Also, you can't order (for delivery) alcohol from the other states in the US unless the state has a reciprocity agreement with the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission or the brewery/winery/distillery has a National Distributor licensed with the State ABC. So for example, I can't order wine from Door County Winery (Door County, WI) or Thomas Tew Rum from Newport Distillery in Newport, RI.
This despite the fact that constitutionally, the states have No Fucking Business Whatsoever passing laws that interfere with the interstate commerce of any substance.
And all to appease a bunch of wack-job religious fundamentalists that make up the core of the Retardican Party.
Re:In My Opinion, More So a Lack of Understanding
on
Technology and Moral Panic
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
The Retardicans and Ree Tardiers get their panties in a wad every few decades.
Remember, these are the same kinds of fucking stupid lunatics that brought us Prohibition, with all the fucked-up crime that it caused, and even today make it so that alcohol is the ONE product where the Federal government actually abdicated its exclusive right to control interstate commerce so as not to piss off the Fundamentalist Fucking Retard Southern Baptists by "allowing" northern booze to be shipped to their states.
Like when they're hiding in a closet, waiting to make a break for it once last night's date convinces the boyfriend who got home a bit too early to go take a shower.
(Actually have had a friend who got into this situation. We were laughing hysterically when he texted back about why he couldn't talk).
C) Mention that banning cell phones or texting doesn't change this, and fail to connect the dots to ask the question as to whether this has been true since the freaking radio was installed
Ironically, attention to What The Fuck They Are Doing While Driving has been going down since the automatic transmission was invented. People don't have to pay attention to the state of their car (speed AND tachometer reading and associated gear choice), they just go "ooh put it in drive, gas=go, vroom vroom."
Likewise, in cars and also (ironically) in Football, an increase in the number of safety devices in the vehicle has caused an increase, not decrease, in the number and severity of crashes/injuries. The problem? In both cases, a significant portion of the population involved behave even more recklessly, believing that they are now "safe" to do so because the "safety devices" will save them.
Antilock brakes, for instance, led to far more rear-end collisions on freeways at higher speeds, because most of the idiots out there thought "ooh, I have antilock brakes, I can stop on a dime" when antilock brakes actually don't cut your stop distance that much, they just help make a safer stop by (within limits!) allowing you to maintain control rather than going into an uncontrolled skid.
Which is one of the jokes of this kind of "study": failure to identify and properly control for intervening factors.
Younger people (well that and illegal aliens) are most likely to drive drunk. Younger people are more likely to adopt new tech (cellphone texting, cell email, etc). Younger people are more likely to be Doing Other Things while driving.
Now, this isn't a 100% certainty. Certainly there are the soccer mom bitches who put on their mascara while driving, and there are the subhuman PHB MBA types who are on the phone talking about how they can cut staff and overwork more people while drinking coffee and doing 90 down the freeway in their BMW. But statistically, the vast majority of car crashes are simply caused by Inexperienced Drivers - and don't worry, the insurance industry has plenty of data to justify charging rates accordingly.
Take away the cellphone from a kid while driving and they'll still be distracted. Talking with a friend, staring at their date rather than the road, driving recklessly or doing crazy things merely because they can, failing to realize the limits of their own driving skill, conditions on the road, and abilities of their vehicle.
- Have never heard of remote-support products like logmein or VNC. They're still talking people through problems over the phone or visiting them at their desk.
Actually, Logmein and VNC are possibly the worst things you can use. They don't authenticate well, and they're trivial to break. They rely on the user-end being set up.
If you're on a Windows domain, set up Remote Assistance Requests instead.
- Aren't familiar with/keen on the idea of scripting repetitive work.
Scripting is fine. As long as the repetitive work is actually the same thing, every time.
- Don't/Won't automate the installation of operating systems - be it through imaging or some other mechanism.
We do what we can. The problem is, images need to be maintained. You don't just push a 6-month-old image to a machine, you have to patch it afterwards.
And the subhuman MBA PHB's are too goddamn cheap to actually give us a single, representative unit of each of the 6 "Standardized Units" the place maintains so that we can update the images in a timely manner.
