I love my TiVo. I had a Series 1 that I hacked to the gills before I sold it and went with the Series 2. Years later, I run a media server with Galleon on it and have everything stable enough to pass the WAF and KSF - Wife Acceptance Factor and Kid Survivability Factor. I gladly pay my monthly subscription for the very factor that I believe in TiVo and want to give them my recurring revenue versus a one-time payment.
I see a possible future for TiVo. I can download vblogs today, re-encode them to MPEG2 using VLC player, and hang them out on a share on the media server. I watch most of the vblogs on my TV now. Thanks to an RSS feed to the cartoons in the internet archive; the kids occasionally download an old superman cartoon and watch it. They didn't think twice about the concept of asking for a show, waiting for it to download, and then having it whenever they want it. This could be the future of TiVo.
Somewhere in a lab, TiVo has to be playing with TiVo Desktop with built-in torrent ability. If TiVo Desktop could do torrents, TiVo could have a new revenue stream by allowing content providers to register their content with TiVo. TiVo would host the tracker and desktop would download and share. Before you could play the video, you would need to download a key from TiVo. Bingo - instant subscription video. If TiVo also added the ability to insert custom commercials into the video, that would be all the better. You don't have to pay for the subscription, but you can't fast forward through the commercials. If the commercials were given to me based on my demographics and I had the ability to thumbs down any commercial I did not like, I would go for that!
TiVo embracing IPTV could change the face of "television". Anyone with a decent camera and a cast could create content with the possibility of a profit. Independent TV would spread as fast as cheap digital cameras have spread independent film! The old 500 channels analogy would become a joke.
But I don't think this will ever happen. Why? Because of the players TiVo is cutting deals with. Hey, I understand why they are doing it -- they have to pay the bills today! But once the deal is done, I don't think Cox and Comcast are going to appreciate TiVo pulling eyeballs away from cable TV to get their video broadband through TiVo. Then again, maybe this is a two-way hedge. Maybe the cable companies are seeing where IPTV *could* go and are putting a backup plan in place where they are still the pipe the video flows through.
All I can say is that the technology is not there today. If everything we are told about the TiVo 3 is true, I think we would only be a bittorrent enabled version of TiVo Desktop away from the start of something huge, but just like DIRECTV would not enable the HMO functionality for the DirecTiVo, I don't see cable companies being too keen on losing viewers (and thus ad revenue) to someone who needs them to survive.
I have a Series 2 TiVo and have installed Galleon on my PC. I am able to download public domain videos (like the original DOA and the old Superman cartoons) from the Internet Archive to my PC, and pull them to my TiVo from the PC. If the video is not in the MPEG2 format TiVo needs, that's okay because Galleon can transcode it by calling external programs.
My point is -- all the technology is here today. Hak.5 and DiggNation show up using BitTorrent (which I leave seeding for 2 weeks to show my support). Galleon transcodes to MPEG2 and serves to TiVo. I go to TiVo, pull down from PC and enjoy. Heck, I bet there are even people out there using some of the BT clients that read RSS feeds to automatically download regular TV shows. I guess I am a big chicken since do IT inside the financial community and would lose my career if the studios sent their lawyers to my door. But if SciFi sold a subscription to buy a season of BSG for $25, I would be all over it even if I had to seed torrents to make it happen. If I could get old episodes of Deep Space 9 or Babylon 5 -- sold. If I could get more Firefly episodes right from Mutant Enemy without going through a studio -- I would PRE-PAY (Hear that Joss?).
Now, here is the problem I see. The TiVo 3 will support more codecs, support HDTV, and have more power. All of this becomes a lot more feasible with a TiVo 3, but TiVo now has a deal with Comcast. Comcast would probably not be happy if TiVo suddenly turned their PVR into the new cablebox of the IPTV revolution. Can anyone say lawsuit?
So, as much as I love my TiVo and the company, if they are stuck in bed with the devil, maybe Google needs to take the cash and go create their own IPTV PVR. Heck, Microsoft could even do it today using MCE and/or xBox 360 if they just.... ummm... nevermind, nothing to see here, move along.
As others have said, the Internet we have today is essentially what you are describing, but with a lot of traffic being consolidated through a small number of peers in the center of the network.
We have a wireless network in our neighborhood that is not even on the Internet. It is just a wireless network that anyone can connect to. The community runs a web server with forums that also allows private mail between users. We have looked into the possibility of putting other nodes in nearby locations and setting up a mesh network. This would be more like what I think you are describing, but the larger it gets, the higher your latency. If I am on the other side of town and want to send packets back and forth from the house, I could potentially go through dozens of nodes to get there. One way around this is to create central nodes with towers on the hilltops, but now you are getting back into a backbone like model.
The other thing we have considered is putting our little network on the internet and making it our own little neighborhood free wifi hotspot, but there are legal issues involved with that. Apparently our local municipality takes their franchise with the cable company quite seriously and most of the ISPs we could connect to would not let us share the bandwidth like this. Of course, you could just do it and not ask anyone's permission and would PROBABLY not get caught. I know and trust my neighbors, but with an open wifi access point, some freak could sit in his car at the top of our community and download kiddie porn and the IP address would point back to us, not him.
So while it is technically possible to do it, reality and practicality would bite you in the end. (Bad pun intended)
First of all, if I was only 37% successful at my tasks at work, I would be out the door in a heartbeat. One category off could mean the difference between success or failure.
Where this gets stupid are the advertising, word of mouth, and "fanatic" factors.
First, if a studio thinks a film is going to tank, they won't advertise it and won't push it to as many screens. As a result, less people even know the film exists and even if they do, it is harder to find. I can think of several movies that were awesome films that were just not advertised. I never saw a commercial for Usual Suspects, but saw it after a friend said it was the best movie they had ever seen. If the studio predicts failure, it could be a self-fulfilling prophesy, but I think the age of quick DVD release and peer recommendations is changing this.
That brings me to the second factor - word of mouth. How do you put word of mouth into a formula? Maybe I am in a very small minority, but my interest in a movie goes up significantly if a trusted friend (key point, others I do the exact opposite of what they say) says it is am AWESOME movie. They rank many movies as good, but very few as awesome. So what is the Awesome determinator? A movie can creep out of nowhere and just keep growing on the word of mouth factor. I admit that this is not a common event, but one that would seem nearly impossible to predict.
Finally, the fanatic factor. Remember where fan comes from. There are certain writers, directors, actors, soundtrack performers, etc. that carry a certain draw all on their own. Josh Weadon could write a movie about a girl who has poo flinging superpowers and tens of thousands of fans would go see it based on his name, but almost all would be inside a tight demographic. 37% sounds about right in this area.
