I for one welcome our miniscule streaky overlords.
Seriously though, this is pretty dumb, it appears to be nothing but a camera problem, either that or it miraculouly doesn't effect ANYTHING around it. I had a camera once that did nothing but leave little smear shapes around things, wasn't aliens or meteors, it was a shit camera.
Quickly, we need an aging action hero! Australia! MEL GIBSON TO THE RESCUE!
Re:Somone get these ppl some free software!
on
Given Up to Spyware?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
My mother thought the same thing. I didn't even deem to answer her though. I know if I told her that some people just enjoy the work, or do it to hone skills, or for common good, she would just give me a funny look. Perhaps we can compair it to art? Fine art is the art that you don't make for people, but for yourself, as compaired to kische, which is made for the people and your profit...
Perhaps I should call my mom, and tell her either I rationalize free software, or she installs FF... Hmmmm....
And then there is the point where you realize that by helping them, your not. Like the silly old cliche "Give a man a fish, he has supper; Teach a man to fish, and he... er... knows how to fish." Cleaning off everyones computers once a month or so is really alturistic and all, but it really is futile. Sure, install FF, and hey sit around wondering what the silly red thing is doing to the earth, but they won't click it, no matter what you tell them.
I finally had to install Netscape for my father, because he would have nothing to do with FF because some radio people said that FF is geek chic, and in his mind that meant complicated. But Netscape has name-recognition (albeit from 10 years ago). (And on my side, it is based on Moz, so I know it won't kill his sys, only slow it down further)
Also, there comes a point in every geeks life, where we have to say enough is enough. I'm sick of doing the routine cleaning, and having some moron stand behind me either asking what I'm doing, and ignoring me, or telling me not to delete that little casino app. They ask for help, but take no advice. The only people I will help now are the people willing to LISTEN to me, and not just smile at my work, and come back a week later.
But in your latter solution, you enter a game of extreme government control again, and actually, perhaps, a degree of favoritism above what exists now.
Is there any decent (and relatively unbiased) book on the libertarian economics?
IMHO, I think that the lack of government sponcership could be a very good thing, depending on trade and such. BUT, I also think that regulation is a necissary evil, along with antimonopoly laws (that work), and a strong unionization of all labor sectors.
Though, in a country with no government involvement with corps, how do they complete with countries with a very stong involvement (like Japan)?
A) your preaching to the choir, since/. and the geek community is a hotbed of libertarianism.
B) Libertarianism isn't a viable opertunity, since it allows corporations to be bigger bastards than they are now, with a complete lack of regulation. And the libertarian embrace of Randian self interest will also lead to a further degradation of morality, and social reponcibility.
Though my co-responder does have a point, the Green Party is a safe alternative to politics as usual, though sadly it is as viable as any of the other choices, being more ideological than practicle.
And you, sir, are what is wrong with America right now. Randian, uber-libraterian, egotistical self-interest. Looking at this ME, IMMEDIATLY, POV is beginning to make me sick. People should look out for the common good of their fellow man, this, I view, will probably be more beneficiant in the long run.
I, for one, view it as a responcibility to care for those less fortunate than me, to try to raise them up to my level, so they can do the same to other unfortunates.
Unless the couple cents that 911 services cost you monthly are seriously hurting your financial position in life, then you have no right to complain.
To be confrontational, I don't drive a car, so therefore I should get my road building and maintence tax back, after all I ride a decent mountain bike. I'm also out of primary and secondary school, therefore I should receive back my portion of property taxes, even if it will make us a more violent and thuggish country in the future. My house is not burning down, therefore I should not pay taxes that go to emergancy services.
This is one reason why I miss religion being common place, is that it breed a sence of common good, and compassion. These are two things we utterly lack now, in America (and it is spreading throughout the West.) All we seem to care about is ourselves aquiring as much money (gadgets!!!) as humanly possible, screw everyone else. This is repugnant. If you do not care about others in you community, then you have no right being a member of it, or receiving any services from it.
Unenlightened self-interest is getting quite old, and judging from the state of the world, it does not work. Any system should be based an minimizing suffering of the whole of the community, and not enhancing the privlege of any individual or group. To try to include some Randian trite into this, is just to put up a smoke screen, hiding nothing but a shallow and petty rational allowing one to be an egotistical bastard, and a drain on the rest of us.
Sorry for ranting, this was not meant to develop into something flame-like. It's just a hot button on me lately.
