How do you intend to provide universal health care (presumably also to undocumented works who get paid under the table and therefore pay no income or payroll tax) and balance the budget? What services will you cut? Whose taxes will you raise? Have you considered that raising taxes on businesses and wealth individuals will merely drive them out of the state, resulting in fewer jobs and recession?
I don't think you have thought through your positions very well. Yet another reason why not to base one's vote on a pretty face or nice-sounding platitudes, and instead on experience and realistic proposals.
But that's an improper analogy. We're not doing anything to push their heads underwater: their own governments are doing that. Any time foreign enterprise is allowed to thrive in a country run by autocrats, that's a good thing, because it always raises local standard of living. Always. Try to point me to a case in which this isn't true. I guarantee you won't be able to.
Perhaps we could liberate a few more countries a la Iraq and try to set up consensual governments, but (a) this costs us a lot of money in bombs and a lot of American lives in troops, and (b) it simply isn't as effective as promoting economic development. Look objectively at how much fun US troops are (not) having in Iraq, and tell me with a straight face that democracy by the sword is a reasonable proposition.
From the tone of your statement, I suspect you think Western enterprises want to keep the third world down. Anything but! Third-world economies are the greatest untapped consumer resource, and one that will become available only as wages rise and those people can afford to provide the profit margins required to make exporting goods to those places worthwhile. But these enterprises cannot afford to simply dump $10/hour wages on those people, or they will go out of business long before those benefits appear.
If the cotton used in my shirt comes from some poor worker in Pakistan or China, my response naturally is, "I'll bet those workers are a lot better off than the people there who don't have any job at all."
I'm always skeptical of income per capita comparisons across economies with much different levels of inflation, because for all I know, $5/day in China might be a huge amount of money there.
Besides, you didn't really do anything to refute my initial point that we are being used primarily as scapegoats: regardless of whether you think free market economics is good or bad, bin Laden is either (a) using us purely as a scapegoat for his own nefarious power aggrandization or (b) complaining that we aren't giving away the fruits of our labor to those who don't want to work for them, in which case we are still being used as a scapegoat, this time for their own failures. Either way, scapegoat.
The problem with your argument is that we (the West, and the US in particuarl) are not the reason those people feel powerless. We are being used as a scapegoat by those who wish to increase their own power without having to take the slow, difficult steps required for economic development. E.g., bin Laden doesn't really care about his followers; he's just using them to increase his own power and influence.
It took me a second to get the joke, but your point is well taken. I have taken great pains to implement garbage collection in C++, but significant understanding of the language is still required to avoid certain pessimal behaviors, which is especially problematic when others use my garbage collector.:)
That book is essentially worthless except for looking up random facts after you've been programming C for a few months. In contrast, the camel book is useful even for long-time Perl hackers, because Perl has more built into the language (e.g., regexps, hashes, etc.) than C, the latter of which is incredibly simple by comparison.
[Aside: The book I use most often is Stroustrup's C++ Second Edition, which in itself is rather vague and outdated wrt the details I need to know most often these days. I'm thinking of getting myself a copy of one of the C++ specs to help me answer the really obscure questions. Does someone recommend a particular spec (e.g., ANSI, ISO)?]
C-a should go to the beginning of the line, NOT "select all." Look, I don't give a fuck if you want to make "select all" the default: just give me a freakin' dialog box somewhere in which I can change it!
I'm sick and tired of waiting for the Gnome2 guys to actually have a keyboard bindings control panel that does something, and this one little feature has made me consider downgrading to 1.2 on several occasions.
Those tariffs are the largest single source of MCI's costs for carrying calls and data transmissions.
Does anyone else find this really irritating? That a tax is the single largest cost they face? It seems to me that the government is the real problem here: IMO, good for MCI for trying to keep more of its hard-earned money away from the gaping maw of Uncle Sam.
No has mentioned deflation. This is what really needs to happen in the US: everything costs too much, because everything else costs too much.