As a final addition, there is the stupidity of Hollywood factor. They make movies based on what movie-goers like. There are less movie-goers each year because there is less for movie-goers to like. Why pay $25 for tickets, coke, and popcorn to take the wife to see a movie when I can go the big screen TV, NetFlix, and Newman's Own Microwave Popcorn route? My wife would probably add the "you can't pause the theater movie to go pee" factor, too.
Hollywood responds with stupid formulas like this that lets them focus on certain formula films fed to certain demographics and expect a simple equation where you fill in 40 variables and get instant profit. Political and religious discussions aside, the Passion totally breaks the mold. I went with 10 people to see that movie in the opening week and 6 of those people had not been to a theater in years.
The box is getting smaller each year and each year Hollywood continues to segment the box into what it thinks is the most profitable section, throw their efforts there, and alienate another years worth of eyeballs out of the box.
My hope is for alternative delivery and an uprooting of the current studio/distribution model. When the fanatics have a mechanism for funding a film or tv series that goes to internet and/or dvd delivery, the whole world changes. There are multiple ways to do this, too. Fans could pre-pay for a season of tv in order to get the dvds as they are made instead of in a boxed set (with no rental/netflix option until the boxed set was out). A film company could put up a bond that they would sell to the fans for a share of the profits.
If you really think JMS is so awesome, how many $50 bonds would you buy? If he sold 100,000 bonds with a 20% of profit share, made the movie for the $5 million, and netted only $30 million on theater, pay-per-view, and dvd, you would still get $60 back for each $50 investment.
Let me start by stating that I do not know it all nor do I presume to try to. This is just another point of view.
That having been said, I at least some ignorance and arrogance all the way around, in the US and out. On all the points except those I addressed below, I agree with you to at least some degree.
Do Europeans think it is a good idea to fork the root servers? Most of the root servers are outside US. What other coutries want is just a system where one stupid president cannot shut off the whole (or part of) internet in his fight agains "terrorism".
George Bush does not have the authority to shut off the internet. If he or ANYONE in the US government tried, it would be the end of their political career and would cost their entire political party greatly in the elections next year. If that didn't take care of it, the world would be reminded why the US has the 2nd Amendment.
Do Europeans think that Iraq deserves Saddam Hussein? Maybe we should let the Iraq-people decide ?
You cannot believe that US attacked Iraq because of Iraqians' human rights ?
It was NOT because of terrorism or WMD, it was NOT because of human rights, it was because of controlling oil reserves.
The Iraqis are deciding on how their country should be run. It is called elections and they are having them right now.
As for the war on Iraq, it was about Iraq not following the UN resolutions as the cease-fire of Desert Storm demanded. You can say whatever you want about WMDs but the reality is the same - Iraq was not obeying the rules. When it was clear that the UN inspections were a decade's worth of nothing, the war was on. If you ask me, the war was about 8 years too late. We should have gone right back in the minute Iraq stopped cooperating with the UN, but we had Bill Clinton as a President and major powers in the UN were too busy earning money off Saddam's regime to want to go to war.
Not least of these results is the Strong, Free and Democratic Europe which hates our guts and which would not exist (twice over) were it not for the American desire to remake the world to conform to American values. Now don't forget that the american civilization would not exist without european immigrants.
My grandparents came to America because Germany and its economy were in shambles after WWI. They came to America, worked hard, and raised a family. That is the American way. We are German-Americans, but we are still Americans. I hold my grandparents in a different light from my family that stayed in Germany.
And as for the "War For Oil" concept, sorry. If we went to war with Iraq for oil, we would not be paying $3.00+ a gallon for gasoline right now. We were paying about $1.25 before the war.
You may destroy American efforts at peace between Israel and the Palestinians. You must be joking. It is the US which has kept the war between Israeli and palestinians going. Without US support Israeli would have agreed to a Palestinian nation long ago, and that would have soothed the area.
Major groups of Palestinians have backed terrorism and declared that they will not stop fighting and killing Isrealis until all of Isreal is destroyed. How do you plan to keep that from happening?
If European leaders think that setting up their own root servers or sabotaging a diplomatic accord here or there will cure the Americans of their Arrogance and end American Unilateralism, they fundamentally misunderstand America and the American Spirit. We have seen that it is "the American Spirit" which allows a coutry to start a war without a reason. Before Bush it was latest done by Hitler and Stalin.
Few Americans know that attacking Iraq was not accepted in ANY other country. Even UK officially supported, the majority of people were against.
More of us are aware of world opinion than it sounds like you think. The problem is not that we are aware but that we so s
In the mid-80s, FidoNet was it. I had a whopping 2 line BBS - 2400 baud on the subscription line and 1200 baud on the public line. I had a massive 10 MB hard drive that I used to run the system.
Well, with over 8 MB of the 10 MB dedicated to file areas for the BBS, 8 MB across 2400 baud is a slow transfer, particularly at long-distance rates. So how did we swap files?
Every 2-4 weeks, us sysops would all meet someplace, usually a state park where we would grill some dogs and shoot the crap. We would all put in requests to each other, spend a few evenings before each get-together copied to disk, and you would show up with a box of floppies. I mean a long cardboard box with 100 floppies, not a box of 10 here.
100 1.44 MB floppies driven 1 hour across the state line - I couldn't touch that kind of bandwidth online.
Oh, I know what to look for. The only DirectX plugin I have found so far is for 8.1 and it ran very slow when I tried it. Yes, it all sounds nice and clean, but until you start trying to strip down your build to the bare essentials of what you need, you just don't know.
The harddrive on our laptops is encrypted, so if I boot from CD/DVD or USB, I can't touch it. I only have 1 GB of RAM to play with and I am trying to run WinXP with DirectX and the game itself. That means the video drivers and sound drivers have to be perfect, all the right reg entries, everything.
I have found part of what I need here and part there, but not a plugin that shows everything you need for a DirectX game. I have about 40 hours of looking and reading and 11 hours of trying it out put into it with no joy yet.
You show me how to get Civ4 (when it is out at the end of the month) running on a BartPE CD/DVD so that I can save games to my thumb drive and I will sing your praises from SlashDot to Fark. Seriously.
When I looked into these, it did not seem like you could install apps on them. Am I right?
We have laptops at work, but we lock them down. The HD is encrypted and no local admin rights. If I need to install something for myself or someone else, I have to login with a special "install account" that has desktop admin rights. It is all very secure, and I want it to stay that way.