I too grew up wandering the boonies of Arizona, and most of the real cowboys I have met are really nice people, sure most of them are rough, uncooth, and of lower education. Yes they like to fight. But for the most part they are just working class folk. Most of them, though, are freindly folk, who will help you out if you need it.
The people I can't stand are the ranchers. They are the ones against the enviroment completely, and are completely dominating the southwestern political scene. They also are the ones completely ruining the fragile southwestern ecosystems with their outmoded (and useless) industry.
As for branding cattle, and castrating them, so what? That is their job. People have been doing it for hundreds of years. And if they used a more human method, such as radio tags, then/.ers would start bitching about big broher watched the cows, and tinfoil hamburgers.
Also, don't comfuse cowboys, for SUV driving folk wearing $300 boots, listening to Toby Keith. These aren't cowboys, these are dude-yuppies. Most cowboys are too poor to afford a new midsized truck, much less a new Dodge Ram diesel.
Amen. I just bought my first Mac, and am dreadfully impressed. I own a nice modded PC, dual booting WinXPpro and Suse, very nice, very expensive, very high upkeep. Over the summer I coughed up over $300 on it, first new 160g HD, then new radeon (doom3!), then a new PSU to keep up with it. I was about to buy a new athalon for it, but then it fried. I realized that I'm hemoraging money on shit, so bought a Mac instead. I tell you, I regret my whole childhood of Mac bashing. OS X is better than any OS out there, my computer is actually pretty, without any kludgy modding, I don't have to worry about community support since the Macfolk are VERY freindly, with hardly any 1337ists.
For the first time in my life I own a well designed machine that does EXACTLY what I want it to do, without delving into the registry once a week, and without defragging once a week. I'm too old to be messing with my computer, it should just work.
I also had a little memorex MP3 player, in which I had to fiddle with directories all the time. And now with my iPod, I can just plug it in, and *poof* everything is there. Very nice. I don't have to cull my music collection everytime I leave my house.
I must say that Mac has won my respect. I'd rank OSs with OS X, Linux, DOS 6.11, then Windows of all calibers. Now.
Actually I just bought a mac (or "switched", as the fanatics say), and was SERIOUSLY jonesing for my gaming fix, with nothing but my old PC software. The only games I could find that were dual installs were from Blizzard (Diablo, Warcraft II, 3, and expansions, and the Diablo 2 expansion. No Diablo 2, though, which made me mad.) Meaning my esteem for Blizzard has increased exponencially. I've always though that they were a SOLID company, with the best support, and the highest product standards of any company in existence, but this just added too it. (No, I don't care about people wanting to rip off battlenet).
I would be buying WoW if I wasn't a poor student right now, and if my pocket book wasn't raped by Apple. Don't get me wrong, I like my little Mac, but it was far too steep, even if superior than any other OS choice out there. (let the flaming begin!)
Actually, I left something out, appearently. My parents will need my help. At least 3 of those 6 would have either figured it out for themselves, or have found some other poor geek do it for them.
That, and the fact that the school STRONGLY reccomends the instalation of it, and gets their wandering techs to install it at EVERY opertunity (they tried giving my friend 1.0 final, when he had PR installed, and was perfectly happy, I had to intercede).
This is the most momentum of any geeky trends hitting the mainstream that I have ever seen. Lay people want it without my insistance, or even telling them about it, hey just need assistance.
I think that FF has a good chance of becomeing the first open software to pick up the mainstream on its own.
That really isn't true, I know that I've gotten at least six people to switch over in the course of this semester, and thats not counting the people who switched of their own violition. Our school makes it availible in all the computer labs (some of them don't even have IE on the desktops), and their tech CD strongly recomends that you install it.
Both of my parents heard the buzz and PR off the internet, and are asking me to install it over thanksgiving for them.
Firefox is spreading because of articles like this, and because of pure WOM.
i think the average consumer doesn't actually care about the whole DRM encumbered music thing, being that the average consumer uses iTMS. I personally, as a geek, have nothing at all against iTMS and its DRM, and generally buy at least two tracks a week from them.
Though, I do agree that the iPod is way too expensive, though mine came out to be $69 since I bought a laptop with it. But the lap top also costed a k, so I dbout that that is a viable option for the average customer. I must say, though, that the iPod is one of my best purchases, I love that little thing. I had some little Memorex flash based MP3 player, and hated the fact that it took an hour or so to actually pick my music for the next day, and the fact that there was no orginization for it. I finally just gave up on the thing.
