Excellent point. You also should note that that same pilot could fold up the wings and drive the airplane at thier destination as well, say to a hotel or festival or something without having to rent a car.
It would make private airplane ownership much more enjoyable for actual trips and such.
Actually they corrolated the results to studies done in animals. So humans with the highest levels of BPA, had the highest levels of heart disease and Diabetes, and this corrolated with toxicity studies done on animals.
So what they are saying is that the toxicity studies done on animals are relevant to the human population. This is a study that is ALWAYS done whenever testing any product/medication/etc which has shown harm in animal testing.
All Fusion reactions (hot or cold) need is a catalyst which increases the efficiency (lowers activtion energy, increases yield, affects rate, etc) of the reaction. In fact, if an amateur can find any catalyst/technique/etc which influences the efficiency, rate, or any properties of the reaction then that technique/substance can be studied to find out WHY it influences the reaction and possibly lead to the discovery of better techniques or catalysts.
Granted, it's much more likely that any breakthroughs in in fusion technology will come from full-time well funded research institutions, but as others have pointed out, history has demonstrated that amateur researchers (particularly those with good technique and knowledge of scientific method) have thier place in science as well.
I think your missing the boat here. The reason the RIAA has caught so much flack is that they tried to supress "technology" to support thier sales of thier technologically inferior CD's. American consumers were obsessed with MP3's, spending large amounts of $$ on MP3 players and making thier own MP3 compilations. The RIAA refused to license the sales of MP3's, which left consumers to figure out solutions on thier own. Hackers stepped in and started a technological war with rippers (for creating MP3's from CD), jukebox applications (for organizing MP3's), Tag editors (for editing MP3 tags), and of course applications for sharing MP3's with others (satisfying demand for MP3's where no supply existed).
The RIAA's response was to attack these providers and started selling "protected" CD's which just plain didn't work in many CD players. Enter Sony's Root kit disaster, aggressive prosecution of MP3 utilities, legislative lobbying to protect thier monopoly on CD's and you have the profile of an industry which is hostile to it's most avid consumers.
Nowhere is there a better example of this than the spate of law suits that then followed. An industry suing the individuals who listen to thier music the most!
I'm a software developer and so I understand the importance of intellectual property. But this whole issue really isn't about intellectual property (noone here is advocating The RIAA give away all music for free). The intellectual property argument comes in because the RIAA is looking for justification to pick and choose what technologies the customers use to listen to music.
If you don't believe this is the issue, look at Itunes. This store started selling digital music which was available for free from other sources, that only worked on thier specific (and expensive) players, and which came with lock-in, and yet consumers went for it. Why? Simple. The consumers demanded digital audio which was easy and convient to use, Itunes delivered and is now the biggest album retailer. The fact is... people don't want to buy CD's anymore.
I wonder if they can incorporate some sort of radiation shielding into the fabric? If they can, I wonder if it would be adequate to protect humans on long-duration space flights?
Most identity theft could be avoided if we adopted a system whereby a document used for identification is verified/validated by the issueing authority at the time of use.
For example, if a Drivers License (or ID card) is used as identification, it should be swiped, and information electronically validated against a state DMV / Vital Records / or issuing authority. This will in and if itself eliminate fraudulent ID's through forgery. Additionally, a second layer of security such as a pin number, thumbprint scan, (or any other information not physically located on the document) can be used to validate that the person posessing the document is the person to whom the document was issued.
This system works well because no information is ever retrieved from the issuing authority, instead responses are a "yes/no" type of transaction.
A more active system, and more troubling for provacy advocates is to return a third piece of identification information (assuming the first two tests are passed), such as an electronic photo, which can then be used by the validating person to match the photo on the ID, with the electronically returned photo, with the person standing there.
This system would not need to be used for every transaction, but transactions such as opening new bank accounts, extending credit, and government transactions would be required to participate. In many ways this is not an encumbering task, as most of these transactions already require some sort of network processing, or computer transactions.
The Federal Government has started to move in this direction with the DHS's "Real ID" initiative. This is just the first step, in that it standardizes the practice of issuing ID's and forces states to adhere to a common "protocol" for validating and issuing an ID to an individual. Of course, this has met with heavy resistance from privacy advocates, although I am not entirely sure why. The idea that every american is uniquely identifiable has been around for a long time, and as we can see in cases of identify theft and impersonation fraud, is a vital protection for our citizens who are otherwise easily victimized.
