I'm glad you're able to use the "occasional" benefit to type your messages on the Internet. If putting money towards civilian efforts is faster, why didn't some other country beat the USA to the Internet?
The issue is not military spending. It is a decision to allow private companies to control the expansion of broadband to civilian homes rather than the government. Undo that one decision and everything changes.
Yeah, that "occasional civilian benefit" line caught my eye as well. The interesting thing about the United States is that it has been far more willing to share the wealth when it comes to commercial spinoffs of once-military technologies than, say, the old Soviet Empire. The world has benefitted greatly from the Internet (of course), satellites (weather prediction, communications, research, you name it) and lots of other applications of technologies that the U.S. originally developed for military purposes. We ought to get a little credit for the trillions of dollars in global economic development that have resulted from such investments on our part.
Anyone making the claim that United States military spending was of no benefit to the U.S. or the world is full of little red ants.
We're loaded with dark fiber at the moment (laid during the DotCom bubble) that, if it were actually lit up, would give us more than enough capacity to be competitive on the world scene. But it's kept dark because certain large corporations make more money by inducing artificial scarcity (kinda like the music industry, but that's a story for another day.)
the equipment that the fibre plugs into isnt cheap... hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit. Redundancy is nice too:)
Indeed... see my previous reference to two hundred billion dollars.
Well, according to your logic, if they collect taxes, governments should protect taxpayers, not citizens.
Just to be clear here, you believe that a government (in particular, my government) has no duty to protect its citizens? That a foreign national should enjoy the same treatment as someone who has spent his life paying into the system, whose family has been doing the same for generations? And all this because certain large corporations see a way to reduce costs, while simultaneously availing themselves of the benefits afforded by the very taxpayers you so offhandedly disparage?
You're on to some nativist bullshit here. I have payed taxes in many countries, only one of which I could vote in or depend on "my fellow citizens." And yet, I paid as much percentage of my wages in taxes as any of my colleagues.
Your logic is that taxes give you rights. Well, according to your logic, if they collect taxes, governments should protect taxpayers, not citizens.
Moreover the parent here makes an excellent point: your standard of living has in fact been based on cheap labour for a long time, not just the direct "cheap" labour of H1-B visas.
You're a tad confused about a number of things, I'm afraid. I'm honestly not interested in educating you, since you have a wealth of information at your fingertips. A little Googling will enlighten you.
Is there anything the RIAA can do to reduce illegal file-sharing without generating massive amounts of bad publicity?
Anything the RIAA can do? No. They're one-trick ponies: "OBEY, or we will destroy you!" By definition, they have been trying to generate bad publicity, because if they don't there is no upside, no deterrence, no reduction in widespread copyright infringement. Not that they've been particularly successful anyway.
Now that doesn't mean that nothing can be done. The studios can do a lot, if they're willing to accept that they can't ever return to the halcyon days of total distribution control. There's still plenty of money to be made, but they'll have to drop their past century of sleazy business practices, and start competing on the merits of their products.
I don't hold out much hope of that happening, but hey, even pigs have been known to fly now and then.
You think your way of life doesn't depend on getting high quality foreign talent (upbringing and education paid elsewhere) at dirt cheap wages?
No, as a matter of fact I don't. I'm honestly getting tired of big companies blaming "the U.S. talent pool" for their own failures as businesses. And you're off on another issue: much of that cheap foreign talent comes here to get educated, often at the expense of qualified American students. The GP is absolutely correct: my taxes go to my government, whom I have every right to expect to put the interests of my fellow citizens first. That goes for every country on Earth, actually, so America is no exception. This is all about maximizing profit margins at the expense of people, period.
they fell from grace when they started doing stupid shit like
No, they fell from grace when they decided to be a media company. Just like, as in your example, HP decided be a YAPCM (Yet Another PC Manufacturer) instead of sticking to what they did, and did well. Sony had a Sony Way, as HP had an HP Way, and when they strayed from that path, they became lesser for it.
Get up, walk out of the theatre, tell the manager, tell an usher, tell someone who looks important.
