I think it's because the left used to be able to control the debate because the issues were often presented in a way that was sympathetic to their cause by the major media.
Now with Fox news, and the internet, they've lost that power. So now they have a very popular media outlet that doesn't adhere to their POV, they attack it as being fake (hence FAUXnews), or only watched by inbreds or something. But the News on Foxnews isn't fake. It's the same stories you can find elsewhere, it's just the POV in the story may be a little different than others, and the weights given to stories may be different. But that doesn't make it wrong. Sure we'd prefer no political bias in our news, but is that really possible?
How can the ability to get different POVs in the media be bad?
They support their own interpretation of the 2nd ammendment, just like they support their own interpretation of the 1st.
For instance, there's a line in the First about religion, saying Congress shall not "prohibit the free exercise thereof (religion)".
So when people put up a Nativity scene at work (in the public sector), or students form a voluntary prayer group at a public school, attmpting to freely excercise their religion, who is there fighting them? The ACLU. Why? They argue that these individual actions amount to a government sanctioned religion which is prohibited by the 1st amendment. But the first amendment doesn't make an exception for the free exercise of religion on public grounds. That was made up by lawyers and judges much later.
The ACLU claims to be the defender of the Bill of Rights, but it's important to realize that their interpretation of the Bill of Rights is often much different that what is actually written there. And Frankly, that's dangerous. If there's a problem with an existing amendment, you change it by getting a new one passed, you shouldn't be able to change it just by getting rulings from judges that are sympathetic to your cause, which is what the ACLU (and like minded groups) have done over the years.
Thats true, but democracy is always based on the lowest common denominator. Capitalism will always reflect the worst of man, not the best.
I think you are confusing Capitalism with "Mass Market". In the Mass-Market, yes, things are geared to the least common denominator. But there are always niche markets for people who aren't satisfied with mass-marketed items.
Take food, for example. Mass-marketed produce has been bred, and sometimes genetically manipulated to have certain characteristics: consistent ripening, disease resistance, low spoilage. Growing these varieties leads to maximum output per acre. However, many people don't want GM produce, they want varieties bred for taste, not those other characteristics, and don't like the idea of pesticides, hence the organic foods market. Capitalism allows the organic foods market to coexist with the mass-food market, but it's still capitalism. Farmers still make money growing organic foods (in some cases more so than mass-market food), and shops make money selling it. Another example would be Apple. Sure the mass-market PCs are cheaper, but enough people consider Apple hardware/software better and are willing to spend more for it, certainly enough to keep Apple profitable, and despite whatever image Steve Jobs may project, Apple is still capitalist.
I think the best way is to have different guidelines in each community, in each country. If you didn't like the way it was done in one community, you could apply to join another.
This does happen already. Here in Massachusetts, many of the communities either have architectural guidelines for new development, or they just won't grant a permit to developments that they think would be out of place. In Boston, there are many neighborhood organizations that you need to satisfy, or they will fight your development every step of the way. Other communities don't care as much, and will allow terribly ugly things to be built. But since I don't think you can build anything anywhere without a permit, every community has the power to determine what kind of development will occur. It's just a matter of whether they care enough. If the place is already filled with eyesores, it's harder to argue against building another eyesore, and the people who care about such things are likely to move elsewhere anyway.
To a capitalist and a communist, ornate architecture is inherently inefficient and serves no real purpose.
That's not completely true, ornate architecture often greatly increases the valuation of a building or object.
This cannot be quantified by a capitalist accountant.
To an-extent it can. It might be known that in a certain community, Neo-victorian architecture may fetch a 25% premium over some plain cookie-cutter design.
Capitalism finds ways to meet demand. If there is great demand for a certain type of architecture, (and the community is affluent enough to pay the extra costs of such development) then they capitalist developer will build it. If he doesn't or use a different type of architecture that's out of place in the location, the market will punish him, and he may lose money on the building.
When you realize this, it makes perfect sense that culture is destroyed by capitalism and communism.
