We have that sort of thing where I live, too. There are two ways to the Walmart/stores/restaurants in one place - either walk on the interstate or cross over the interstate in a low-railinged, very heavily trafficked bridge where the winds often exceed fifty mph. They are building a "bike path" to try and get around that, but it's really just somewhere for the rich people in the adjacent suburb to walk their dogs. The road that leads up to the bridge has no shoulder in most places.
I've had a few adventures on that bridge that almost left me crawling the rest of the way across.
I don't think one could consider packaging "speech". Sure, the hype on it may be - but I agree that product packaging should be regulated at least enough to keep the manufacturers semi-honest (pretty much where we are now).
Most, if not all, advertising contains one sort of lie or another, even if subtle. If it didn't, what would be the point? It'd just be info dump, not advertising, right? I mean the whole idea is to convince your audience that your product is better - but one can always find someone to say that, paid or not. Advertising is deceptive bullshit aimed at convincing ignorant people to buy your product. The real shit about any product is spread thru objective reviews and word-of-mouth.
I'm sorry, but I can't really consider advertising "speech", either. Certainly not in the sense we are talking about here. We may be talking parallel, there.
As to grassroots/paid political blogging - ask the IRS. If the org/blogger is getting paid over the table, it'll show up there. Tax them for it (maybe under consultant status or something). If they are showing more income than they report, well, then it's the IRS's problem, isn't it?
No, that won't stop paid astroturfing. Stopping it completely is impossible in a free country. But it's a lot better way to do it than passing Another Fucking (unenforceable) Law that requires yet more government employees.
There has to be *some* limits on speech, just as few as possible - and it's probably better to let the "paid blogger" problem sort itself out (let the "blogosphere - the internet - manage itself), over the long run. Regulating it *specifically* just opens the door to more restrictions and more tax money being spent on something that'll do more damage than it "repairs". Bah:)
Meanwhile the rest of us suffer, because the small outlets we prefer who are actually customer-friendly and get-to-know-you are being driven out of business by the big outlets who sell the (generic) brands. Meanwhile the market for more foot doctors booms - and we suffer from that, too, from higher costs. And the insurance companies benefit...
What a clusterfuck. Not that it's new, it's been happening for quite a while, but it's still a clusterfuck.
I once knew an old man
Who could fit a shoe to anyone
But volumed out, a legal ban
and now greeter at Cost Is One.
The only thing that $ will buy you in footwear nowadays is possibly longer life (don't count on that, either.) It won't buy you comfort. Everyone's feet differ, every situation differs.
(My foot doctor told me he's never seen feet like mine (13WW with a super-high arch). Despite that, he managed to make me comfortable, using a $15 clearance pair of tennies from Kmart as a base, two years in a row now. I'll spend money on a cobbler before I'll spend it on expensive shoes. All the crap in the advertisements and by salesmen is just that - crap. They aren't paid enough to know any better. Find someone who actually looks at your feet./rant )
(I don't run, but I do spend more than 12 hours on my feet every day. Until a couple years ago, I used to spend an hour in agony afterward, every day. Not anymore. Thank you, Dr. Bennis;-) )
I used to spend over a hundred dollars per pair on shoes. At least one pair of those contributed to my long-term pain more than they helped my short-term - but not that was not evident until months had gone by, and I couldn't go back and get refunded. The last pair of expensive shoes I bought lasted a whole six months. Woo.
I grieve for the death of the small business cobbler. Oftentimes they'd know one's feet better than one knew them oneself. Unintended effect of modern business, maybe, but it still sucks. I'd trade federal protection against bad business for having a lot of the small biz back. At least one had more choices.
The nearest cobbler to here is three hours away, not likely to know me. But I do have a very good local foot doctor - even if he is more expensive, and is constantly buried in people whose feet have been fucked up by mass-produced shoes.
Moo. I wish more people realized what it means when we drive local small biz out of viability, and would vote so. Not that voting makes a fucking difference anymore, and now I'm getting way off topic, so/end rant
Because words like truth, honor, duty, and integrity actually have some meaning to me.
There's nothing in that statement that binds one irrevocably to upholding the law of whatever jurisdiction one might be in. Indeed, it could be argued that sometimes fighting the law at the time is upholding the same concepts. There's certainly a lot of historical precedent, even in the sanitized versions of American history;-)
While I don't doubt your commitment, I don't think you have your priorities straight, as to why you fight for.