Of course, I have a buddy who works at a different company, and their people just push the Goddamn Wrong Image to half the machines. It's STILL out of date, they just put a 2-year-old desktop image on company laptops and stick it out bare on the network because their "IT" is mostly staffed with college dropouts who don't give a fuck and are stoned half the time.
However I have never lived in the US so I don't pretend to know what your experiences are.
And there's the basic problem.
Here in the USA, since the Retardicans took over in the early 2000's, every worker protection has basically been gutted. We're at 20% real unemployment, employees are uniformly scared for their jobs, and almost no company has anything but PHB's around.
It's the MBA's who are responsible for the complete lack of cross-training and the complete lack of understanding that (a) the workforce needs redundancy and (b) working people to death is bad in the long run.
Then again, your average MBA can't see more than a month ahead of time. Which again is part of the problem. The "long run" never enters into it. And these subhuman assholes are the ones who decide "Oh, Bob is taking 2 weeks off for vacation, to use up the accrued leave time so we don't steal it from him on "expiring"... Nothing broke while he was gone... guess we don't need Bob any more!"
Engineering firms should be run by someone with engineering experience who then gets an MBA or similar training. Software firms, likewise - take a coder and give them MBA or equivalent training.
Don't do it that way? You get what we have today. Everyone* with an MBA is a fucking PHB moron.
You left out the part where Microsoft used hidden program hooks, undocumented, in their OS to make it so that Lotus couldn't perform as well as Office (whose development team had access to ALL of the operating system and optimized calls).
The same crap Microsoft did to Netscape when they started trying to take over with Internet Explorer.
The problem is using their monopoly to force their way into other markets and become the de facto standard in those markets. Sort of like Microsoft forcing everybody but MS Office out of the word-processing and spreadsheet markets.
Google's been doing very similar things with their search engine dominance, if you look at a lot of the other markets they've expanded into recently.
The phrase is "antitrust conspiracy." And Major League Baseball has a specific, congressionally-approved exemption against same.
The MafiAA just gets away with it anyways because they have certain congressional stooges in their pocket. What, you didn't think the Sonny Bono Rape The Public Copyright Act just came out of nowhere did you?
I'm sorry it's just... this has been covered ad nauseum.
This kind of crap happened to Courtney Love. (Original Salon story here. Happened to TLC. Happened to Lyle Lovett. Happened to Janis Ian.
Has happened to almost every goddamn band to walk the face of the earth, with the exception of maybe the "chosen few" like Metallica (who are too fucking brain-dead to check if they are getting ripped off)... and even those usually make the vast majority of their money not from their music, but from endorsement contracts.
If I don't like a work contract I get it changed or walk away.
Now imagine that the "work contract" includes a no-compete clause that you can't look for other employment or even strike out on your own. One way the MafiAA keeps "artists" in limbo is by forever delaying an album. They sign you to a 4 record deal? Three records down, you're a fairly popular band, working on the fourth... they'll start exercising a "discretion clause" to keep sending it back and disapproving it over and over and over until you finally break down and re-sign with them.
And you CAN'T go anywhere else. Want to go to another label? Whoops, there's already a contract, we can't sign you. Want to go solo? Unless you have the following of The Weirdo Formerly And Then Again Known As Prince, you're going to have to leave your name and all your previous material behind, never even be able to perform it on tour again.
- The MafiAA control the booking for 99% of the performance venues that seat more than 50 people. Get yourself to a large enough following, and you'll have problems. Piss off the MafiAA by being independent too long and they'll have you blackballed from performance venues.
- The MafiAA control the vast, vast majority of sound studios. Want to rent time and the equipment to record your album? Their response will be "fuck you, you're not under contract, get lost till someone signs you."
- Likewise, the vast majority of record producers, sound mixers, etc... are under MafiAA control.
- The MafiAA control the "top 40" lists and radio playback. Your music will never get onto the radio or onto satellite radio without them, let alone onto the pre-show movie screener reels or any other of the "combined marketing" channels. And like it or not, that is STILL how most people get exposed to new music these days.
