Re:Nove 2 - we're in for a wild ride!
on
Verified Voting
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· Score: 1
For my part, living in IL, I'll cast my vote for W, not because I don't think that he's a moron, but rather because, after weeks of deliberation, I cannot, as an OB/Gyn practicing in a doctor-unfriendly state, cast a ballot in favor a ticket which includes a personal injury lawyer who made his fortune exploiting my profession.
You do realize that you have more than two choices, right?
A program like this would force those who are actually causing the accidents to be the ones to pick up the tab for them, instead of spreading the cost out over all us good drivers.
Would it? Some one comes into my lane, I swerve to avoid them and hit something, they continue on. Someone pulls out of their driveway, I slam on my brakes and get rear-ended. I'm sure you can think of a half dozen other scenarios like this where the true cause of the accident isn't one of the people in the accident. You see near misses like this every single day. Just as in the current system, my rates will go up, and the bad driver goes unpunished, unless we take it to the extreme of mandated remote GPS tracking for every motor vehicle so they can see the position of every car that was in the area at the time of the accident. I certainly don't want things to get to that point, and that's where they'd need to be to make a real difference.
But I believe the current ones only record the last few seconds of activity before an airbag deployment, so that the circumstances of a crash can be determined. What they're proposing would have to keep a MUCH longer record - on the order of months worth of data - to be of any use.
Beginag able to know I was doing 110 when I hit that tree is very different from pulling my insurace because I routinely exceed the speed limit on empty roads at 3am.
The viewpoint shown here seems not to be the popular one here with most of the posters...
I'm not really sure what your viewpoint is supposed to be. Humans shouldn't make their own decisions, they should obey the strictures of authority? Problematic, since I've yet to run into an auhtority figure who is not human. Unless of course you're referring to one of the many conflicting books (also written by humans) that claim to contain the word of some sort of superior being. But none of them seem to agree on much of anything, besides "try not to kill people who believe like you do".
Perhaps you mean we should consult the Greys for moral guidance?
We are really a democracy. All of us who live in the US are responsible for our country's actions and decisions.
Odd, I thought we were a representative republic. We have no say at all in laws that get created. We pick some person who we hope has our best interests at heart (HA!) to make decisions for us. If he proves intolerable, we can elect someone else next time, or we may even be able to recall him, but any damage he's done remains. Everything he did while in office is not magically undone. So what we get is a slow erosion of the quality of the government every time a politician makes a vote his constituency disagrees with. Just a little at a time but over a few hundred years, it adds up.
What you guys need to remember is that there's a big difference between policies enacted at the National level in Nazi Germany and power exercised on the "capillary" level, to use Foucault's term, power and authority exercised beyond what is precisely legally ordaned.
The thing is, if if the Supreme Court says Hiibel was wrong not to produce ID without being supplied a reason by the cop, "Papers Please" in effect becomes national policy.
Doesn't the notary just emboss the document and initial it (I could be wrong here)? So blow $20 to get an embosser that says "Notary Public - Dumbass County"
1." Do two wrongs make a right?"
2. "Am I willing to participate in illegal and immoral activities?"
3. "If I am willing to engage in copyright infringement/theft, am I prepared to accept the possible consequences?"
4. "Is it all worth it?"
5. "Am I stupid enough to send in a signed confession to a crime no one knows I've committed, when I could simply stop instead?"
And then my business kicks your ass.
Nice thought. It would even be a correct thought if you could offer the same music as the DRM encumbered site. But you can't, the labels won't let you publish their stuff without burying it in restrictions. Like it or not, the big-label crap music is where the money is. So what happens is both businesses do poorly. The DRM site because people won't buy what they can't use, yours because people won't buy what they don't want.
If simply offering unencumbered music at reasonable prices were enough, emusic.com would already be undisputed king of the digital music sales world. As it is, most people have never heard of them.
Odd. TW must have a couple versions of their guide floating around then, because what I get here isn't much better. On TW Digital, I get 2:30/~10 channels, and only the bottom half of the screen. The top right of the guide is a shrunken view of whatever channel I'm on, and the the top left is just telling me the channel, show and time I've got the selector on. No ads at least.