"The man who does the right thing does it, not because he wants to change the world, but because he refuses to be changed by it."
Which implies personal decision on the ethical and moral implications of laws, all by itself.
Interesting, I didn't know that. More reading to do;-) (I know quite a bit about how Tombaugh discovered Pluto, even have a poster of his blink plates around here somewhere, but never cared much about the "outside history" of the discovery.)
I'm not sure I'd call it a "mistake", tho. Not in the sense of what we're talking about here. We weren't mistaken originally, as far as we knew, until very recently, Pluto *was* the only body near that size out there.
Perhaps the IAU should just drop "dwarf planet" call Pluto a KBO - which is what it is. It's not like the public-at-large couldn't absorb Yet Another Acronym, if they had to - and if they cared enough.
and was only done so for political reasons, not scientific.
Here I thought that Pluto was classified as a planet because it was the next rock we found after Neptune.
Seems to me the current reclassification has much more to do with politics than the original classification did.
Probably shares a lot of characteristics with comets, tho - and we can be glad that comets of that size don't enter the inner system very often anymore;-)
From what I used to see when I worked hardware, much of the time what burns out in CFL bulbs is something in the electronics in the base, which should be easily replaceable - they aren't that hard to take apart, so companies could disassemble, insert new component, reassemble, fairly cheaply I'd think.
Just a thought, but it'd help in recycling the things anyway.
Oh, to some of yous who aren't having much luck with them - switch brands. GE has treated me very nicely, not one dead one in two years. Of course I only have 13 of them, but I'm still saving money over regular bulbs. The GE CFLs we sold at work had a very, very low return rate as well. For a time we were stuck with Sylvania bulbs coming thru our suppliers, and they had a very high return rate, better than one in ten within three months. Phillips I have no data on but many people seem to like them. YMMV, etc...
SB
Re:Old media tries to understand, fails.
on
Bob Saget 2.0
·
· Score: 1
The main thing they don't have in common is that youtube's content isn't decided upon by a small bunch of Hollywood television show producers. It's just there for the viewing. I'm not saying that makes most of it better, but it certainly is more diverse.
I had a similar experience here a few years ago when I moved in and [my] local cable company came to hook things up. Turns out that one of their local competitors had done some really shoddy wiring - using sub-spec connectors and hard bends (the coax was visibly crimped at two points where it didn't need to be) and after they pulled new cable thru it actually exceeded the promised specs [ "oh, we need to have the office slow this down some" - they never did]
If the cable installer doesn't do a bandwidth test from inside the house or apartment, at the connection on the wall, ask them to do so, in front of you. There are quite a few people I do tech support for in this area who have been screwed that way. It should be "from the pole to your wall outlet" and not "from the pole to your house/building".
I chewed on the local Qwest telephone installer for a similar problem - "we aren't responsible for the telephone lines inside your building" - despite the south wall of my apartment being where the main box is located, eight feet from the wall outlet. I ended up pulling that wire myself, took me about ten minutes. Bullshit. Service is service. Provide it, or don't. If it's a large apartment building and you have a long and problematical run, call the landlord and arrange something with him or her and their maintenance personnel (if they don't have any, move the hell out! *g*). But it's service to the wall outlet or not-gonna-pay-you.
I'm the (only) maintenance person for a mid sized apartment complex (56 apartments, 7 buildings) and while I'm willing to accomodate installers who have special problems - ie, they have to get into another apartment in order to run cabling thru or they need a hand pulling cable, or access to locked closets or even tearing up some sheetrock - fine - but I have no patience with the lazy ones who won't run new cable because it means they won't get their job orders filled today and they think the customer won't notice. Bah. Sorry, but I've heard it enough from one company out here (fortunately not from the other, and guess which one I recommend to tenants?);-) Do the damned job right or hand it over to someone who will.
They are contracted to deliver service to the wall jack. That's what they should deliver. *
Sorry for getting a bit feisty, just had to bitch a bit. I have lots of that stored up. Years worth, to be honest;-)
But I'll say that Midcontinent Communication's installers are fantastic for the most part, and PrairieWave's ain't, for those of you living in this part of the "western midwest". Kudos to those who are doing their jobs. Speaking as a maintenance grunt, it's damned nice to deal with you when you want to get the job done right, and not waste your time nor mine.