I have several friends who've gone the indie route. Some of whom are merely good, one of whom is a fucking virtuoso, can pick up almost any instrument and give a good accounting, is phenomenal on the guitar, and has a killer instinct for writing earworms. The most he's ever been able to earn in a year, despite these talents, is about $20k - not bad for a part-time gig, but when he didn't have a day job, making a living as an indie was a matter of Just Barely Breaking Even month to month living in the crappiest, cheapest possible apartment and scheduling band practices at - you guessed it - the drummer's garage.
Note I don't say he wasn't being paid well, by most standards, for the gigs (and they had a decent number). But once you count in fuel costs, equipment costs, instrument maintenance, and split the remainder four or five ways, the money for "indie" bands to perform isn't really all that much at all.
There have been reports in some states of boxs of voting slips just appearing after an election.
The Republicans have raised it to an art form in Wisconsin. What, you didn't think Scott Walker actually won the election fairly, did you? Far easier for the Kochs to simply buy him off and rig the election.
The media companies have been waging war against the consumer for over a century.
- "Copy Protection" - so that consumers can't even safeguard their own purchase. If I want to make a separate copy of a purchased video/game and keep the original in a safe place (someplace where, say, inquisitive dogs and 3-year-olds can't get to it), that should be my right.
- Shrink-wrap licenses. Remember when Adobe tried to sue a company that resold its products, claiming the terms of the (unopened) shrinkwrap license included an agreement not to resell?
And if you want to go WAY back: remember, the book publishers tried to stop the creation of the US's public lending library system. Now, with the terms on eBooks, they're trying to pull the same crap and make it impossible for libraries to still serve their customers.
Given that the "Tea Party" is a registered party and caucus in Texas, for starters, you're a complete liar.
I could go on from there, but really, your whole rant has not a single point grounded in reality. Please stop drinking the spiked kool-aid, it's killing what few working brain cells you ever had.
Okami: pressed in Taiwanese DVD-fab factory. Wii: full of Foxconn components (China slave labor), likely Korean laser diode in the DVD drive. Sony TV: Taiwanese or Korean LCD, could be either. Toyota minivan: mostly made in the US (probably Knoxville TN).
What was your point again?
Taiwan's what we really should wonder about. China's very good at stealing tech from other countries, but crap-all at doing anything else except for destroying the environment and committing acts of barbarism against farmers and monks.
It's the Macbook line that are absolutely fucking stupid to try to replace a hard drive on.
I mean seriously. I have to take the entire fucking clamshell off to get to the drive? Fuck you, Apple. Even HP has learned their lesson about doing something so annoying, the only company other than Apple still doing it is Sony.
Do you REALLY want to be known as making stuff just as crappy as Sony, Apple?
And here I thought the only use for Timexes was for shady guys in New York alleys to scratch the name a bit to make it kinda-sorta look right and then claim they were "Genuine Rolex".
Sorta like the "Oakey" sunglasses sold by the chinese guy with a cart down the street.
Your first one - "Can I know" or "May I know" instead of "Can you tell me" or "What is" construction when asking for the problem description, model/serial number, or even your name. I get someone on the line who opens up that way, they're likely in either India or Malaysia (which is where Dell now puts their corporate call centers after the client uproar when they tried to ship corporate support to India).
There are other ones you learn to listen for quickly. An out-of-place conjugation here, an oddly colloquial phrase there... it adds up quickly.
The best call centers I ever got through to were in Mormon-land, Utah and Idaho. They were knowledgeable, they got right to the problem without going through 5 pages of script crap, and when I got off the line I had a real certainty that the warranty replacement parts would ship out on time (they actually got out two days early).
Every time I've dealt with India, meanwhile, they've been somewhere beyond incompetent and I've often had to call back a second time or more, get told that I now have a different call center that has no fucking record of my last call, and get them to send the parts again. With India, it's taken as much as five tries sometimes to get a goddamn part shipped playing their little game.
What else would you call a bunch of mentally deficient lunatics who are so upset about the fact that the Prez is actually from the US that they are peeing themselves?
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.tabc.state.tx.us/poe/how_much_can_i_bring_back.asp
Also, you can't order (for delivery) alcohol from the other states in the US unless the state has a reciprocity agreement with the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission or the brewery/winery/distillery has a National Distributor licensed with the State ABC. So for example, I can't order wine from Door County Winery (Door County, WI) or Thomas Tew Rum from Newport Distillery in Newport, RI.
