They were just confused that the ease in which we can accomplish four 1968 work hours would eliminate us from having to do an additional four hours of additional work.
While I don't have hard numbers handy to back it up, I'll venture to state that I darn well could work and live at my current standard of living (very nice, IMO) while working four hours per day...
... if I wasn't shouldering around a 50% tax burden. Thank you, US government, for screwing up the future. (~35% fed tax/medicare-which-I'll-never-use/social-so-called-security, ~8% state sales tax, property taxes (even for renters), state income taxes as applicable, gas and other comsumption taxes, etc.)
Funny, Paul's site says nothing to indicate that. To the contrary, he has encouraged his supporters to continue winning delegates for the national convention. Granted, the only way he can win is pulling an upset at the national convention; such things are not entirely unheard of, and McCain is so unpopular...
Distillation is the method which produces the purest drinking water possible, since it involves boiling the water, then recondensing the steam back to water.
The downsides to distillation is that it is expensive in terms of energy, and the crap left behind after distilling lots of water can be difficult to clean out of your distillation vessel.
If you're going to include a charcoal filter, I'd put it before the distiller so you'd have a little less crap to eventually scrape out of your boiling vessel.
A new car is a necessity? Granted, $800 is a lot of cash, but that was the cost of my first car, and it lasted a good eight years with a few thousand dollars in repair/replacement costs spread out over that period. No, a new car is not a necessity.
A house is a necessity? Yes, it does bring tears of sorrow to my eyes to see all the money I've spent on rent falling down that bottomless rat hole, but does that matter necessitate decades of debt? Absolutely not!
Is a college education required for life, for a future, for happiness? I can guarantee that it is not, for I have no degrees to my name (not even from a high school), and am doing quite well financially even in this time of skyrocketing costs of living, etc. (Neither did I come from a rich family, nor have any other advantage other than simply finding something I like to do and getting someone to pay me for doing just that. Nor is my line of work illegal, abnormal, etc.)
When I lived somewhere where there were no jobs which I could support just myself without having to work multiples of the same, I found a way to leave and move to greener pastures.
My situation is certainly not the same as everyone elses', but neither does that mean that such luxuries mentioned above automatically become requirements for life!
You may get laid off because some idiots signed mortgages they were never able to afford. Should the government have taken action, restricting their freedoms to prevent them from screwing you over? It's a tough question.
Absolutely not! Dig a little deeper: why are most people instantly in financial trouble if they lose a job? Usually because they are living hand-to-mouth at best, or are underwater and merely piling up debt. Disruption of income would then mean instant problems.
Whatever happened to such things as saving, putting money away for a rainy day or hard times? Granted, it isn't always the easiest thing to do, but then again, no one forces debt upon "consumers" in the first place!
Actions have consequences. True Americans in the traditional sense will take responsibility for all their choices.
For those stuck on Windows, dump Acrobat and use Foxit's PDF software.
I finally stopped the "install new Adobe, spend minutes ripping out tons of useless, bloated plugins and turning off stupid options" routine after that last PDF vuln that Adobe's crap automatically trashed your machine over, but Foxit at least had the good sense to ask 'trash machine? y/n'.
The Core Media Player had (what I considered to be) serious flaws in its support of certain older operating systems (or perhaps just in general), and their customer service in that regard was less than stellar. As a paying customer (I guess I still am, since I'd already bought the thing), I figured that VLC's flaws were more bearable at the time.
Much like how Firefox's (Phoenix's?) were more bearable than Opera's, circa version five.
It's a prop which I use to easily illustrate the horrific decline of the US dollar. A '64 silver Kennedy half-dollar is the companion piece, and since it is more recognizable, is easier to get people thinking about inherantly valuble money versus fiat currency.
Since the spot prices for metals change fairly often, my numbers aren't always exactly correct, but the basics goes as follows: a '64 half dollar has a face value of fifty cents, and contains roughly 0.35 ounces of silver. When silver is around $14 an ounce, a '64 half-dollar contains roughly five dollars' worth of silver... which is a decline of more than 90% of the value of the dollar since '64.