SB *Only answer I have for if they don't involves large clubs and midnight visits;-)
We just wanna be going our own way, no truck with the bad folk... just leave us alone to take care of us and ours. Leave us well enough alone, we'll leave you alone...
But rubbing it in someone's face in an arrogant and bullying manner is way the hell out of line. There are courteous ways to deal with that, and this particular person obviously never learned how. ( Like "It's my job to ensure that..." or "I am charged with the responsibility to...") and the sort of person we *don't* need doing that sort of work is one who spouts shit like "I get to decide who..." which implies to me that the inspector/customs official in question has a personal agenda. Doesn't it sound that way to you? Sure as gorram hell seems so to me.
Look at it another way... if you got treated that way in a retail business where you were doing some shopping, wouldn't it piss you off? Would you shop there again? Is there some reason why these officials can't do their job without courtesy? I know it's a rough job, but I've worked enough roughshit retail to know that there are lines that one shouldn't cross, and if you can't keep your cool in your work, you simply don't belong there...
Then there's LA sucking water downhill to the tune of billions of gallons
Out where I'm at it's just the worst drought in history combined with a lot of expansion, new homes, luscious lawns, the well drillers are pretty busy:-(
Have you thought about looking at smaller companies who do large scale survey/sat photo analysis? Be a good combo with your degree (I don't do it, but a friend does, and he says there's need) if it's something you are interested in.
Slashdot Mirror
In order to do that, first we must declare war on it...
SB
We have that sort of thing where I live, too. There are two ways to the Walmart/stores/restaurants in one place - either walk on the interstate or cross over the interstate in a low-railinged, very heavily trafficked bridge where the winds often exceed fifty mph. They are building a "bike path" to try and get around that, but it's really just somewhere for the rich people in the adjacent suburb to walk their dogs. The road that leads up to the bridge has no shoulder in most places.
I've had a few adventures on that bridge that almost left me crawling the rest of the way across.
Sigh.
SB
Eeeerily familiar to the dot-com crash, that is.
I don't think one could consider packaging "speech". Sure, the hype on it may be - but I agree that product packaging should be regulated at least enough to keep the manufacturers semi-honest (pretty much where we are now).
:)
Most, if not all, advertising contains one sort of lie or another, even if subtle. If it didn't, what would be the point? It'd just be info dump, not advertising, right? I mean the whole idea is to convince your audience that your product is better - but one can always find someone to say that, paid or not. Advertising is deceptive bullshit aimed at convincing ignorant people to buy your product. The real shit about any product is spread thru objective reviews and word-of-mouth.
I'm sorry, but I can't really consider advertising "speech", either. Certainly not in the sense we are talking about here. We may be talking parallel, there.
As to grassroots/paid political blogging - ask the IRS. If the org/blogger is getting paid over the table, it'll show up there. Tax them for it (maybe under consultant status or something). If they are showing more income than they report, well, then it's the IRS's problem, isn't it?
No, that won't stop paid astroturfing. Stopping it completely is impossible in a free country. But it's a lot better way to do it than passing Another Fucking (unenforceable) Law that requires yet more government employees.
There has to be *some* limits on speech, just as few as possible - and it's probably better to let the "paid blogger" problem sort itself out (let the "blogosphere - the internet - manage itself), over the long run. Regulating it *specifically* just opens the door to more restrictions and more tax money being spent on something that'll do more damage than it "repairs". Bah
Cheers,
SB
Advertising/packaging != free speech
you're comparing apples and oranges there
(of course companies DO lie in their advertising and packaging quite often, just in ways that aren't easily discernible)
SB
People who call other people "sheep" because they don't share your priorities are arrogant assholes.
...
I guarantee you you don't even meet your own standard for "non-sheepness"
Right. So the problem is that not everyone thinks as clearly as you do on this subject?
SB
(arrogant asshole in training)
Exactly.
;-)
Meanwhile the rest of us suffer, because the small outlets we prefer who are actually customer-friendly and get-to-know-you are being driven out of business by the big outlets who sell the (generic) brands. Meanwhile the market for more foot doctors booms - and we suffer from that, too, from higher costs. And the insurance companies benefit...
What a clusterfuck. Not that it's new, it's been happening for quite a while, but it's still a clusterfuck.
I once knew an old man
Who could fit a shoe to anyone
But volumed out, a legal ban
and now greeter at Cost Is One.
bad poetry
SB
Mod parent up.
