
The same government that has imprisoned 2 million people for drug possession.
The same government that takes an aggregate of half your income in taxes.
The same government that kills innocent people around the world causing you to pay an extra $10 for that gram of cocaine.
The same government which is supposedly accountable to the people, yet most people don't even know who their local senator or representative.
The same government that funds american business with 150 billion a year, in exchange for a variety of monetary compensation. Of course, the average American donates $1000 a year to that fund of bribery
The same government that has a whole army, the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, the CIA, the IRS, and many other armed government bodies ready to enforce their wishes.
And this whining tool thinks AT&T is evil because they raise there prices $10 a month.
Every country outside of the US imposes these kinds of controls on a vast scale. Go look at the shitty shacks in which people live in the UK, and look how expensive their state controlled internet access is. Go anywhere in Europe and you will see what price controls do, they destroy progress and they prevent innovation.
Fuck, go to Canada. Look at how those schmoes live in abject poverty they call a higher standard of living. A stanard applied to prisons. Ahh well, you got food, shelter! Be happy!
I am so amazed people actually believe corporations are forcing Americans to do anything. Yet, no one can name a single instance where this is true.
to force: to compel by physical, moral, or intellectual (logical conclusion folks) means
No one is forcing you to pay $50 a month so you can download a gig of porn a day. You don't want to pay, fine turn it off.
However, try telling the government you don't want to pay the $200 a year the average american wastes in tax dollars on the highways which fuel suburban sprawl. I take a Schwinn to work. If I told the government that I would go to jail.
Here we are, 200 million people killed by governments in this last century in order to control markets. Thats nearly the entire population of the US, dead. And people think government and their weapons of war, even on the small scale of a police officer forcing you to leave your house so it can be auctioned off, are the answer to ANY problems. And we wonder why history keep on repeating itself.
I want X.
Those evil Y'ers won't give it to you!.
Fuck them! Tell Y to give X to me or they die!!!
Yeah, real brilliant.
note X can equal food, shelter, gold, silver, internet access, you name it.
The government is your enemy.
Note to europeans, berkley graduates, and residents of rent controlled apartments: Fuck you! Live free or die bitch! When the next hitler comes, we won't save your sorry ass!
Wow, I don't know what year you are in or where you are from, but if you are referring to industrial style music (ie Front 242, Front Line Assembly, KMFDM), I MISS this kind of music.
Dance music today has become the same commercial crap that the masses consume in droves. All dance clubs in the US play the same crap. Yes, some of that happy music sounds great when you are on ecstasy or other amphetamines, but it gets old real fast. Every club you go to its a bunch of unemployed kids cracked out with glow sticks listening to music that sounds like a broken washing machine... It doesn't sound angry or ANYTHING. I would rather listen to Britney Spears all damn night than some of the records DJ's throw on their antiquated record players. When the music does convey an emotion, its some euphoric happiness that I rarely feel unless I am on drugs.
Nihilism and anger are just as important of emotions as happiness... the problem is not so much one style is worse than the other, but variety is in order. Pick up a Front 242 album like Up Evil. You CAN alternate between angry music and calm "trance" music in the same album or music set, it just takes a little skill. Hell, even Orbital did this all the time and they were always very popular.
Outside of Project Pitchfork, I haven't heard any new industrial music in ages. Here in Chicago, the supposed birth place of this genre of music you hate, there is one dance club left that plays it and its not much bigger than my four bedroom flat.
Anyway, bring back the I hate everyone electronica. After, since I hate almost everyone it fits my life perfectly.
After dealing with VIA crap for so long, I am amazed with the nForce based mobo I have now... If shuttle made this thing with an nForce chipset instead of the other crap.. I would be impressed. Most people would be perfectly happy with geforce2 graphics and the AGP slot issue would be moot.
Re:You're not gonna get a silent Athlon system..
on
Shuttle SS40G Mini-PC
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· Score: 2, Insightful
One of the unique things about this box that the article points out is its use of a radiator. After running Quake for 45 minutes, the temperature was 47 degrees celsius when the ambient air temperature was 70 degrees.
Of course, it would be damn near impossible to run a system that small with an Athlon without some serious cooling. That said, the system seem very well designed.
Ooooh I am so impressed you can quote from a textbook you college student! Gee, if ONLY I was smart enough to have bother remembering all those definitions for my Economics 101 test instead of failing out of college.
Rather than describe these wonderful curves of which you speak, why don't you describe how they acquired their data sets which they used to construct that statistical analysis. I am absolutely amazed how my undergraduate business hacks who are destined to be little more than idiot secretaries are able to identify the various curves of economics but they have no idea how those curves came into being. Most economics textbooks I have read are exactly as vague as you are right now. In fact, many don't even define the measurement of a particular axis. Just two intersecting lines and a curve. For your own benefit, you will begin to have a greater aspect of the HUMAN aspect of economics when you realize that those curves are attempts to describe a general patter of human behavior, and that pattern comes from a SURVEY of humans. They never tell you that in your econ book.
Surveys of anything does not change the basic element that human beings are free by nature and are inherently unpredictable.