The half-eagle was an extravagant way to drive the point home: face value of five bucks, about 0.26 ounces of gold, contains roughly two hundred bucks' worth of gold, illustrating a total devaluation of the dollar since around 1913 of about ninty-eight percent.
It's a pretty disgusting situation, but those shiny old coins seem to help folks get interested enough for the short time it takes to explain the scam we're all on the losing side of.
Also note what the cop initially said about the kid's camera: "I really don't care about your camera system cause I'm about ready to tow your car. Then we can tear them all apart..." O.o
The official police dashcam video and audio "was lost", according to the cops. Hmmmmm.
Neither do I have information on when 'In God We Trust' was first added to US currency or coinage - I merely pointed out that the motto certainly was put on some coins before 1956, which was contrary to the statement you'd made in the post I'd first replied to.
My pointing out that fact does not support nor decry the use of the motto.
"In God We Trust" was put on US coins and currency in 1956 with the passage of an Act of Congress. Prior to this E Pluribus Unum, meaning "out of many, (is) one," was used.
Sorry, but your statement is not correct. I'm looking directly at a 1909 gold half-eagle and on the reverse side "IN GOD WE TRUST" is clearly stamped, with the letters G-O-D in a slightly larger typeface than the rest. "E PLURIBUS UNUM" is also stamped on the reverse, for reference.
So, "In God We Trust" has been on US coins since at least 1908, when the motto was added to the half-eagle.
More than likely, you're thinking of Hiibel vs Nevada; Mr. Hiibel was not driving a vehicle at the time and refused to produce a driver's license. He was arrested. The supreme court essentially determined that a person can state their name to fulfill the "identification" requirement, which is still an absolute atrocity... but does NOT require showing any form of papers.
... in my opinion, is to be as bored as possible. Everything which is done on a regular basis should be as automated as possible, and as much effort and resources thrown at avoiding potential problems as the finances and customers will allow (data backups, spare or redundant equipment, etc.).
Much of a "good" sysadmin's time should be spent doing regular, but occasional spot checks on the automation (which can also be greatly automated) to ensure everything is running as smoothly as possible.
Obviously, not all problems can be avoided, especially hardware failures, but if everything else is in place, even recovering a dead, but critical server can be fairly painless.
Firstly, yes, you are correct in that physical books do command their price in large part because of the reality of the costs associated with their dead-tree physical form. (For the record, I'm not an artist - I punch a clock for my pay.)
That said, though, *especially* in the realm of entertainment (music, most books I read), the information in the medium did not appear via magic - someone put at least some effort into organizing the information into a form he/she thought some would find worth a certain cost. As I believe in rewarding someone for the fruits of their labor, I have no problem with an author having at least a limited legal monopoly over the distribution of the product of their own works. Seven years of protection upon creation with the option of one seven-year extension seems reasonable to me. As much as I loathe DRM - as you say, begging permission to use what I've already paid for - it should be the creator's choice to control the terms for their own works' distribution for a limited time. If no one buys the foolishly-packaged work, then perhaps the creator will take that into consideration in the future. If not, well, there's no law against being stupid.
When it comes to a "free" medium, it should still be the creator's choice, for a limited time, to choose how to dictate pricing. A "free" medium could mean more profit for the creator, or could entice more people to pay for the assembled compilation, rather than wait for up to fourteen years.
Therefore, if you were to write a book and offer it for sale in one of many forms, including electronically, I firmly believe that you, as a creator/organizer, should have the option of asking whatever price you wish for any works derived from your offering (to include giving your work away). I, as a customer, would then have the option of meeting your price, negotiating another, or waiting until you, as the author, have had a reasonable window in which to make money off your own work(s)... and then when seven or fourteen years have passed, I then have a new option of finding your information from other sources, to include those who will provide me the information you created at no charge to me.