/rant )
;-) )
/end rant
The only thing that $ will buy you in footwear nowadays is possibly longer life (don't count on that, either.) It won't buy you comfort. Everyone's feet differ, every situation differs.
(My foot doctor told me he's never seen feet like mine (13WW with a super-high arch). Despite that, he managed to make me comfortable, using a $15 clearance pair of tennies from Kmart as a base, two years in a row now. I'll spend money on a cobbler before I'll spend it on expensive shoes. All the crap in the advertisements and by salesmen is just that - crap. They aren't paid enough to know any better. Find someone who actually looks at your feet.
(I don't run, but I do spend more than 12 hours on my feet every day. Until a couple years ago, I used to spend an hour in agony afterward, every day. Not anymore. Thank you, Dr. Bennis
I used to spend over a hundred dollars per pair on shoes. At least one pair of those contributed to my long-term pain more than they helped my short-term - but not that was not evident until months had gone by, and I couldn't go back and get refunded. The last pair of expensive shoes I bought lasted a whole six months. Woo.
I grieve for the death of the small business cobbler. Oftentimes they'd know one's feet better than one knew them oneself. Unintended effect of modern business, maybe, but it still sucks. I'd trade federal protection against bad business for having a lot of the small biz back. At least one had more choices.
The nearest cobbler to here is three hours away, not likely to know me. But I do have a very good local foot doctor - even if he is more expensive, and is constantly buried in people whose feet have been fucked up by mass-produced shoes.
Moo. I wish more people realized what it means when we drive local small biz out of viability, and would vote so. Not that voting makes a fucking difference anymore, and now I'm getting way off topic, so
SB
How do you fight them, then?
SB
Because words like truth, honor, duty, and integrity actually have some meaning to me.
;-)
There's nothing in that statement that binds one irrevocably to upholding the law of whatever jurisdiction one might be in. Indeed, it could be argued that sometimes fighting the law at the time is upholding the same concepts. There's certainly a lot of historical precedent, even in the sanitized versions of American history
While I don't doubt your commitment, I don't think you have your priorities straight, as to why you fight for.
"The man who does the right thing does it, not because he wants to change the world, but because he refuses to be changed by it."
Which implies personal decision on the ethical and moral implications of laws, all by itself.
Cheers,
SB
Don't know if it's just me, but youtube is suffering badly trying to deliver that video right now (4:53 Mountain time US)
I've never seen it like this.
SB
Interesting, I didn't know that. More reading to do
I'm not sure I'd call it a "mistake", tho. Not in the sense of what we're talking about here. We weren't mistaken originally, as far as we knew, until very recently, Pluto *was* the only body near that size out there.
Perhaps the IAU should just drop "dwarf planet" call Pluto a KBO - which is what it is. It's not like the public-at-large couldn't absorb Yet Another Acronym, if they had to - and if they cared enough.
Cheers, and thanks
SB
and was only done so for political reasons, not scientific.
;-)
Here I thought that Pluto was classified as a planet because it was the next rock we found after Neptune.
Seems to me the current reclassification has much more to do with politics than the original classification did.
Probably shares a lot of characteristics with comets, tho - and we can be glad that comets of that size don't enter the inner system very often anymore
Cheers,
SB
From what I used to see when I worked hardware, much of the time what burns out in CFL bulbs is something in the electronics in the base, which should be easily replaceable - they aren't that hard to take apart, so companies could disassemble, insert new component, reassemble, fairly cheaply I'd think.
Just a thought, but it'd help in recycling the things anyway.
Oh, to some of yous who aren't having much luck with them - switch brands. GE has treated me very nicely, not one dead one in two years. Of course I only have 13 of them, but I'm still saving money over regular bulbs. The GE CFLs we sold at work had a very, very low return rate as well. For a time we were stuck with Sylvania bulbs coming thru our suppliers, and they had a very high return rate, better than one in ten within three months. Phillips I have no data on but many people seem to like them. YMMV, etc...
SB
The main thing they don't have in common is that youtube's content isn't decided upon by a small bunch of Hollywood television show producers. It's just there for the viewing. I'm not saying that makes most of it better, but it certainly is more diverse.
SB
Youtube is just a video collection site.
The collection is determined by the submitters and voted upon by the viewers.