The last piece of the puzzle is to stop thinking of "identity theft" as a petty crime. It should become a federal crime, because it often occurs across state boundaries, and the penalties and sentencing guidelines for said federal crime should be harsh. Identity theft is alot more invasive then many felonies and involves a longer recovery time for victims, it's about time we start treating it as a real crime, requiring preventative measures (re-thinking our identification sytem) and prosecuting offenders aggressively.
Let's face it, the media moguls are completely disconnected from the "demand" of thier market. What the market demands is fast, convienent, flexible, on-demand media delivery, and what they are supplying is slow-to-market, disfunctional, legacy media.
They fight tooth and nail to maintain a business model based upon 100+ year old technology. The movie theatre is reminiscent of pre-movie era stage performances, and cd/dvd's are just the modern incarnation of phonograph reels. This business model is to crush any competing distribution models (and any new technology assocaited with it) to preserve thier status quo.
Basic economics now comes into play. When there is demand, and no supply, a free-market will adjust to create the supply, and meet demand. Unfortunately, the RIAA and the MPAA have failed so miserably at meeting demand that the supply has been created ad-hock by hobbyists, hackers, and media pirates, despite the legal challenges and persecution.
However, instead of acknowledging the market forces at work, and responding accordingly, the RIAA and MPAA's response has actually inflamed the issue by crippling thier status quo distribution network with aggravating DRM.
And now by pushing for more legal protections and heavier regulation, the MPAA and RIAA are now forcing a confrontation between free-market economics and government control and regulation.
The MPAA and RIAA are trying to spin the facts to suggest that Piracy, and copyright infringement are the enemy, and thus justify legal intervention. In reality, Copyright Infringement and Piracy are simply a means, by which the market forces have responded to a growing demand amongst consumers. They are merely a symptom of the fact that the Media companies have refused to license thier content for new distribution, and therefore the only way to provide the content is to do so in violation of copyright.
As a free-market economy we should reject increased government regulations and market controls, which act to stifle innovation and the creation of new market opportunities. The MPAA and RIAA need to adjust to the changing marketplace, and make licensed content available to legitimate content-delivery providers.
I can see the above argument. Frankly, I don't care to publically exibit a work, or distribute it, I buy it so I can replay the media at home.
Of course, then you get the media home (and your all excited cause you've been waiting to buy it), pop it into your player and it doesnt' work. You go around hte house and you try it in every player that you own, and nothing. After researching you find out that you need to buy a new player ($100+), because the CD/DVD that you just bought has some new "copy protection" on it that is preventing your player from playing it.
Oh and guess what... you can't return the media because they don't take returns at the store.
So instead of buying a movie or cd for 10 bucks or so... you realise that you've just been swindled into paying money for something that doesn't work... and more specifically something that was intentionally broken by the person selling it, the same person who is refusing to refund your money.
So now you can upgrade all the players in your house for thousands of dollars (this might be an option if there wasn't the threat that next year the same thing is going to happen, or.. the year after that) or you can go on the internet and find a hack and in under an hour create a "drm-free" backup of the disk that will play in all your players just fine, just like the original should have.
Problem is, you just broke the terms of some legislation called "DCMA" which prevents you from circumventing the thing that is keeping you from playing the media that you bought with a license to be able to view it privately.
Well... I'd like to say that this is all speculation but this is exactly what happened to me on several occasions.
The fact is that my rights are being violated. I have a right to expect that I recieve the item that I purchased as it was marketed. It's dishonest, misleading, and it should be prosecutable. In fact it should be prosecuted for every fraudulent sale that has been made.
Boo hoo that the RIAA lost a couple of dollars because someone downloaded a movie off the internet. I don't see how that gives them free reign to engage in fraudulent business activities or to act as a vigillante who runs all over the rule of law and individual rights in pursuit of copyright violators all the time spouting the rhetoric that "the DCMA said I could do it".
IANANP, but I was a chemistry major in college. A nuclear reaction is not like combustion, removing the fuel source doens't stop the reaction because the reaction actually takes place inside of the fuel rods themselves. The way you control the reaction is by lower/raising your control rods. Control rods absorb neutrons which are needed to keep the reaction going. Thus lowering the control rods slows the reaction and raising them speeds up the reaction (as far as I know fuel rods are not movable). Reactors (in the US anyway) are designed to operate such that if all control is lost (such as loosing all your power) then the control rods can no longer be held out of the reaction, and will be lowered by gravity, and theoretically stop the reactor.
Additionally, boronated water can be used to kill an out of control reaction and I believe that many reactors have tanks of boronated water on stand-by to flood the reactor with in the case of an out-of-control reaction.