Capitalism is a reflection of the values of the people. If the people want mediocrity, that's what they'll get. If you are producing a TV show, you can produce something like "Masterpiece Theater", or "Joe Millionaire". If there's a small audience for the "Masterpiece Theater"-type show, but a huge one for "Joe Millionaire", guess which wins? If you say "screw it, we need Masterpiece Theater, not that Joe Millionaire garbage, so that's what I'll produce." You can still do that, but you can't force people to watch it. No matter how much your convictions tell you that "we need it"
So the apparent lack of cultural values in capitalism, is just a reflection of the lack of cultural values in the public. To change it, perhaps you can try to instill cultural pride in the youth in education. If that works, when that generation grows up, they will demand better quality. Or it might just be that some people will never come to appreciate the "finer things", no matter how much you attempt to indoctrinate them. What you value as a "finer thing" is not the same as theirs.
yet the idea of free market is quite young. Adam Smith published Wealth of Nation in 1776. How do you explain all the innovations during the reneissance when merchantilism ruled? Or perhaps during the height of Greeks?
Adam Smith didn't invent the "Free Market", he merely observed it and wrote about it.
Anyway, the marketplace of ideas isn't exactly the same thing as free markets in economics.
For some reason, someone in my family thought I was a Far Side fan, and I kept getting FS books for Christmas every year. But I've read the books, and each book maybe had one funny strip each.
I just don't find most FS strips very amuzing at all. It's not that I don't get the humor/punch line, I do, but I don't find it very humorous. Am I the only one?
My wife always watches, so I end up seeing more than I can take (defined as 2 minutes or more) no matter how much I try to avoid them.
Re:If it's ready to happen, it will, despite gov't
on
The End of the Oil Age
·
· Score: 1
Did governments need to promote the alternatives to stone? A thing whose time has come shouldn't need "help". In fact, I'd argue that having government in your corner is often the worst thing that could happen.
I tend to agree. When the cost becomes attractive enough, it will hit critical mass.
For a good example of what happens when the govt, or especially the US govt tries to promote something, check out the Time magazine article a few weeks ago about the alternative energy scam. Basically, the US govt, to promote alternative fuels, instituted an alternative fuels tax credit.
The article reported that some companies were quietly taking coal, and spraying it with gas or some other flammable product, and calling it an alternative fuel, and claiming the tax credit!
In protest of the screener ban, they would have cancelled an award show?
I say keep the ban then!
I can't tell you how much I HATE those &#$( award shows.
Joan Rivers and others gawking over what horrendously tacky and expensive outfits the stars are wearing beforehand. Why do we care? The stuff is loaned to them, it's a form of product placement on part of the designers.
Then comes the preaching on the evils of P2P at the start of the show.
And before each award is presented, we get the awful, awful, awful, inane scripted banter on part of the presenters.
And then comes Justin Timberlake, Christina Agulera, and Brittney Spears. One or more of them seems to be present at every stinkin awards show, even if it's the Country Music Awards.
And then one act or movie always seems to take all the awards. Some acts like U2 and Tom Hanks always win no matter what the competition, or the merit of their particular thing (I like U2, but "Stuck in a moment you can't get out of?" Puh leeze)
And then they can't ever seem to end on time.
And sometimes it seems like there's an award show on every other day!
So if the screener ban causes these shows to be cancelled, I say "Bring it on!".
UFOs stop being believable for a whole number of reasons related to the known physics of space travel.
Exactly, we used to "know" that the world was flat, and celestial objects revolved arount IT, and that the atom was the smallest unit of matter. Who is to say what we still don't know? It's arrogant to assume that our knowledge of science is complete. It never was before, why should it be now?
We haven't yet found any habitable planets AT ALL that I'm aware of
And we've only started discovering extra-solar planets at all in the past few years. Our knowledge here is really in its infancy.
What possible interest would that life form have of visiting us in person? Wouldn't they have a technology sufficient to observe us remotely?
If you had knowledge that there was life on planet y, and you had the means to travel to planet y, wouldn't you?
Sure they could send "unmanned drones" to watch us, but wouldn't that still be an "unidentified flying object"?
Even if they did come here in person and crashed one or more ships, how can the government possibly keep something like that a coverup for so long.