At the theatre I work at, we love to kick out the unruly lot that make the movies worse for everyone. Every time we walk in, they hush down, it's hard for us to know where the problems are. It's also a multiplex, with only one usher for many theatres, doing double duty, cleaning and checking the facilities.
So, do something about it. Honestly, having the balls to fix the problem is probably not their problem, more likely, they don't have anything substantive and don't want to interrupt the movie more severely than it already has been. Nothing distracts everyone in the theatre more than an argument in the seats. Make the theatre staff know it's a problem, and it'll probably be taken care of.
When I get torqued off by said "unruly lot", I'll ask them myself to shut the fuck up. Heck, I had a couple of Arab characters talking in loud tones in their own language while I was trying to enjoy a good movie. I was irritated but not enough to say anything. Then, one of them sent a goddamn beer can spinning over my head. He wasn't aiming at me, true, I think he was just in high spirits... but I stood up and told them both that "I DIDN'T APPRECIATE THE SHOWER." They got all wide-eyed and actually apologized, and wonder of wonders were quiet for the rest of the film.
no firearm manufacturer claims that its products are non-lethal. Taser does make that claim, and even though it is often false, they're using their lawyers to keep up the pretense.
Hence the new term "less lethal", because given the right conditions, even pepper spray can be lethal. (severe asthma, for instance)
Which is still irrational ("slightly pregnant", etc.) because you can't be "less lethal." You can be "less frequently lethal", I suppose, which amounts to a game of Russian Roulette. That is pretty much what the widespread use of Tasers has become, since you can't know an individual's physical condition before you fire the thing at him. Pepper spray is generally used as a defensive weapon (if you have asthma and you try to rob someone and get sprayed, well, you got what you deserved.) Tasers are used by cops in an offensive capacity, often as a substitute for real police work.
Taser Corporation just doesn't want to admit that its weapons can (and do) kill. But they go way beyond a potential false-advertising charge to intimidation of public officials. That's just wrong, and frankly even if I thought I could use a Taser I'd never give that third-rate lawyer-happy outfit a penny.
My poly-layered ectoplasmic analysis software measures 22 parameters of ESP in real-time for psychics. It's accuracy is not proven, but it lets psychics more quickly pinpoint where there are problems in psychic emanations.
Not everywhere. And you seem to be under the impression that people won't sue you if you're telling the truth. That simply doesn't matter: the more correct your accusations, the more money and lawyers they will throw at you. You may well be right... but in the end, if what you are saying is sufficiently threatening to a litigious corporation, you'll be dead right.
This is pretty bad, but nowhere near as bad as Taser Corporation intimidating forensic scientists and coroners to change their findings, if it so happens that a Taser kills someone. I mean, it's one thing if you shoot someone with a gun: no firearm manufacturer claims that its products are non-lethal. Taser does make that claim, and even though it is often false, they're using their lawyers to keep up the pretense.
I always wondered how that cherry-pick arrangement came to pass, if any of you know, please respond because that would perhaps enlighten us as to Charter's financial woes.
Corruption, bribery, and malfeasance in office. Obviously Comcast put in the winning bid.
fastest? no.
As an example, there are several providers that have 1Gbps (1000Mbps) service in Japan
here's onehere's another
Maybe the fastest for US cable internet companies thus far but it's nowhere near being the fastest, period.
What, are you trying to make us feel bad? This is a U.S. Web site discussing a U.S-centric article about a specific U.S. Internet Service Provider. What was your point again?
Simple. Because they (you?) are the most powerful country (in military terms).
You can't have both. Or in other words: Because you spent all the money on wars.
{sigh} why is it that you people always try to sell Americans on the idea that we spent all our money on wars and thus must have less than you in other areas? Your logic is faulty, and your conclusion suspect (although I'm sure it makes you feel all warm inside just thinking that Americans will never have faster broadband than you because we have more guns than you.) I hate to break this to you, but the two are not mutually exclusive. Anyway, there's your reality check (since yours has obviously bounced.)