Natural monopolies. I challenge you to find ONE example of a TRUE natural monopoly. Remember, monopoly means one seller. I refuse to accept any other definition. Find me one example of a natural monopoly where only one seller exists at any given time. Caveat: you cannot say "Only Pepsi sells Pepsi" That is not a monopoly, but equivocation. Further, technology that is patented cannot be sold by another company. It must be a good or service that COULD be sold by another company but for whatever reason no other company sells that good or service.
You will find that this scenario has NEVER existed in the United States EVER. Even if 99.9% of Americans use Windows 95 because they love it intensely, there will always be that.1% who choose otherwise. That is NOT a monopoly contrary to what the government and your textbook might say. As long as people are free to choose another seller of a similar and competeing product, some always do.
Also, economies of scale is complete bullshit. There is not one market, ie the entire US. Or world for that matter. Just look at operating systems. Just because Windows controls 95% of the market does not mean it is too expensive for another company to enter the market. Economies of scale presume the only facto deciding buying and selling of goods is the cost of production. It further assumes that the only factor affecting cost of production is efficiency. Things like quality, and the inherent unpredictable nature of humans is not part of that equation.
The best example of why this theory is nothing but useless crap is the entire.com bust. All those companies run by people like you with their econ textbook in hand tried spending tons of money to conquer the economy of scale, to capture that market share. It ended up being pointless.
Read up on the concept of MICROMARKETS to realize why this entire concept of economies of scale is pointless.
A LOCAL monopoly does "straddle" the line because you mix definitions. Because joe schmoe in east bumblefuck doesn't want to drive 20 miles to find another seller of hog food doesn't mean his local seller has a monopoly. Further, a local phone company has a monopoly because either the government says so, in which case it is a monopoly by force, or no one has bother to compete in which case it is not a monopoly because that person can move elsewhere to find a different seller.
Your definitions of local monopolies presumes that people are static and that their freedom to move is not part of the equation. Of course you don't realize freedom is inherent to economics, your definitions of economics presume people HAVE no freedom.
As far as regulated monopolies, I of course agree with you there. Of course, you seem to justify them somewhat... Using rather utilitarian means. But, as any economics professor will tell you, legal barriers to market entry simply cause the creation of a black market.
The primary problem I have with this pseudo-science study of economics is that inability of its adherents to realize the human factor involved in it. This has lead to so much bloodshed in the world it is sickening. Ideas that look good on paper have left millions dead at the hands of those who attempt to force free people to conform to their little dreamy visions of reality.
This discussion of monopoly also is a great example of newspeak. You can forward any idea by changing the definitions of words. Economics in particular is very guilty of this form of obfuscation. Once upon a time, it was considered only natural that people could trade whatever they had with whomever they want. That is, until our college youth started to read economics textbooks.
Ahh.. Progress. At least we know there is a whole new crop of business inept college students to make money off of in the next techno bubble. Thank for being able to sell short.
Remember, this was the era of Gertrude Stein. The New York Times also particularly loved the incomprehensible poet. But there was a general idea that words were art and could be as abstract as Picaso' paintings and that alone was part of the fun.
We may look at the words now as mumbo jumbo, and perhaps it is... But it can make for amusing reading.
Please, please tell me. Of which economist(s) am I so ignorant? This discussion revolves around a single economist, Adam Smith and my personal musings.
It should be obvious that my economic musings are not at all conservative. They are based on an absolute distrust of government, a respect for the power and threat of violent force, and a desire to not have other people tell me what to do when I am not hurting anyone nor lying to them. It is as simple as that.
Further, one need to follow anyone about anything. Who cares what Adam Smith said or Karl Marx for that matter. The simple fact is 99.9% of the people on slashdot probably have not read the 1100 page Wealth of Nations or the 10000 Das Capital. We also cannot debate such mammoth works here. But, contrary to the powers that be, economics is not rocket science. We need not quote other economists or disect their arguments in order to figure out the basic problem here:
For Americans to get high speed internet access in their homes RIGHT NOW, should we use the government to regulate the industry or not? Is the recent appeals decision regarding the 1999 FCC regulations of the telecommunications industry beneficial to the American people or not?
You find my an economist who deals with this issue explicitly. They do exist, but I won't help you find them.
"Have you read Adam Smith's title called The Wealth of Nations? It rests on a principle of a competitive or free market economy; a competitive market being defined by many economists as one where no single supplier holds more than 20% of the marketspace, having 7 or more distinct direct competitors. Only under these circumstances will capitalistic markets bring the highest value to society. In marginalized situations, where a single company holds a large share of the marketplace there isn't a choice, it is called monopolistic."
I challenge you to find for me the chapter in The Wealth of Nations that describes any of this garbage about monopolies. It sounds like you are confusing Alan Keynes with Adam Smith. I would suggest the spirt of Book IV, Chapter III, Part II would contradict your claim. In it, the case is made that any sort of restrictions on trade do not help anyone. I would argue this chapter can be applied to restrictions on telecommunications companies as well. Adam Smith was also well aware of basic greek. The word MONOPOLY comes from the two words mon and polein. MONOPOLY literally means SINGLE SELLER. Because you arbitrarily decide the greeks really mean 20% of the market or less than 7 competitors is absolutely irrelevant. We can change the definitions of every word here. But, fortunately I have history on my side.
