By your logic, it would have been equally acceptable if each student had received a penny of the settlement, because obviously, without his work, they wouldn't have gotten anything.
Please quit spreading this misinformation. We aren't more spread out than several countries that completely kick our asses in both rural and metro internet access.
And being spread out *still* doesn't provide any justification why there would be effective monopolies with poor service in most major metro areas.
U.S. citizens are reamed for Internet access. Stop playing the Stockholm syndrome victim and acting as an industry apologist.
It is unethical because NOBODY who understands the "service" they provide would choose to pay them for it. The ONLY people who will fall for it are those that don't know any better.
If you argue that this is ok; fine. That means you also think that just about any scam that takes advantage of people not knowing any better is ok, as long as it provides *some* sort of a "service," no matter how loosely that "service" is defined.
How do you think that you can simultaneously describe something as both "sleazy" and "ethical"? It kind of casts into doubt your entire argument throughout this thread; sleazy is basically, by definition, unethical.
And with the number of different models available and constantly changing prices of PS3 hardware, it's entirely possible that someone wouldn't really know what they were being charged for, or assume that they were getting a premium SKU.
it would be like buying auto insurance after you've had a wreck and expecting the insurance company to cover you for that wreck
No, it wouldn't be like that at all. It would be more like an ambulance ride, where you call them up when you need them and they give you a ride to the hospital, and charge you for it.
Your analogy would mean that while your house is burning, you call up the fire department, give them $75, and they're on the hook for the house an its contents. That indeed would be stupid, which is why nobody is suggesting that.
You'll still pay for it; there's no free lunch here or anywhere. It just ends up being an invisible mark-up on *everything* you buy to cover the cost of advertising.
You still pay the cost for advertising. Everything you buy has the cost of advertising built in.
This is one reason that I see nothing wrong with "stealing" TV or movies; they were financed by advertising. The stuff I buy paid for that, whether I wanted it to or not. I don't generally bother, because there isn't much worth watching; in fact, I generally do pay when I do watch things. But I feel absolutely no remorse for downloading a show here or there without advertisers getting their cut.
There really is no comparison. The images of Milano were copyrighted and being distributed without permission. There were no images of Stayart herself, copyrighted or otherwise; just that a search for her name returned unrelated links to porn.
There is no irony, or even contradiction. Two completely different issues.
The only reason it got pulled was because it was doing something *Apple* didn't want it to do, not because it was doing something the *users* didn't want it to do.
Do you have a list of applications that have been pulled from the Apple website because they were data mining their users? If not, you have no evidence that Apple cares about this at all.
You know, I was out east a couple weeks ago and wandering around NYC. I found it outrageously funny that every fucking time the lights changed, one or more people would honk.
Now, I'm from the northwest, and it's *rare* to hear car horns, even in downtown traffic, unless something really egregious is happening. And you know what? The people sitting at stoplights still manage to get started, all by themselves, without some jackass laying on the horn.
I know this is completely off-topic, but I seriously don't understand how you can put up with that. Are people really that stupid that they won't move when a light changes, or are they just that impatient that they can't help but be a loud, obnoxious asshole by using their horn?
Fair idea, except is sucks to be the person who gets t-boned in an intersection by a negligent driver who can't afford to replace their totaled car or their $50k hospital stay.
Fast forward to Obama, and not only did he not foresee the oncoming financial disaster, he also did basically nothing to counteract it.
The financial disaster started in early 2008 with some large problems in the financial industry, then became a really major issue with the stock markets losing some 30% of their value over the last few months, starting prior to the election, and basically leveling off before Obama ever even took office.
During that time, Bush and the congress of the time passed the TARP. After Obama took office, he passed the stimulus bill. So you really can't say he has done "basically nothing to counteract it." What would you have had him do?
It doesn't mean what the people clearly wanted - as in a leadership that listens to the voters
Some 90% of the public was supportive of some form of health care reform. Then the bickering and misinformation started. Now we have a terrible bill (that's still better than nothing) that few support. One could say that Obama *was* doing what the voters wanted by initiating the health care reform. Unfortunately, it really didn't work out very well.
Anyway, your reality doesn't match my reality. I'm pretty sure that it doesn't match most other people's reality either when half of what you assert as facts are demonstratably false, and all you have left is subjective, unsupported opinion.
If you actually priced out hardware you would find that you do pay more for Apple hardware but it is often higher quality hardware.