At the same time, we have sales weasels and IT guys that travel A LOT. As one of them who has to spend at least 6 - 10 hours a week with laptop in some mode of transportation on ground or air, I understand first hand the repeated request for a way to use a USB drive to make "personal" use of the laptops. I ran this up 3 layers of management to the Group VP and showed her what I could do with both a BartPE/USB drive combo and with linux on a thumb drive. She bought a 1 GB drive that evening and, with my help, now boots to it to surf and check email on the road. Needless to say, we now have formal permission to do this as long as it is understand that it is unsupported by the tech staff (in other words, me and my fellow sysadmins).
Linux is all great - FireFox and Thunderbird rule - but I want to run Windows games on the road. Particularly, I would like to run Civ3 Conquests or, even better, Civ4 when it comes out later this month. I have tried starting with BartPE and the DirectX 8.1 plugin I found, but I have not been able to get Civ3 to work. I just don't have the free time to invest in the trial and error of getting BartPE configured right, and there is no guarentee that BartPE will even be able to handle it (though the 1 GB RAM in my laptop gives me hope).
Any advice? Does anyone know of anyone else who is running a configuration that runs WinXP and DirectX games from a DVD-R and/or thumbdrive? Heck, I might even be able to get some of the sales weasels to pitch in some bucks and pay someone a little something for their time!
The U.S. Military is going to a model where the "heavy lifting" of combat will be done by autonomous or semi-autonomous units. It is all about reducing training costs and the "political cost" of human lives.
The Air Force is going to this model with the http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/ucav.htm/UCA V. You will F-22 fighters for Air-to-Air Superiority to control the skies as F-35 Joint Strike Fighter squadrons augmented with UCAVs take out ground targets. The UCAVs get the dangerous missions and the F-35s do clean-up work. Targets are found and designated by UAVs like the Predator and the Global Hawk. 80% of the Air Force's costs are training and personnel. Even when you get to hard equipment costs, the UCAV is 1/3 the price of a JSF and 8 - 9% the cost of a F-22.
The Army and the Marines will have the "packbot" and Talon robots to engage "hardened targets". Ground robots will still require human guidance and will most likely be an extension of the eyes, ears, and rifle instead of autonomous soldiers.
As a veteran of the Gulf War and a former paratrooper of the 82nd Airborne, I can not even begin to describe the advantages of a highly mobile force that can air-deployed or sea-deployed in 1 - 3 days anywhere in the world. The 82nd Airborne can have 1/3 of the Division anywhere in the world in 18 hours or less of the President saying "Go." Imagine them having that same deployability but now having that same size force able to employ more firepower than the entire Division thanks to robotic augementation.
The problems here are still those of logistics and command and control. You still need boats and planes to put your forces on site. Commanders still need to be able to get an assessment of the tactical situation from the field and give orders to their forces. Robots put that much more of a strain on command and control and logistically are yet another thing that must be transported to the front, kept running, and repaired as needed.
I wonder what the MOS of a robot repairman is in the Army?
I work for a bank and will ask for $2 if I see the tellers have them. I am "the computer guy" so they think I am weird anyway.
I love to pay with them just to watch the cashier's face when they try to figure out where to put it in the cash drawer. Now that it has a chance to get me falsely arrested so that I can settle out of court for a couple of mil, I will have to pay with them all the time!
Heck, I will be up half the night just trying to think of stores this dumb!
If you read the other papers this professor has written, a lot of his stuff is about being anonymous. Look at his e-commerce/e-cash stuff and you will see.
I get the impression that he has more in mind for this than just banks and its customers. I think he is looking for ideas on how you can trust someone you have never "met".
We are number 1 now! Just under 2,000 members and counting. And yes, I am running it on Windows XP. Proudly serving my corporate masters!;)
A *SAINT* can do anything with God's help!
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Remember, he is SAINT Nicholas. When you have God and all his angels to help you, delivering presents to 33%+ of the households in the world is no big feat at all.
This still baffles me. BitTorrent works great for distributing media like ISOs. Folks, it can distribute "little" stuff, too.
A content creator (say Slashdot) has webpages and it has an RSS feed. They create a torrent for each page. They sign the RSS file and each torrent (and its content) with a private key. They post their public key on their homepage.
Now, you can cache the RSS file on other sites that support you yet the users can still be confident that it really came from you. Inside the RSS file, users can try to get the webpage (and all its images, etc.) through the torrent first. When the page loads locally in your browser, it could still go out and get ads if you are an ad sponsored site.
If you are a popular site and have a "fan base", you should have no problem implementing something along these lines. If you are a site that has these problems, you are probably popular and have a fan base. Given the right software and the buy-in from users, the problem solves itself.
Re:Taking Self-Employed Into Account? and my thoug
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So I assume you are calling me a Neocon and saying that I suck. Sorry you feel that way. I don't think anyone sucks... I think they just have different opinions. Some are right, some are wrong, and some of just ill-informed.
As for the labor figures, go to the labor website yourself, look at both sets of figures, realize that the media is quoting the "worse" figures that do not take into account a sizable and growing part of our economy. I have personally done this and think that the media is only telling me half the story. You can't have it both ways... you can't say that the Dept. of Labor numbers are real and then dismiss the more inclusive numbers of the Dept. of Labor.
Unemployment Insurance - I can buy that from an insurance agent. Why do I need the government involved?
Social Security - I pay over 12% of my income each year to old people. When I am 65, 12% of the income of the workforce divided by the number of people 65 or older will come no where near the poverty level. When I retire, Social Security will be either meaningless or go. You want to try to save it? So what do we do? Give it to less people? Give the people less money? Take a larger percentage from each worker's paycheck? A combination of the three? How is this a good idea again?
SEC/FDIC/FCC/DOL/Treasury/EPA - we need 'em and I support 'em as long as they serve the people and don't do things just to perpetuate themselves. I mentioned this in my post. Did you read my post?
Sean Hannity - never read his books, have listened to his radio show a few times and do not like his "in your face" style combined with his mind closed to anything not Republican.
Rush Limbaugh - is he still around? Whatever happened to that drug thing? Do people still listen to him?
Fox News - I don't get my news from television. I prefer to read it online from several different sources and form my own opinion.
I lost my job last year... and then I got a new one. It took a month, but I was prepared, used savings, and moved on. I don't know anyone here in Atlanta right now that wants to be working and isn't.
Is it that are taxes are too low or that government spending is too high? I think taxes are still too high and that spending is totally out of control. Let's try reducing spending this time.
As for a strong economy under a Democrat President, I said in my post that it is not the President, it is Congress when it comes to taxes and spending. The '90s was about new innovation and a Congress working to help businesses, particularly small business. It is as fair to give Clinton credit for that as to blame the recession on him since the decline started at the end of his time in office.