Perhaps you should read Smith instead of quoting him to give credence to your bogus claims. Or better yet, stop getting your info from the New Republic.
Monopolies exist for one reason and one reason alone, because the government forces others to accept them. We are talking about WIRES here, not roads. There is no reason why 10 companies can't contract with individual citizens to lay wire on their property. You may laugh at such a prospect, but it is not as difficult as you might think. Personally, I don't even believe the roads should be owned by the government, but that is another issue.
Lets say in 1970 you decided you were going to set up a compete with AT&T. Nevermind how expensive this prospect might seem, you could not have done so. The police would have come, with guns pointed at your heads, and drag you off to jail
True monopolies are not arbitrary numbers of market control, a monopoly is ONLY POSSIBLE under threat of violent force. A monopoly is absolutely impossible in a free society. Capitalism is not about bogus statistics and ridiculous definitions such as yours regarding monopolies, Captitalism is about freedom. You are free to do whatever you wish, unless someone makes it too costly for you to do so. Usually, this involves weapons.
This IS a black and white issue. Freedom, or not freedom. You may try and obfuscate this issue by presenting irrelevant facts or changing the definition of ancient words in the argument... but the fact remains we can either have a company owned by citizens provide high speed internet access. OR we can have the government do it.
A simple proof of why government sucks, is Europe and Japan. These are two economies that believed everything you have just said, and their are absolute basket cases. You are proposing nothing less than the Command Economy theories presented by the American Left in the 1970s.
Government does not work, it never has worked, and it never will work. Get over it. You may think your parody of marxist economic theory you learned in college is sufficient, but it is old news. We have listend to the chatter of micromanaging arm chair thinkers like this for a hundred years.
I also had to say that I found your discussion of dictatorship versus democracy amusing. Personally, I do not believe in the rule of men. I believe in the rule of law. The government exists to protect citizens from force and fraud, nothing more nothing less. Whether despotism or democracy does this is unclear as it has not been tried too often in the last 2000 years.
"The court also overturned a 1999 rule that required the dominant carriers to share a portion of a local line into a home so that the customer could have a different provider for DSL (digital subscriber line) service, but keep their local telephone provider."
What the article is not telling you is this same 1999 rule did not just require telephone companies to share their network with "competitors", it also required companies to do so at a price set by the FCC or some other administrative body. This price made it UNPROFITABLE to bother upgrading this network further.
As far as the last mile, there are other regulations that are being challenged now as well of which this ruling is one part. This decision is just one domino down and what will hopefully be a wave of deregulation. The issue with the "last mile" carriers is not the situation you propose, its the backbone carriers. If it was profitable for them to provide service to homes and use all the available bandwidth, they would.
I suggest you or someone else explain what it will take to get fibre into homes in the US. Who will do it, the government?
What happened to all those wonderful dreams of high speed internet access in 1999? Why is my high speed internet access much slower than it was in 1999? where is the progress?
Yes, the phone network and the big carriers acquired their wealth by using the government to enforce their monopoly status, but what is done is done. This does not justify screwing over AT&T, et al to MY detriment.
These regulations obviously did not help competition, because service got worse. How many people are happy with their DSL service? Why does it take months to get it? If you believe there are not problems with DSL... you are ignoring reality
These administrative codes were not just unjust and inconsistent with American ideas of freedom and liberty, they make my internet experience SUCK.
I can't believe the communist crap I am reading on this board.
The reason we do not have better high speed internet acccess is BECAUSE no one wants to bother investing money in something that the government will force them to give away for free under penalty of law!
There are miles and miles of unused fibre optic cable in this country that could provide T1 speed to every home in America easily, but because whoever bothers to build that infrastructure will HAVE to share that service with a competitor at prices dictated by the government no one will invest a dime.
I can understand how the small minds cannot understand the rather esoteric issues regarding intellectual property, but outright capital investment such as this is a no brainer. There are currently no high speed connections to houses. Yes, some smart people have found ways to use the phone and cable networks installed 20-30 years ago to provide faster than modem speed, but true synchronous high speed internet access is out of the reach of all but the most wealthy.
Someone needs to build a high speed network for the regular joe sixpack. Who is going to do it? Right now, NOBODY. You can complain about monopolies all you want, but you are not going to find anyone, anywhere who will invest a dime in infrastructure when he will not own it in the end.
Hypothetical: Lets say you buy your dream car and it costs you $300 a month. What if the government came along and told you that unless you want to go to JAIL, you will give your brand new car to your neighbor for six months a year and you cannot charge him more than $250 a month to use it. The government doesn't care that you will lose $50 a month. The government says that because your neighbor can't afford $300, this is only fair.
Does this sound reasonable? I think not.
This ruling is a victory for the Americans everywhere. The iron grip of Washington is losing its grasp on the throats of innovation.
In defense of OS/2, while Windows performance was often slow this was more perception as you had to wait for the VM to start, windows to start, then your app. Once loaded, applications were sometimes faster than in native Windows 3.1...