This has zip to do with Federal expenditures on our military, and has everything to do with the private sector here being run by greedy fucks that are nickel-and-diming us back to dial-up, all the while doing their damnedest to offer us less for more. We're loaded with dark fiber at the moment (laid during the DotCom bubble) that, if it were actually lit up, would give us more than enough capacity to be competitive on the world scene. But it's kept dark because certain large corporations make more money by inducing artificial scarcity (kinda like the music industry, but that's a story for another day.) In fact, if you've been keeping up on your Slashdot, you'd know that our Telcos got about two hundred billion dollars in tax breaks, granted in exchange for their providing high-speed connections to all. They reneged on the deal... but kept the money.
Simple, really. You just have to have a few facts at your command.
A win would have meant a Democracy in the South. The North was more than willing to trade bodies for time. They knew their propaganda machine would win in the end.
Nobody here cared about their propaganda machine. We had our own in the form of widespread ignorance, and an anti-government movement that was uninterested in protest for protest's sake.
Regarding your sig, I remember when Al Gore got asked about his opinion on term limits for Congresspeople. His response was something like, "But that would deny the American people the benefits of professional politicians." Yeah, those benefits are very clear, and equally dubious.
Yeah, pretty much. SBC bought out their old parent company, and kept the name because it still garnered more respect than "SBC", which as everyone knows stands for "Southern Boys Club", or perhaps "Sodomized By Cowboys."
Slashdot Mirror
I'm glad you're able to use the "occasional" benefit to type your messages on the Internet. If putting money towards civilian efforts is faster, why didn't some other country beat the USA to the Internet?
The issue is not military spending. It is a decision to allow private companies to control the expansion of broadband to civilian homes rather than the government. Undo that one decision and everything changes.
Yeah, that "occasional civilian benefit" line caught my eye as well. The interesting thing about the United States is that it has been far more willing to share the wealth when it comes to commercial spinoffs of once-military technologies than, say, the old Soviet Empire. The world has benefitted greatly from the Internet (of course), satellites (weather prediction, communications, research, you name it) and lots of other applications of technologies that the U.S. originally developed for military purposes. We ought to get a little credit for the trillions of dollars in global economic development that have resulted from such investments on our part.
Anyone making the claim that United States military spending was of no benefit to the U.S. or the world is full of little red ants.
We're loaded with dark fiber at the moment (laid during the DotCom bubble) that, if it were actually lit up, would give us more than enough capacity to be competitive on the world scene. But it's kept dark because certain large corporations make more money by inducing artificial scarcity (kinda like the music industry, but that's a story for another day.)
the equipment that the fibre plugs into isnt cheap... hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit. Redundancy is nice too :)
Indeed ... see my previous reference to two hundred billion dollars.
Remember Sony?
Yes. Trying not to.
This definitely goes into the "WTF?" category.
Well, according to your logic, if they collect taxes, governments should protect taxpayers, not citizens.
Just to be clear here, you believe that a government (in particular, my government) has no duty to protect its citizens? That a foreign national should enjoy the same treatment as someone who has spent his life paying into the system, whose family has been doing the same for generations? And all this because certain large corporations see a way to reduce costs, while simultaneously availing themselves of the benefits afforded by the very taxpayers you so offhandedly disparage?
... wow.
Wow. I mean, just
You're on to some nativist bullshit here. I have payed taxes in many countries, only one of which I could vote in or depend on "my fellow citizens." And yet, I paid as much percentage of my wages in taxes as any of my colleagues.
Your logic is that taxes give you rights. Well, according to your logic, if they collect taxes, governments should protect taxpayers, not citizens.
Moreover the parent here makes an excellent point: your standard of living has in fact been based on cheap labour for a long time, not just the direct "cheap" labour of H1-B visas.
You're a tad confused about a number of things, I'm afraid. I'm honestly not interested in educating you, since you have a wealth of information at your fingertips. A little Googling will enlighten you.
Is there anything the RIAA can do to reduce illegal file-sharing without generating massive amounts of bad publicity?
