Seems at least possible. If there are alien civilizations out there, we're bound to get into a genocidal war with one or more of them. It might not be even partly our fault, but I won't take that bet.
Go and click it manually for a while first. I'm pretty sure they set up a maximum per x hours a while ago to appease sponsers worried about exactly that. I know that freedonation.com did anyhow.
Not to mention that, ahem, if someone wants an actual *job* it's trivial to find one. Okay, so this is flamebait, but FUCK YOU. Let's see you get a job without money, clean clothes and a place to sleep and clean up. Seriously, try it. Go out and dumpster dive to find some old rags that might keep a person half-ass warm in the winter, let them get nice and dirty, don't wash or shave for at least two weeks, and go out and get one of these "trivial to find" jobs. Jobs are like many other things in a capitalist society: easy to get for the people who already have them.
...89.58% of the worlds heavy metals is has been shipped to the United States...
On a vaguely related train of thought, I remember reading a couple years ago that all the massive damming project in Northern Asia (China and Russia, mainly I think it was), that the center of mass of the planet was being slightly altered. There's enough water being held behind dams in one part of the world to throw the whole thing off-balance!
He told me that he liked the way things are. I don't tend to try to make comments that deserve to modded up (which is why it only happens to every ten or twenty comments), so I don't think I'll ever use my +1 intentionally, but Taco says I have to turn it off every time:(
I've never seen those before. How come it isn't in the bottles? (That's the main reason I bother buying Jones. Drink from glass bottle = good!) Anyway, I don't think I'll bother with XTC then. If I want Ginseng, I'll stick with Sobe, at least that way my drink will taste good as well as get me all hopped up on roots.:)
The Times, biased! Say it aint so! I suppose you could find a more "yeah big corporate america!" publication, but who wants to read the Wall Street Journal anyhow?
XTC isn't caffinated here? I thought that was the whole point. Not that I've ever bothered to actually buy any. I do remember being disapointed to see that the non-cola Jolts weren't caffed though.
I don't disagree with anything you said there. But none of it disagrees with what I just said either. I didn't say companies were stupid, just that morality and ethics don't enter into the decision making process. Customer goodwill is desireable for companies because it can increase profits in the future. No other reason. Of course companies don't want to get every last cent on every sale. They want to get the most pennies over the long-term, which means getting a good profit on each sale while trying to keep the customer happy with the experience so that they will come back again latter. (Not that any of that applies to all companies. There are many whose strategies do not involve repeat business, and just need to get the sale finished. Telemarketers and the guys in Boiler Room are examples of this.)
See, now I don't see that. The phone, I can _maybe_ see. I know the local telco made me give them a $100 deposit when they didn't know anything about me the first time I moved into my own place. But now, if I wanted a phone without any paper trail, I'd just go spend a $100 on a Clearnet, make up a name, call in once a month, find out the balance, and pay it. The only thing my landlord knows about me is the name I scrawled on the signature line. (and that I bounced a rent check when I wasn't working last winter) As long as he gets the rent within a reasonable time, and the neighbors aren't screaming about noise, why should he care who I am?
(snicker) Companies don't do the right thing, or the wrong thing. Companies do the most profitable thing. People are moral creatures, companies aren't. The only time a company will do what a person would consider the "right thing", is if enough of the leadership can be convinced that there's no extra profit in doing the wrong thing instead of what they (one would hope) personally think is the right thing to do...
Even though Disney's intentions were to maintain the privacy, the data would have been sold without restriction. The FTC would have been agreeing to the concept that collected data was saleable.
Why do you think Disney wanted to do this? I strongly suspect they were hoping to get such a precedent created, and were willing to bury whatever information Toysmart has. Then they can offer Doubleclick or someone with that level of information serious money for their database(s), and do whatever they like with it...