This despite the fact that constitutionally, the states have No Fucking Business Whatsoever passing laws that interfere with the interstate commerce of any substance.
And all to appease a bunch of wack-job religious fundamentalists that make up the core of the Retardican Party.
The Retardicans and Ree Tardiers get their panties in a wad every few decades.
Remember, these are the same kinds of fucking stupid lunatics that brought us Prohibition, with all the fucked-up crime that it caused, and even today make it so that alcohol is the ONE product where the Federal government actually abdicated its exclusive right to control interstate commerce so as not to piss off the Fundamentalist Fucking Retard Southern Baptists by "allowing" northern booze to be shipped to their states.
Sometimes people can't talk but can text.
Like when they're hiding in a closet, waiting to make a break for it once last night's date convinces the boyfriend who got home a bit too early to go take a shower.
(Actually have had a friend who got into this situation. We were laughing hysterically when he texted back about why he couldn't talk).
C) Mention that banning cell phones or texting doesn't change this, and fail to connect the dots to ask the question as to whether this has been true since the freaking radio was installed
Ironically, attention to What The Fuck They Are Doing While Driving has been going down since the automatic transmission was invented. People don't have to pay attention to the state of their car (speed AND tachometer reading and associated gear choice), they just go "ooh put it in drive, gas=go, vroom vroom."
Likewise, in cars and also (ironically) in Football, an increase in the number of safety devices in the vehicle has caused an increase, not decrease, in the number and severity of crashes/injuries. The problem? In both cases, a significant portion of the population involved behave even more recklessly, believing that they are now "safe" to do so because the "safety devices" will save them.
Antilock brakes, for instance, led to far more rear-end collisions on freeways at higher speeds, because most of the idiots out there thought "ooh, I have antilock brakes, I can stop on a dime" when antilock brakes actually don't cut your stop distance that much, they just help make a safer stop by (within limits!) allowing you to maintain control rather than going into an uncontrolled skid.
Which is one of the jokes of this kind of "study": failure to identify and properly control for intervening factors.
Younger people (well that and illegal aliens) are most likely to drive drunk.
Younger people are more likely to adopt new tech (cellphone texting, cell email, etc).
Younger people are more likely to be Doing Other Things while driving.
Now, this isn't a 100% certainty. Certainly there are the soccer mom bitches who put on their mascara while driving, and there are the subhuman PHB MBA types who are on the phone talking about how they can cut staff and overwork more people while drinking coffee and doing 90 down the freeway in their BMW. But statistically, the vast majority of car crashes are simply caused by Inexperienced Drivers - and don't worry, the insurance industry has plenty of data to justify charging rates accordingly.
Take away the cellphone from a kid while driving and they'll still be distracted. Talking with a friend, staring at their date rather than the road, driving recklessly or doing crazy things merely because they can, failing to realize the limits of their own driving skill, conditions on the road, and abilities of their vehicle.
- Have never heard of remote-support products like logmein or VNC. They're still talking people through problems over the phone or visiting them at their desk.
Actually, Logmein and VNC are possibly the worst things you can use. They don't authenticate well, and they're trivial to break. They rely on the user-end being set up.
If you're on a Windows domain, set up Remote Assistance Requests instead.
- Aren't familiar with/keen on the idea of scripting repetitive work.
Scripting is fine. As long as the repetitive work is actually the same thing, every time.
- Don't/Won't automate the installation of operating systems - be it through imaging or some other mechanism.
We do what we can. The problem is, images need to be maintained. You don't just push a 6-month-old image to a machine, you have to patch it afterwards.
And the subhuman MBA PHB's are too goddamn cheap to actually give us a single, representative unit of each of the 6 "Standardized Units" the place maintains so that we can update the images in a timely manner.
Of course, I have a buddy who works at a different company, and their people just push the Goddamn Wrong Image to half the machines. It's STILL out of date, they just put a 2-year-old desktop image on company laptops and stick it out bare on the network because their "IT" is mostly staffed with college dropouts who don't give a fuck and are stoned half the time.
However I have never lived in the US so I don't pretend to know what your experiences are.
And there's the basic problem.