I agree that the government doesn't keep secrets well, so I automatically doubt conspiracy theories, espicially the MJ12/New World Order variety.
But I would call Roswell an unsuccessful coverup. If they had been successful in covering it up, we'd know nothing about it at all. In the case of Roswell, they TOLD us they recovered a crashed "saucer". Then they essential said "oops, our bad, it was a weather balloon" then years later admitted the weather balloon was a cover story because it really a spy balloon. People have come forward who were in the govt or on the scene with the Alien craft story. Some might question their credibility, but this essentially is what keeps the controversy alive. Is the govt lying, or are all those people lying? If the crashed saucer theory is the truth, the govt did a poor job of conceiling it.
In the case of the PA crash. It seems clear they recovered something. If it was 1960's Soviet space technology, why must it still be classified?
In either case, the govt did a poor job covering it up. (as would be expected) The difference between this and Watergate is that most of the mainstream media considers this a fringe area, and won't risk their professional credibility trying to expose it.
I am not saying for certains that aliens are visiting Earth, or crashing the crafts here in the process. I don't know. It is pretty compelling though if you look at the whole of the evidence, that some UFOs are a real physical phenomena. We just don't know what they are, they could be secret government craft, or they could be something else.
SCO is not the type of company most pension-type funds would touch. High-risk hedge funds, maybe.
SCOX it's a small or microcap stock that was trading in penny stock territory not long ago, and now has a price to earnings ratio of 143 (very expensive)! It is a highly speculative investment.
Since it's a smallcap stock, large mutual funds can only take a relatively small holding in SCOX, (after all, you don't want to be the one bidding the price way up, who will you sell to?)
So you need not worry about SCO ruining your retirement.
Why is it that our civilization can build airplanes, yet we have people who will use them to travel to far away countries and study more primitive cultures who barely have knowledge of agriculture?
If there are aliens visiting, then I assume it would be for the same reasons. If there is anything to the abduction stories, it doesn't sound any different than what our scientists do to study wild animals. We tranquilize them, examine them, and tag them so we can track them by radio.
Or to look at it another way, one assumes that humans will aspire to travel to the stars some day. If we are ever successful, and we discover a planet that houses a primitive civilization, would we say, "These beings are so primitive, nothing to see here, let's move along"? I doubt it! I'm certain we would keep people around them to study them without impacting the alien civilization too much, so we would probably try to conceal our presence.
I don't buy the argument that no one would come here because it isn't interesting enough. I think the fact that this planet houses any kind of life, no matter how primitive would be VERY interesting to alien races as it would be for us.
We assume that there is life on other worlds, based on the sheer number of stars similar to our own, and based on the relative position of our galaxy and star, that there may well be civilazations more advanced than us.
So if we believe there could be more advanced civilizations than us out there, they could have achieved what we could only dream of, and things we couldn't imagine right now. So why couldn't they find away to travel to distant stars and discover other civilizations? The main reason we say they can't because we can't, we don't know how to do it, and our understanding of physics says it's impossible. Da Vinci designed a kind of helicoptor, but it was "impossible" to build one in his time. But it's possible now. Who knows what's impossible now but possible in the future?
If there are advanced civilizations out there, it should come as no surprise that they would come here to observe and study, and if they don't feel that we're ready to come into contact with an alien civilization, they would likely try to conceal their presence as much as possible.
"Unless Apple decides to make radical changes to their service model, a Windows-based version of iTunes will still remain a closed system, where iPod owners cannot access content from other services. Additionally, users of iTunes are limited to music from Apple's Music Store. As I mentioned earlier, this is a drawback for Windows users, who expect choice in music services, choice in devices, and choice in music from a wide-variety of music services to burn to a CD or put on a portable device,"
Sure you have choice, you can still install the MusicMatch client, and the Napster 2.0 client (when it becomes available), and use those stores along with iTunes
"Lastly, if you use Apple's music store along with iTunes, you don't have the ability of using the over 40 different Windows Media-compatible portable music devices. When I'm paying for music, I want to know that I have choices today and in the future,"
This is a valid point. I can't put the songs from iTunes onto my Nomad Jukebox, unless I burn them to CD and Rip them back first. I can put the songs I buy from MusicMatch on my Nomad with no problems.