As a Slashdot reader I am well aware of the RIAA and MPAA's battle against piracy, chasing after the millions of dollars they are supposedly loosing.
However, being a logically minded individual, I would have a better time believing thier position if there were some well-conducted market studies which offer substantial evidence that P2P, and file sharing are the cause of decreased sales.
Boycott's aside... my personal expirience is that i spend less money on movies/music because there are more economical entertainment values available. While I used to go to the movies, buy an album, and rent a movie at least once a week, I haven't done either of these activities in several months. Below is a summary of how my spending habits have changed.
Movie: $10.00 ticket / $5.50 popcorn $4.00 soda = 2 hours entertainment
Alternative: $50 Video Game = 50+ hours entertainment
Music Album: $10 - $20 per album
Alternative: Yahoo Radio($3/month), Satellite Radio ($14/month), ditigal cable Music channels(included w/ cable)
Movie Rentals: $3.89 + hastle to go to store and return movies.
Alternative: Digital Cable - HBO/Cinemax/Showtime and Movies on Demand (sure I have to wait longer to see new releases but most of them pop up here sooner or later)
Alternative 2: Netflix
You will note that because all of my alternatives are paid for services... in some way royalties are being kicked back to the industry. However, the delivery medium is much more economical, and I feel that I get much more entertainment value for the money.
(An interesting side note, is that the reason I stopped buying albums was because I bought two albums with anti-piracy technology built into them and they wouldn't play on any of the cd players in my house until i "hacked" them with a marker. I got so angry I started listening to the radio and got hooked on the commercial free radio.)
Check out www.guildwars.com It is supposed to designed to take into account those of us that love MPPORG's but because of job are lucky to find a hour a day to play. Game play is supposed to be rewarding at all levels of play.
I appologize for my grammar earlier, I was on my palm and in the car.
I actually have started boycotting products from several companies whose executives are extremely aggressive about oversea's outsourcing.
The reason?
Quite simple. I understand the economics of building foreign markets, and taking advantage of cheap foreign labor.
However, there are several myths that are perpetuated by top executives in defending thier aggressive oversea's outsourcing.
Basically, instead of the money being saved by utilizing oversea's labor increasing corporate profits, thus creating new higher paying jobs, and also increasing federal tax revenue; corporations are managing to grossly inflate top executive salaries (30% ave last year) and are investing in oversea's Facilities to house engineering, R&D, Marketing, and even legal services out of the country.
In addition, these large companies are avoiding paying any federal income taxes through use of various shelters, and are recieving subsidies for moving jobs out of the US.
These trends have a serious affect throughout the US economy. Programmers that used to make 80K/year (like me) are now making 30K (and I've survived three layoffs this year already). But moreover, moving Research oversea's takes away even higher paying jobs, in addition, all the support services for those jobs. Building / Maintenance / Cleaning / etc... loosing these top facilities has a major impact throughout the economy.
In the next few years, legal services, and medical services (where I am currently studying to get a second career) will be being outsourced. In the name of free trade and unrestricted capitalism, the united states has no regulations to protect the workforce and american jobs that are being threatened by nothing less then pure capitalist greed.
We need to start removing tax benefits for companies who are offshoring labor, we need to remove the income tax loopholes that allow them to bring in billions in profit tax-free from offshoring, and we need to start offering incentives to companies who promote a strong domestic workforce.
In addition, we don't have to support greedy executives who are filthy rich with no social consciousness about where they came from... who paid for the roads/sanitation/housing etc that they grw up with, provided educational facilities, and of course the opportunity to be a successful female executive (let's see her pull that off in some of these underdeveloped countries). Thus, I am happy to say that we only have one HP printer left in the office, and it will soon be on it's way out the door.
Regards.
TOo bad I've boycotted HP's products in light of CEO Carly Fiorina's lobbying for accelerated outsourcing of American Technology jobs to oversea's firms.
Great Editorial on the subject
This is just an idea, and maybe it exists, I haen't really gone looking for it. But what about a web site that compiles a list of Pop-up adds, and the product they are advertising, possibly formulated from some of the Pop-up blockers. Then, along with that database, compile a list of the products competitors that do NOT employ pop-ups and spam advertising tactics. That way, before making an online purchase you can check and make sure that the company is "clean" in thier marketing practices?
(I would suggest building this into pop-up blocking software, to offer alterative sites, but I'm sure law suits would ensue)
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent point. You also should note that that same pilot could fold up the wings and drive the airplane at thier destination as well, say to a hotel or festival or something without having to rent a car.