Once there aren't enough people around making enough money to buy Starbucks lattes, $30 meals, and $1400 apartments in the Boston suburbs, and $30,000 cars, then something will have to give: either we'll get more protectionism from the boobs in Congress (likely), or they'll all collectively understand economics and roll back the regulatory state so the US can again compete in the global market (unlikely).
Either way, lots of people will be ticked, but the first case is (sadly) more likely to get them votes, at least until Reality(TM) finally sets in.
I am preparing for the day when my real wages fall more than 50%. Are you?
Why not just borrow a full install disk of XP from a friend? Surely this is a good example of fair use, considering you already own a license to the operating system, albeit a different copy.
Sorry, man, but CVS doesn't have atomic checkins a la changelists in Perforce. Perhaps Subversion solves this (I haven't looked at it yet), but that's a MAJOR deficiency.
In some cases, a proprietary tool is the best for the job. The most popular free software source management tool (CVS) is a complete p-o-s in many respects and unsuitable for large projects and for those with automated builds.
That said, a proprietary tool can never be the best for the job if the author/copyright holder is a complete dick. If it was known that the author of BitKeeper was a dick before Linus started using it, then the tool should not have been introduced; regardless, it is clear now that the guy IS a dick, and therefore RMS is absolutely correct in urging the kernel developers to play chicken and either force BK to play nicely with others or shoot the moon and wind up losing its free advertising.
Did I say that? I said I want this to be a civil matter, not a criminal one. The RIAA/MPAA et al. should sue for damages at their own cost in a civil courtroom, and accept the risk of losing; they should not have the power to oppress me at my own expense.
The distinction between natural and intellectual property (i.e., rivalrous vs. non-rivalrous goods) makes the case for copyrights/trademarks/patents actually being property pretty thin.
For example, it is at least much more difficult to place prior restraint on and/or proper defenses around music, names, and ideas than on and/or around a house, jewelry, and a car.
I'm not opposed to copyright (and patent, and trademark) protection, and in fact, I think such things are desirable as incentive to produce, although the current copyright term is so ridiculously long as to be an anti-incentive.
However, it is not clear to me that we the public instead of they, the copyright holders, should be paying for the investigation and punishment of violators, especially given the much greater scope of the problem and consequent cost versus the protection of natural property.
After that long-winded preface, my question is therefore: why has the government chosen to make IP enforcement a criminal, rather than civil, matter, given the added costs, both in fiscal and libertarian terms?
A phone ring has very low current so it is unlikely to kill you, but the voltage is reasonably high (90 V) and the wave is 20Hz. My father worked at the telco for 30 years, and he said that was the really painful part: the 20Hz cycle produced a very unpleasant feeling.
Why would I want a portable player that can hold maybe 1-1/2 albums? A hard drive is a prerequisite IMO, though with the Neuros, I get the best of both worlds by being able to detach the HD and use NVRAM storage when I need ultimate portability.
: Vorbis is a toy. No respect in the film and audio : industries at all. The MPEG-4 standards are where : people are moving to. If you think otherwise, you : really need a news source other than just Slashdot.
But why should I care? I care only about being able to play the music I myself ripped. Whoever is willing to provide me with that capability is going to get my business. Period. I'm really not all that interested in which format is more "popular."
Are good MPEG-4 encoders and decoders guaranteed to be freely available (i.e., none of this RAND crap; "free" is the key word), with the potential for development of a fully free (as in speech) software version for the lifetime of the codec?
No?
Then MPEG-4 AAC has a fundamental weakness compared to Ogg Vorbis, and I for one will not be using it.
From the little you saw of him in the first film, he was a different character for sure. But considering just how little time he was in the first film, it's hard to assert that they completely rewrote him to satisfy some kind of primal comic urge.
And, even if they did, I found Brody's bumbling to be very well done: like C-3P0 and UNLIKE Jar-Jar Binks, he didn't dominate the film, but rather just provided a few moments of comic relief here and there.
Furthermore, I'd say his contribution of non-comic lines in the third movie, while lower as a percentage of the whole of his lines in that film, was still greater than the sum total of his lines from the first film. So, what are you complaining about?:)
One of my favorite characters, Marcus Brody, was played by Denholm Elliott, who died in 1992. He was one of the reasons why Last Crusade was such a good movie:
Elsa: It's perfectly obvious where the pages are. He's given them to Marcus Brody.