Many DOS games ran much better than in native DOS as well. Of course, always having 640K of main memory was always killer. And being able to run good old Oblivion/2 in the background while I was playing X-Wing... Those were the days.
I do acknowledge however there is a big difference between emulating an operating system and emulating a whole other processor. I would tend to think that is not going on however, as the performance would just suck, especially on something like an ARM.
Are you suggesting that in Nevada, the state of gambling, prostitution and all the other evil vices of pure capitalism, is going to impose under penalty of law and under threat of force that no one shall sell a CD for less than a minimum price?
Of course, price ceilings are routinely used to restrict markets (IE rent control in NYC).. in fact if the New York legislature was promoting this I would not be surprised.
But Nevada? Outside of government controlled monopolies and import tariffs is anyone else familiar with government imposed price floors?
It is of course quite amusing that the only way to enslave drug companies and their employees to work for free is by in fact using guns or other forms of deadly persuasion.
The Marxist here can decry the drug companies TODAY for not giving away the fruits of their labor for free. He can equate inaction with murder.
But what happens when drug companies refuse to develop drugs because these same marxists constantly steal them?
They have no choice but to persuade their citizenry not with money, but violence.
So, you won't develop that drug for $4.75 an hour? fine, do it or you go to the slave labor camps!
Suggesting Capitalists are murderers! nothing could be more amusing. Of course, it is not amusing to the 100 million who have died in the last century at the hands of Marxists and their murderous toys.
There is no conspiracy. Anyone who wants any drug can get one. AZT, Aspirin, Heroin, you name it. You can get it anywhere. The question is, are you able to pay for it. I don't know anyone who sells drugs, whether the street dealer, Walgreens, or Bayer that will sell their drugs for free.
Treatment may be expensive because of the pharmaceutical companies, but WITHOUT those very same companies you deplore these drugs would not even exist.
Are you so foolish to think drug companies should develop drugs for free?? Who would by the equipment? Who would pay the researchers? You?
Of course, your solution would be to mug every citizen in this country through taxation for the benefit of some barbarians in a foreign country.
Instead of crying about human life and wanting to steal from me, why don't lazy buffoons like yourself go out and contribute something to society? Why don't YOU design that next aids vaccine and give it away for free.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly the problem with communists, they have this unfortunate disposition to honestly believe that anyone who disagrees with them is being stupid.
They also tend to believe in the paranormal and ESP.
See, this commie thinks that a) if we thought about this we would agree with him and b) he can read your mind and thus knows that this phenomenon is true.
Murder, lying to prevent a sexual harassment lawsuit, sexual harassment itself, rape, tax fraud, insider trading.
CATTLE FUTURES. VINCE FOSTER.
Reagan's alleged crimes were done for the expressed purpose of helping those fighting for their freedom against communism. He had nothing to gain. Nothing to hide from his wife. He didn't make any money. Congress had no authority to prevent the commander in chief from giving military arms to whomever he wishes. That power is vested in the President in the constitution.
The suggestan that Reagan had any contact with the Iranians was pure insanity, an outright lie that even the NY Times retracted due to its insanity. So much so, that Iran-Contra is the wrong name. It just the Nicaragua Contras story now. And of course, no one even knows who the contras are.
Nixon. Some two bit espionage done by an underling, that very likely occured without his knowledge. What was he guilty of? covering up a stupid move by someone acting without his authority. If anything, it is the same thing as Clinton covering up his sexual misconduct. They were both petty crimes. At least Nixon got us out of the Vietnam war, and saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Clinton just pissed off our enemies, and now the World Trade Center is gone.
Clinton's crimes were crimes for his personal gain, crimes against private citizens to deprive them of their property, sexual propriety, or very life, so he could enrich his power and personal gain.
Reagan did none of this. Hell, even Nixon got us out of Vietnam, something Democrats always forget.
What did Clinton do? Nothing, but rape the american people for whatever he wanted. Money. Sex. Power. He was a tyrannical criminal in the truest sense of the word.
We don't hear about the scandals because there weren't any.
Iran-contra? anyone remember how that got started? The New York Times printing an article on the FRONT PAGE suggesting that George Bush, the VP candidate for president flew to Iran to convince the iranians to NOT release the hostages so that Carter would lose the election? After criticisms that Bush didn't have the time to do any of that, they then suggested he flew in an SR-71?
The list goes on. What Reagan ALLEGEDLY did was very questionably illegal, and no evidence ever came of it. However, Clinton in fact committed crimes, recognized throughout history as being crimes.
Of course, the first selection he gives us is country music.
How does a simple story like laser powered aircraft strike up the communist naderite fury?
Why do these people think anyone gives a fuck about the majority of the worthless scum that inhabits this earth? We just want laser powered ANYTHING dammit. We remember laser tag. We remember buck rogers. We want lasers and we want them now.
The sooner we can toast some third world excuse for humanity, the better. Then snivelling fools like this won't have any more sob stories to take up our bandwidth.
Lasers = no population problem.