It would make private airplane ownership much more enjoyable for actual trips and such.
Actually they corrolated the results to studies done in animals. So humans with the highest levels of BPA, had the highest levels of heart disease and Diabetes, and this corrolated with toxicity studies done on animals.
So what they are saying is that the toxicity studies done on animals are relevant to the human population. This is a study that is ALWAYS done whenever testing any product/medication/etc which has shown harm in animal testing.
I don't know why posters are being so critical.
All Fusion reactions (hot or cold) need is a catalyst which increases the efficiency (lowers activtion energy, increases yield, affects rate, etc) of the reaction. In fact, if an amateur can find any catalyst/technique/etc which influences the efficiency, rate, or any properties of the reaction then that technique/substance can be studied to find out WHY it influences the reaction and possibly lead to the discovery of better techniques or catalysts.
Granted, it's much more likely that any breakthroughs in in fusion technology will come from full-time well funded research institutions, but as others have pointed out, history has demonstrated that amateur researchers (particularly those with good technique and knowledge of scientific method) have thier place in science as well.
I think your missing the boat here. The reason the RIAA has caught so much flack is that they tried to supress "technology" to support thier sales of thier technologically inferior CD's. American consumers were obsessed with MP3's, spending large amounts of $$ on MP3 players and making thier own MP3 compilations. The RIAA refused to license the sales of MP3's, which left consumers to figure out solutions on thier own. Hackers stepped in and started a technological war with rippers (for creating MP3's from CD), jukebox applications (for organizing MP3's), Tag editors (for editing MP3 tags), and of course applications for sharing MP3's with others (satisfying demand for MP3's where no supply existed).
The RIAA's response was to attack these providers and started selling "protected" CD's which just plain didn't work in many CD players. Enter Sony's Root kit disaster, aggressive prosecution of MP3 utilities, legislative lobbying to protect thier monopoly on CD's and you have the profile of an industry which is hostile to it's most avid consumers.
Nowhere is there a better example of this than the spate of law suits that then followed. An industry suing the individuals who listen to thier music the most!
I'm a software developer and so I understand the importance of intellectual property. But this whole issue really isn't about intellectual property (noone here is advocating The RIAA give away all music for free). The intellectual property argument comes in because the RIAA is looking for justification to pick and choose what technologies the customers use to listen to music.
If you don't believe this is the issue, look at Itunes. This store started selling digital music which was available for free from other sources, that only worked on thier specific (and expensive) players, and which came with lock-in, and yet consumers went for it. Why? Simple. The consumers demanded digital audio which was easy and convient to use, Itunes delivered and is now the biggest album retailer. The fact is... people don't want to buy CD's anymore.
I wonder if they can incorporate some sort of radiation shielding into the fabric? If they can, I wonder if it would be adequate to protect humans on long-duration space flights?
Most identity theft could be avoided if we adopted a system whereby a document used for identification is verified/validated by the issueing authority at the time of use.
For example, if a Drivers License (or ID card) is used as identification, it should be swiped, and information electronically validated against a state DMV / Vital Records / or issuing authority. This will in and if itself eliminate fraudulent ID's through forgery. Additionally, a second layer of security such as a pin number, thumbprint scan, (or any other information not physically located on the document) can be used to validate that the person posessing the document is the person to whom the document was issued.
This system works well because no information is ever retrieved from the issuing authority, instead responses are a "yes/no" type of transaction.
A more active system, and more troubling for provacy advocates is to return a third piece of identification information (assuming the first two tests are passed), such as an electronic photo, which can then be used by the validating person to match the photo on the ID, with the electronically returned photo, with the person standing there.
This system would not need to be used for every transaction, but transactions such as opening new bank accounts, extending credit, and government transactions would be required to participate. In many ways this is not an encumbering task, as most of these transactions already require some sort of network processing, or computer transactions.
The Federal Government has started to move in this direction with the DHS's "Real ID" initiative. This is just the first step, in that it standardizes the practice of issuing ID's and forces states to adhere to a common "protocol" for validating and issuing an ID to an individual. Of course, this has met with heavy resistance from privacy advocates, although I am not entirely sure why. The idea that every american is uniquely identifiable has been around for a long time, and as we can see in cases of identify theft and impersonation fraud, is a vital protection for our citizens who are otherwise easily victimized.