What happened to the concept of a nation that sacrifices in a time of war for the betterment of the country? I sold my SUV and have sacrificed. The "nation" you speak of is each individual American making the sacrifice. I think that most of us have become so selfish that this very concept is beyond us. We are not the America of WWII.
As for better care for veteran's who bear the burden of fighting, you are exchanging words with a Gulf War veteran. One thing I do have to say is that I have always been impressed and amazed by the kindness and pride show to our men and women in uniform in our generation. This is one area where we have gotten it right.
So, now that I have answered your objections, let me say that it saddens me that you lump me under a clever little title and deemed me ignorant. I spent 15 years reading, thinking, discussing, and putting into action my beliefs in my daily life. I don't know if you being so far off the mark is a sad commentary on you, me, both of us, or the whole country.
Whatever the case, I respect any person who puts forth time, though and effort in determining a position that the belief because they have made an intelligent decision that it is right. If the try to put their beliefs into action in their daily life, my respect grows to admiriation. That's all I really have to say.
Our first nomination for the SlashDot party?
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I see a new poll in Slashdot's future and I see Cowboy Neal winning.
So are the MegaCorps in charge yet? ...
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... because I want to officially start calling myself a cyberpunk and start working in the shadows. As soon as I get that neural interface implanted, I am going to work for the MegaCorps so that I can use their own money against them as I try to bring them down.
Kerry's Plans Are Simple! Go Read Yourself!
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Yes, follow the link above and read Kerry's plans. They are simple and easy to understand.
If more than 50% of America said in today's poll that they liked what Bush did, Kerry will do that too, but he will do it better than Bush. If more than 50% of America said in today's poll that they did not like what Bush did, Kerry will do the extreme opposite of what Bush did.
Of course, you will not know what Kerry's positions will be on election day until he gets a chance to read the poll results the night before...
(Sorry, but someone had to bring up the flip-flopping. See my next post for my tear-down of Bush's following of a vision whether it proves to be right or not!)
Save Social Security - Have More Kids!
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Why is social security going bankrupt? Because there will be too many people taking money out and not enough putting money in. If you want social security, have more kids who will work good jobs and pay into the system.
As a side note, I know that my wife and I, and those like us, are ultimately going to "win" in the long run. Our country will grow more conservative, yet also more compassionate. Not in the "Compassionate Conservative" political speech of today, but in the true religious sense of standing for the Right to Life, standing for Social Justice, helping the poor, healing the sick, etc.
Do you want to know why? Because the couples we know that are only out for their own self-intrest are either not having kids or are only having one kid. We are expecting number four.
We raise our kids in a religious framework that focuses not on self, but on other. "What can I do for my brother to show God I love Him", not "What is in it for me."
The "Me" kids grow up, marry each other, and only have one kid. The "Other" Kids grow up, marry each other, and have a lot of kids. Look three generations ahead and tell me what you see.
Taking Self-Employed Into Account? and my thoughts
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Does this take the self-employed into account? I read tha article and saw nothing about the self-employed mentioned anywhere in there.
From what I have read from the federal government's figures, once you take the self-employed into account, Bush is creating jobs, not losing them. Since the self-employed are not being taken into account by the "left", I can not trust anything they have to say about avarage salary since they are not taking millions of workers into account.
Now don't take this to mean that I support Bush either. The whole Homeland Security continues to rub me the wrong way. And the federalizing of the airport screeners?!?
As far as outsourcing goes, every company I have personally been involved with that has outsourced to India (5 in the IT arena) have all seen it as a huge failure and pulled it back in-house. 2 where development and 3 were tech support.
I do agree with their take on worker visas. If you want to work and live in America, become a citizen.
The lowering "disposible income" figure is very misleading. This has been torn apart by the "Right" because you look at what is considered "essential" today as compared to 30 years ago. Who doesn't have a washer, a dryer, a television, and a telephone today? Today they count as essential. Decades ago they didn't. Thus, the "cost of living" goes up and the "disposible income" goes down.
Economics is the easiest thing to understand at a systemic level and the hardest thing to actually implement at the individual level. "Economies" do not change, the earning, spending and investing of individuals changes.
But when you get right down to it, you need the American people to keep more of their own money and for them to spend that money buying products from American companies that employ American workers. Those workers need to invest in those American companies and thus increase their personal wealth while giving the companies more capital to expand.
Oh, and those of you blaming the President for the economy need to remember that it is CONGRESS, not the President, who rules the country's taxes and spending. While the President provides the leadership, CONGRESS is to blame. Vote accordingly.
In my opinion (and, since I am not an economist, it is just my opinion), we need to:
- reduce federal spending (make Congress personally responsible for any deficit?).
- lower taxes for those who pay taxes (the lower 50% of the earners in America pay no taxes!).
- streamline the tax system with the Fair Tax. Once you get rid of most of the IRS, you lower federal costs, you lower the costs of businesses and individuals doing their taxes, you make your tax burden directly linked to your spending, you remove ALL tax burden from those living in poverty, and you lower the cost of American goods, thus making them more competitive in the world economy.
- as individuals, buy products from American companies (preferrably made entirely in America if you can still find one).
- phase out social security (the third rail of politics!). This will never happen, but it should. Over 12% of every worker's paycheck goes to retired people. Imagine if half that money went into your personal IRA account that would actually be worth something when you retired! (Also, as a side note, black men have the lowest life expectancy in America. White women have the highest. Statistically, social security takes money from young black men and gives it to old white women!)
- get the government out of the charity business. Let groups like the Red Cross, the United Way, religious charities, etc. do this work and treat people as individuals instead of numbers.
- put the government back on focus to what it MUST do, not what people WANT it to do. The government should not be a wealth redistribution plan. Government should provide the Common Good Required For Existence.
- Without breathable air, drinkable water, and land that can support farming and ranching,
I am a Linux idiot, but I want to join the fun. I have enjoyed my Knoppix CD.
Is it possible to build a Knoppix-like CD-R or DVD-R that would have Linux, WineX, and the Game so that you boot from the CD right into the game?
If so, could you save game to a thumb drive?
I could definitely see a benefit of having a CD-R or DVD-R that I could boot up, play my game, save to thumb drive, and reboot to get back to Windows. Copyright issues would require this to be a "roll your own" solution, but could it be done? If so, how does a moron like me go about doing it?
There is just no way Lucas can direct this movie and not have it suck. All the fancy new costumes and special effects is not going to change that (and arguably will make it worse).