Yeah, I live in a city too, but my apartment faces elevated train tracks. I feel like I am in Kansas next to the local freight train when I am sleeping in during rush hour. If it wasn't for the drunks and prostitutes getting busy underneath those tracks, I might even be able to fantasize there are some cows back there... Hell, if it wasn't for all the condoms on the ground, I might mistake that sucking sound for some bovine feeding frenzy.
Sometimes, the vomitting does sound like a big CO2 cow fart.
It would be nice to at least *pretend* I am actually living on the 50th floor of a nice high rise, in a 5000 square foot condo, in my hot tub, with five hot ladies, instead of transvestite whores, staring out at the beautiful skyline I paid $1,000,000 to see...
But, at least these sluts are only $20 a trick.
Having used non-Intel chips since the NexGen Nx586, this is all very true. It is a new phenomonen that is entirely VIA fault however. The Athlon was hit hard by terrible taiwanese chipsets. My first athlon mobo had a VIA KT133 chipset, and I ultimately had to retire it due to excessive system instability and incompatibility with other major component manufacturers like ATi and Creative.
That said, my new nvidia based ASUS board is fast and incredibly stable. With a SB Audigy Ex and an ATI Radeon 8500 AIW, I have not had a single crash since I turned this puppy on.
Of course, my personal anecdotal evidence means nothing, but read any review on the web and the Nvidia chipsets are fast and rock solid. The Intel chipset advantage is now gone. Nvidia and AMD are going to completely dominate the home market, and hopefully the professional market.
I have to say thats true, but to use any other graphics format, you had to use separate graphics and menus for ANSI/AVATAR/RIP.. that was a pain in the ass to to.
Personally, I ran Oblivion/2. I do admit, my elite attitude still pervades to this day. I am amazed no one here is writing about Vision-x obv/2 or anything else like that.
It has been ten years since I have used renegade, but as I recall too many aspects of it were hard coded and you had to hack the overlay file to really make it look like anything but plain old renegade.
Oh I just love europeans and their funny little dialects. Its so quaint! I always wonder if they talk that way in their little cottages after the town fair where they all got completely wasted.
Ahh, nothing beats a drunken european.
Especially in Spain where the age of consent is still 12!
What happened to all those folks lamenting the terrible state of affairs here in the US due to the monopolistic practices of big corporations.
I thought it was IMPOSSIBLE to have a new internet provider due to these monopolistic practices.
Amazing, eh? Perhaps quick innovations like this will help statists of all varities to think twice before they claim the free market is incapable of serving the needs of the people. This is just a few WEEKS after provisions of the 1996 telecommunications act was struck down by the supreme court.
Imagine what will happen in a year. Or ten.
The only people who used Avatar graphics were gay losers running Renegade.
Yeah, every terminal program supported them, but no one bothered. Same thing with RIP graphics.
Just look at the works from ACiD, iCE and whatever other groups keep their old distros online. No one even bothered to make anything with Avatar. Its a nice thought, but it is up there with every other failed technology.
He trusts the government.
The same government that has imprisoned 2 million people for drug possession.
The same government that takes an aggregate of half your income in taxes.
The same government that kills innocent people around the world causing you to pay an extra $10 for that gram of cocaine.
The same government which is supposedly accountable to the people, yet most people don't even know who their local senator or representative.
The same government that funds american business with 150 billion a year, in exchange for a variety of monetary compensation. Of course, the average American donates $1000 a year to that fund of bribery
The same government that has a whole army, the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, the CIA, the IRS, and many other armed government bodies ready to enforce their wishes.
And this whining tool thinks AT&T is evil because they raise there prices $10 a month.
Every country outside of the US imposes these kinds of controls on a vast scale. Go look at the shitty shacks in which people live in the UK, and look how expensive their state controlled internet access is. Go anywhere in Europe and you will see what price controls do, they destroy progress and they prevent innovation.
Fuck, go to Canada. Look at how those schmoes live in abject poverty they call a higher standard of living. A stanard applied to prisons. Ahh well, you got food, shelter! Be happy!
I am so amazed people actually believe corporations are forcing Americans to do anything. Yet, no one can name a single instance where this is true.
to force: to compel by physical, moral, or intellectual (logical conclusion folks) means
No one is forcing you to pay $50 a month so you can download a gig of porn a day. You don't want to pay, fine turn it off.
However, try telling the government you don't want to pay the $200 a year the average american wastes in tax dollars on the highways which fuel suburban sprawl. I take a Schwinn to work. If I told the government that I would go to jail.
Here we are, 200 million people killed by governments in this last century in order to control markets. Thats nearly the entire population of the US, dead. And people think government and their weapons of war, even on the small scale of a police officer forcing you to leave your house so it can be auctioned off, are the answer to ANY problems. And we wonder why history keep on repeating itself.
I want X.
Those evil Y'ers won't give it to you!.
Fuck them! Tell Y to give X to me or they die!!!
Yeah, real brilliant.
note X can equal food, shelter, gold, silver, internet access, you name it.
The government is your enemy.
Note to europeans, berkley graduates, and residents of rent controlled apartments: Fuck you! Live free or die bitch! When the next hitler comes, we won't save your sorry ass!