Re:Difference between "Theme" and "Message
on
Altered Carbon
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· Score: 1
Actually, with Crichton, it usually feels more like a message with an incidentally attached book. I don't mind a book with a message, as long as it's not too heavy-handed about it. Crichton has a habit of repeatedly bludgeoning the reader about the head with his moral of the day.
Newspapers? Nah, I'm gonna mount me a chaff dispenser on my car to get rid of tailgaters. *pop* Tailgater's car thinks there's a brick wall coming up, slams the brakes, I get some breathing room.
For example finding nearest cinema is useless because I don't go to the movies based on what theatre is closest to me when the thought strikes. In my city I know where most of them are, in another city a street address is useless - even if the phone tells me it is nearby - because I don't know how to get there (I would have to ask somebody anyway).
Same applies to bars. One would have to be a really hard-pressed alcoholic to actually urgently need directions to the closest open bar. I do go to bars for a few drinks with friends but we tend to choose places we know.
OK, those aren't the most useful apps, but the could be with a little help. For instance, if the cinema listing then used my location to generate directions, that would be quite useful.
While I rarely need the absolute closest bar, being able to find everything within two blocks, along with a quick blurb about what type of bar/club it is would be great for bar-hopping in a differnt town, or even unfamiliar local areas (At least while I'm still coherent enough to work the phone/PDA). Directions would be useful here too. Same kind of thing would work for restraunts too.
But even when I do buy the CD, I only get lyrics on maybe half of those. And of those, most are incomplete. Somtimes it's just a few repetitions of the chorus that are omitted, but I have alleged lyrics that are missing entire verses, and some that are just plain wrong.
4) Although many feel that we have to leave the planet before the Sun grows into a red gas giant, but has anyone considered the possibility of the Sun's output fluctuating way before that? What if it cranks up the heat just enough to cause massive climatic damage? Do we KNOW FOR SURE that this will NOT happen?
===============
Ignore the sun. There's plenty of other things that have a good chance of offing us (or at least bringing down civilization) well before the sun gets us. We've got super-volcanoes every 100,000 years or so, your regularly scheduled meteor/comet impacts, ice ages, all those nifty plauges the governments develop to protect us, and probably a dozen or so other things that could put the human race out of the running for galactic conquerer. The sooner we spread, the better our odds. Yesterday isn't soon enough.
And once the Movie/Book/Music publishers can track second-hand sales of their products, any guesses as to how long it would take before they start demanding royalties on those sales as well? I'm betting you could measure it in nanoseconds.
So making films is a money losing proposition, much like owning a MLB team will lose you $500 million/year. This explains the continuous growth of the movie companies perfectly.
No mention of the HTCP and DTCP encryption plans the content providers are pushing? If implemented as planned, they would either remove the analog outputs on set top boxes altogether (rendering all current HDTVs obsolete), or down-res analog outputs to standard definition for any program with the correct flag set. The threat of buying an instantly obsolete multi-thousand dollar TV is holding quite a few people back.
Oh they CAN add value. But only a very small percentage of bands get that benefit. And as a rule, the companies don't extend these benefits to anyone who hasn't already put a good deal of money in their coffers. If you manage to succeed inspite of them ignoring you, then they'll consider pushing your band. If you continue to succeed, then you might get a shot at a decent contract next time around. Then you might actually see profits. Most bands are signed published, and forgotten.
Go into a record store and browse through those bins. Most likely, you've never even heard of 1/3 of those artists. Another 1/3, maybe you've heard a song or two on the radio off of one of their 5 albums. The other 1/3 is bands you've heard of, they've had some measure of success. But how many have you actually seen advertising for, other than radio spots for their concerts, which comes out of their pocket in the end anyway?
Only catch I've found is that all of the mp3s are 128kb, which is a bit low for my tastes. It's by no means a deal breaker though, especially since half my listening is done in the car, where I can't tell that much difference anyway. The big plus for me is that they have a fairy broad catalog, and while they are lacking on the current mainstream albums (oh no, I can't get the latest Brittney CD! Whatever shall I do?), they have many out of print albums that you just can't find on OpenNap or Morpheus servers. I got my $120 worth in the first few days. And I love having them come off of real servers with real bandwidth. No partial rips, no Rice Krispies sound effects in my songs, no dropped transfers, and it's all guilt-free.
