To elaborate on kfg's comment..."No. I'd rather not give my employer or corrupt union leader a way of tracing my ballot back to me. I appreciate my status of being employed and only wish to have my bones broken due to a skiing accident."
"What makes the Lapboard unique is that the keyboard can be angled upwards to create a surface for the mouse to operate on underneath."
So let me get this straight...this keyboard will cover my lap and my right hand will be moving around on a surface underneath the keyboard? I can already imagine mothers everywhere fainting when they accidentally walk in on their kids playing games. "Honestly, mom, I was just playing with my mouse!" "Oh my God!, is that what you're calling it these days?!?!"
In all fairness, "eBay" was the founder's online nickname from many years back and although it looks like it, it's not a typical "let's add a lowercase 'e' to some word" company name. eBay's name is actually Pig Latin for the word "be."
"The triangle (or delta) around the eye is the mathematical symbol for change (the Illuminati's ultimate goal was to bring about massive change in the form of a secular New World Order.)"
The pyramid on the bills is an allusion to E. Pluribus Unum: "out of many, one." The base of the pyramid represents all the individual people of the world and as you move up the pyramid towards enlightenment, you realize that we're all in this together. It's actually a very religious symbol, albeit a very universal one that just about every culture can identify with. With all the Star Wars geeks here, you'd think there would be more people that have read Joseph Campbell!
Two things to consider: there are more than just 1 million blank discs being sold and you are paying the tax. The dollar amount the record labels receive may be small relative to their overall revenues, but it's still a good amount of money that could be put to better use.
Immorality knows no dollar signs. If you multiply those 18 or 20 cents by millions of blank CDs and DVDs, you'll see that millions of dollars are being stolen from your fellow citizens and funneled to private interests under the assumption that each and every one of you are criminals. That's money that can be put to better use among the *productive* members of the economy. Moreover, those levies are going to an organization that represents only a small minority of the overall pool of musical talent in the country.
You could pay for the content, but you wouldn't get as many programs. OTOH, the programs you'd get would be of much greater quality. That's why people pay for channels like HBO and you have viewer-sponsored shows like Six Feet Under and the Sopranos winning all the television awards.
There is racism all over the world and a lot of people are put at a disadvantage by it. We don't tolerate racist nutjobs here in the US, either; but we're not naive enough to drive them underground so that we don't know what the hell is going on.
I'd prefer that my enemies make themselves known, rather than hide in the shadows. And it is sickening and somewhat frightening that a government would encourage the latter.
"How can you have freedom of speech and freedom from fear? Belgian is trying to give it's population freedom from fear be limiting racist speech. It is a trade off."
Not at all. Freedom from fear can ONLY come from inside yourself.
After RTFA, it appears that the fine does not stem from the fact that he had a podcast. He was fined because he had on some guests from a deemed racist political party. Certain European countries get very limp-wristed on these issues and try to deny that such people and problems exist. They would rather sweep the problems of racism under the carpet and pretend these whackjobs don't exist. That is where the fine came from.
Whenever anyone brings this up, I always draw the following analogy: Christopher Columbus is like Microsoft. He wasn't the first to discover America and his efforts didn't necessarily end up with good results, but he made it popular to the masses. You could probably substitute AOL in there, too.
"I believe that the lack of personal responsibility is the prime reason for the psychopathic, anti-social tendencies of public corporations."
Agreed.
"Shareholders, the true owners of the company, claim they have no control over its actions, and are thus not responsible."
They really don't have any control, unless they are large, institutional investors or insiders, like management or board members.
"Managers claim to work for the benefit of shareholders, and blame their actions on "fiduciary duty", which many of them seem to interpret to mean doing whatever is necessary to make a profit."
Upper management would be one of the "responsible parties."
"The board of directors has nominal power, but in reality most corporate boards are made up of cronies, tokens and toadies and are utterly toothless."
Not in my experience. They are appointed by the large shareholders or are in fact those large shareholders. This is where most of the power is.
"So who bears ulimate moral responsibility for the actions of a corporation?"
The upper management and board of directors; since they are the ones making the decisions.
Slashdot Mirror
All the songs I've purchased from a competing service, eMusic, work just fine on my iPod.
To elaborate on kfg's comment..."No. I'd rather not give my employer or corrupt union leader a way of tracing my ballot back to me. I appreciate my status of being employed and only wish to have my bones broken due to a skiing accident."
"What makes the Lapboard unique is that the keyboard can be angled upwards to create a surface for the mouse to operate on underneath."
So let me get this straight...this keyboard will cover my lap and my right hand will be moving around on a surface underneath the keyboard? I can already imagine mothers everywhere fainting when they accidentally walk in on their kids playing games. "Honestly, mom, I was just playing with my mouse!" "Oh my God!, is that what you're calling it these days?!?!"