Wow, I don't know what year you are in or where you are from, but if you are referring to industrial style music (ie Front 242, Front Line Assembly, KMFDM), I MISS this kind of music.
Dance music today has become the same commercial crap that the masses consume in droves. All dance clubs in the US play the same crap. Yes, some of that happy music sounds great when you are on ecstasy or other amphetamines, but it gets old real fast. Every club you go to its a bunch of unemployed kids cracked out with glow sticks listening to music that sounds like a broken washing machine... It doesn't sound angry or ANYTHING. I would rather listen to Britney Spears all damn night than some of the records DJ's throw on their antiquated record players. When the music does convey an emotion, its some euphoric happiness that I rarely feel unless I am on drugs.
Nihilism and anger are just as important of emotions as happiness... the problem is not so much one style is worse than the other, but variety is in order. Pick up a Front 242 album like Up Evil. You CAN alternate between angry music and calm "trance" music in the same album or music set, it just takes a little skill. Hell, even Orbital did this all the time and they were always very popular.
Outside of Project Pitchfork, I haven't heard any new industrial music in ages. Here in Chicago, the supposed birth place of this genre of music you hate, there is one dance club left that plays it and its not much bigger than my four bedroom flat.
Anyway, bring back the I hate everyone electronica. After, since I hate almost everyone it fits my life perfectly.
After dealing with VIA crap for so long, I am amazed with the nForce based mobo I have now... If shuttle made this thing with an nForce chipset instead of the other crap.. I would be impressed. Most people would be perfectly happy with geforce2 graphics and the AGP slot issue would be moot.
One of the unique things about this box that the article points out is its use of a radiator. After running Quake for 45 minutes, the temperature was 47 degrees celsius when the ambient air temperature was 70 degrees.
Of course, it would be damn near impossible to run a system that small with an Athlon without some serious cooling. That said, the system seem very well designed.
Ooooh I am so impressed you can quote from a textbook you college student! Gee, if ONLY I was smart enough to have bother remembering all those definitions for my Economics 101 test instead of failing out of college.
.1% who choose otherwise. That is NOT a monopoly contrary to what the government and your textbook might say. As long as people are free to choose another seller of a similar and competeing product, some always do.
.com bust. All those companies run by people like you with their econ textbook in hand tried spending tons of money to conquer the economy of scale, to capture that market share. It ended up being pointless.
Rather than describe these wonderful curves of which you speak, why don't you describe how they acquired their data sets which they used to construct that statistical analysis. I am absolutely amazed how my undergraduate business hacks who are destined to be little more than idiot secretaries are able to identify the various curves of economics but they have no idea how those curves came into being. Most economics textbooks I have read are exactly as vague as you are right now. In fact, many don't even define the measurement of a particular axis. Just two intersecting lines and a curve. For your own benefit, you will begin to have a greater aspect of the HUMAN aspect of economics when you realize that those curves are attempts to describe a general patter of human behavior, and that pattern comes from a SURVEY of humans. They never tell you that in your econ book.
Surveys of anything does not change the basic element that human beings are free by nature and are inherently unpredictable.
Natural monopolies. I challenge you to find ONE example of a TRUE natural monopoly. Remember, monopoly means one seller. I refuse to accept any other definition. Find me one example of a natural monopoly where only one seller exists at any given time. Caveat: you cannot say "Only Pepsi sells Pepsi" That is not a monopoly, but equivocation. Further, technology that is patented cannot be sold by another company. It must be a good or service that COULD be sold by another company but for whatever reason no other company sells that good or service.
You will find that this scenario has NEVER existed in the United States EVER. Even if 99.9% of Americans use Windows 95 because they love it intensely, there will always be that
Also, economies of scale is complete bullshit. There is not one market, ie the entire US. Or world for that matter. Just look at operating systems. Just because Windows controls 95% of the market does not mean it is too expensive for another company to enter the market. Economies of scale presume the only facto deciding buying and selling of goods is the cost of production. It further assumes that the only factor affecting cost of production is efficiency. Things like quality, and the inherent unpredictable nature of humans is not part of that equation.
The best example of why this theory is nothing but useless crap is the entire
Read up on the concept of MICROMARKETS to realize why this entire concept of economies of scale is pointless.
A LOCAL monopoly does "straddle" the line because you mix definitions. Because joe schmoe in east bumblefuck doesn't want to drive 20 miles to find another seller of hog food doesn't mean his local seller has a monopoly. Further, a local phone company has a monopoly because either the government says so, in which case it is a monopoly by force, or no one has bother to compete in which case it is not a monopoly because that person can move elsewhere to find a different seller.
Your definitions of local monopolies presumes that people are static and that their freedom to move is not part of the equation. Of course you don't realize freedom is inherent to economics, your definitions of economics presume people HAVE no freedom.
As far as regulated monopolies, I of course agree with you there. Of course, you seem to justify them somewhat... Using rather utilitarian means. But, as any economics professor will tell you, legal barriers to market entry simply cause the creation of a black market.