Slashdot Mirror
You do realize that you have more than two choices, right?
Would it? Some one comes into my lane, I swerve to avoid them and hit something, they continue on. Someone pulls out of their driveway, I slam on my brakes and get rear-ended. I'm sure you can think of a half dozen other scenarios like this where the true cause of the accident isn't one of the people in the accident. You see near misses like this every single day. Just as in the current system, my rates will go up, and the bad driver goes unpunished, unless we take it to the extreme of mandated remote GPS tracking for every motor vehicle so they can see the position of every car that was in the area at the time of the accident. I certainly don't want things to get to that point, and that's where they'd need to be to make a real difference.
But I believe the current ones only record the last few seconds of activity before an airbag deployment, so that the circumstances of a crash can be determined. What they're proposing would have to keep a MUCH longer record - on the order of months worth of data - to be of any use. Beginag able to know I was doing 110 when I hit that tree is very different from pulling my insurace because I routinely exceed the speed limit on empty roads at 3am.
Downhill for the entire test drive, yet you managed to return the car? Did M.C. Escher design the roads around there by any chance?
I'm not really sure what your viewpoint is supposed to be. Humans shouldn't make their own decisions, they should obey the strictures of authority? Problematic, since I've yet to run into an auhtority figure who is not human. Unless of course you're referring to one of the many conflicting books (also written by humans) that claim to contain the word of some sort of superior being. But none of them seem to agree on much of anything, besides "try not to kill people who believe like you do".
Perhaps you mean we should consult the Greys for moral guidance?
Odd, I thought we were a representative republic. We have no say at all in laws that get created. We pick some person who we hope has our best interests at heart (HA!) to make decisions for us. If he proves intolerable, we can elect someone else next time, or we may even be able to recall him, but any damage he's done remains. Everything he did while in office is not magically undone. So what we get is a slow erosion of the quality of the government every time a politician makes a vote his constituency disagrees with. Just a little at a time but over a few hundred years, it adds up.
What you guys need to remember is that there's a big difference between policies enacted at the National level in Nazi Germany and power exercised on the "capillary" level, to use Foucault's term, power and authority exercised beyond what is precisely legally ordaned.
The thing is, if if the Supreme Court says Hiibel was wrong not to produce ID without being supplied a reason by the cop, "Papers Please" in effect becomes national policy.
Doesn't the notary just emboss the document and initial it (I could be wrong here)? So blow $20 to get an embosser that says "Notary Public - Dumbass County"
2. "Am I willing to participate in illegal and immoral activities?"
3. "If I am willing to engage in copyright infringement/theft, am I prepared to accept the possible consequences?"
4. "Is it all worth it?"
5. "Am I stupid enough to send in a signed confession to a crime no one knows I've committed, when I could simply stop instead?"
I bet making shitty music is their new plan to stop people from sharing it.
You mean like this?
And then my business kicks your ass. Nice thought. It would even be a correct thought if you could offer the same music as the DRM encumbered site. But you can't, the labels won't let you publish their stuff without burying it in restrictions. Like it or not, the big-label crap music is where the money is. So what happens is both businesses do poorly. The DRM site because people won't buy what they can't use, yours because people won't buy what they don't want. If simply offering unencumbered music at reasonable prices were enough, emusic.com would already be undisputed king of the digital music sales world. As it is, most people have never heard of them.
Odd. TW must have a couple versions of their guide floating around then, because what I get here isn't much better. On TW Digital, I get 2:30/~10 channels, and only the bottom half of the screen. The top right of the guide is a shrunken view of whatever channel I'm on, and the the top left is just telling me the channel, show and time I've got the selector on. No ads at least.
I smell a new market for those mod chip makers.
Actually, with Crichton, it usually feels more like a message with an incidentally attached book. I don't mind a book with a message, as long as it's not too heavy-handed about it. Crichton has a habit of repeatedly bludgeoning the reader about the head with his moral of the day.