Whatever. We all know we are still going to bittorrent it and yet still go to see the big fight on the big screen.
Slashdot Mirror
I love my TiVo. I had a Series 1 that I hacked to the gills before I sold it and went with the Series 2. Years later, I run a media server with Galleon on it and have everything stable enough to pass the WAF and KSF - Wife Acceptance Factor and Kid Survivability Factor. I gladly pay my monthly subscription for the very factor that I believe in TiVo and want to give them my recurring revenue versus a one-time payment.
I see a possible future for TiVo. I can download vblogs today, re-encode them to MPEG2 using VLC player, and hang them out on a share on the media server. I watch most of the vblogs on my TV now. Thanks to an RSS feed to the cartoons in the internet archive; the kids occasionally download an old superman cartoon and watch it. They didn't think twice about the concept of asking for a show, waiting for it to download, and then having it whenever they want it. This could be the future of TiVo.
Somewhere in a lab, TiVo has to be playing with TiVo Desktop with built-in torrent ability. If TiVo Desktop could do torrents, TiVo could have a new revenue stream by allowing content providers to register their content with TiVo. TiVo would host the tracker and desktop would download and share. Before you could play the video, you would need to download a key from TiVo. Bingo - instant subscription video. If TiVo also added the ability to insert custom commercials into the video, that would be all the better. You don't have to pay for the subscription, but you can't fast forward through the commercials. If the commercials were given to me based on my demographics and I had the ability to thumbs down any commercial I did not like, I would go for that!
TiVo embracing IPTV could change the face of "television". Anyone with a decent camera and a cast could create content with the possibility of a profit. Independent TV would spread as fast as cheap digital cameras have spread independent film! The old 500 channels analogy would become a joke.
But I don't think this will ever happen. Why? Because of the players TiVo is cutting deals with. Hey, I understand why they are doing it -- they have to pay the bills today! But once the deal is done, I don't think Cox and Comcast are going to appreciate TiVo pulling eyeballs away from cable TV to get their video broadband through TiVo. Then again, maybe this is a two-way hedge. Maybe the cable companies are seeing where IPTV *could* go and are putting a backup plan in place where they are still the pipe the video flows through.
All I can say is that the technology is not there today. If everything we are told about the TiVo 3 is true, I think we would only be a bittorrent enabled version of TiVo Desktop away from the start of something huge, but just like DIRECTV would not enable the HMO functionality for the DirecTiVo, I don't see cable companies being too keen on losing viewers (and thus ad revenue) to someone who needs them to survive.
I have a Series 2 TiVo and have installed Galleon on my PC. I am able to download public domain videos (like the original DOA and the old Superman cartoons) from the Internet Archive to my PC, and pull them to my TiVo from the PC. If the video is not in the MPEG2 format TiVo needs, that's okay because Galleon can transcode it by calling external programs.
.... ummm ... nevermind, nothing to see here, move along.
My point is -- all the technology is here today. Hak.5 and DiggNation show up using BitTorrent (which I leave seeding for 2 weeks to show my support). Galleon transcodes to MPEG2 and serves to TiVo. I go to TiVo, pull down from PC and enjoy. Heck, I bet there are even people out there using some of the BT clients that read RSS feeds to automatically download regular TV shows. I guess I am a big chicken since do IT inside the financial community and would lose my career if the studios sent their lawyers to my door. But if SciFi sold a subscription to buy a season of BSG for $25, I would be all over it even if I had to seed torrents to make it happen. If I could get old episodes of Deep Space 9 or Babylon 5 -- sold. If I could get more Firefly episodes right from Mutant Enemy without going through a studio -- I would PRE-PAY (Hear that Joss?).
Now, here is the problem I see. The TiVo 3 will support more codecs, support HDTV, and have more power. All of this becomes a lot more feasible with a TiVo 3, but TiVo now has a deal with Comcast. Comcast would probably not be happy if TiVo suddenly turned their PVR into the new cablebox of the IPTV revolution. Can anyone say lawsuit?
So, as much as I love my TiVo and the company, if they are stuck in bed with the devil, maybe Google needs to take the cash and go create their own IPTV PVR. Heck, Microsoft could even do it today using MCE and/or xBox 360 if they just
As others have said, the Internet we have today is essentially what you are describing, but with a lot of traffic being consolidated through a small number of peers in the center of the network.
We have a wireless network in our neighborhood that is not even on the Internet. It is just a wireless network that anyone can connect to. The community runs a web server with forums that also allows private mail between users. We have looked into the possibility of putting other nodes in nearby locations and setting up a mesh network. This would be more like what I think you are describing, but the larger it gets, the higher your latency. If I am on the other side of town and want to send packets back and forth from the house, I could potentially go through dozens of nodes to get there. One way around this is to create central nodes with towers on the hilltops, but now you are getting back into a backbone like model.
The other thing we have considered is putting our little network on the internet and making it our own little neighborhood free wifi hotspot, but there are legal issues involved with that. Apparently our local municipality takes their franchise with the cable company quite seriously and most of the ISPs we could connect to would not let us share the bandwidth like this. Of course, you could just do it and not ask anyone's permission and would PROBABLY not get caught. I know and trust my neighbors, but with an open wifi access point, some freak could sit in his car at the top of our community and download kiddie porn and the IP address would point back to us, not him.
So while it is technically possible to do it, reality and practicality would bite you in the end. (Bad pun intended)
First of all, if I was only 37% successful at my tasks at work, I would be out the door in a heartbeat. One category off could mean the difference between success or failure.
Where this gets stupid are the advertising, word of mouth, and "fanatic" factors.
First, if a studio thinks a film is going to tank, they won't advertise it and won't push it to as many screens. As a result, less people even know the film exists and even if they do, it is harder to find. I can think of several movies that were awesome films that were just not advertised. I never saw a commercial for Usual Suspects, but saw it after a friend said it was the best movie they had ever seen. If the studio predicts failure, it could be a self-fulfilling prophesy, but I think the age of quick DVD release and peer recommendations is changing this.
That brings me to the second factor - word of mouth. How do you put word of mouth into a formula? Maybe I am in a very small minority, but my interest in a movie goes up significantly if a trusted friend (key point, others I do the exact opposite of what they say) says it is am AWESOME movie. They rank many movies as good, but very few as awesome. So what is the Awesome determinator? A movie can creep out of nowhere and just keep growing on the word of mouth factor. I admit that this is not a common event, but one that would seem nearly impossible to predict.
Finally, the fanatic factor. Remember where fan comes from. There are certain writers, directors, actors, soundtrack performers, etc. that carry a certain draw all on their own. Josh Weadon could write a movie about a girl who has poo flinging superpowers and tens of thousands of fans would go see it based on his name, but almost all would be inside a tight demographic. 37% sounds about right in this area.