MMMMmmm... Soma. Soma always seemed like a nicer, happier, alternative to Prozac. And Prozac, or its ilk, doesn't do much unless you actually have a seratonin imbalance, so it wouldn't work on the populance at large.
I thought that reality television is the Soma of the modern age. Though commercials can be seen as a form of brain control, being that it seems that our whole society is geared around raising a nice complacent populance, who will watch and be quickly swayed by thier cheesy psychosocial gimicks.
I risk ranting, and have lost my ability to mod. Drat.
As stated, that is really silly. I decided to boycott EA a long time ago, for their crap support, and shoddy products that may or may not work, and have never even considered buying ANY game made or distributed by them. I think that a boycott should be full hearted, not some oppurtunistic "stick it to 'em" thing. Its like boycotting walmart, but then asking your freinds to pick up things there for you.
Appearently you didn't really want to boycott Bliz either, being that you use battlenet, increasing their usage stats. And by playing WarcraftIII, you admit the fact that they have a desirable product, that is worth playing.
Though, as an aside, I support Blizzard, and buy their games religiously. They are one of a dying breed of companies that produce good, high quality, games. Though I will not be buying Ghost to protest console exclutivity.
To be an ass; Do I really care about Best Buys employees or investors? No. I care about me, the customer, and that is it. I should get the price cut, even if it means that investors get less, and god knows that BB would never give a benefit to an employee unless at gun point
All that matters to me is getting the best deal, for the lowest price. And if they inconvience anyone, then they should recomp with lower prices.
Now some rabid-capitalist will tell me what is good for the investors is good for all. And I will tell them that they are a tool.
Please read the post. I often make returns, innocently, with no decision to defraud the company. Also, I often only buy things on sale, especially at technosuperstores where the price is boosted. Hence their countermeasures to remove the bottom "20%" will hurt me, make me go through more hastle when returning an item.
I generally only shop online now, newegg and amazon, but sometimes I want my purchase NOW, and not whenever it ships to me. I know, I could do one day, but then that would destroy what cost benefit there is.
DCs cost money by doing things like this. And stopping them would save the company money. And this leaves only the one question that actually matters to anyone, will we (the good, saintly, customers) actually see any of this money?
Probably not.
So, for BB to save money, some innocent customers get to suffer a bit, some bad customers get to keep what they rightfully purchased, and some CEO gets a few extra bucks. There seems to be a problem somewhere.
I've noticed that anytime someone makes something more cost-effective (self checkout, for example.) The customer never benefits from the extra hardship.
How many innocent people will suffer? Sometimes I will return an item several times for exchanges, not because of any schemeing personal gain, but because the product isn't exactly what I want, I had second thoughts, I really didn't need it, etc... And yes, I do buy most of what I want when it is on sale, and I do not buy anything but what I want. Terrible person, I.
Woohoo, we're capitalized now! and one-man experts on what the common parliance of rhetorical gimmics should be as well. In rhetoric it is "begging the question", which may not be the most appropriate name, but the one it goes by, no matter what you and the Philosopher think. We can say, though, that there is a difference between the PHRASE and the FALLACY, and that there is no relation between them.
The rest of the world has not studied rhetoric, appearently, and most of the rest of the world does not speak english. And I doubt that the rest of the world confused a rhetorical device for a common turn of speech.
Not quite true, my old napster mp3s have completely made way for AAC, both from iTMS and from me reripping my CDs for a higher quality but smaller file size. The few mp3 I've actually kept from the napster days have all been converted to AAC as well.
I think that, if this trend is indeed real, and if it continues, then a lot of companies will start only handleing the predominant format.
Its crap not in the whole sense, but in the sense that its not going to be some great magnum opus, its going to be painfully amateur, and utterly unedited. All of them though, are going to be excrutiatingly creative, which is more important. Its like saying children shouldn't draw, because we know that they are going to cough up utter shite. Sure right now we get crap, but perhaps some day down the road we get Picasso, and either way their motor skills get better, their brains grow in complexity, and are better people for it.
Same thing about NaNoWriMo, we get a ton of adults to try their damnest to cough of something decent in an insanely short period of time, and flext their creativity more than most have ever wanted, and something good comes out of it. Creativity is the at least part of the solution of most of the worlds current problems. Followed by a healthy dose of humor and apathy. In the end all of the worlds silly little problems pale before humor, being that all that matters in our individual happiness, and humor is the key to that. Let the worlds problems sort themselves out for a month, I want to purge my head of political fantasy, and create something that matters at least to me on a subjective level.