The primary problem I have with this pseudo-science study of economics is that inability of its adherents to realize the human factor involved in it. This has lead to so much bloodshed in the world it is sickening. Ideas that look good on paper have left millions dead at the hands of those who attempt to force free people to conform to their little dreamy visions of reality.
This discussion of monopoly also is a great example of newspeak. You can forward any idea by changing the definitions of words. Economics in particular is very guilty of this form of obfuscation. Once upon a time, it was considered only natural that people could trade whatever they had with whomever they want. That is, until our college youth started to read economics textbooks.
Ahh.. Progress. At least we know there is a whole new crop of business inept college students to make money off of in the next techno bubble. Thank for being able to sell short.
Remember, this was the era of Gertrude Stein. The New York Times also particularly loved the incomprehensible poet. But there was a general idea that words were art and could be as abstract as Picaso' paintings and that alone was part of the fun.
We may look at the words now as mumbo jumbo, and perhaps it is... But it can make for amusing reading.
Please, please tell me. Of which economist(s) am I so ignorant? This discussion revolves around a single economist, Adam Smith and my personal musings.
It should be obvious that my economic musings are not at all conservative. They are based on an absolute distrust of government, a respect for the power and threat of violent force, and a desire to not have other people tell me what to do when I am not hurting anyone nor lying to them. It is as simple as that.
Further, one need to follow anyone about anything. Who cares what Adam Smith said or Karl Marx for that matter. The simple fact is 99.9% of the people on slashdot probably have not read the 1100 page Wealth of Nations or the 10000 Das Capital. We also cannot debate such mammoth works here. But, contrary to the powers that be, economics is not rocket science. We need not quote other economists or disect their arguments in order to figure out the basic problem here:
For Americans to get high speed internet access in their homes RIGHT NOW, should we use the government to regulate the industry or not? Is the recent appeals decision regarding the 1999 FCC regulations of the telecommunications industry beneficial to the American people or not?
You find my an economist who deals with this issue explicitly. They do exist, but I won't help you find them.
"Have you read Adam Smith's title called The Wealth of Nations? It rests on a principle of a competitive or free market economy; a competitive market being defined by many economists as one where no single supplier holds more than 20% of the marketspace, having 7 or more distinct direct competitors. Only under these circumstances will capitalistic markets bring the highest value to society. In marginalized situations, where a single company holds a large share of the marketplace there isn't a choice, it is called monopolistic."
I challenge you to find for me the chapter in The Wealth of Nations that describes any of this garbage about monopolies. It sounds like you are confusing Alan Keynes with Adam Smith. I would suggest the spirt of Book IV, Chapter III, Part II would contradict your claim. In it, the case is made that any sort of restrictions on trade do not help anyone. I would argue this chapter can be applied to restrictions on telecommunications companies as well. Adam Smith was also well aware of basic greek. The word MONOPOLY comes from the two words mon and polein. MONOPOLY literally means SINGLE SELLER. Because you arbitrarily decide the greeks really mean 20% of the market or less than 7 competitors is absolutely irrelevant. We can change the definitions of every word here. But, fortunately I have history on my side.
Perhaps you should read Smith instead of quoting him to give credence to your bogus claims. Or better yet, stop getting your info from the New Republic.
Monopolies exist for one reason and one reason alone, because the government forces others to accept them. We are talking about WIRES here, not roads. There is no reason why 10 companies can't contract with individual citizens to lay wire on their property. You may laugh at such a prospect, but it is not as difficult as you might think. Personally, I don't even believe the roads should be owned by the government, but that is another issue.
Lets say in 1970 you decided you were going to set up a compete with AT&T. Nevermind how expensive this prospect might seem, you could not have done so. The police would have come, with guns pointed at your heads, and drag you off to jail
True monopolies are not arbitrary numbers of market control, a monopoly is ONLY POSSIBLE under threat of violent force. A monopoly is absolutely impossible in a free society. Capitalism is not about bogus statistics and ridiculous definitions such as yours regarding monopolies, Captitalism is about freedom. You are free to do whatever you wish, unless someone makes it too costly for you to do so. Usually, this involves weapons.
This IS a black and white issue. Freedom, or not freedom. You may try and obfuscate this issue by presenting irrelevant facts or changing the definition of ancient words in the argument... but the fact remains we can either have a company owned by citizens provide high speed internet access. OR we can have the government do it.
A simple proof of why government sucks, is Europe and Japan. These are two economies that believed everything you have just said, and their are absolute basket cases. You are proposing nothing less than the Command Economy theories presented by the American Left in the 1970s.
Government does not work, it never has worked, and it never will work. Get over it. You may think your parody of marxist economic theory you learned in college is sufficient, but it is old news. We have listend to the chatter of micromanaging arm chair thinkers like this for a hundred years.
I also had to say that I found your discussion of dictatorship versus democracy amusing. Personally, I do not believe in the rule of men. I believe in the rule of law. The government exists to protect citizens from force and fraud, nothing more nothing less. Whether despotism or democracy does this is unclear as it has not been tried too often in the last 2000 years.
"The court also overturned a 1999 rule that required the dominant carriers to share a portion of a local line into a home so that the customer could have a different provider for DSL (digital subscriber line) service, but keep their local telephone provider."