Professor Henry Jones: Marcus? You didn't drag poor Marcus along did you? He's not up to the challenge.
Walter Donovan: He sticks out like a sore thumb. We'll find him.
Indiana Jones: The hell you will. He's got a two day head start on you, which is more than he needs. Brody's got friends in every town and village from here to the Sudan, he speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom, he'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see him again. With any luck, he's got the grail already.
[Cut to middle of fair in the Middle East, Marcus Brody wearing bright suit and white hat, sticking out like sore thumb]
Marcus Brody: Uhhh, does anyone here speak English?!
Despite this...
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'd still rather live in the US, where 6% unemployment is considered "bad," than a country like, say, France, in which double-digit unemployment is the norm and perpetual dependence is more of a way of life due to the myriad entitlements, paid for by those foolish enough to work, that are a strong disincentive to keeping a job that is more difficult than watching TV.
I work at one of the few dot-com's to survive the downturn, and am overworked for sure; but I choose to do this because I want the rewards that come with hard work. I'm only 27: I've seen how fast people can progress if they are willing to work long and hard, and am happy to put off some pleasure today to reap the rewards of tomorrow, as long as I have some fun along the way.
I'll risk stating the unpopular for this forum by saying that this is precisely the right approach for them to take. Rather than unfairly target all computer users with legislative restraints on free trade, they are going after the ones breaking the law.
Now, whether you think copyright infringement through p2p networks should or should not be illegal is immaterial to that statement; just as is the inevitable failure of their business model in an internet-connected world. The simple fact is that they should be, and apparently are now, going after the infringers directly, and rightly leaving their hands off my computer, seeing as I have nothing to do with the perceived problem.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you intend to provide universal health care (presumably also to undocumented works who get paid under the table and therefore pay no income or payroll tax) and balance the budget? What services will you cut? Whose taxes will you raise? Have you considered that raising taxes on businesses and wealth individuals will merely drive them out of the state, resulting in fewer jobs and recession?
I don't think you have thought through your positions very well. Yet another reason why not to base one's vote on a pretty face or nice-sounding platitudes, and instead on experience and realistic proposals.
But that's an improper analogy. We're not doing anything to push their heads underwater: their own governments are doing that. Any time foreign enterprise is allowed to thrive in a country run by autocrats, that's a good thing, because it always raises local standard of living. Always. Try to point me to a case in which this isn't true. I guarantee you won't be able to.
Perhaps we could liberate a few more countries a la Iraq and try to set up consensual governments, but (a) this costs us a lot of money in bombs and a lot of American lives in troops, and (b) it simply isn't as effective as promoting economic development. Look objectively at how much fun US troops are (not) having in Iraq, and tell me with a straight face that democracy by the sword is a reasonable proposition.
From the tone of your statement, I suspect you think Western enterprises want to keep the third world down. Anything but! Third-world economies are the greatest untapped consumer resource, and one that will become available only as wages rise and those people can afford to provide the profit margins required to make exporting goods to those places worthwhile. But these enterprises cannot afford to simply dump $10/hour wages on those people, or they will go out of business long before those benefits appear.
Cheers,
Kyle
If the cotton used in my shirt comes from some poor worker in Pakistan or China, my response naturally is, "I'll bet those workers are a lot better off than the people there who don't have any job at all."
I'm always skeptical of income per capita comparisons across economies with much different levels of inflation, because for all I know, $5/day in China might be a huge amount of money there.
Besides, you didn't really do anything to refute my initial point that we are being used primarily as scapegoats: regardless of whether you think free market economics is good or bad, bin Laden is either (a) using us purely as a scapegoat for his own nefarious power aggrandization or (b) complaining that we aren't giving away the fruits of our labor to those who don't want to work for them, in which case we are still being used as a scapegoat, this time for their own failures. Either way, scapegoat.