Still this is mostly typical FUD from M$. They see online digital music sales as the next big thing, and they HATE it when the next big thing is dominated by someone else.
But for some reason, nobody in the industry except for Apple could see the obvious business model for online digital music sales. While everyone else was fiddling with subscription models where you lose your music if you stop paying your subscription, Apple knew that users wanted to buy and keep their music, so they deserve their lead.
The difference between a "freedom fighter"
and a terrorist does not exist.
It most certainly does. A terrorist is often motivated by generating fear and getting media coverage. The have no qualms about deliberately targetting and killing civilians, and even people otherwise sympathetic to their cause in their attacks. A non-terrorist "freedom fighter" would limit their attacks to government, military, police and targets, specifically the oppressors. Sure the might kill civilians in those efforts, but it's not the same thing as bombing shopping malls and nightclubs, buses, etc.
Linux zealots are obsessed with making better software, helping people and making the world a better place.
The world better by OUR standards. The terrorists truly believe that they are trying to make the world a better place also, by their standards.
When was the last time a terrorist helped a little old lady cross the road?
The terrorists have a different solution to this problem. Remember, in Afghanistan, under the Taliban, it was against the law for a woman to be outside without a male escort.
Jeez.. I'll probably get modded flamebait for this post, just trying to get people to think a little differently. I am a Linux enthusiast who does think some of the zealots could be a liability, but the real difference between terrorists and Linux Zealots is that they haven't killed anyone, at least that I'm aware of...;-)
From one of the BBC articles about Concorde development:
At one point, work was halted after the French insisted that the plane should have a Gallic final letter "e" in its name - the British stolidly referred to it as "Concord" during development.
The French, of course, got their way.
Wow! If such a trivial issue could cause a work stoppage, it's amazing the thing ever got off the ground at all!
While it's true that property tax is higher in NH, it is not 4X the MA rate! It does vary by town though. For example, the towns of Methuen MA and Salem NH border each other. Methuen's prop tax rate is 11.74/$1000, while Salem's is 20.20/$1000. Not quite double. Also consider that property values are generally higher in MA.
Someone who lives, works, and shops in NH has a lower tax burden than someone who lives, works and shops in MA. However, southeast NH has become a Boston suburb, so many people who live in that area work in MA, and still have to pay an income tax. Also many people in MA take advantage of the tax-free shopping in NH.
But I do agree that MA doesn't live up to its tax reputation.
My understanding that taxes used to be much worse in Mass than they are now (in the 80's, I think), which is where the "Taxachusetts" moniker came from.
I agree that right now MA taxes are not unreasonable. The worst I encountered was a 12% short term Capital Gains tax, but I think even that has been reduced to around 5% in the past couple of years. The income tax fell from 5.9% to 5.3% in the past 5 years.
Did you notice the "optional" tax rate on the MA tax return form this year? Yes that's right, you had the option to be taxed at a higher rate if you wanted to! For a state that has a reputation for being overwelmingly liberal, very few people chose that option.;-)
Anyone unable to upgrade from old POS Win98/ME setup to a modern computer is probably not in Apple's target demograhic
Nonsense. This has been Apples target demographic ever since the first Mac. They've tried to attract people away from PCs for years by pointing out how easy Macs are to use.
But think of how many songs you could buy with that money spent to upgrade to XP/2K!
I've heard that most software purchases are within six months of buying a new computer, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar situation here.
Personally, as much as I want iTunes, I refuse to upgrade my Windows OS (which I barely use anyway) just to use it. I'll just check out one of the iTunes competitors that keep popping up instead that support 98. I suspect many people will feel the same.
If we won't let Bill Gates force us to give him more money, why would we let Steve Jobs force us to give Gates more money?
"Pump and Dump" usually refers to a third party loading up on a cheap, low volume stock (hence easily manipulated). Then hyping it, often on internet message boards, if successful, he then dumps his stock at the higher price.
If you go to any internet microcap stock board, there always seems to be one insane individual posting essentially the same colorful message day in and day out telling people to "load up now, this stock is about to go to the moon". These are the pump-and-dump artists.