Its like giving birth to some hideously mishapen mutant child! Ugh... In the end though, your not pouring your heart into the creartion of crap, your pouring into creation, which is something that most of us don't ever get to experience. ASnd this isn't short term thinking, I've been planning my story for a month, and probably will continue working on it until the next NaNoWriMo, its just the forcing it out that is short term.
I participated in this last year, and am gladly doing it again this year. Your comment is silly you know, how does it promote short term thinking, and especially consumerism? The goal is to stop procrastinating and start writing, not to try to sell your hackwork. If you read the website you'd notice that the organizers know full well that 90% of what is going to be written is absolute crap. Hell, what i wrote last year was also crap, I'm proud of it, but it still is crap. I'm proud of it because I put so much damn work into it, its the most I've ever written just for the joy of writing.
You, my freind, are way to serious. Learn to have fun, do something pointless. Fuck purpose, I want random activity that has nothing to do with the so-called real world.
The "in the privacy of your own home" argument doesn't hold as much water as you would like. Being that there may be negative social consiquences to viewing porn (demeanment of women, inflating abnormal urges, etc). Not all things that do not directly effect another do not have social consiquences. Also, being that China is worried about the morality of their people, it makes perfect sense to try to ban pornography, being that it does degrade morality, making women into mere sex symbols, especially if widespread enough.
Now, I do not agree with Chinas actions, I just understand them. Being that they are a "managed" country, unlike what the U.S. aspires to, they have every right to promote the public good in ways such as these.
But I am sick of the view that I have the right to do anything I want as long as it does not kill or maim someone. I think that the government has the right to require seat belts, being that it increases the public health/good, when the public are too stupid, or too apathetic to do it themselves. I think government is here for the good of society, and not for the good of the individual, and the good of society includes its (as populariliy accepted) moral character. Everything you do has some social consiquence down the road, and thus most of it is social buisness. It comes down to weighing the harm to society, against what good it causes the individual. Too bad this is a sticky measurment, since the larger consiquences of our actions are not immediatly appearent most of the time.
Slashdot Mirror
I for one welcome our miniscule streaky overlords.
Seriously though, this is pretty dumb, it appears to be nothing but a camera problem, either that or it miraculouly doesn't effect ANYTHING around it. I had a camera once that did nothing but leave little smear shapes around things, wasn't aliens or meteors, it was a shit camera.
Quickly, we need an aging action hero!
Australia!
MEL GIBSON TO THE RESCUE!
My mother thought the same thing. I didn't even deem to answer her though. I know if I told her that some people just enjoy the work, or do it to hone skills, or for common good, she would just give me a funny look. Perhaps we can compair it to art? Fine art is the art that you don't make for people, but for yourself, as compaired to kische, which is made for the people and your profit...
Perhaps I should call my mom, and tell her either I rationalize free software, or she installs FF... Hmmmm....
And then there is the point where you realize that by helping them, your not. Like the silly old cliche "Give a man a fish, he has supper; Teach a man to fish, and he... er... knows how to fish." Cleaning off everyones computers once a month or so is really alturistic and all, but it really is futile. Sure, install FF, and hey sit around wondering what the silly red thing is doing to the earth, but they won't click it, no matter what you tell them.
I finally had to install Netscape for my father, because he would have nothing to do with FF because some radio people said that FF is geek chic, and in his mind that meant complicated. But Netscape has name-recognition (albeit from 10 years ago). (And on my side, it is based on Moz, so I know it won't kill his sys, only slow it down further)
Also, there comes a point in every geeks life, where we have to say enough is enough. I'm sick of doing the routine cleaning, and having some moron stand behind me either asking what I'm doing, and ignoring me, or telling me not to delete that little casino app. They ask for help, but take no advice. The only people I will help now are the people willing to LISTEN to me, and not just smile at my work, and come back a week later.
I just pictured a striped emo kid...
Lord...
But in your latter solution, you enter a game of extreme government control again, and actually, perhaps, a degree of favoritism above what exists now.
Is there any decent (and relatively unbiased) book on the libertarian economics?
IMHO, I think that the lack of government sponcership could be a very good thing, depending on trade and such. BUT, I also think that regulation is a necissary evil, along with antimonopoly laws (that work), and a strong unionization of all labor sectors.