Words mean whatever a lawyer can convince a judge they mean. I'm sure that many lawyers could convince many judges that spam (I don't know, "direct marketing?") with your real name in it, for products that relate to something you bought a few years ago is personalizing your "online experience"
I seem to recall people talking about this (astronomer type people, that is) when that comet blasted the crap out of Jupiter a few years ago. (Shoemaker-Levy? or is mind _completely_ shot?) Jupiter (and Saturn to a lesser extent) has been acting like a vacuum for alot of big nasty rocks that would otherwise still be zipping into the inner solar system to this day. Can you imagine a Halley every 8 months, or a Shoemaker-Levy ever couple years? Someone might actually start looking for ways to protect Earth, instead of talking about it. Of course, we would almost never have survived long enough to figure out how helpful big gravity wells in the outer solar system can be. I believe that it was also said that the moon manages to snag alot of hits that managed to come close to Earth too, although those would've been more asteroids than comets, I suppose.
Isn't Hercules the Roman version of Hercules? (Yeah, there supposed to be a spelling difference between the Roman and Greek, but I can't remember it offhand.) I think Jupiter is Zeus.
He doesn't really have much choice anymore does he? Besides, he never seemed as much of a determined unbeliever as Scully. He just wanted reports that he could actually give to his superiors. He's always seemed pretty willing to accept the government conspiracy things (didn't smoking man first appear in Skinner's office?), its just the werewolves and flukemen that have aroused his sceptisism.
Uh, then MS must be one of the biggest thieves there is then right?
"potential profits" and/or "future revenues" are just corporate lawyer babble for "we have more expensive lawyers than you" when in a court room. You can't steal what doesn't exist yet. There's no guarentee that some other aspect of the market won't change (that doesn't lend well to suing) that will cause the "loss" of the "future profits". Like, say, a massive natural disaster destroys the companies base of operations. When the law considers money not yet recieved to be something that can be lost or stolen, it allows wealthy entities to prevent any changes that might make for a more balanced playing field. (i.e. a competitor makes a superior product "stealing our revenues"; laws are changed to weaken a monopolies power to preserve its monopoly "cutting into our future profits")
Slashdot Mirror
Seems at least possible. If there are alien civilizations out there, we're bound to get into a genocidal war with one or more of them. It might not be even partly our fault, but I won't take that bet.
Go and click it manually for a while first. I'm pretty sure they set up a maximum per x hours a while ago to appease sponsers worried about exactly that. I know that freedonation.com did anyhow.
Not to mention that, ahem, if someone wants an actual *job* it's trivial to find one.
Okay, so this is flamebait, but FUCK YOU. Let's see you get a job without money, clean clothes and a place to sleep and clean up. Seriously, try it. Go out and dumpster dive to find some old rags that might keep a person half-ass warm in the winter, let them get nice and dirty, don't wash or shave for at least two weeks, and go out and get one of these "trivial to find" jobs. Jobs are like many other things in a capitalist society: easy to get for the people who already have them.
...89.58% of the worlds heavy metals is has been shipped to the United States...
On a vaguely related train of thought, I remember reading a couple years ago that all the massive damming project in Northern Asia (China and Russia, mainly I think it was), that the center of mass of the planet was being slightly altered. There's enough water being held behind dams in one part of the world to throw the whole thing off-balance!
He told me that he liked the way things are. I don't tend to try to make comments that deserve to modded up (which is why it only happens to every ten or twenty comments), so I don't think I'll ever use my +1 intentionally, but Taco says I have to turn it off every time :(
I've never seen those before. How come it isn't in the bottles? (That's the main reason I bother buying Jones. Drink from glass bottle = good!) :)
Anyway, I don't think I'll bother with XTC then. If I want Ginseng, I'll stick with Sobe, at least that way my drink will taste good as well as get me all hopped up on roots.
Dammit! I told Taco I'd wind up not clicking the stupid checkbox one of these days! (Actually, I missed and hit submit before I noticed I'd missed...)
The Times, biased! Say it aint so! I suppose you could find a more "yeah big corporate america!" publication, but who wants to read the Wall Street Journal anyhow?
XTC isn't caffinated here? I thought that was the whole point. Not that I've ever bothered to actually buy any. I do remember being disapointed to see that the non-cola Jolts weren't caffed though.
I don't disagree with anything you said there. But none of it disagrees with what I just said either. I didn't say companies were stupid, just that morality and ethics don't enter into the decision making process. Customer goodwill is desireable for companies because it can increase profits in the future. No other reason.