That's not exactly the same thing SCO is running here (If you're a company officer, you can't hype up your stock and just cash out, letting it crash. The other investors will have your head, if the SEC doesn't get it first.)
But "Insider Trading" and "Securities Fraud", yes. Especially if these documents about a "Linux Lottery" exist, that RHAT is looking for.
What are the chances that SCO would actually fork over any such "Linux Lottery" documents even if they do exist? They would show criminal intent, much worse than the civil charges they currently face.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's because the left used to be able to control the debate because the issues were often presented in a way that was sympathetic to their cause by the major media.
Now with Fox news, and the internet, they've lost that power. So now they have a very popular media outlet that doesn't adhere to their POV, they attack it as being fake (hence FAUXnews), or only watched by inbreds or something. But the News on Foxnews isn't fake. It's the same stories you can find elsewhere, it's just the POV in the story may be a little different than others, and the weights given to stories may be different. But that doesn't make it wrong. Sure we'd prefer no political bias in our news, but is that really possible?
How can the ability to get different POVs in the media be bad?
They support their own interpretation of the 2nd ammendment, just like they support their own interpretation of the 1st.
For instance, there's a line in the First about religion, saying Congress shall not "prohibit the free exercise thereof (religion)".
So when people put up a Nativity scene at work (in the public sector), or students form a voluntary prayer group at a public school, attmpting to freely excercise their religion, who is there fighting them? The ACLU. Why? They argue that these individual actions amount to a government sanctioned religion which is prohibited by the 1st amendment. But the first amendment doesn't make an exception for the free exercise of religion on public grounds. That was made up by lawyers and judges much later.
The ACLU claims to be the defender of the Bill of Rights, but it's important to realize that their interpretation of the Bill of Rights is often much different that what is actually written there. And Frankly, that's dangerous. If there's a problem with an existing amendment, you change it by getting a new one passed, you shouldn't be able to change it just by getting rulings from judges that are sympathetic to your cause, which is what the ACLU (and like minded groups) have done over the years.
I think you are confusing Capitalism with "Mass Market". In the Mass-Market, yes, things are geared to the least common denominator. But there are always niche markets for people who aren't satisfied with mass-marketed items.
Take food, for example. Mass-marketed produce has been bred, and sometimes genetically manipulated to have certain characteristics: consistent ripening, disease resistance, low spoilage. Growing these varieties leads to maximum output per acre. However, many people don't want GM produce, they want varieties bred for taste, not those other characteristics, and don't like the idea of pesticides, hence the organic foods market. Capitalism allows the organic foods market to coexist with the mass-food market, but it's still capitalism. Farmers still make money growing organic foods (in some cases more so than mass-market food), and shops make money selling it. Another example would be Apple. Sure the mass-market PCs are cheaper, but enough people consider Apple hardware/software better and are willing to spend more for it, certainly enough to keep Apple profitable, and despite whatever image Steve Jobs may project, Apple is still capitalist.
I think the best way is to have different guidelines in each community, in each country. If you didn't like the way it was done in one community, you could apply to join another.This does happen already. Here in Massachusetts, many of the communities either have architectural guidelines for new development, or they just won't grant a permit to developments that they think would be out of place. In Boston, there are many neighborhood organizations that you need to satisfy, or they will fight your development every step of the way. Other communities don't care as much, and will allow terribly ugly things to be built. But since I don't think you can build anything anywhere without a permit, every community has the power to determine what kind of development will occur. It's just a matter of whether they care enough. If the place is already filled with eyesores, it's harder to argue against building another eyesore, and the people who care about such things are likely to move elsewhere anyway.
That's not completely true, ornate architecture often greatly increases the valuation of a building or object.
This cannot be quantified by a capitalist accountant.To an-extent it can. It might be known that in a certain community, Neo-victorian architecture may fetch a 25% premium over some plain cookie-cutter design.
Capitalism finds ways to meet demand. If there is great demand for a certain type of architecture, (and the community is affluent enough to pay the extra costs of such development) then they capitalist developer will build it. If he doesn't or use a different type of architecture that's out of place in the location, the market will punish him, and he may lose money on the building.