Though, in a country with no government involvement with corps, how do they complete with countries with a very stong involvement (like Japan)?
A) your preaching to the choir, since /. and the geek community is a hotbed of libertarianism.
B) Libertarianism isn't a viable opertunity, since it allows corporations to be bigger bastards than they are now, with a complete lack of regulation. And the libertarian embrace of Randian self interest will also lead to a further degradation of morality, and social reponcibility.
Though my co-responder does have a point, the Green Party is a safe alternative to politics as usual, though sadly it is as viable as any of the other choices, being more ideological than practicle.
And you, sir, are what is wrong with America right now. Randian, uber-libraterian, egotistical self-interest. Looking at this ME, IMMEDIATLY, POV is beginning to make me sick. People should look out for the common good of their fellow man, this, I view, will probably be more beneficiant in the long run.
I, for one, view it as a responcibility to care for those less fortunate than me, to try to raise them up to my level, so they can do the same to other unfortunates.
Unless the couple cents that 911 services cost you monthly are seriously hurting your financial position in life, then you have no right to complain.
To be confrontational, I don't drive a car, so therefore I should get my road building and maintence tax back, after all I ride a decent mountain bike. I'm also out of primary and secondary school, therefore I should receive back my portion of property taxes, even if it will make us a more violent and thuggish country in the future. My house is not burning down, therefore I should not pay taxes that go to emergancy services.
This is one reason why I miss religion being common place, is that it breed a sence of common good, and compassion. These are two things we utterly lack now, in America (and it is spreading throughout the West.) All we seem to care about is ourselves aquiring as much money (gadgets!!!) as humanly possible, screw everyone else. This is repugnant. If you do not care about others in you community, then you have no right being a member of it, or receiving any services from it.
Unenlightened self-interest is getting quite old, and judging from the state of the world, it does not work. Any system should be based an minimizing suffering of the whole of the community, and not enhancing the privlege of any individual or group. To try to include some Randian trite into this, is just to put up a smoke screen, hiding nothing but a shallow and petty rational allowing one to be an egotistical bastard, and a drain on the rest of us.
Sorry for ranting, this was not meant to develop into something flame-like. It's just a hot button on me lately.
I too grew up wandering the boonies of Arizona, and most of the real cowboys I have met are really nice people, sure most of them are rough, uncooth, and of lower education. Yes they like to fight. But for the most part they are just working class folk. Most of them, though, are freindly folk, who will help you out if you need it.
/.ers would start bitching about big broher watched the cows, and tinfoil hamburgers.
The people I can't stand are the ranchers. They are the ones against the enviroment completely, and are completely dominating the southwestern political scene. They also are the ones completely ruining the fragile southwestern ecosystems with their outmoded (and useless) industry.
As for branding cattle, and castrating them, so what? That is their job. People have been doing it for hundreds of years. And if they used a more human method, such as radio tags, then
Also, don't comfuse cowboys, for SUV driving folk wearing $300 boots, listening to Toby Keith. These aren't cowboys, these are dude-yuppies. Most cowboys are too poor to afford a new midsized truck, much less a new Dodge Ram diesel.
Amen. I just bought my first Mac, and am dreadfully impressed. I own a nice modded PC, dual booting WinXPpro and Suse, very nice, very expensive, very high upkeep. Over the summer I coughed up over $300 on it, first new 160g HD, then new radeon (doom3!), then a new PSU to keep up with it. I was about to buy a new athalon for it, but then it fried. I realized that I'm hemoraging money on shit, so bought a Mac instead. I tell you, I regret my whole childhood of Mac bashing. OS X is better than any OS out there, my computer is actually pretty, without any kludgy modding, I don't have to worry about community support since the Macfolk are VERY freindly, with hardly any 1337ists.
For the first time in my life I own a well designed machine that does EXACTLY what I want it to do, without delving into the registry once a week, and without defragging once a week. I'm too old to be messing with my computer, it should just work.
I also had a little memorex MP3 player, in which I had to fiddle with directories all the time. And now with my iPod, I can just plug it in, and *poof* everything is there. Very nice. I don't have to cull my music collection everytime I leave my house.
I must say that Mac has won my respect. I'd rank OSs with OS X, Linux, DOS 6.11, then Windows of all calibers. Now.