No, it really isn't. The screens aren't any better (they used to be, but aren't any more) the hardware is the same as you'll find in any Windows machine (same Intel chips, same end-user grade RAM, same end-user grade HDs), the video hardware is from stock chips. Maybe they have better optical drives. And maybe the touchpad could be considered higher quality. Those don't add up to a 50% price premium.
About the only thing "high-end" about it is the machined aluminum case. (I say this as a 17" MacBook Pro owner.)
So one example of a poorly-run union shows that every union is corrupt? Or are you equally skeptical when people present evidence of stuff that supports your position?
The fact that a freshly-trained, uneducated, inexperienced laborer can earn a middle-class wage from day one, with full benefits
This actually doesn't sound unreasonable at all to me.
At what point would someone be "deserving" of a middle-class wage, in your point of view? How many years do they have to put in as a low-wage, no-benefits employee where a single bad illness or injury could mean bankruptcy?
Why should "talented people with double-degrees and 10 years experience" be guaranteed anything? Sounds like they're just too smart/stubborn/dumb to unionize; and your entire post reeks of self-entitlement.
Personally, I think that anyone working an honest 40 hours per week should be able to enjoy a stable financial situation. The only people who seem to have an issue with that are assholes with huge egos that somehow think they deserve more than all of the uneducated peons.
Why should teachers be able to enjoy the benefits of the unions (health insurance, retirement benefits) without becoming members themselves?
I'm all for making it optional to join if they want to go it alone in their bargaining, but if they're not paying dues, nothing except a sense of entitlement says that they should get to take advantage of what the union has bargained for.
Everyone is a potential rapist, mugger, or murderer. You need guns to protect yourself from them.
Everyone is also a potential thief. You can't mention any of your possessions because someone might come steal your stuff. And in a flip of bizarre logic, owning guns deters burglars, because they might be shot, but they also attract burglars, because they're valuable; so you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, really.
The world I live in:
Most people are fairly reasonable and will leave you alone unless you do shit to provoke them. I don't fear other citizens and I'm not afraid to walk around at night alone. I'm not scared that if I mention owning something of value, that my home will immediately become a target for thieves. Really, I don't live in much fear of anything. I've never experienced crime, my immediate family has never experienced crime, and in my rather large extended family, only one cousin has ever experienced crime when she was mugged in Boston and lost a couple hundred bucks and had to cancel all of her credit cards. Crime is the lowest it has been in 40 years (look it up), and has been on a steadily decreasing trend for 20 years.
Note that I don't give a shit about guns and never said anything about whether I think they should be legal or not legal. I'm only responding to your obvious paranoia in regards to the people you apparently deal with on a regular basis.
I invite you to come to my world; the odds against crime are on my side, and it's a really much more pleasant place to live. At the very least, quit hanging around people you think are potential thieves
Or, continue to live in the paranoid delusion that random people around you might suddenly turn on you because they know you have something of value. Seems like a stupid, indefensible choice to me, but hey, you're free to live your life however you want to.
I'm not going to provide any statistics or Google links -- only my hunch. But I'd put quite a bit of money on a bet that far more people survive fistfights with little or no permanent injury than they do gunshots.
I'm going to assume that you don't think it's reasonable to put a bullet in someone because they shoved you, but you don't really clarify what type of "attacks" would warrant a response with deadly force. The reason I state this is because there are a lot of idiots that seem to like to provoke violence just to have an excuse to get into a fight, and gun violence is only one drunken bad decision away when you have a heavily armed population all with concealed carry permits. If everyone has guns, it also makes the "but I thought he was going for his gun" defense more viable.
So are you actually going to create job(s) with the 5% of your income above $200k? What kind of jobs? Are you a business owner? Maybe you should just pay yourself a little less and reinvest the money in the business instead, and avoid the tax altogether?
Or maybe you're just completely full of shit, and have no intention or ability to create jobs?
I'll be in the Colbert - 'Keep Fear Alive' side. My sign will read; 'The New American Tea-Party; Harnessing the Power of Stupid. Finally, A Renewable resource all republicans can agree on!'
Good job missing the point; unless you're waving that sign ironically to make a meta-joke illustrating that only idiots that miss the point would be waving a sign like that. If that's the case, kudos.
Slashdot Mirror
By your logic, it would have been equally acceptable if each student had received a penny of the settlement, because obviously, without his work, they wouldn't have gotten anything.
--Jeremy
Please quit spreading this misinformation. We aren't more spread out than several countries that completely kick our asses in both rural and metro internet access.