When you realize this, it makes perfect sense that culture is destroyed by capitalism and communism.Capitalism is a reflection of the values of the people. If the people want mediocrity, that's what they'll get. If you are producing a TV show, you can produce something like "Masterpiece Theater", or "Joe Millionaire". If there's a small audience for the "Masterpiece Theater"-type show, but a huge one for "Joe Millionaire", guess which wins? If you say "screw it, we need Masterpiece Theater, not that Joe Millionaire garbage, so that's what I'll produce." You can still do that, but you can't force people to watch it. No matter how much your convictions tell you that "we need it"
So the apparent lack of cultural values in capitalism, is just a reflection of the lack of cultural values in the public. To change it, perhaps you can try to instill cultural pride in the youth in education. If that works, when that generation grows up, they will demand better quality. Or it might just be that some people will never come to appreciate the "finer things", no matter how much you attempt to indoctrinate them. What you value as a "finer thing" is not the same as theirs.
Adam Smith didn't invent the "Free Market", he merely observed it and wrote about it.
Anyway, the marketplace of ideas isn't exactly the same thing as free markets in economics.
I can't believe I wasted my time reading that.
(or posting this)
For some reason, someone in my family thought I was a Far Side fan, and I kept getting FS books for Christmas every year. But I've read the books, and each book maybe had one funny strip each.
I just don't find most FS strips very amuzing at all. It's not that I don't get the humor/punch line, I do, but I don't find it very humorous. Am I the only one?
This is the most insightful comment I've seen here in some time, I wish I had mod points
My wife always watches, so I end up seeing more than I can take (defined as 2 minutes or more) no matter how much I try to avoid them.
I tend to agree. When the cost becomes attractive enough, it will hit critical mass.
For a good example of what happens when the govt, or especially the US govt tries to promote something, check out the Time magazine article a few weeks ago about the alternative energy scam. Basically, the US govt, to promote alternative fuels, instituted an alternative fuels tax credit.
The article reported that some companies were quietly taking coal, and spraying it with gas or some other flammable product, and calling it an alternative fuel, and claiming the tax credit!
In protest of the screener ban, they would have cancelled an award show?
I say keep the ban then!
I can't tell you how much I HATE those &#$( award shows.
Joan Rivers and others gawking over what horrendously tacky and expensive outfits the stars are wearing beforehand. Why do we care? The stuff is loaned to them, it's a form of product placement on part of the designers.
Then comes the preaching on the evils of P2P at the start of the show.
And before each award is presented, we get the awful, awful, awful, inane scripted banter on part of the presenters.
And then comes Justin Timberlake, Christina Agulera, and Brittney Spears. One or more of them seems to be present at every stinkin awards show, even if it's the Country Music Awards.
And then one act or movie always seems to take all the awards. Some acts like U2 and Tom Hanks always win no matter what the competition, or the merit of their particular thing (I like U2, but "Stuck in a moment you can't get out of?" Puh leeze)
And then they can't ever seem to end on time.
And sometimes it seems like there's an award show on every other day!
So if the screener ban causes these shows to be cancelled, I say "Bring it on!".
Exactly, we used to "know" that the world was flat, and celestial objects revolved arount IT, and that the atom was the smallest unit of matter. Who is to say what we still don't know? It's arrogant to assume that our knowledge of science is complete. It never was before, why should it be now?
We haven't yet found any habitable planets AT ALL that I'm aware ofAnd we've only started discovering extra-solar planets at all in the past few years. Our knowledge here is really in its infancy.
What possible interest would that life form have of visiting us in person? Wouldn't they have a technology sufficient to observe us remotely?- If you had knowledge that there was life on planet y, and you had the means to travel to planet y, wouldn't you?
- Sure they could send "unmanned drones" to watch us, but wouldn't that still be an "unidentified flying object"?
Even if they did come here in person and crashed one or more ships, how can the government possibly keep something like that a coverup for so long.I agree that the government doesn't keep secrets well, so I automatically doubt conspiracy theories, espicially the MJ12/New World Order variety.