Anything the RIAA can do? No. They're one-trick ponies: "OBEY, or we will destroy you!" By definition, they have been trying to generate bad publicity, because if they don't there is no upside, no deterrence, no reduction in widespread copyright infringement. Not that they've been particularly successful anyway.
Now that doesn't mean that nothing can be done. The studios can do a lot, if they're willing to accept that they can't ever return to the halcyon days of total distribution control. There's still plenty of money to be made, but they'll have to drop their past century of sleazy business practices, and start competing on the merits of their products.
I don't hold out much hope of that happening, but hey, even pigs have been known to fly now and then.
Local Citizens Want To Jam Police Signals
There ... fixed it.
You think your way of life doesn't depend on getting high quality foreign talent (upbringing and education paid elsewhere) at dirt cheap wages?
No, as a matter of fact I don't. I'm honestly getting tired of big companies blaming "the U.S. talent pool" for their own failures as businesses. And you're off on another issue: much of that cheap foreign talent comes here to get educated, often at the expense of qualified American students. The GP is absolutely correct: my taxes go to my government, whom I have every right to expect to put the interests of my fellow citizens first. That goes for every country on Earth, actually, so America is no exception. This is all about maximizing profit margins at the expense of people, period.
they fell from grace when they started doing stupid shit like
No, they fell from grace when they decided to be a media company. Just like, as in your example, HP decided be a YAPCM (Yet Another PC Manufacturer) instead of sticking to what they did, and did well. Sony had a Sony Way, as HP had an HP Way, and when they strayed from that path, they became lesser for it.
I wonder if a robot arm that actually hits the keys with a camera to get input from the screen would be illegal.
It could do something very similar to WoW glider while interacting with the game in the exact same way as a human.
Or a black box that plugs into a keyboard port.
Are they covering this? The only news I've found is from Ray Beckerman's blog, and on Slashdot. It's not scrolling across the bottom of the newscast.
Well, do you count AP and NYT as big media? They're throwing their weight behind this Webcast.
Get up, walk out of the theatre, tell the manager, tell an usher, tell someone who looks important.
At the theatre I work at, we love to kick out the unruly lot that make the movies worse for everyone. Every time we walk in, they hush down, it's hard for us to know where the problems are. It's also a multiplex, with only one usher for many theatres, doing double duty, cleaning and checking the facilities.
So, do something about it. Honestly, having the balls to fix the problem is probably not their problem, more likely, they don't have anything substantive and don't want to interrupt the movie more severely than it already has been. Nothing distracts everyone in the theatre more than an argument in the seats. Make the theatre staff know it's a problem, and it'll probably be taken care of.
When I get torqued off by said "unruly lot", I'll ask them myself to shut the fuck up. Heck, I had a couple of Arab characters talking in loud tones in their own language while I was trying to enjoy a good movie. I was irritated but not enough to say anything. Then, one of them sent a goddamn beer can spinning over my head. He wasn't aiming at me, true, I think he was just in high spirits ... but I stood up and told them both that "I DIDN'T APPRECIATE THE SHOWER." They got all wide-eyed and actually apologized, and wonder of wonders were quiet for the rest of the film.
no firearm manufacturer claims that its products are non-lethal. Taser does make that claim, and even though it is often false, they're using their lawyers to keep up the pretense.
Hence the new term "less lethal", because given the right conditions, even pepper spray can be lethal. (severe asthma, for instance)
Which is still irrational ("slightly pregnant", etc.) because you can't be "less lethal." You can be "less frequently lethal", I suppose, which amounts to a game of Russian Roulette. That is pretty much what the widespread use of Tasers has become, since you can't know an individual's physical condition before you fire the thing at him. Pepper spray is generally used as a defensive weapon (if you have asthma and you try to rob someone and get sprayed, well, you got what you deserved.) Tasers are used by cops in an offensive capacity, often as a substitute for real police work.