As a final addition, there is the stupidity of Hollywood factor. They make movies based on what movie-goers like. There are less movie-goers each year because there is less for movie-goers to like. Why pay $25 for tickets, coke, and popcorn to take the wife to see a movie when I can go the big screen TV, NetFlix, and Newman's Own Microwave Popcorn route? My wife would probably add the "you can't pause the theater movie to go pee" factor, too.
Hollywood responds with stupid formulas like this that lets them focus on certain formula films fed to certain demographics and expect a simple equation where you fill in 40 variables and get instant profit. Political and religious discussions aside, the Passion totally breaks the mold. I went with 10 people to see that movie in the opening week and 6 of those people had not been to a theater in years.
The box is getting smaller each year and each year Hollywood continues to segment the box into what it thinks is the most profitable section, throw their efforts there, and alienate another years worth of eyeballs out of the box.
My hope is for alternative delivery and an uprooting of the current studio/distribution model. When the fanatics have a mechanism for funding a film or tv series that goes to internet and/or dvd delivery, the whole world changes. There are multiple ways to do this, too. Fans could pre-pay for a season of tv in order to get the dvds as they are made instead of in a boxed set (with no rental/netflix option until the boxed set was out). A film company could put up a bond that they would sell to the fans for a share of the profits.
If you really think JMS is so awesome, how many $50 bonds would you buy? If he sold 100,000 bonds with a 20% of profit share, made the movie for the $5 million, and netted only $30 million on theater, pay-per-view, and dvd, you would still get $60 back for each $50 investment.
Awesome idea ... if I always had internet connectivity. I spend more than 50% of my "on the move" time outside range of a hotspot.
Let me start by stating that I do not know it all nor do I presume to try to. This is just another point of view.
That having been said, I at least some ignorance and arrogance all the way around, in the US and out. On all the points except those I addressed below, I agree with you to at least some degree.
Do Europeans think it is a good idea to fork the root servers?
Most of the root servers are outside US. What other coutries want is just a system where one stupid president cannot shut off the whole (or part of) internet in his fight agains "terrorism".
George Bush does not have the authority to shut off the internet. If he or ANYONE in the US government tried, it would be the end of their political career and would cost their entire political party greatly in the elections next year. If that didn't take care of it, the world would be reminded why the US has the 2nd Amendment.
Do Europeans think that Iraq deserves Saddam Hussein?
Maybe we should let the Iraq-people decide ?
You cannot believe that US attacked Iraq because of Iraqians' human rights ? It was NOT because of terrorism or WMD, it was NOT because of human rights, it was because of controlling oil reserves.
The Iraqis are deciding on how their country should be run. It is called elections and they are having them right now.
As for the war on Iraq, it was about Iraq not following the UN resolutions as the cease-fire of Desert Storm demanded. You can say whatever you want about WMDs but the reality is the same - Iraq was not obeying the rules. When it was clear that the UN inspections were a decade's worth of nothing, the war was on. If you ask me, the war was about 8 years too late. We should have gone right back in the minute Iraq stopped cooperating with the UN, but we had Bill Clinton as a President and major powers in the UN were too busy earning money off Saddam's regime to want to go to war.
Not least of these results is the Strong, Free and Democratic Europe which hates our guts and which would not exist (twice over) were it not for the American desire to remake the world to conform to American values.
Now don't forget that the american civilization would not exist without european immigrants.
My grandparents came to America because Germany and its economy were in shambles after WWI. They came to America, worked hard, and raised a family. That is the American way. We are German-Americans, but we are still Americans. I hold my grandparents in a different light from my family that stayed in Germany.
And as for the "War For Oil" concept, sorry. If we went to war with Iraq for oil, we would not be paying $3.00+ a gallon for gasoline right now. We were paying about $1.25 before the war.
You may destroy American efforts at peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
You must be joking. It is the US which has kept the war between Israeli and palestinians going. Without US support Israeli would have agreed to a Palestinian nation long ago, and that would have soothed the area.
Major groups of Palestinians have backed terrorism and declared that they will not stop fighting and killing Isrealis until all of Isreal is destroyed. How do you plan to keep that from happening?
If European leaders think that setting up their own root servers or sabotaging a diplomatic accord here or there will cure the Americans of their Arrogance and end American Unilateralism, they fundamentally misunderstand America and the American Spirit.
We have seen that it is "the American Spirit" which allows a coutry to start a war without a reason. Before Bush it was latest done by Hitler and Stalin. Few Americans know that attacking Iraq was not accepted in ANY other country. Even UK officially supported, the majority of people were against.
More of us are aware of world opinion than it sounds like you think. The problem is not that we are aware but that we so s
In the mid-80s, FidoNet was it. I had a whopping 2 line BBS - 2400 baud on the subscription line and 1200 baud on the public line. I had a massive 10 MB hard drive that I used to run the system.
Well, with over 8 MB of the 10 MB dedicated to file areas for the BBS, 8 MB across 2400 baud is a slow transfer, particularly at long-distance rates. So how did we swap files?
Every 2-4 weeks, us sysops would all meet someplace, usually a state park where we would grill some dogs and shoot the crap. We would all put in requests to each other, spend a few evenings before each get-together copied to disk, and you would show up with a box of floppies. I mean a long cardboard box with 100 floppies, not a box of 10 here.
100 1.44 MB floppies driven 1 hour across the state line - I couldn't touch that kind of bandwidth online.
Oh, I know what to look for. The only DirectX plugin I have found so far is for 8.1 and it ran very slow when I tried it. Yes, it all sounds nice and clean, but until you start trying to strip down your build to the bare essentials of what you need, you just don't know.
The harddrive on our laptops is encrypted, so if I boot from CD/DVD or USB, I can't touch it. I only have 1 GB of RAM to play with and I am trying to run WinXP with DirectX and the game itself. That means the video drivers and sound drivers have to be perfect, all the right reg entries, everything.
I have found part of what I need here and part there, but not a plugin that shows everything you need for a DirectX game. I have about 40 hours of looking and reading and 11 hours of trying it out put into it with no joy yet.
Allow me to clarify ... you can't run WinXP and a DirectX game off of it.
You show me how to get Civ4 (when it is out at the end of the month) running on a BartPE CD/DVD so that I can save games to my thumb drive and I will sing your praises from SlashDot to Fark. Seriously.
When I looked into these, it did not seem like you could install apps on them. Am I right?