The problem with your argument is that we (the West, and the US in particuarl) are not the reason those people feel powerless. We are being used as a scapegoat by those who wish to increase their own power without having to take the slow, difficult steps required for economic development. E.g., bin Laden doesn't really care about his followers; he's just using them to increase his own power and influence.
It took me a second to get the joke, but your point is well taken. I have taken great pains to implement garbage collection in C++, but significant understanding of the language is still required to avoid certain pessimal behaviors, which is especially problematic when others use my garbage collector. :)
That book is essentially worthless except for looking up random facts after you've been programming C for a few months. In contrast, the camel book is useful even for long-time Perl hackers, because Perl has more built into the language (e.g., regexps, hashes, etc.) than C, the latter of which is incredibly simple by comparison.
[Aside: The book I use most often is Stroustrup's C++ Second Edition, which in itself is rather vague and outdated wrt the details I need to know most often these days. I'm thinking of getting myself a copy of one of the C++ specs to help me answer the really obscure questions. Does someone recommend a particular spec (e.g., ANSI, ISO)?]
You are correct. I was unaware of the alternate meaning of tariff as "price schedule."
Cheers,
Kyle
C-a should go to the beginning of the line, NOT "select all." Look, I don't give a fuck if you want to make "select all" the default: just give me a freakin' dialog box somewhere in which I can change it!
I'm sick and tired of waiting for the Gnome2 guys to actually have a keyboard bindings control panel that does something, and this one little feature has made me consider downgrading to 1.2 on several occasions.
Those tariffs are the largest single source of MCI's costs for carrying calls and data transmissions.
Does anyone else find this really irritating? That a tax is the single largest cost they face? It seems to me that the government is the real problem here: IMO, good for MCI for trying to keep more of its hard-earned money away from the gaping maw of Uncle Sam.
No has mentioned deflation. This is what really needs to happen in the US: everything costs too much, because everything else costs too much.
Once there aren't enough people around making enough money to buy Starbucks lattes, $30 meals, and $1400 apartments in the Boston suburbs, and $30,000 cars, then something will have to give: either we'll get more protectionism from the boobs in Congress (likely), or they'll all collectively understand economics and roll back the regulatory state so the US can again compete in the global market (unlikely).
Either way, lots of people will be ticked, but the first case is (sadly) more likely to get them votes, at least until Reality(TM) finally sets in.
I am preparing for the day when my real wages fall more than 50%. Are you?
Kyle
Why not just borrow a full install disk of XP from a friend? Surely this is a good example of fair use, considering you already own a license to the operating system, albeit a different copy.
Sorry, man, but CVS doesn't have atomic checkins a la changelists in Perforce. Perhaps Subversion solves this (I haven't looked at it yet), but that's a MAJOR deficiency.
In some cases, a proprietary tool is the best for the job. The most popular free software source management tool (CVS) is a complete p-o-s in many respects and unsuitable for large projects and for those with automated builds.
That said, a proprietary tool can never be the best for the job if the author/copyright holder is a complete dick. If it was known that the author of BitKeeper was a dick before Linus started using it, then the tool should not have been introduced; regardless, it is clear now that the guy IS a dick, and therefore RMS is absolutely correct in urging the kernel developers to play chicken and either force BK to play nicely with others or shoot the moon and wind up losing its free advertising.
Isn't this sort of protection racket governed by RICO laws?
Did I say that? I said I want this to be a civil matter, not a criminal one. The RIAA/MPAA et al. should sue for damages at their own cost in a civil courtroom, and accept the risk of losing; they should not have the power to oppress me at my own expense.
The distinction between natural and intellectual property (i.e., rivalrous vs. non-rivalrous goods) makes the case for copyrights/trademarks/patents actually being property pretty thin.
For example, it is at least much more difficult to place prior restraint on and/or proper defenses around music, names, and ideas than on and/or around a house, jewelry, and a car.
I'm not opposed to copyright (and patent, and trademark) protection, and in fact, I think such things are desirable as incentive to produce, although the current copyright term is so ridiculously long as to be an anti-incentive.
However, it is not clear to me that we the public instead of they, the copyright holders, should be paying for the investigation and punishment of violators, especially given the much greater scope of the problem and consequent cost versus the protection of natural property.