Taser Corporation just doesn't want to admit that its weapons can (and do) kill. But they go way beyond a potential false-advertising charge to intimidation of public officials. That's just wrong, and frankly even if I thought I could use a Taser I'd never give that third-rate lawyer-happy outfit a penny.
No...slashdot is a global web site.
Which is all irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is a specific U.S Internet provider. What was your point again?
My poly-layered ectoplasmic analysis software measures 22 parameters of ESP in real-time for psychics. It's accuracy is not proven, but it lets psychics more quickly pinpoint where there are problems in psychic emanations.
Harold Ramis ... is that you?
Truth is an absolute defense to libel.
Not everywhere. And you seem to be under the impression that people won't sue you if you're telling the truth. That simply doesn't matter: the more correct your accusations, the more money and lawyers they will throw at you. You may well be right ... but in the end, if what you are saying is sufficiently threatening to a litigious corporation, you'll be dead right.
This is pretty bad, but nowhere near as bad as Taser Corporation intimidating forensic scientists and coroners to change their findings, if it so happens that a Taser kills someone. I mean, it's one thing if you shoot someone with a gun: no firearm manufacturer claims that its products are non-lethal. Taser does make that claim, and even though it is often false, they're using their lawyers to keep up the pretense.
Evil is as evil does.
I guess it's just me
Lucky you. Best I can do is 18 down, 1 up with AT&T U-Verse.
I always wondered how that cherry-pick arrangement came to pass, if any of you know, please respond because that would perhaps enlighten us as to Charter's financial woes.
Corruption, bribery, and malfeasance in office. Obviously Comcast put in the winning bid.
Any more questions?
Shame /. isn't a US centric site~
You forgot the "Oh wait ..."
fastest? no. As an example, there are several providers that have 1Gbps (1000Mbps) service in Japan here's one here's another
Maybe the fastest for US cable internet companies thus far but it's nowhere near being the fastest, period.
What, are you trying to make us feel bad? This is a U.S. Web site discussing a U.S-centric article about a specific U.S. Internet Service Provider. What was your point again?
Simple. Because they (you?) are the most powerful country (in military terms).
You can't have both. Or in other words: Because you spent all the money on wars.
{sigh} why is it that you people always try to sell Americans on the idea that we spent all our money on wars and thus must have less than you in other areas? Your logic is faulty, and your conclusion suspect (although I'm sure it makes you feel all warm inside just thinking that Americans will never have faster broadband than you because we have more guns than you.) I hate to break this to you, but the two are not mutually exclusive. Anyway, there's your reality check (since yours has obviously bounced.)
... but kept the money.
This has zip to do with Federal expenditures on our military, and has everything to do with the private sector here being run by greedy fucks that are nickel-and-diming us back to dial-up, all the while doing their damnedest to offer us less for more. We're loaded with dark fiber at the moment (laid during the DotCom bubble) that, if it were actually lit up, would give us more than enough capacity to be competitive on the world scene. But it's kept dark because certain large corporations make more money by inducing artificial scarcity (kinda like the music industry, but that's a story for another day.) In fact, if you've been keeping up on your Slashdot, you'd know that our Telcos got about two hundred billion dollars in tax breaks, granted in exchange for their providing high-speed connections to all. They reneged on the deal
Simple, really. You just have to have a few facts at your command.
, and an anti-government movement that was uninterested in protest for protest's sake.
I meant only interested. Oops.
A win would have meant a Democracy in the South. The North was more than willing to trade bodies for time. They knew their propaganda machine would win in the end.
Nobody here cared about their propaganda machine. We had our own in the form of widespread ignorance, and an anti-government movement that was uninterested in protest for protest's sake.
Regarding your sig, I remember when Al Gore got asked about his opinion on term limits for Congresspeople. His response was something like, "But that would deny the American people the benefits of professional politicians." Yeah, those benefits are very clear, and equally dubious.
Is it?
Yeah, pretty much. SBC bought out their old parent company, and kept the name because it still garnered more respect than "SBC", which as everyone knows stands for "Southern Boys Club", or perhaps "Sodomized By Cowboys."