We have laptops at work, but we lock them down. The HD is encrypted and no local admin rights. If I need to install something for myself or someone else, I have to login with a special "install account" that has desktop admin rights. It is all very secure, and I want it to stay that way.
At the same time, we have sales weasels and IT guys that travel A LOT. As one of them who has to spend at least 6 - 10 hours a week with laptop in some mode of transportation on ground or air, I understand first hand the repeated request for a way to use a USB drive to make "personal" use of the laptops. I ran this up 3 layers of management to the Group VP and showed her what I could do with both a BartPE/USB drive combo and with linux on a thumb drive. She bought a 1 GB drive that evening and, with my help, now boots to it to surf and check email on the road. Needless to say, we now have formal permission to do this as long as it is understand that it is unsupported by the tech staff (in other words, me and my fellow sysadmins).
Linux is all great - FireFox and Thunderbird rule - but I want to run Windows games on the road. Particularly, I would like to run Civ3 Conquests or, even better, Civ4 when it comes out later this month. I have tried starting with BartPE and the DirectX 8.1 plugin I found, but I have not been able to get Civ3 to work. I just don't have the free time to invest in the trial and error of getting BartPE configured right, and there is no guarentee that BartPE will even be able to handle it (though the 1 GB RAM in my laptop gives me hope).
Any advice? Does anyone know of anyone else who is running a configuration that runs WinXP and DirectX games from a DVD-R and/or thumbdrive? Heck, I might even be able to get some of the sales weasels to pitch in some bucks and pay someone a little something for their time!
Thanks in advance for any advice or assistance!
The U.S. Military is going to a model where the "heavy lifting" of combat will be done by autonomous or semi-autonomous units. It is all about reducing training costs and the "political cost" of human lives.
A V. You will F-22 fighters for Air-to-Air Superiority to control the skies as F-35 Joint Strike Fighter squadrons augmented with UCAVs take out ground targets. The UCAVs get the dangerous missions and the F-35s do clean-up work. Targets are found and designated by UAVs like the Predator and the Global Hawk. 80% of the Air Force's costs are training and personnel. Even when you get to hard equipment costs, the UCAV is 1/3 the price of a JSF and 8 - 9% the cost of a F-22.
The Air Force is going to this model with the http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/ucav.htm/UC
The Army and the Marines will have the "packbot" and Talon robots to engage "hardened targets". Ground robots will still require human guidance and will most likely be an extension of the eyes, ears, and rifle instead of autonomous soldiers.
As a veteran of the Gulf War and a former paratrooper of the 82nd Airborne, I can not even begin to describe the advantages of a highly mobile force that can air-deployed or sea-deployed in 1 - 3 days anywhere in the world. The 82nd Airborne can have 1/3 of the Division anywhere in the world in 18 hours or less of the President saying "Go." Imagine them having that same deployability but now having that same size force able to employ more firepower than the entire Division thanks to robotic augementation.
The problems here are still those of logistics and command and control. You still need boats and planes to put your forces on site. Commanders still need to be able to get an assessment of the tactical situation from the field and give orders to their forces. Robots put that much more of a strain on command and control and logistically are yet another thing that must be transported to the front, kept running, and repaired as needed.
I wonder what the MOS of a robot repairman is in the Army?
I work for a bank and will ask for $2 if I see the tellers have them. I am "the computer guy" so they think I am weird anyway. I love to pay with them just to watch the cashier's face when they try to figure out where to put it in the cash drawer. Now that it has a chance to get me falsely arrested so that I can settle out of court for a couple of mil, I will have to pay with them all the time! Heck, I will be up half the night just trying to think of stores this dumb!
If you read the other papers this professor has written, a lot of his stuff is about being anonymous. Look at his e-commerce/e-cash stuff and you will see. I get the impression that he has more in mind for this than just banks and its customers. I think he is looking for ideas on how you can trust someone you have never "met".
We are number 1 now! Just under 2,000 members and counting. And yes, I am running it on Windows XP. Proudly serving my corporate masters! ;)
Remember, he is SAINT Nicholas. When you have God and all his angels to help you, delivering presents to 33%+ of the households in the world is no big feat at all.
This still baffles me. BitTorrent works great for distributing media like ISOs. Folks, it can distribute "little" stuff, too.
A content creator (say Slashdot) has webpages and it has an RSS feed. They create a torrent for each page. They sign the RSS file and each torrent (and its content) with a private key. They post their public key on their homepage.
Now, you can cache the RSS file on other sites that support you yet the users can still be confident that it really came from you. Inside the RSS file, users can try to get the webpage (and all its images, etc.) through the torrent first. When the page loads locally in your browser, it could still go out and get ads if you are an ad sponsored site.
If you are a popular site and have a "fan base", you should have no problem implementing something along these lines. If you are a site that has these problems, you are probably popular and have a fan base. Given the right software and the buy-in from users, the problem solves itself.
So I assume you are calling me a Neocon and saying that I suck. Sorry you feel that way. I don't think anyone sucks ... I think they just have different opinions. Some are right, some are wrong, and some of just ill-informed.
... you can't say that the Dept. of Labor numbers are real and then dismiss the more inclusive numbers of the Dept. of Labor.
... and then I got a new one. It took a month, but I was prepared, used savings, and moved on. I don't know anyone here in Atlanta right now that wants to be working and isn't.
As for the labor figures, go to the labor website yourself, look at both sets of figures, realize that the media is quoting the "worse" figures that do not take into account a sizable and growing part of our economy. I have personally done this and think that the media is only telling me half the story. You can't have it both ways
Unemployment Insurance - I can buy that from an insurance agent. Why do I need the government involved?
Social Security - I pay over 12% of my income each year to old people. When I am 65, 12% of the income of the workforce divided by the number of people 65 or older will come no where near the poverty level. When I retire, Social Security will be either meaningless or go. You want to try to save it? So what do we do? Give it to less people? Give the people less money? Take a larger percentage from each worker's paycheck? A combination of the three? How is this a good idea again?
SEC/FDIC/FCC/DOL/Treasury/EPA - we need 'em and I support 'em as long as they serve the people and don't do things just to perpetuate themselves. I mentioned this in my post. Did you read my post?
Sean Hannity - never read his books, have listened to his radio show a few times and do not like his "in your face" style combined with his mind closed to anything not Republican.
Rush Limbaugh - is he still around? Whatever happened to that drug thing? Do people still listen to him?
Fox News - I don't get my news from television. I prefer to read it online from several different sources and form my own opinion.
I lost my job last year
Is it that are taxes are too low or that government spending is too high? I think taxes are still too high and that spending is totally out of control. Let's try reducing spending this time.