Actually I just bought a mac (or "switched", as the fanatics say), and was SERIOUSLY jonesing for my gaming fix, with nothing but my old PC software. The only games I could find that were dual installs were from Blizzard (Diablo, Warcraft II, 3, and expansions, and the Diablo 2 expansion. No Diablo 2, though, which made me mad.) Meaning my esteem for Blizzard has increased exponencially. I've always though that they were a SOLID company, with the best support, and the highest product standards of any company in existence, but this just added too it. (No, I don't care about people wanting to rip off battlenet).
I would be buying WoW if I wasn't a poor student right now, and if my pocket book wasn't raped by Apple. Don't get me wrong, I like my little Mac, but it was far too steep, even if superior than any other OS choice out there. (let the flaming begin!)
Actually, I left something out, appearently. My parents will need my help. At least 3 of those 6 would have either figured it out for themselves, or have found some other poor geek do it for them.
That, and the fact that the school STRONGLY reccomends the instalation of it, and gets their wandering techs to install it at EVERY opertunity (they tried giving my friend 1.0 final, when he had PR installed, and was perfectly happy, I had to intercede).
This is the most momentum of any geeky trends hitting the mainstream that I have ever seen. Lay people want it without my insistance, or even telling them about it, hey just need assistance.
I think that FF has a good chance of becomeing the first open software to pick up the mainstream on its own.
That really isn't true, I know that I've gotten at least six people to switch over in the course of this semester, and thats not counting the people who switched of their own violition. Our school makes it availible in all the computer labs (some of them don't even have IE on the desktops), and their tech CD strongly recomends that you install it.
Both of my parents heard the buzz and PR off the internet, and are asking me to install it over thanksgiving for them.
Firefox is spreading because of articles like this, and because of pure WOM.
i think the average consumer doesn't actually care about the whole DRM encumbered music thing, being that the average consumer uses iTMS. I personally, as a geek, have nothing at all against iTMS and its DRM, and generally buy at least two tracks a week from them.
Though, I do agree that the iPod is way too expensive, though mine came out to be $69 since I bought a laptop with it. But the lap top also costed a k, so I dbout that that is a viable option for the average customer. I must say, though, that the iPod is one of my best purchases, I love that little thing. I had some little Memorex flash based MP3 player, and hated the fact that it took an hour or so to actually pick my music for the next day, and the fact that there was no orginization for it. I finally just gave up on the thing.
MMMMmmm... Soma. Soma always seemed like a nicer, happier, alternative to Prozac. And Prozac, or its ilk, doesn't do much unless you actually have a seratonin imbalance, so it wouldn't work on the populance at large.
I thought that reality television is the Soma of the modern age. Though commercials can be seen as a form of brain control, being that it seems that our whole society is geared around raising a nice complacent populance, who will watch and be quickly swayed by thier cheesy psychosocial gimicks.
I risk ranting, and have lost my ability to mod. Drat.
As stated, that is really silly. I decided to boycott EA a long time ago, for their crap support, and shoddy products that may or may not work, and have never even considered buying ANY game made or distributed by them. I think that a boycott should be full hearted, not some oppurtunistic "stick it to 'em" thing. Its like boycotting walmart, but then asking your freinds to pick up things there for you.
Appearently you didn't really want to boycott Bliz either, being that you use battlenet, increasing their usage stats. And by playing WarcraftIII, you admit the fact that they have a desirable product, that is worth playing.
Though, as an aside, I support Blizzard, and buy their games religiously. They are one of a dying breed of companies that produce good, high quality, games. Though I will not be buying Ghost to protest console exclutivity.
To be an ass; Do I really care about Best Buys employees or investors? No. I care about me, the customer, and that is it. I should get the price cut, even if it means that investors get less, and god knows that BB would never give a benefit to an employee unless at gun point
All that matters to me is getting the best deal, for the lowest price. And if they inconvience anyone, then they should recomp with lower prices.
Now some rabid-capitalist will tell me what is good for the investors is good for all. And I will tell them that they are a tool.
Please read the post. I often make returns, innocently, with no decision to defraud the company. Also, I often only buy things on sale, especially at technosuperstores where the price is boosted. Hence their countermeasures to remove the bottom "20%" will hurt me, make me go through more hastle when returning an item.
I generally only shop online now, newegg and amazon, but sometimes I want my purchase NOW, and not whenever it ships to me. I know, I could do one day, but then that would destroy what cost benefit there is.
DCs cost money by doing things like this. And stopping them would save the company money. And this leaves only the one question that actually matters to anyone, will we (the good, saintly, customers) actually see any of this money?