The problem isn't necessarily that artists are greedy, that big corporations abuse what power they have, etc. The primary problem in the USA seems to be the imbalance between the law, with its essentially perpetual copyright protection, versus the useful life of the created work to the actual creator/person AND in the interest of stimulating more such potentially useful works by limiting said protection in an effort to enrich our culture as a whole.
Copyright infringement is not theft, but (perpetual copyright aside) neither is it moral.
I write a piece of code that helps my employer do something, I get paid for the amount of time I worked on it.... Artists should definitely get paid when they perform their popular song, which is real work, paid for at the time of service. Should artists get paid forever for the same 6 hours of work in the recording studio?
... and authors should only be paid for the time they are actually writing, researching, or otherwise working on a book, not for each copy they sell.
Freedom may not be entirely boolean, but what we have here in "the land of the free" is certainly heavily weighted towards the negative. The USA may be one of the *most* free countries on the planet today, but that still doesn't speak well of the state of freedom in general.
This issue of property tax is central to the whole freedom issue, aside from self-ownership: even if you own yourself, where the heck are you going to live, store your goods, ply your trade, raise your family, if you can't own anything else (because even though you own yourself, you do not own any place to exist).
Anyone who believes what they see on TV should read what they can about the above - then question why they haven't heard a *peep* about it from the mainstream media, especially in light of the utter fiasco which was the Duke Lacrosse false rape accusation garbage.
Talk about a suppressed story, and this one being without wild assumptions or other leaps to conclusions, unlike the majority of the ones listed on the "official" website.
I agree - the characters in FFVI had so much more emotion and backstory and character than in FFVII, that I can still remember all the characters from FFVI but can't really remember any beyond the Big Three (Aeris, Cloud, and Sephiroth) from FFVII. And the only reason anyone remembers the Big Three is because the Sephiweenies never stop talking about them.
What was Cloud's character? He was a characterless ass. Sephiroth never made any sense (first he was good, then he turned bad because?). And Aeris was essentially the weak little girl, up until - actually, wait. She died, because she was the weak little girl.
Contrast with FFVI. Terra starts off playing weak little girl roll
... IT'S A TRAP! A long time ago, I was reading a little about FFVII when some jackass posted a note saying that Aeris *died* before I'd gotten to that section of the game - it was as if the poster had given Aeris cancer!
Now you are trying to do the same damn thing with Terra! Fool me once, shame on me - fool me twice...... can't... can't get fooled again! *runs off to play FFVI*
Not so much guns, although there is no better tool for the job, hence the reason they are known as "the great equalizer". Have fun with your cameras! Smile! Oh, and pick up that trash you just dropped!
Cameras do not stop the three 'upstanding young men' in the subway. Nothing is gained by having it recorded on camera, but much is lost.
On the flip side, here in the US of A, the three assailants would have a very good chance of making their way post-haste to the emergency room with a set of shiney new holes in them, while my molars stay right where I last put them. See, we believe in having SELF defense here, no need for helpless, useless cameras.
The major problem with your point of view is that it completely overlooks the fact that people are deterred from a physical threat or physical presence with the force of the former. A camera can do nothing other than make noises.
Then, make a list of the laws you break every day:
speeding
decency laws (cursing)
"hate" crimes (flipping someone of a minority race the bird)
sex crimes (performing anything other than 'missionary' on your partner)
heatlh crimes (NYC's trans-fat ban)
smoking too close to some doors
etc.
... now, those are all on tape. Good luck in your wonderful thought-crime-free country. How're those bobbies doing at keeping the yobs in line?
Additionally, the police cannot protect everyone, cameras or no - legally, nor physically. It is impossible. Play the odds: you win, you win for now. You lose, you become a stastistic.
And how do cameras actually prevent any of those things you mentioned?
The right to walk the streets without fear of such acts is a more important and significant one.
Curious - since when did you have the right to be free of any of your fears? If you insist on pressing the point, what of my fear of an overbearing nanny state - don't I have the right to be free of that? On a side note, your fear sounds like a personal problem. Related: well, they DID ban most all handguns in the UK...