As for a strong economy under a Democrat President, I said in my post that it is not the President, it is Congress when it comes to taxes and spending. The '90s was about new innovation and a Congress working to help businesses, particularly small business. It is as fair to give Clinton credit for that as to blame the recession on him since the decline started at the end of his time in office.
What happened to the concept of a nation that sacrifices in a time of war for the betterment of the country? I sold my SUV and have sacrificed. The "nation" you speak of is each individual American making the sacrifice. I think that most of us have become so selfish that this very concept is beyond us. We are not the America of WWII.
As for better care for veteran's who bear the burden of fighting, you are exchanging words with a Gulf War veteran. One thing I do have to say is that I have always been impressed and amazed by the kindness and pride show to our men and women in uniform in our generation. This is one area where we have gotten it right.
So, now that I have answered your objections, let me say that it saddens me that you lump me under a clever little title and deemed me ignorant. I spent 15 years reading, thinking, discussing, and putting into action my beliefs in my daily life. I don't know if you being so far off the mark is a sad commentary on you, me, both of us, or the whole country.
Whatever the case, I respect any person who puts forth time, though and effort in determining a position that the belief because they have made an intelligent decision that it is right. If the try to put their beliefs into action in their daily life, my respect grows to admiriation. That's all I really have to say.
I see a new poll in Slashdot's future and I see Cowboy Neal winning.
... because I want to officially start calling myself a cyberpunk and start working in the shadows. As soon as I get that neural interface implanted, I am going to work for the MegaCorps so that I can use their own money against them as I try to bring them down.
Yes, follow the link above and read Kerry's plans. They are simple and easy to understand.
If more than 50% of America said in today's poll that they liked what Bush did, Kerry will do that too, but he will do it better than Bush. If more than 50% of America said in today's poll that they did not like what Bush did, Kerry will do the extreme opposite of what Bush did.
Of course, you will not know what Kerry's positions will be on election day until he gets a chance to read the poll results the night before...
(Sorry, but someone had to bring up the flip-flopping. See my next post for my tear-down of Bush's following of a vision whether it proves to be right or not!)
Why is social security going bankrupt? Because there will be too many people taking money out and not enough putting money in. If you want social security, have more kids who will work good jobs and pay into the system. As a side note, I know that my wife and I, and those like us, are ultimately going to "win" in the long run. Our country will grow more conservative, yet also more compassionate. Not in the "Compassionate Conservative" political speech of today, but in the true religious sense of standing for the Right to Life, standing for Social Justice, helping the poor, healing the sick, etc. Do you want to know why? Because the couples we know that are only out for their own self-intrest are either not having kids or are only having one kid. We are expecting number four. We raise our kids in a religious framework that focuses not on self, but on other. "What can I do for my brother to show God I love Him", not "What is in it for me." The "Me" kids grow up, marry each other, and only have one kid. The "Other" Kids grow up, marry each other, and have a lot of kids. Look three generations ahead and tell me what you see.
Does this take the self-employed into account? I read tha article and saw nothing about the self-employed mentioned anywhere in there.
From what I have read from the federal government's figures, once you take the self-employed into account, Bush is creating jobs, not losing them. Since the self-employed are not being taken into account by the "left", I can not trust anything they have to say about avarage salary since they are not taking millions of workers into account.
Now don't take this to mean that I support Bush either. The whole Homeland Security continues to rub me the wrong way. And the federalizing of the airport screeners?!?
As far as outsourcing goes, every company I have personally been involved with that has outsourced to India (5 in the IT arena) have all seen it as a huge failure and pulled it back in-house. 2 where development and 3 were tech support.
I do agree with their take on worker visas. If you want to work and live in America, become a citizen.
The lowering "disposible income" figure is very misleading. This has been torn apart by the "Right" because you look at what is considered "essential" today as compared to 30 years ago. Who doesn't have a washer, a dryer, a television, and a telephone today? Today they count as essential. Decades ago they didn't. Thus, the "cost of living" goes up and the "disposible income" goes down.
Economics is the easiest thing to understand at a systemic level and the hardest thing to actually implement at the individual level. "Economies" do not change, the earning, spending and investing of individuals changes.
But when you get right down to it, you need the American people to keep more of their own money and for them to spend that money buying products from American companies that employ American workers. Those workers need to invest in those American companies and thus increase their personal wealth while giving the companies more capital to expand.
Oh, and those of you blaming the President for the economy need to remember that it is CONGRESS, not the President, who rules the country's taxes and spending. While the President provides the leadership, CONGRESS is to blame. Vote accordingly.
In my opinion (and, since I am not an economist, it is just my opinion), we need to:
- reduce federal spending (make Congress personally responsible for any deficit?).
- lower taxes for those who pay taxes (the lower 50% of the earners in America pay no taxes!).
- streamline the tax system with the Fair Tax. Once you get rid of most of the IRS, you lower federal costs, you lower the costs of businesses and individuals doing their taxes, you make your tax burden directly linked to your spending, you remove ALL tax burden from those living in poverty, and you lower the cost of American goods, thus making them more competitive in the world economy.
- as individuals, buy products from American companies (preferrably made entirely in America if you can still find one).
- phase out social security (the third rail of politics!). This will never happen, but it should. Over 12% of every worker's paycheck goes to retired people. Imagine if half that money went into your personal IRA account that would actually be worth something when you retired! (Also, as a side note, black men have the lowest life expectancy in America. White women have the highest. Statistically, social security takes money from young black men and gives it to old white women!)
- get the government out of the charity business. Let groups like the Red Cross, the United Way, religious charities, etc. do this work and treat people as individuals instead of numbers.
- put the government back on focus to what it MUST do, not what people WANT it to do. The government should not be a wealth redistribution plan. Government should provide the Common Good Required For Existence.
- Without breathable air, drinkable water, and land that can support farming and ranching,
I am a Linux idiot, but I want to join the fun. I have enjoyed my Knoppix CD.
Is it possible to build a Knoppix-like CD-R or DVD-R that would have Linux, WineX, and the Game so that you boot from the CD right into the game?
If so, could you save game to a thumb drive?
I could definitely see a benefit of having a CD-R or DVD-R that I could boot up, play my game, save to thumb drive, and reboot to get back to Windows. Copyright issues would require this to be a "roll your own" solution, but could it be done? If so, how does a moron like me go about doing it?
There is just no way Lucas can direct this movie and not have it suck. All the fancy new costumes and special effects is not going to change that (and arguably will make it worse).
Whatever. We all know we are still going to bittorrent it and yet still go to see the big fight on the big screen.