The last piece of the puzzle is to stop thinking of "identity theft" as a petty crime. It should become a federal crime, because it often occurs across state boundaries, and the penalties and sentencing guidelines for said federal crime should be harsh. Identity theft is alot more invasive then many felonies and involves a longer recovery time for victims, it's about time we start treating it as a real crime, requiring preventative measures (re-thinking our identification sytem) and prosecuting offenders aggressively.
Regards,
John R.
Let's face it, the media moguls are completely disconnected from the "demand" of thier market. What the market demands is fast, convienent, flexible, on-demand media delivery, and what they are supplying is slow-to-market, disfunctional, legacy media.
They fight tooth and nail to maintain a business model based upon 100+ year old technology. The movie theatre is reminiscent of pre-movie era stage performances, and cd/dvd's are just the modern incarnation of phonograph reels. This business model is to crush any competing distribution models (and any new technology assocaited with it) to preserve thier status quo.
Basic economics now comes into play. When there is demand, and no supply, a free-market will adjust to create the supply, and meet demand. Unfortunately, the RIAA and the MPAA have failed so miserably at meeting demand that the supply has been created ad-hock by hobbyists, hackers, and media pirates, despite the legal challenges and persecution.
However, instead of acknowledging the market forces at work, and responding accordingly, the RIAA and MPAA's response has actually inflamed the issue by crippling thier status quo distribution network with aggravating DRM.
And now by pushing for more legal protections and heavier regulation, the MPAA and RIAA are now forcing a confrontation between free-market economics and government control and regulation.
The MPAA and RIAA are trying to spin the facts to suggest that Piracy, and copyright infringement are the enemy, and thus justify legal intervention. In reality, Copyright Infringement and Piracy are simply a means, by which the market forces have responded to a growing demand amongst consumers. They are merely a symptom of the fact that the Media companies have refused to license thier content for new distribution, and therefore the only way to provide the content is to do so in violation of copyright.
As a free-market economy we should reject increased government regulations and market controls, which act to stifle innovation and the creation of new market opportunities. The MPAA and RIAA need to adjust to the changing marketplace, and make licensed content available to legitimate content-delivery providers.
I can see the above argument. Frankly, I don't care to publically exibit a work, or distribute it, I buy it so I can replay the media at home.
.. the year after that) or you can go on the internet and find a hack and in under an hour create a "drm-free" backup of the disk that will play in all your players just fine, just like the original should have.
Of course, then you get the media home (and your all excited cause you've been waiting to buy it), pop it into your player and it doesnt' work. You go around hte house and you try it in every player that you own, and nothing. After researching you find out that you need to buy a new player ($100+), because the CD/DVD that you just bought has some new "copy protection" on it that is preventing your player from playing it.
Oh and guess what... you can't return the media because they don't take returns at the store.
So instead of buying a movie or cd for 10 bucks or so... you realise that you've just been swindled into paying money for something that doesn't work... and more specifically something that was intentionally broken by the person selling it, the same person who is refusing to refund your money.
So now you can upgrade all the players in your house for thousands of dollars (this might be an option if there wasn't the threat that next year the same thing is going to happen, or
Problem is, you just broke the terms of some legislation called "DCMA" which prevents you from circumventing the thing that is keeping you from playing the media that you bought with a license to be able to view it privately.
Well... I'd like to say that this is all speculation but this is exactly what happened to me on several occasions.
The fact is that my rights are being violated. I have a right to expect that I recieve the item that I purchased as it was marketed. It's dishonest, misleading, and it should be prosecutable. In fact it should be prosecuted for every fraudulent sale that has been made.
Boo hoo that the RIAA lost a couple of dollars because someone downloaded a movie off the internet. I don't see how that gives them free reign to engage in fraudulent business activities or to act as a vigillante who runs all over the rule of law and individual rights in pursuit of copyright violators all the time spouting the rhetoric that "the DCMA said I could do it".
IANANP, but I was a chemistry major in college. A nuclear reaction is not like combustion, removing the fuel source doens't stop the reaction because the reaction actually takes place inside of the fuel rods themselves. The way you control the reaction is by lower/raising your control rods. Control rods absorb neutrons which are needed to keep the reaction going. Thus lowering the control rods slows the reaction and raising them speeds up the reaction (as far as I know fuel rods are not movable). Reactors (in the US anyway) are designed to operate such that if all control is lost (such as loosing all your power) then the control rods can no longer be held out of the reaction, and will be lowered by gravity, and theoretically stop the reactor.