What the article is not telling you is this same 1999 rule did not just require telephone companies to share their network with "competitors", it also required companies to do so at a price set by the FCC or some other administrative body. This price made it UNPROFITABLE to bother upgrading this network further.
As far as the last mile, there are other regulations that are being challenged now as well of which this ruling is one part. This decision is just one domino down and what will hopefully be a wave of deregulation. The issue with the "last mile" carriers is not the situation you propose, its the backbone carriers. If it was profitable for them to provide service to homes and use all the available bandwidth, they would.
I suggest you or someone else explain what it will take to get fibre into homes in the US. Who will do it, the government?
What happened to all those wonderful dreams of high speed internet access in 1999? Why is my high speed internet access much slower than it was in 1999? where is the progress?
Yes, the phone network and the big carriers acquired their wealth by using the government to enforce their monopoly status, but what is done is done. This does not justify screwing over AT&T, et al to MY detriment.
These regulations obviously did not help competition, because service got worse. How many people are happy with their DSL service? Why does it take months to get it? If you believe there are not problems with DSL... you are ignoring reality
These administrative codes were not just unjust and inconsistent with American ideas of freedom and liberty, they make my internet experience SUCK.
I can't believe the communist crap I am reading on this board.
The reason we do not have better high speed internet acccess is BECAUSE no one wants to bother investing money in something that the government will force them to give away for free under penalty of law!
There are miles and miles of unused fibre optic cable in this country that could provide T1 speed to every home in America easily, but because whoever bothers to build that infrastructure will HAVE to share that service with a competitor at prices dictated by the government no one will invest a dime.
I can understand how the small minds cannot understand the rather esoteric issues regarding intellectual property, but outright capital investment such as this is a no brainer. There are currently no high speed connections to houses. Yes, some smart people have found ways to use the phone and cable networks installed 20-30 years ago to provide faster than modem speed, but true synchronous high speed internet access is out of the reach of all but the most wealthy.
Someone needs to build a high speed network for the regular joe sixpack. Who is going to do it? Right now, NOBODY. You can complain about monopolies all you want, but you are not going to find anyone, anywhere who will invest a dime in infrastructure when he will not own it in the end.
Hypothetical: Lets say you buy your dream car and it costs you $300 a month. What if the government came along and told you that unless you want to go to JAIL, you will give your brand new car to your neighbor for six months a year and you cannot charge him more than $250 a month to use it. The government doesn't care that you will lose $50 a month. The government says that because your neighbor can't afford $300, this is only fair.
Does this sound reasonable? I think not.
This ruling is a victory for the Americans everywhere. The iron grip of Washington is losing its grasp on the throats of innovation.
In defense of OS/2, while Windows performance was often slow this was more perception as you had to wait for the VM to start, windows to start, then your app. Once loaded, applications were sometimes faster than in native Windows 3.1...
Many DOS games ran much better than in native DOS as well. Of course, always having 640K of main memory was always killer. And being able to run good old Oblivion/2 in the background while I was playing X-Wing... Those were the days.
I do acknowledge however there is a big difference between emulating an operating system and emulating a whole other processor. I would tend to think that is not going on however, as the performance would just suck, especially on something like an ARM.
Are you suggesting that in Nevada, the state of gambling, prostitution and all the other evil vices of pure capitalism, is going to impose under penalty of law and under threat of force that no one shall sell a CD for less than a minimum price?
Of course, price ceilings are routinely used to restrict markets (IE rent control in NYC).. in fact if the New York legislature was promoting this I would not be surprised.
But Nevada? Outside of government controlled monopolies and import tariffs is anyone else familiar with government imposed price floors?
It is of course quite amusing that the only way to enslave drug companies and their employees to work for free is by in fact using guns or other forms of deadly persuasion.
The Marxist here can decry the drug companies TODAY for not giving away the fruits of their labor for free. He can equate inaction with murder.
But what happens when drug companies refuse to develop drugs because these same marxists constantly steal them?
They have no choice but to persuade their citizenry not with money, but violence.
So, you won't develop that drug for $4.75 an hour? fine, do it or you go to the slave labor camps!
Suggesting Capitalists are murderers! nothing could be more amusing. Of course, it is not amusing to the 100 million who have died in the last century at the hands of Marxists and their murderous toys.
But who gives a fuck about them?
What is this communist tripe?
There is no conspiracy. Anyone who wants any drug can get one. AZT, Aspirin, Heroin, you name it. You can get it anywhere. The question is, are you able to pay for it. I don't know anyone who sells drugs, whether the street dealer, Walgreens, or Bayer that will sell their drugs for free.
Treatment may be expensive because of the pharmaceutical companies, but WITHOUT those very same companies you deplore these drugs would not even exist.
Are you so foolish to think drug companies should develop drugs for free?? Who would by the equipment? Who would pay the researchers? You?
Of course, your solution would be to mug every citizen in this country through taxation for the benefit of some barbarians in a foreign country.
Instead of crying about human life and wanting to steal from me, why don't lazy buffoons like yourself go out and contribute something to society? Why don't YOU design that next aids vaccine and give it away for free.