Here in the USA, since the Retardicans took over in the early 2000's, every worker protection has basically been gutted. We're at 20% real unemployment, employees are uniformly scared for their jobs, and almost no company has anything but PHB's around.
It's the MBA's who are responsible for the complete lack of cross-training and the complete lack of understanding that (a) the workforce needs redundancy and (b) working people to death is bad in the long run.
Then again, your average MBA can't see more than a month ahead of time. Which again is part of the problem. The "long run" never enters into it. And these subhuman assholes are the ones who decide "Oh, Bob is taking 2 weeks off for vacation, to use up the accrued leave time so we don't steal it from him on "expiring"... Nothing broke while he was gone... guess we don't need Bob any more!"
That's precisely what the problem is.
Engineering firms should be run by someone with engineering experience who then gets an MBA or similar training.
Software firms, likewise - take a coder and give them MBA or equivalent training.
Don't do it that way? You get what we have today. Everyone* with an MBA is a fucking PHB moron.
*By "Everyone" I mean "with 99.9% certainty
That's nothing new. Ever seen the trailer for The Princess Bride?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpBO9FRkGsY
Basically EVERY scene is given away.
You left out the part where Microsoft used hidden program hooks, undocumented, in their OS to make it so that Lotus couldn't perform as well as Office (whose development team had access to ALL of the operating system and optimized calls).
The same crap Microsoft did to Netscape when they started trying to take over with Internet Explorer.
The same crap Microsoft did as recently as 2009 to Firefox.
Now run along and get yourself an education. You obviously don't know crap about what you are talking about.
The problem is not becoming a monopoly.
The problem is using their monopoly to force their way into other markets and become the de facto standard in those markets. Sort of like Microsoft forcing everybody but MS Office out of the word-processing and spreadsheet markets.
Google's been doing very similar things with their search engine dominance, if you look at a lot of the other markets they've expanded into recently.
The phrase is "antitrust conspiracy." And Major League Baseball has a specific, congressionally-approved exemption against same.
The MafiAA just gets away with it anyways because they have certain congressional stooges in their pocket. What, you didn't think the Sonny Bono Rape The Public Copyright Act just came out of nowhere did you?
I'm sorry it's just... this has been covered ad nauseum.
This kind of crap happened to Courtney Love. (Original Salon story here.
Happened to TLC.
Happened to Lyle Lovett.
Happened to Janis Ian.
Has happened to almost every goddamn band to walk the face of the earth, with the exception of maybe the "chosen few" like Metallica (who are too fucking brain-dead to check if they are getting ripped off)... and even those usually make the vast majority of their money not from their music, but from endorsement contracts.
You're assuming the MafiAA labels actually compete with each other? That you can possibly find a label willing to sign "just" distribution?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... you're new around here, aren't you?
If I don't like a work contract I get it changed or walk away.
Now imagine that the "work contract" includes a no-compete clause that you can't look for other employment or even strike out on your own. One way the MafiAA keeps "artists" in limbo is by forever delaying an album. They sign you to a 4 record deal? Three records down, you're a fairly popular band, working on the fourth... they'll start exercising a "discretion clause" to keep sending it back and disapproving it over and over and over until you finally break down and re-sign with them.
And you CAN'T go anywhere else. Want to go to another label? Whoops, there's already a contract, we can't sign you. Want to go solo? Unless you have the following of The Weirdo Formerly And Then Again Known As Prince, you're going to have to leave your name and all your previous material behind, never even be able to perform it on tour again.
- The MafiAA control the booking for 99% of the performance venues that seat more than 50 people. Get yourself to a large enough following, and you'll have problems. Piss off the MafiAA by being independent too long and they'll have you blackballed from performance venues.
- The MafiAA control the vast, vast majority of sound studios. Want to rent time and the equipment to record your album? Their response will be "fuck you, you're not under contract, get lost till someone signs you."
- Likewise, the vast majority of record producers, sound mixers, etc... are under MafiAA control.
- The MafiAA control the "top 40" lists and radio playback. Your music will never get onto the radio or onto satellite radio without them, let alone onto the pre-show movie screener reels or any other of the "combined marketing" channels. And like it or not, that is STILL how most people get exposed to new music these days.