But I would call Roswell an unsuccessful coverup. If they had been successful in covering it up, we'd know nothing about it at all. In the case of Roswell, they TOLD us they recovered a crashed "saucer". Then they essential said "oops, our bad, it was a weather balloon" then years later admitted the weather balloon was a cover story because it really a spy balloon. People have come forward who were in the govt or on the scene with the Alien craft story. Some might question their credibility, but this essentially is what keeps the controversy alive. Is the govt lying, or are all those people lying? If the crashed saucer theory is the truth, the govt did a poor job of conceiling it. In the case of the PA crash. It seems clear they recovered something. If it was 1960's Soviet space technology, why must it still be classified?
In either case, the govt did a poor job covering it up. (as would be expected) The difference between this and Watergate is that most of the mainstream media considers this a fringe area, and won't risk their professional credibility trying to expose it.
I am not saying for certains that aliens are visiting Earth, or crashing the crafts here in the process. I don't know. It is pretty compelling though if you look at the whole of the evidence, that some UFOs are a real physical phenomena. We just don't know what they are, they could be secret government craft, or they could be something else.
SCO is not the type of company most pension-type funds would touch. High-risk hedge funds, maybe.
SCOX it's a small or microcap stock that was trading in penny stock territory not long ago, and now has a price to earnings ratio of 143 (very expensive)! It is a highly speculative investment.
Since it's a smallcap stock, large mutual funds can only take a relatively small holding in SCOX, (after all, you don't want to be the one bidding the price way up, who will you sell to?)
So you need not worry about SCO ruining your retirement.
Why is it that our civilization can build airplanes, yet we have people who will use them to travel to far away countries and study more primitive cultures who barely have knowledge of agriculture?
If there are aliens visiting, then I assume it would be for the same reasons. If there is anything to the abduction stories, it doesn't sound any different than what our scientists do to study wild animals. We tranquilize them, examine them, and tag them so we can track them by radio.
Or to look at it another way, one assumes that humans will aspire to travel to the stars some day. If we are ever successful, and we discover a planet that houses a primitive civilization, would we say, "These beings are so primitive, nothing to see here, let's move along"? I doubt it! I'm certain we would keep people around them to study them without impacting the alien civilization too much, so we would probably try to conceal our presence.
I don't buy the argument that no one would come here because it isn't interesting enough. I think the fact that this planet houses any kind of life, no matter how primitive would be VERY interesting to alien races as it would be for us.
We assume that there is life on other worlds, based on the sheer number of stars similar to our own, and based on the relative position of our galaxy and star, that there may well be civilazations more advanced than us.
So if we believe there could be more advanced civilizations than us out there, they could have achieved what we could only dream of, and things we couldn't imagine right now. So why couldn't they find away to travel to distant stars and discover other civilizations? The main reason we say they can't because we can't, we don't know how to do it, and our understanding of physics says it's impossible. Da Vinci designed a kind of helicoptor, but it was "impossible" to build one in his time. But it's possible now. Who knows what's impossible now but possible in the future?
If there are advanced civilizations out there, it should come as no surprise that they would come here to observe and study, and if they don't feel that we're ready to come into contact with an alien civilization, they would likely try to conceal their presence as much as possible.
Sure you have choice, you can still install the MusicMatch client, and the Napster 2.0 client (when it becomes available), and use those stores along with iTunes
"Lastly, if you use Apple's music store along with iTunes, you don't have the ability of using the over 40 different Windows Media-compatible portable music devices. When I'm paying for music, I want to know that I have choices today and in the future,"This is a valid point. I can't put the songs from iTunes onto my Nomad Jukebox, unless I burn them to CD and Rip them back first. I can put the songs I buy from MusicMatch on my Nomad with no problems.
Still this is mostly typical FUD from M$. They see online digital music sales as the next big thing, and they HATE it when the next big thing is dominated by someone else.
But for some reason, nobody in the industry except for Apple could see the obvious business model for online digital music sales. While everyone else was fiddling with subscription models where you lose your music if you stop paying your subscription, Apple knew that users wanted to buy and keep their music, so they deserve their lead.