"...its a goddam supercomputer in a breadbox."
I smell a new marketing slogan. You should sell that to Microsoft!
"eBay"
In all fairness, "eBay" was the founder's online nickname from many years back and although it looks like it, it's not a typical "let's add a lowercase 'e' to some word" company name. eBay's name is actually Pig Latin for the word "be."
"The triangle (or delta) around the eye is the mathematical symbol for change (the Illuminati's ultimate goal was to bring about massive change in the form of a secular New World Order.)"
The pyramid on the bills is an allusion to E. Pluribus Unum: "out of many, one." The base of the pyramid represents all the individual people of the world and as you move up the pyramid towards enlightenment, you realize that we're all in this together. It's actually a very religious symbol, albeit a very universal one that just about every culture can identify with. With all the Star Wars geeks here, you'd think there would be more people that have read Joseph Campbell!
Amazing, even human evolution is getting outsourced to Asia!
Two things to consider: there are more than just 1 million blank discs being sold and you are paying the tax. The dollar amount the record labels receive may be small relative to their overall revenues, but it's still a good amount of money that could be put to better use.
"The levy is pretty much irrelevant."
Immorality knows no dollar signs. If you multiply those 18 or 20 cents by millions of blank CDs and DVDs, you'll see that millions of dollars are being stolen from your fellow citizens and funneled to private interests under the assumption that each and every one of you are criminals. That's money that can be put to better use among the *productive* members of the economy. Moreover, those levies are going to an organization that represents only a small minority of the overall pool of musical talent in the country.
"...and haven't watched ER in a couple years at best."
Queen Elizabeth has a TV show now?
Sure! Of course, IANAL.
You could pay for the content, but you wouldn't get as many programs. OTOH, the programs you'd get would be of much greater quality. That's why people pay for channels like HBO and you have viewer-sponsored shows like Six Feet Under and the Sopranos winning all the television awards.
y = r^3/3
If you determine the rate of change in this curve correctly, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised!
There is racism all over the world and a lot of people are put at a disadvantage by it. We don't tolerate racist nutjobs here in the US, either; but we're not naive enough to drive them underground so that we don't know what the hell is going on.
I'd prefer that my enemies make themselves known, rather than hide in the shadows. And it is sickening and somewhat frightening that a government would encourage the latter.
"How can you have freedom of speech and freedom from fear? Belgian is trying to give it's population freedom from fear be limiting racist speech. It is a trade off."
Not at all. Freedom from fear can ONLY come from inside yourself.
After RTFA, it appears that the fine does not stem from the fact that he had a podcast. He was fined because he had on some guests from a deemed racist political party. Certain European countries get very limp-wristed on these issues and try to deny that such people and problems exist. They would rather sweep the problems of racism under the carpet and pretend these whackjobs don't exist. That is where the fine came from.
I thought people bought those things specifically because they *don't* talk back.
"I agree with Dhanjani. What has Apple done recently to wow the developers, and make it fun to code Cocoa components?"
What, a fun and whimsical name like "Cocoa" isn't enough for you? Perhaps you'd prefer to code in puppies and rainbows?
Perhaps a large mirror in your front yard is in order.
Whenever anyone brings this up, I always draw the following analogy: Christopher Columbus is like Microsoft. He wasn't the first to discover America and his efforts didn't necessarily end up with good results, but he made it popular to the masses. You could probably substitute AOL in there, too.
"We still don't know what the long term social effects will be, on the West especially, for another 50 years."
Fewer people?
It's Not News, It's Slashdot.org
:)
Couldn't resist
I believe that is a James Taylor song. I heard him sing it live on Howard Stern a number of years ago.
"I believe that the lack of personal responsibility is the prime reason for the psychopathic, anti-social tendencies of public corporations."
Agreed.
"Shareholders, the true owners of the company, claim they have no control over its actions, and are thus not responsible."
They really don't have any control, unless they are large, institutional investors or insiders, like management or board members.
"Managers claim to work for the benefit of shareholders, and blame their actions on "fiduciary duty", which many of them seem to interpret to mean doing whatever is necessary to make a profit."
Upper management would be one of the "responsible parties."
"The board of directors has nominal power, but in reality most corporate boards are made up of cronies, tokens and toadies and are utterly toothless."
Not in my experience. They are appointed by the large shareholders or are in fact those large shareholders. This is where most of the power is.
"So who bears ulimate moral responsibility for the actions of a corporation?"
The upper management and board of directors; since they are the ones making the decisions.
He didn't lower taxes, he just shifted the responsibility to municipalities in the form of higher property taxes.