After that long-winded preface, my question is therefore: why has the government chosen to make IP enforcement a criminal, rather than civil, matter, given the added costs, both in fiscal and libertarian terms?
Kyle
A phone ring has very low current so it is unlikely to kill you, but the voltage is reasonably high (90 V) and the wave is 20Hz. My father worked at the telco for 30 years, and he said that was the really painful part: the 20Hz cycle produced a very unpleasant feeling.
Kyle
Why would I want a portable player that can hold maybe 1-1/2 albums? A hard drive is a prerequisite IMO, though with the Neuros, I get the best of both worlds by being able to detach the HD and use NVRAM storage when I need ultimate portability.
Kyle
: Vorbis is a toy. No respect in the film and audio
: industries at all. The MPEG-4 standards are where
: people are moving to. If you think otherwise, you
: really need a news source other than just Slashdot.
But why should I care? I care only about being able to play the music I myself ripped. Whoever is willing to provide me with that capability is going to get my business. Period. I'm really not all that interested in which format is more "popular."
Kyle
Are good MPEG-4 encoders and decoders guaranteed to be freely available (i.e., none of this RAND crap; "free" is the key word), with the potential for development of a fully free (as in speech) software version for the lifetime of the codec?
No?
Then MPEG-4 AAC has a fundamental weakness compared to Ogg Vorbis, and I for one will not be using it.
Cheers,
Kyle
As I said long ago, I would buy the first portable player to have Ogg Vorbis support. Just 5 minutes ago, I ordered by Neuros. Sorry iRiver, you lose.
Cheers,
Kyle
From the little you saw of him in the first film, he was a different character for sure. But considering just how little time he was in the first film, it's hard to assert that they completely rewrote him to satisfy some kind of primal comic urge.
:)
And, even if they did, I found Brody's bumbling to be very well done: like C-3P0 and UNLIKE Jar-Jar Binks, he didn't dominate the film, but rather just provided a few moments of comic relief here and there.
Furthermore, I'd say his contribution of non-comic lines in the third movie, while lower as a percentage of the whole of his lines in that film, was still greater than the sum total of his lines from the first film. So, what are you complaining about?
One of my favorite characters, Marcus Brody, was played by Denholm Elliott, who died in 1992. He was one of the reasons why Last Crusade was such a good movie:
Elsa: It's perfectly obvious where the pages are. He's given them to Marcus Brody.
Professor Henry Jones: Marcus? You didn't drag poor Marcus along did you? He's not up to the challenge.
Walter Donovan: He sticks out like a sore thumb. We'll find him.
Indiana Jones: The hell you will. He's got a two day head start on you, which is more than he needs. Brody's got friends in every town and village from here to the Sudan, he speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom, he'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see him again. With any luck, he's got the grail already.
[Cut to middle of fair in the Middle East, Marcus Brody wearing bright suit and white hat, sticking out like sore thumb]
Marcus Brody: Uhhh, does anyone here speak English?!
I'd still rather live in the US, where 6% unemployment is considered "bad," than a country like, say, France, in which double-digit unemployment is the norm and perpetual dependence is more of a way of life due to the myriad entitlements, paid for by those foolish enough to work, that are a strong disincentive to keeping a job that is more difficult than watching TV.
I work at one of the few dot-com's to survive the downturn, and am overworked for sure; but I choose to do this because I want the rewards that come with hard work. I'm only 27: I've seen how fast people can progress if they are willing to work long and hard, and am happy to put off some pleasure today to reap the rewards of tomorrow, as long as I have some fun along the way.
I'll risk stating the unpopular for this forum by saying that this is precisely the right approach for them to take. Rather than unfairly target all computer users with legislative restraints on free trade, they are going after the ones breaking the law.
Now, whether you think copyright infringement through p2p networks should or should not be illegal is immaterial to that statement; just as is the inevitable failure of their business model in an internet-connected world. The simple fact is that they should be, and apparently are now, going after the infringers directly, and rightly leaving their hands off my computer, seeing as I have nothing to do with the perceived problem.
Cheers,
Kyle