It most certainly does. A terrorist is often motivated by generating fear and getting media coverage. The have no qualms about deliberately targetting and killing civilians, and even people otherwise sympathetic to their cause in their attacks. A non-terrorist "freedom fighter" would limit their attacks to government, military, police and targets, specifically the oppressors. Sure the might kill civilians in those efforts, but it's not the same thing as bombing shopping malls and nightclubs, buses, etc.
The world better by OUR standards. The terrorists truly believe that they are trying to make the world a better place also, by their standards.
When was the last time a terrorist helped a little old lady cross the road?The terrorists have a different solution to this problem. Remember, in Afghanistan, under the Taliban, it was against the law for a woman to be outside without a male escort.
Jeez.. I'll probably get modded flamebait for this post, just trying to get people to think a little differently. I am a Linux enthusiast who does think some of the zealots could be a liability, but the real difference between terrorists and Linux Zealots is that they haven't killed anyone, at least that I'm aware of... ;-)
Osama bin QuackQuack
From one of the BBC articles about Concorde development:
At one point, work was halted after the French insisted that the plane should have a Gallic final letter "e" in its name - the British stolidly referred to it as "Concord" during development.The French, of course, got their way.
Wow! If such a trivial issue could cause a work stoppage, it's amazing the thing ever got off the ground at all!
While it's true that property tax is higher in NH, it is not 4X the MA rate! It does vary by town though. For example, the towns of Methuen MA and Salem NH border each other. Methuen's prop tax rate is 11.74/$1000, while Salem's is 20.20/$1000. Not quite double. Also consider that property values are generally higher in MA.
Someone who lives, works, and shops in NH has a lower tax burden than someone who lives, works and shops in MA. However, southeast NH has become a Boston suburb, so many people who live in that area work in MA, and still have to pay an income tax. Also many people in MA take advantage of the tax-free shopping in NH.
But I do agree that MA doesn't live up to its tax reputation.
My understanding that taxes used to be much worse in Mass than they are now (in the 80's, I think), which is where the "Taxachusetts" moniker came from.
;-)
I agree that right now MA taxes are not unreasonable. The worst I encountered was a 12% short term Capital Gains tax, but I think even that has been reduced to around 5% in the past couple of years. The income tax fell from 5.9% to 5.3% in the past 5 years.
Did you notice the "optional" tax rate on the MA tax return form this year? Yes that's right, you had the option to be taxed at a higher rate if you wanted to! For a state that has a reputation for being overwelmingly liberal, very few people chose that option.
Nonsense. This has been Apples target demographic ever since the first Mac. They've tried to attract people away from PCs for years by pointing out how easy Macs are to use.
But think of how many songs you could buy with that money spent to upgrade to XP/2K!
I've heard that most software purchases are within six months of buying a new computer, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar situation here.Personally, as much as I want iTunes, I refuse to upgrade my Windows OS (which I barely use anyway) just to use it. I'll just check out one of the iTunes competitors that keep popping up instead that support 98. I suspect many people will feel the same.
If we won't let Bill Gates force us to give him more money, why would we let Steve Jobs force us to give Gates more money?
Apple shouldn't want to force PC users to send more money to M$ to upgrade their OS, should they?
I was so looking forward to iTunes too. The new Napster is XP/2000 only also, I guess I'll check out MusicMatch, it supports 98
"Pump and Dump" usually refers to a third party loading up on a cheap, low volume stock (hence easily manipulated). Then hyping it, often on internet message boards, if successful, he then dumps his stock at the higher price.
If you go to any internet microcap stock board, there always seems to be one insane individual posting essentially the same colorful message day in and day out telling people to "load up now, this stock is about to go to the moon". These are the pump-and-dump artists.
That's not exactly the same thing SCO is running here (If you're a company officer, you can't hype up your stock and just cash out, letting it crash. The other investors will have your head, if the SEC doesn't get it first.)
But "Insider Trading" and "Securities Fraud", yes. Especially if these documents about a "Linux Lottery" exist, that RHAT is looking for.
What are the chances that SCO would actually fork over any such "Linux Lottery" documents even if they do exist? They would show criminal intent, much worse than the civil charges they currently face.