Additionally, boronated water can be used to kill an out of control reaction and I believe that many reactors have tanks of boronated water on stand-by to flood the reactor with in the case of an out-of-control reaction.
As a Slashdot reader I am well aware of the RIAA and MPAA's battle against piracy, chasing after the millions of dollars they are supposedly loosing.
However, being a logically minded individual, I would have a better time believing thier position if there were some well-conducted market studies which offer substantial evidence that P2P, and file sharing are the cause of decreased sales.
Boycott's aside... my personal expirience is that i spend less money on movies/music because there are more economical entertainment values available. While I used to go to the movies, buy an album, and rent a movie at least once a week, I haven't done either of these activities in several months. Below is a summary of how my spending habits have changed.
Movie: $10.00 ticket / $5.50 popcorn $4.00 soda = 2 hours entertainment
Alternative: $50 Video Game = 50+ hours entertainment
Music Album: $10 - $20 per album
Alternative: Yahoo Radio($3/month), Satellite Radio ($14/month), ditigal cable Music channels(included w/ cable)
Movie Rentals: $3.89 + hastle to go to store and return movies.
Alternative: Digital Cable - HBO/Cinemax/Showtime and Movies on Demand (sure I have to wait longer to see new releases but most of them pop up here sooner or later)
Alternative 2: Netflix
You will note that because all of my alternatives are paid for services... in some way royalties are being kicked back to the industry. However, the delivery medium is much more economical, and I feel that I get much more entertainment value for the money.
(An interesting side note, is that the reason I stopped buying albums was because I bought two albums with anti-piracy technology built into them and they wouldn't play on any of the cd players in my house until i "hacked" them with a marker. I got so angry I started listening to the radio and got hooked on the commercial free radio.)
Check out www.guildwars.com It is supposed to designed to take into account those of us that love MPPORG's but because of job are lucky to find a hour a day to play. Game play is supposed to be rewarding at all levels of play.
I appologize for my grammar earlier, I was on my palm and in the car. I actually have started boycotting products from several companies whose executives are extremely aggressive about oversea's outsourcing. The reason? Quite simple. I understand the economics of building foreign markets, and taking advantage of cheap foreign labor. However, there are several myths that are perpetuated by top executives in defending thier aggressive oversea's outsourcing. Basically, instead of the money being saved by utilizing oversea's labor increasing corporate profits, thus creating new higher paying jobs, and also increasing federal tax revenue; corporations are managing to grossly inflate top executive salaries (30% ave last year) and are investing in oversea's Facilities to house engineering, R&D, Marketing, and even legal services out of the country. In addition, these large companies are avoiding paying any federal income taxes through use of various shelters, and are recieving subsidies for moving jobs out of the US. These trends have a serious affect throughout the US economy. Programmers that used to make 80K/year (like me) are now making 30K (and I've survived three layoffs this year already). But moreover, moving Research oversea's takes away even higher paying jobs, in addition, all the support services for those jobs. Building / Maintenance / Cleaning / etc... loosing these top facilities has a major impact throughout the economy. In the next few years, legal services, and medical services (where I am currently studying to get a second career) will be being outsourced. In the name of free trade and unrestricted capitalism, the united states has no regulations to protect the workforce and american jobs that are being threatened by nothing less then pure capitalist greed. We need to start removing tax benefits for companies who are offshoring labor, we need to remove the income tax loopholes that allow them to bring in billions in profit tax-free from offshoring, and we need to start offering incentives to companies who promote a strong domestic workforce. In addition, we don't have to support greedy executives who are filthy rich with no social consciousness about where they came from... who paid for the roads /sanitation/housing etc that they grw up with, provided educational facilities, and of course the opportunity to be a successful female executive (let's see her pull that off in some of these underdeveloped countries). Thus, I am happy to say that we only have one HP printer left in the office, and it will soon be on it's way out the door.
Regards.
TOo bad I've boycotted HP's products in light of CEO Carly Fiorina's lobbying for accelerated outsourcing of American Technology jobs to oversea's firms. Great Editorial on the subject
This is just an idea, and maybe it exists, I haen't really gone looking for it. But what about a web site that compiles a list of Pop-up adds, and the product they are advertising, possibly formulated from some of the Pop-up blockers. Then, along with that database, compile a list of the products competitors that do NOT employ pop-ups and spam advertising tactics. That way, before making an online purchase you can check and make sure that the company is "clean" in thier marketing practices?
(I would suggest building this into pop-up blocking software, to offer alterative sites, but I'm sure law suits would ensue)
Oh well, just some thought food.