Probably not.
So, for BB to save money, some innocent customers get to suffer a bit, some bad customers get to keep what they rightfully purchased, and some CEO gets a few extra bucks. There seems to be a problem somewhere.
I've noticed that anytime someone makes something more cost-effective (self checkout, for example.) The customer never benefits from the extra hardship.
How many innocent people will suffer? Sometimes I will return an item several times for exchanges, not because of any schemeing personal gain, but because the product isn't exactly what I want, I had second thoughts, I really didn't need it, etc... And yes, I do buy most of what I want when it is on sale, and I do not buy anything but what I want. Terrible person, I.
Woohoo, we're capitalized now! and one-man experts on what the common parliance of rhetorical gimmics should be as well. In rhetoric it is "begging the question", which may not be the most appropriate name, but the one it goes by, no matter what you and the Philosopher think. We can say, though, that there is a difference between the PHRASE and the FALLACY, and that there is no relation between them.
The rest of the world has not studied rhetoric, appearently, and most of the rest of the world does not speak english. And I doubt that the rest of the world confused a rhetorical device for a common turn of speech.
Not quite true, my old napster mp3s have completely made way for AAC, both from iTMS and from me reripping my CDs for a higher quality but smaller file size. The few mp3 I've actually kept from the napster days have all been converted to AAC as well.
I think that, if this trend is indeed real, and if it continues, then a lot of companies will start only handleing the predominant format.
Its crap not in the whole sense, but in the sense that its not going to be some great magnum opus, its going to be painfully amateur, and utterly unedited. All of them though, are going to be excrutiatingly creative, which is more important. Its like saying children shouldn't draw, because we know that they are going to cough up utter shite. Sure right now we get crap, but perhaps some day down the road we get Picasso, and either way their motor skills get better, their brains grow in complexity, and are better people for it.
Same thing about NaNoWriMo, we get a ton of adults to try their damnest to cough of something decent in an insanely short period of time, and flext their creativity more than most have ever wanted, and something good comes out of it. Creativity is the at least part of the solution of most of the worlds current problems. Followed by a healthy dose of humor and apathy. In the end all of the worlds silly little problems pale before humor, being that all that matters in our individual happiness, and humor is the key to that. Let the worlds problems sort themselves out for a month, I want to purge my head of political fantasy, and create something that matters at least to me on a subjective level.
Its like giving birth to some hideously mishapen mutant child! Ugh... In the end though, your not pouring your heart into the creartion of crap, your pouring into creation, which is something that most of us don't ever get to experience. ASnd this isn't short term thinking, I've been planning my story for a month, and probably will continue working on it until the next NaNoWriMo, its just the forcing it out that is short term.
I participated in this last year, and am gladly doing it again this year. Your comment is silly you know, how does it promote short term thinking, and especially consumerism? The goal is to stop procrastinating and start writing, not to try to sell your hackwork. If you read the website you'd notice that the organizers know full well that 90% of what is going to be written is absolute crap. Hell, what i wrote last year was also crap, I'm proud of it, but it still is crap. I'm proud of it because I put so much damn work into it, its the most I've ever written just for the joy of writing.
You, my freind, are way to serious. Learn to have fun, do something pointless. Fuck purpose, I want random activity that has nothing to do with the so-called real world.
The "in the privacy of your own home" argument doesn't hold as much water as you would like. Being that there may be negative social consiquences to viewing porn (demeanment of women, inflating abnormal urges, etc). Not all things that do not directly effect another do not have social consiquences. Also, being that China is worried about the morality of their people, it makes perfect sense to try to ban pornography, being that it does degrade morality, making women into mere sex symbols, especially if widespread enough.
Now, I do not agree with Chinas actions, I just understand them. Being that they are a "managed" country, unlike what the U.S. aspires to, they have every right to promote the public good in ways such as these.
But I am sick of the view that I have the right to do anything I want as long as it does not kill or maim someone. I think that the government has the right to require seat belts, being that it increases the public health/good, when the public are too stupid, or too apathetic to do it themselves. I think government is here for the good of society, and not for the good of the individual, and the good of society includes its (as populariliy accepted) moral character. Everything you do has some social consiquence down the road, and thus most of it is social buisness. It comes down to weighing the harm to society, against what good it causes the individual. Too bad this is a sticky measurment, since the larger consiquences of our actions are not immediatly appearent most of the time.