Slashdot Mirror
http://noscript.net
:)
No more!
While I don't have hard numbers handy to back it up, I'll venture to state that I darn well could work and live at my current standard of living (very nice, IMO) while working four hours per day...
Funny, Paul's site says nothing to indicate that. To the contrary, he has encouraged his supporters to continue winning delegates for the national convention. Granted, the only way he can win is pulling an upset at the national convention; such things are not entirely unheard of, and McCain is so unpopular...
Distillation is the method which produces the purest drinking water possible, since it involves boiling the water, then recondensing the steam back to water.
The downsides to distillation is that it is expensive in terms of energy, and the crap left behind after distilling lots of water can be difficult to clean out of your distillation vessel.
If you're going to include a charcoal filter, I'd put it before the distiller so you'd have a little less crap to eventually scrape out of your boiling vessel.
A new car is a necessity? Granted, $800 is a lot of cash, but that was the cost of my first car, and it lasted a good eight years with a few thousand dollars in repair/replacement costs spread out over that period. No, a new car is not a necessity.
A house is a necessity? Yes, it does bring tears of sorrow to my eyes to see all the money I've spent on rent falling down that bottomless rat hole, but does that matter necessitate decades of debt? Absolutely not!
Is a college education required for life, for a future, for happiness? I can guarantee that it is not, for I have no degrees to my name (not even from a high school), and am doing quite well financially even in this time of skyrocketing costs of living, etc. (Neither did I come from a rich family, nor have any other advantage other than simply finding something I like to do and getting someone to pay me for doing just that. Nor is my line of work illegal, abnormal, etc.)
When I lived somewhere where there were no jobs which I could support just myself without having to work multiples of the same, I found a way to leave and move to greener pastures.
My situation is certainly not the same as everyone elses', but neither does that mean that such luxuries mentioned above automatically become requirements for life!
Absolutely not! Dig a little deeper: why are most people instantly in financial trouble if they lose a job? Usually because they are living hand-to-mouth at best, or are underwater and merely piling up debt. Disruption of income would then mean instant problems.
Whatever happened to such things as saving, putting money away for a rainy day or hard times? Granted, it isn't always the easiest thing to do, but then again, no one forces debt upon "consumers" in the first place!
Actions have consequences. True Americans in the traditional sense will take responsibility for all their choices.
For those stuck on Windows, dump Acrobat and use Foxit's PDF software.
I finally stopped the "install new Adobe, spend minutes ripping out tons of useless, bloated plugins and turning off stupid options" routine after that last PDF vuln that Adobe's crap automatically trashed your machine over, but Foxit at least had the good sense to ask 'trash machine? y/n'.
The Core Media Player had (what I considered to be) serious flaws in its support of certain older operating systems (or perhaps just in general), and their customer service in that regard was less than stellar. As a paying customer (I guess I still am, since I'd already bought the thing), I figured that VLC's flaws were more bearable at the time.
:)
Much like how Firefox's (Phoenix's?) were more bearable than Opera's, circa version five.
CCCP, OTOH, is quite, quite nice.
It's a prop which I use to easily illustrate the horrific decline of the US dollar. A '64 silver Kennedy half-dollar is the companion piece, and since it is more recognizable, is easier to get people thinking about inherantly valuble money versus fiat currency.
Since the spot prices for metals change fairly often, my numbers aren't always exactly correct, but the basics goes as follows: a '64 half dollar has a face value of fifty cents, and contains roughly 0.35 ounces of silver. When silver is around $14 an ounce, a '64 half-dollar contains roughly five dollars' worth of silver... which is a decline of more than 90% of the value of the dollar since '64.
The half-eagle was an extravagant way to drive the point home: face value of five bucks, about 0.26 ounces of gold, contains roughly two hundred bucks' worth of gold, illustrating a total devaluation of the dollar since around 1913 of about ninty-eight percent.
It's a pretty disgusting situation, but those shiny old coins seem to help folks get interested enough for the short time it takes to explain the scam we're all on the losing side of.