I have several friends who've gone the indie route. Some of whom are merely good, one of whom is a fucking virtuoso, can pick up almost any instrument and give a good accounting, is phenomenal on the guitar, and has a killer instinct for writing earworms. The most he's ever been able to earn in a year, despite these talents, is about $20k - not bad for a part-time gig, but when he didn't have a day job, making a living as an indie was a matter of Just Barely Breaking Even month to month living in the crappiest, cheapest possible apartment and scheduling band practices at - you guessed it - the drummer's garage.
Note I don't say he wasn't being paid well, by most standards, for the gigs (and they had a decent number). But once you count in fuel costs, equipment costs, instrument maintenance, and split the remainder four or five ways, the money for "indie" bands to perform isn't really all that much at all.
There have been reports in some states of boxs of voting slips just appearing after an election.
The Republicans have raised it to an art form in Wisconsin. What, you didn't think Scott Walker actually won the election fairly, did you? Far easier for the Kochs to simply buy him off and rig the election.
The media companies have been waging war against the consumer for over a century.
- "Copy Protection" - so that consumers can't even safeguard their own purchase. If I want to make a separate copy of a purchased video/game and keep the original in a safe place (someplace where, say, inquisitive dogs and 3-year-olds can't get to it), that should be my right.
- Shrink-wrap licenses. Remember when Adobe tried to sue a company that resold its products, claiming the terms of the (unopened) shrinkwrap license included an agreement not to resell?
And if you want to go WAY back: remember, the book publishers tried to stop the creation of the US's public lending library system. Now, with the terms on eBooks, they're trying to pull the same crap and make it impossible for libraries to still serve their customers.
Given that the "Tea Party" is a registered party and caucus in Texas, for starters, you're a complete liar.
I could go on from there, but really, your whole rant has not a single point grounded in reality. Please stop drinking the spiked kool-aid, it's killing what few working brain cells you ever had.
"Brave New World" is reality today. People are more concerned with the Casey Anthony trial than the actual, important shit going on in the government.
Coincidence?
Okami: pressed in Taiwanese DVD-fab factory.
Wii: full of Foxconn components (China slave labor), likely Korean laser diode in the DVD drive.
Sony TV: Taiwanese or Korean LCD, could be either.
Toyota minivan: mostly made in the US (probably Knoxville TN).
What was your point again?
Taiwan's what we really should wonder about. China's very good at stealing tech from other countries, but crap-all at doing anything else except for destroying the environment and committing acts of barbarism against farmers and monks.
It's the Macbook line that are absolutely fucking stupid to try to replace a hard drive on.
I mean seriously. I have to take the entire fucking clamshell off to get to the drive? Fuck you, Apple. Even HP has learned their lesson about doing something so annoying, the only company other than Apple still doing it is Sony.
Do you REALLY want to be known as making stuff just as crappy as Sony, Apple?
And here I thought the only use for Timexes was for shady guys in New York alleys to scratch the name a bit to make it kinda-sorta look right and then claim they were "Genuine Rolex".
Sorta like the "Oakey" sunglasses sold by the chinese guy with a cart down the street.
The "tells" are glaringly obvious.
Your first one - "Can I know" or "May I know" instead of "Can you tell me" or "What is" construction when asking for the problem description, model/serial number, or even your name. I get someone on the line who opens up that way, they're likely in either India or Malaysia (which is where Dell now puts their corporate call centers after the client uproar when they tried to ship corporate support to India).
There are other ones you learn to listen for quickly. An out-of-place conjugation here, an oddly colloquial phrase there... it adds up quickly.
The best call centers I ever got through to were in Mormon-land, Utah and Idaho. They were knowledgeable, they got right to the problem without going through 5 pages of script crap, and when I got off the line I had a real certainty that the warranty replacement parts would ship out on time (they actually got out two days early).
Every time I've dealt with India, meanwhile, they've been somewhere beyond incompetent and I've often had to call back a second time or more, get told that I now have a different call center that has no fucking record of my last call, and get them to send the parts again. With India, it's taken as much as five tries sometimes to get a goddamn part shipped playing their little game.
What else would you call a bunch of mentally deficient lunatics who are so upset about the fact that the Prez is actually from the US that they are peeing themselves?