And being spread out *still* doesn't provide any justification why there would be effective monopolies with poor service in most major metro areas.
U.S. citizens are reamed for Internet access. Stop playing the Stockholm syndrome victim and acting as an industry apologist.
--Jeremy
It is unethical because NOBODY who understands the "service" they provide would choose to pay them for it. The ONLY people who will fall for it are those that don't know any better.
If you argue that this is ok; fine. That means you also think that just about any scam that takes advantage of people not knowing any better is ok, as long as it provides *some* sort of a "service," no matter how loosely that "service" is defined.
Understand?
--Jeremy
How do you think that you can simultaneously describe something as both "sleazy" and "ethical"? It kind of casts into doubt your entire argument throughout this thread; sleazy is basically, by definition, unethical.
And with the number of different models available and constantly changing prices of PS3 hardware, it's entirely possible that someone wouldn't really know what they were being charged for, or assume that they were getting a premium SKU.
--Jeremy
No, it wouldn't be like that at all. It would be more like an ambulance ride, where you call them up when you need them and they give you a ride to the hospital, and charge you for it.
Your analogy would mean that while your house is burning, you call up the fire department, give them $75, and they're on the hook for the house an its contents. That indeed would be stupid, which is why nobody is suggesting that.
--Jeremy
You'll still pay for it; there's no free lunch here or anywhere. It just ends up being an invisible mark-up on *everything* you buy to cover the cost of advertising.
--Jeremy
You still pay the cost for advertising. Everything you buy has the cost of advertising built in.
This is one reason that I see nothing wrong with "stealing" TV or movies; they were financed by advertising. The stuff I buy paid for that, whether I wanted it to or not. I don't generally bother, because there isn't much worth watching; in fact, I generally do pay when I do watch things. But I feel absolutely no remorse for downloading a show here or there without advertisers getting their cut.
--Jeremy
There really is no comparison. The images of Milano were copyrighted and being distributed without permission. There were no images of Stayart herself, copyrighted or otherwise; just that a search for her name returned unrelated links to porn.
There is no irony, or even contradiction. Two completely different issues.
--Jeremy
The only reason it got pulled was because it was doing something *Apple* didn't want it to do, not because it was doing something the *users* didn't want it to do.
Do you have a list of applications that have been pulled from the Apple website because they were data mining their users? If not, you have no evidence that Apple cares about this at all.
--Jeremy
And if Bush had been president, you'd be in here defending this as "defending the people."
See how easy it is to bring up irrelevant strawmen?
--Jeremy
He made no statement whatsoever about right-wing being good or bad.
--Jeremy
Nice talking points, but you failed to present a single piece of evidence to support your 'argument,' if you can call it that.
--Jeremy
You know, I was out east a couple weeks ago and wandering around NYC. I found it outrageously funny that every fucking time the lights changed, one or more people would honk.
Now, I'm from the northwest, and it's *rare* to hear car horns, even in downtown traffic, unless something really egregious is happening. And you know what? The people sitting at stoplights still manage to get started, all by themselves, without some jackass laying on the horn.
I know this is completely off-topic, but I seriously don't understand how you can put up with that. Are people really that stupid that they won't move when a light changes, or are they just that impatient that they can't help but be a loud, obnoxious asshole by using their horn?
--Jeremy
Fair idea, except is sucks to be the person who gets t-boned in an intersection by a negligent driver who can't afford to replace their totaled car or their $50k hospital stay.
--Jeremy
You have an atrocious memory.
Second year. He started in 2009.
The financial disaster started in early 2008 with some large problems in the financial industry, then became a really major issue with the stock markets losing some 30% of their value over the last few months, starting prior to the election, and basically leveling off before Obama ever even took office.
During that time, Bush and the congress of the time passed the TARP. After Obama took office, he passed the stimulus bill. So you really can't say he has done "basically nothing to counteract it." What would you have had him do?
Some 90% of the public was supportive of some form of health care reform. Then the bickering and misinformation started. Now we have a terrible bill (that's still better than nothing) that few support. One could say that Obama *was* doing what the voters wanted by initiating the health care reform. Unfortunately, it really didn't work out very well.
Anyway, your reality doesn't match my reality. I'm pretty sure that it doesn't match most other people's reality either when half of what you assert as facts are demonstratably false, and all you have left is subjective, unsupported opinion.
--Jeremy
Holy crap. When I saw all those exclamation points, for a second I thought I was over on the CNN message boards.