I also found the transcript of that encounter very handy.
Also note what the cop initially said about the kid's camera: "I really don't care about your camera system cause I'm about ready to tow your car. Then we can tear them all apart..." O.o
The official police dashcam video and audio "was lost", according to the cops. Hmmmmm.
Neither do I have information on when 'In God We Trust' was first added to US currency or coinage - I merely pointed out that the motto certainly was put on some coins before 1956, which was contrary to the statement you'd made in the post I'd first replied to.
My pointing out that fact does not support nor decry the use of the motto.
Sorry, but your statement is not correct. I'm looking directly at a 1909 gold half-eagle and on the reverse side "IN GOD WE TRUST" is clearly stamped, with the letters G-O-D in a slightly larger typeface than the rest. "E PLURIBUS UNUM" is also stamped on the reverse, for reference.
So, "In God We Trust" has been on US coins since at least 1908, when the motto was added to the half-eagle.
Copulating nincompoops for Ron Paul!
:)
* Opposes federal funding for stem cell research
I.e., not a ban, just no money. Since Ron Paul also would like to abolish the IRS, this makes sense, no?
* Pro-tax cuts, nearly all of which go to the rich
Pro-no-IRS. How much would a 100% tax cut affect the poor?
* Anti-U.N.
From a pragmatic standpoint, the US pays for what percentage of the UN budget and gets how much say in return?
* Favors cutting gas taxes (go figure)
Favors cutting all taxes.
* Against corporate accountability
You're going to have to expound upon that one.
* Glorifies Ronald Reagan
No comment.
* Supports corporate efforts to ship US jobs to China
Is this a slam on the free market? If not, more details needed.
* Attacks gun control and D.C. self-rule
"D.C. self rule" trumps the Constitution, specifically Amendment #2? News to me...
* Anti-union
Well, we've been saying he's pretty sharp for an old guy.
* Opposes hate crime legislation
Supports rule of law, versus thoughtcrime.
* Supports "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
In other words, if not making passes at the CO, a homosexual private doesn't have much to worry about.
* Opposes allowing same-sex partners to adopt
Because grand societal experiments involving innocent babies backed up with the force of federal law is such a good idea...
* Voted to allow bigoted Alabama judge to post Ten Commandments in courtroom
Nevermind US history...
* Co-sponsored Constitutional amendment pushing coerced prayer in public schools
Because enforced atheism is the only true religion.
* Opposes restoring the Pledge of Allegiance to the version without "Under God"
What does he think about "In God We Trust"?
* And so on and so forth.
Sounds like the right man for the job!
More than likely, you're thinking of Hiibel vs Nevada; Mr. Hiibel was not driving a vehicle at the time and refused to produce a driver's license. He was arrested. The supreme court essentially determined that a person can state their name to fulfill the "identification" requirement, which is still an absolute atrocity... but does NOT require showing any form of papers.
... in my opinion, is to be as bored as possible. Everything which is done on a regular basis should be as automated as possible, and as much effort and resources thrown at avoiding potential problems as the finances and customers will allow (data backups, spare or redundant equipment, etc.).
Much of a "good" sysadmin's time should be spent doing regular, but occasional spot checks on the automation (which can also be greatly automated) to ensure everything is running as smoothly as possible.
Obviously, not all problems can be avoided, especially hardware failures, but if everything else is in place, even recovering a dead, but critical server can be fairly painless.
Firstly, yes, you are correct in that physical books do command their price in large part because of the reality of the costs associated with their dead-tree physical form. (For the record, I'm not an artist - I punch a clock for my pay.)
That said, though, *especially* in the realm of entertainment (music, most books I read), the information in the medium did not appear via magic - someone put at least some effort into organizing the information into a form he/she thought some would find worth a certain cost. As I believe in rewarding someone for the fruits of their labor, I have no problem with an author having at least a limited legal monopoly over the distribution of the product of their own works. Seven years of protection upon creation with the option of one seven-year extension seems reasonable to me.