Of course companies don't want to get every last cent on every sale. They want to get the most pennies over the long-term, which means getting a good profit on each sale while trying to keep the customer happy with the experience so that they will come back again latter. (Not that any of that applies to all companies. There are many whose strategies do not involve repeat business, and just need to get the sale finished. Telemarketers and the guys in Boiler Room are examples of this.)
Hmm. I came up with 11 Slashdot comments. Guess I need to get my name written down more places.
See, now I don't see that. The phone, I can _maybe_ see. I know the local telco made me give them a $100 deposit when they didn't know anything about me the first time I moved into my own place. But now, if I wanted a phone without any paper trail, I'd just go spend a $100 on a Clearnet, make up a name, call in once a month, find out the balance, and pay it. The only thing my landlord knows about me is the name I scrawled on the signature line. (and that I bounced a rent check when I wasn't working last winter) As long as he gets the rent within a reasonable time, and the neighbors aren't screaming about noise, why should he care who I am?
(snicker)
Companies don't do the right thing, or the wrong thing. Companies do the most profitable thing. People are moral creatures, companies aren't. The only time a company will do what a person would consider the "right thing", is if enough of the leadership can be convinced that there's no extra profit in doing the wrong thing instead of what they (one would hope) personally think is the right thing to do...
Even though Disney's intentions were to maintain the privacy, the data would have been sold without restriction. The FTC would have been agreeing to the concept that collected data was saleable.
Why do you think Disney wanted to do this? I strongly suspect they were hoping to get such a precedent created, and were willing to bury whatever information Toysmart has. Then they can offer Doubleclick or someone with that level of information serious money for their database(s), and do whatever they like with it...
Words mean whatever a lawyer can convince a judge they mean. I'm sure that many lawyers could convince many judges that spam (I don't know, "direct marketing?") with your real name in it, for products that relate to something you bought a few years ago is personalizing your "online experience"
Huh? Who did what to who now? I don't remember anything about nano-bots...
attention moderators: this is off topic.
Good god man, don't encourage them, they're out of control as it is!
I seem to recall people talking about this (astronomer type people, that is) when that comet blasted the crap out of Jupiter a few years ago. (Shoemaker-Levy? or is mind _completely_ shot?) Jupiter (and Saturn to a lesser extent) has been acting like a vacuum for alot of big nasty rocks that would otherwise still be zipping into the inner solar system to this day. Can you imagine a Halley every 8 months, or a Shoemaker-Levy ever couple years? Someone might actually start looking for ways to protect Earth, instead of talking about it. Of course, we would almost never have survived long enough to figure out how helpful big gravity wells in the outer solar system can be.
I believe that it was also said that the moon manages to snag alot of hits that managed to come close to Earth too, although those would've been more asteroids than comets, I suppose.
I think Saturn's the car. Otherwise astronomer's would have to Saaat-uuurn all the time.
Isn't Hercules the Roman version of Hercules? (Yeah, there supposed to be a spelling difference between the Roman and Greek, but I can't remember it offhand.) I think Jupiter is Zeus.
Hey, don't blame me, blame FOX for reminding me by running it last weekend...
Cinescape update
I'd post the original story from yesterday, but Cinescape's redirects and frames make linking to a particular article a real bitch.
He doesn't really have much choice anymore does he? Besides, he never seemed as much of a determined unbeliever as Scully. He just wanted reports that he could actually give to his superiors. He's always seemed pretty willing to accept the government conspiracy things (didn't smoking man first appear in Skinner's office?), its just the werewolves and flukemen that have aroused his sceptisism.
Yeah, but how many of us have been hired to consult on a silly VR game with deadly morphing chicks?
Uh, then MS must be one of the biggest thieves there is then right?
"potential profits" and/or "future revenues" are just corporate lawyer babble for "we have more expensive lawyers than you" when in a court room. You can't steal what doesn't exist yet. There's no guarentee that some other aspect of the market won't change (that doesn't lend well to suing) that will cause the "loss" of the "future profits". Like, say, a massive natural disaster destroys the companies base of operations. When the law considers money not yet recieved to be something that can be lost or stolen, it allows wealthy entities to prevent any changes that might make for a more balanced playing field. (i.e. a competitor makes a superior product "stealing our revenues"; laws are changed to weaken a monopolies power to preserve its monopoly "cutting into our future profits")