--Jeremy
No, it really isn't. The screens aren't any better (they used to be, but aren't any more) the hardware is the same as you'll find in any Windows machine (same Intel chips, same end-user grade RAM, same end-user grade HDs), the video hardware is from stock chips. Maybe they have better optical drives. And maybe the touchpad could be considered higher quality. Those don't add up to a 50% price premium.
About the only thing "high-end" about it is the machined aluminum case. (I say this as a 17" MacBook Pro owner.)
--Jeremy
So one example of a poorly-run union shows that every union is corrupt? Or are you equally skeptical when people present evidence of stuff that supports your position?
--Jeremy
This actually doesn't sound unreasonable at all to me.
At what point would someone be "deserving" of a middle-class wage, in your point of view? How many years do they have to put in as a low-wage, no-benefits employee where a single bad illness or injury could mean bankruptcy?
Why should "talented people with double-degrees and 10 years experience" be guaranteed anything? Sounds like they're just too smart/stubborn/dumb to unionize; and your entire post reeks of self-entitlement.
Personally, I think that anyone working an honest 40 hours per week should be able to enjoy a stable financial situation. The only people who seem to have an issue with that are assholes with huge egos that somehow think they deserve more than all of the uneducated peons.
--Jeremy
Why should teachers be able to enjoy the benefits of the unions (health insurance, retirement benefits) without becoming members themselves?
I'm all for making it optional to join if they want to go it alone in their bargaining, but if they're not paying dues, nothing except a sense of entitlement says that they should get to take advantage of what the union has bargained for.
--Jeremy
The world you live in:
Everyone is a potential rapist, mugger, or murderer. You need guns to protect yourself from them.
Everyone is also a potential thief. You can't mention any of your possessions because someone might come steal your stuff. And in a flip of bizarre logic, owning guns deters burglars, because they might be shot, but they also attract burglars, because they're valuable; so you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, really.
The world I live in:
Most people are fairly reasonable and will leave you alone unless you do shit to provoke them. I don't fear other citizens and I'm not afraid to walk around at night alone. I'm not scared that if I mention owning something of value, that my home will immediately become a target for thieves. Really, I don't live in much fear of anything. I've never experienced crime, my immediate family has never experienced crime, and in my rather large extended family, only one cousin has ever experienced crime when she was mugged in Boston and lost a couple hundred bucks and had to cancel all of her credit cards. Crime is the lowest it has been in 40 years (look it up), and has been on a steadily decreasing trend for 20 years.
Note that I don't give a shit about guns and never said anything about whether I think they should be legal or not legal. I'm only responding to your obvious paranoia in regards to the people you apparently deal with on a regular basis.
I invite you to come to my world; the odds against crime are on my side, and it's a really much more pleasant place to live. At the very least, quit hanging around people you think are potential thieves
Or, continue to live in the paranoid delusion that random people around you might suddenly turn on you because they know you have something of value. Seems like a stupid, indefensible choice to me, but hey, you're free to live your life however you want to.
--Jeremy
I'm not going to provide any statistics or Google links -- only my hunch. But I'd put quite a bit of money on a bet that far more people survive fistfights with little or no permanent injury than they do gunshots.
I'm going to assume that you don't think it's reasonable to put a bullet in someone because they shoved you, but you don't really clarify what type of "attacks" would warrant a response with deadly force. The reason I state this is because there are a lot of idiots that seem to like to provoke violence just to have an excuse to get into a fight, and gun violence is only one drunken bad decision away when you have a heavily armed population all with concealed carry permits. If everyone has guns, it also makes the "but I thought he was going for his gun" defense more viable.
--Jeremy
So are you actually going to create job(s) with the 5% of your income above $200k? What kind of jobs? Are you a business owner? Maybe you should just pay yourself a little less and reinvest the money in the business instead, and avoid the tax altogether?
Or maybe you're just completely full of shit, and have no intention or ability to create jobs?
--Jeremy
So in other words, you've already decided what reality will be:
If independent estimates place the numbers below Beck's, then that's what you expected, so that's obviously correct.
If independent estimates place the numbers higher than Beck's, you'll go with your gut and say it's just lies.
Basically, you won't have to think either way. Either outcome will reinforce what you already believe to be true.
--Jeremy
Good job missing the point; unless you're waving that sign ironically to make a meta-joke illustrating that only idiots that miss the point would be waving a sign like that. If that's the case, kudos.
--Jeremy