As much as I loathe DRM - as you say, begging permission to use what I've already paid for - it should be the creator's choice to control the terms for their own works' distribution for a limited time. If no one buys the foolishly-packaged work, then perhaps the creator will take that into consideration in the future. If not, well, there's no law against being stupid.
When it comes to a "free" medium, it should still be the creator's choice, for a limited time, to choose how to dictate pricing. A "free" medium could mean more profit for the creator, or could entice more people to pay for the assembled compilation, rather than wait for up to fourteen years.
Therefore, if you were to write a book and offer it for sale in one of many forms, including electronically, I firmly believe that you, as a creator/organizer, should have the option of asking whatever price you wish for any works derived from your offering (to include giving your work away). I, as a customer, would then have the option of meeting your price, negotiating another, or waiting until you, as the author, have had a reasonable window in which to make money off your own work(s)... and then when seven or fourteen years have passed, I then have a new option of finding your information from other sources, to include those who will provide me the information you created at no charge to me.
The problem isn't necessarily that artists are greedy, that big corporations abuse what power they have, etc. The primary problem in the USA seems to be the imbalance between the law, with its essentially perpetual copyright protection, versus the useful life of the created work to the actual creator/person AND in the interest of stimulating more such potentially useful works by limiting said protection in an effort to enrich our culture as a whole.
Copyright infringement is not theft, but (perpetual copyright aside) neither is it moral.
Yes, do be careful not to step in the sarcasm.
Freedom may not be entirely boolean, but what we have here in "the land of the free" is certainly heavily weighted towards the negative. The USA may be one of the *most* free countries on the planet today, but that still doesn't speak well of the state of freedom in general.
This issue of property tax is central to the whole freedom issue, aside from self-ownership: even if you own yourself, where the heck are you going to live, store your goods, ply your trade, raise your family, if you can't own anything else (because even though you own yourself, you do not own any place to exist).
http://www.crimelibrary.com/news/original/0507/030 1_channon_christian.html - murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom (remove slashdot-inserted space in visible URI).
Anyone who believes what they see on TV should read what they can about the above - then question why they haven't heard a *peep* about it from the mainstream media, especially in light of the utter fiasco which was the Duke Lacrosse false rape accusation garbage.
Talk about a suppressed story, and this one being without wild assumptions or other leaps to conclusions, unlike the majority of the ones listed on the "official" website.
Now you are trying to do the same damn thing with Terra! Fool me once, shame on me - fool me twice...
Not so much guns, although there is no better tool for the job, hence the reason they are known as "the great equalizer". Have fun with your cameras! Smile! Oh, and pick up that trash you just dropped!
Cameras do not stop the three 'upstanding young men' in the subway. Nothing is gained by having it recorded on camera, but much is lost.
On the flip side, here in the US of A, the three assailants would have a very good chance of making their way post-haste to the emergency room with a set of shiney new holes in them, while my molars stay right where I last put them. See, we believe in having SELF defense here, no need for helpless, useless cameras.
The major problem with your point of view is that it completely overlooks the fact that people are deterred from a physical threat or physical presence with the force of the former. A camera can do nothing other than make noises.
... now, those are all on tape. Good luck in your wonderful thought-crime-free country. How're those bobbies doing at keeping the yobs in line?
Then, make a list of the laws you break every day:
speeding
decency laws (cursing)
"hate" crimes (flipping someone of a minority race the bird)
sex crimes (performing anything other than 'missionary' on your partner)
heatlh crimes (NYC's trans-fat ban)
smoking too close to some doors
etc.
Additionally, the police cannot protect everyone, cameras or no - legally, nor physically. It is impossible. Play the odds: you win, you win for now. You lose, you become a stastistic.
Curious - since when did you have the right to be free of any of your fears? If you insist on pressing the point, what of my fear of an overbearing nanny state - don't I have the right to be free of that? On a side note, your fear sounds like a personal problem. Related: well, they DID ban most all handguns in the UK...
TPM 1.2
:P
1.2: now with 50% more potentially restrictive evil!