So any attributes we would apply to youtube, should be applied to the public at large. It's like that Carlin skit about voters and politicians...
SB
On Youtube, you get to see all the rejects.
:=(
Pretty much quantifies Stossel-20/20s piece on American education.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfRUMmTs0ZA
SB
So wouldn't patents on methods in data mining be the same thing as patenting mathematical methods, specifically stastistical methods?
(It's an honest question)
SB
Oh, yeah.
;-) Do the damned job right or hand it over to someone who will.
;-)
;-)
I had a similar experience here a few years ago when I moved in and [my] local cable company came to hook things up. Turns out that one of their local competitors had done some really shoddy wiring - using sub-spec connectors and hard bends (the coax was visibly crimped at two points where it didn't need to be) and after they pulled new cable thru it actually exceeded the promised specs [ "oh, we need to have the office slow this down some" - they never did]
If the cable installer doesn't do a bandwidth test from inside the house or apartment, at the connection on the wall, ask them to do so, in front of you. There are quite a few people I do tech support for in this area who have been screwed that way. It should be "from the pole to your wall outlet" and not "from the pole to your house/building".
I chewed on the local Qwest telephone installer for a similar problem - "we aren't responsible for the telephone lines inside your building" - despite the south wall of my apartment being where the main box is located, eight feet from the wall outlet. I ended up pulling that wire myself, took me about ten minutes. Bullshit. Service is service. Provide it, or don't. If it's a large apartment building and you have a long and problematical run, call the landlord and arrange something with him or her and their maintenance personnel (if they don't have any, move the hell out! *g*). But it's service to the wall outlet or not-gonna-pay-you.
I'm the (only) maintenance person for a mid sized apartment complex (56 apartments, 7 buildings) and while I'm willing to accomodate installers who have special problems - ie, they have to get into another apartment in order to run cabling thru or they need a hand pulling cable, or access to locked closets or even tearing up some sheetrock - fine - but I have no patience with the lazy ones who won't run new cable because it means they won't get their job orders filled today and they think the customer won't notice. Bah. Sorry, but I've heard it enough from one company out here (fortunately not from the other, and guess which one I recommend to tenants?)
They are contracted to deliver service to the wall jack. That's what they should deliver. *
Sorry for getting a bit feisty, just had to bitch a bit. I have lots of that stored up. Years worth, to be honest
But I'll say that Midcontinent Communication's installers are fantastic for the most part, and PrairieWave's ain't, for those of you living in this part of the "western midwest". Kudos to those who are doing their jobs. Speaking as a maintenance grunt, it's damned nice to deal with you when you want to get the job done right, and not waste your time nor mine.
SB
*Only answer I have for if they don't involves large clubs and midnight visits
We just wanna be going our own way, no truck with the bad folk... just leave us alone to take care of us and ours. Leave us well enough alone, we'll leave you alone...
small l noted and agreed with
We ain't a party, 'cept on U day maybe...
SB
It is.
But rubbing it in someone's face in an arrogant and bullying manner is way the hell out of line. There are courteous ways to deal with that, and this particular person obviously never learned how. ( Like "It's my job to ensure that..." or "I am charged with the responsibility to...") and the sort of person we *don't* need doing that sort of work is one who spouts shit like "I get to decide who..." which implies to me that the inspector/customs official in question has a personal agenda. Doesn't it sound that way to you? Sure as gorram hell seems so to me.
Look at it another way... if you got treated that way in a retail business where you were doing some shopping, wouldn't it piss you off? Would you shop there again? Is there some reason why these officials can't do their job without courtesy? I know it's a rough job, but I've worked enough roughshit retail to know that there are lines that one shouldn't cross, and if you can't keep your cool in your work, you simply don't belong there...
SB
Then there's LA sucking water downhill to the tune of billions of gallons
Out where I'm at it's just the worst drought in history combined with a lot of expansion, new homes, luscious lawns, the well drillers are pretty busy
SB
It's like the old joke about corporations being like septic tanks
Give it another couple generations and nobody will remember that tru... er, joke anymore.
SB
Have you thought about looking at smaller companies who do large scale survey/sat photo analysis? Be a good combo with your degree (I don't do it, but a friend does, and he says there's need) if it's something you are interested in.
Good luck!
SB
1) Did they have someone stop by and question her as well? Wouldn't surprise me...
2) Are you an Inna'pennant now? *g*
SB