Does this mean that I'll never be able to fold it back up the same way it came?
Newspapers? Nah, I'm gonna mount me a chaff dispenser on my car to get rid of tailgaters. *pop* Tailgater's car thinks there's a brick wall coming up, slams the brakes, I get some breathing room.
For example finding nearest cinema is useless because I don't go to the movies based on what theatre is closest to me when the thought strikes. In my city I know where most of them are, in another city a street address is useless - even if the phone tells me it is nearby - because I don't know how to get there (I would have to ask somebody anyway).
Same applies to bars. One would have to be a really hard-pressed alcoholic to actually urgently need directions to the closest open bar. I do go to bars for a few drinks with friends but we tend to choose places we know.
OK, those aren't the most useful apps, but the could be with a little help. For instance, if the cinema listing then used my location to generate directions, that would be quite useful.
While I rarely need the absolute closest bar, being able to find everything within two blocks, along with a quick blurb about what type of bar/club it is would be great for bar-hopping in a differnt town, or even unfamiliar local areas (At least while I'm still coherent enough to work the phone/PDA). Directions would be useful here too. Same kind of thing would work for restraunts too.
But even when I do buy the CD, I only get lyrics on maybe half of those. And of those, most are incomplete. Somtimes it's just a few repetitions of the chorus that are omitted, but I have alleged lyrics that are missing entire verses, and some that are just plain wrong.
Now all I need is an expansion slot that can handle 10Gb/s to plug that new NIC into.
4) Although many feel that we have to leave the planet before the Sun grows into a red gas giant, but has anyone considered the possibility of the Sun's output fluctuating way before that? What if it cranks up the heat just enough to cause massive climatic damage? Do we KNOW FOR SURE that this will NOT happen? =============== Ignore the sun. There's plenty of other things that have a good chance of offing us (or at least bringing down civilization) well before the sun gets us. We've got super-volcanoes every 100,000 years or so, your regularly scheduled meteor/comet impacts, ice ages, all those nifty plauges the governments develop to protect us, and probably a dozen or so other things that could put the human race out of the running for galactic conquerer. The sooner we spread, the better our odds. Yesterday isn't soon enough.
And once the Movie/Book/Music publishers can track second-hand sales of their products, any guesses as to how long it would take before they start demanding royalties on those sales as well? I'm betting you could measure it in nanoseconds.
So making films is a money losing proposition, much like owning a MLB team will lose you $500 million/year. This explains the continuous growth of the movie companies perfectly.
No mention of the HTCP and DTCP encryption plans the content providers are pushing? If implemented as planned, they would either remove the analog outputs on set top boxes altogether (rendering all current HDTVs obsolete), or down-res analog outputs to standard definition for any program with the correct flag set. The threat of buying an instantly obsolete multi-thousand dollar TV is holding quite a few people back.
Oh they CAN add value. But only a very small percentage of bands get that benefit. And as a rule, the companies don't extend these benefits to anyone who hasn't already put a good deal of money in their coffers. If you manage to succeed inspite of them ignoring you, then they'll consider pushing your band. If you continue to succeed, then you might get a shot at a decent contract next time around. Then you might actually see profits. Most bands are signed published, and forgotten. Go into a record store and browse through those bins. Most likely, you've never even heard of 1/3 of those artists. Another 1/3, maybe you've heard a song or two on the radio off of one of their 5 albums. The other 1/3 is bands you've heard of, they've had some measure of success. But how many have you actually seen advertising for, other than radio spots for their concerts, which comes out of their pocket in the end anyway?
Only catch I've found is that all of the mp3s are 128kb, which is a bit low for my tastes. It's by no means a deal breaker though, especially since half my listening is done in the car, where I can't tell that much difference anyway. The big plus for me is that they have a fairy broad catalog, and while they are lacking on the current mainstream albums (oh no, I can't get the latest Brittney CD! Whatever shall I do?), they have many out of print albums that you just can't find on OpenNap or Morpheus servers. I got my $120 worth in the first few days. And I love having them come off of real servers with real bandwidth. No partial rips, no Rice Krispies sound effects in my songs, no dropped transfers, and it's all guilt-free.