Kind of explains how the Japanese and Chinese managed to overcome the United States trade barriers so easily. A few backroom deals and Voila!... free trade. If you're a foreign corporation that doesn't want to deal with tariffs or import duties when shipping products for sale in the U.S., a few well-placed bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hcontributions can work wonders.
serving sizes designed for normal humans for one single meal (Spain) versus servings for giant humans for multiple days (U.S.)
Well, and as one of those American giant humans I have to ask: what's your point? Seriously though, when we go out to dinner we often split a meal. Most restaurants have absolutely no problem with that, and it does leave you pleasantly full rather than stuffed to the gills. Portion sizes, I believe, are really more an issue of economy of scale: the more food the big corporations buy the cheaper the price. The consequence of that is huge portions. And yeah, I guess most of us like that or something.
- variety of spices, herbs and types of flavour (Spain) versus sugary, somewhat Mexican-y uniformity (U.S.)
Yes, well... "somewhat Mexican-y uniformity" pretty much describes the whole damn country nowadays, not just the food. My mother lives in Arizona, and the supermarkets down there have all the food packaging labeled in Spanish: if you can't see what's in it you have to ask someone to translate for you. Welcome to the United States of Mexico.
Two good books (that you've probably already read) are Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, M.D. and The China Study. The evidence is pretty damning that a diet high in animal protein and modified plant foods is largely responsible for the soaring levels of clinical obesity, diabetes and other ailments in the U.S. today. Dr. Fuhrman calls a typical American's eating habits the "Mainstream American Diet" (M.A.D.) What's interesting about Fuhrman's book is that he says flatly that his recommended diet isn't for everyone because most of us are thoroughly addicted to our lifelong killer foods. He also points out that if you want big results, you have to make big changes: just adding a little more fish or chicken to your diet won't help. He also cites all the studies he used in writing his book (some 3,000 of them.) That's in stark contrast to most diet books that want to make getting healthy sound painless and simple so they can sell more books, and are remarkably unconcerned about the validity of their claims.
High fructose corn syrup has been readily available since the sixties, when a company called UOP, known for petroleum refining technology among other things, pioneered the process that converts corn into corn syrup. It wasn't much used in soft drinks and as a sweetener until Congress finished dicking around with Latin American cane-sugar farmers and pretty much screwed us out of our supply of the stuff. Coca Cola, I believe, was the last soft drink manufacturer to switch to corn syrup back in the early eighties, with a noticeable loss of taste. As Cecil Adams put it, "The sad fact is that Coke hasn't been 'it' for a long time." He's right about that: I'm old enough to remember the wonderful, crisp taste of an ice-cold Coca Cola some four decades ago.
Well, supposedly the government is supposed to already be us. That's according to the Constitution and some other apparently outdated documents. I guess that there's been a certain disconnect that occurred somewhere along the way.
That's a decent analysis, actually. I'll buy that. My point is that from the perspective of how my tax bill keeps increasing, it doesn't seem to matter which group of bloodsuckers is in power.
What fuckwit modded this guy troll? He's only stating the truth. There are people that are against any progress, especially if it involves modification of the human genome. Somebody should convince Mr. Gates that this kind of research would be a worthy investment for some of his billions. Besides... if it pans out he might live a lot longer.
Your signature makes a false assumption. That is that Religion is between people. Religion is about a relationship with God.
Word games. That sounds all well and good, but ignores reality. You see, organized religion (which is what we all mean when we say "religion" hereabouts, it does not refer to some unique personal profession of faith) is all about people, not God. In the end, if it turns out that God is just another of Man's less useful inventions, even that caveat will go away.
More to the point, it's all about people doing things to each other in the name of God. If it were true (and it isn't) that the bulk of the faithful were permitted their own personal belief systems, their own ways of communing with God, without any dogma or ritual being imposed upon them from without... you might be right. But that's not the way it is. Organized religion is, at the core, all about social control, with compliance encouraged by the threat of eternal damnation and the dangling promise of everlasting life.
God has less to do with that most people want to admit.
It's like a couple of Arkansas cops that were sent to arrest a white-collar criminal, and when asked why he was carrying a crowbar, one of them said, "In case we have to get any information out of the computer."
Nothing really changed in terms of music availability, other than that now we can now find more "illegal" tracks at higher bitrates, better quality, more quickly and conveniently than we could then. Amazing, isn't it? The Gnutella network alone is just bursting with music, and it's hardly the only one. The fact is, the RIAA's effort to shut down Napster was an absolutely classic Pyrrhic victory. Hell, a few more "successes" like that and they'll put the studios out of business entirely. Personally, I think the RIAA's poor decisionmaking in that situation would have justified the studios shutting them down instead. It really was a massive fuckup.
Put it this way: not only was that lawsuit a dismal failure in terms of discouraging copyright infringement, but also yet another clear example of the RIAA mindset simply not getting it. They failed to grasp either the technological potential of P2P (there's more than one way to skin a cat) or the human element (we've had a taste of this and we want more.) Had they asked, I would have told them that all they were doing was forcing a phase change on the technology. The appearance of Frankel's prototype Gnutella client so close on the heels of Napster's shutdown was no surprise to me. I grabbed a copy the night it was released, before AOL tried to shut it down (horse, barndoor, all that.) I could not believe how fast music began to appear on it. The thing had a serious memory leak, but I'll be damned if it didn't work! Anyway, if it hadn't been Justin Frankel, sooner or later somebody would have released the next generation of peer-to-peer, because Napster gave millions upon millions of people something they wanted. Here's the thing: some of those people were programmers.
That was something that even an RIAA lawyer should have been able to predict, and I think it should have been sufficient motivation to make them work with Napster so as to maintain a level of control over distribution. That would have required some vision, though, and a willingness to tell their bosses, "Hey, things are about to go from bad to worse and you had better do something NOW." Instead, they did the only thing they know how to do: throw lawyers at the problem. So they blew it.
So the GP can claim that the RIAA was successful in eliminating Napster as a source of illegal downloads... and he would be right.
If only there was some way to write the code out-of-state, and then transfer it to the buyer in Maryland...... like a big series of tubes...
Yes, well... that's the thing isn't it. Nobody is saying that custom programming cannot be done via outsourced projects (I've done a few jobs that way and it's unlikely I'll ever do it again.) What is relevant is that States claim they want to keep good jobs in-state for their residents. I mean, those are the people whose best interests the Legislatures are supposed to serve. Then they pull crap like this which obviously has the express purpose of encouraging the export of said jobs to other States or even overseas so the whole country loses out. Why does it seem that the United States is deliberately shooting holes in both feet? Good job, Maryland. Makes me regret that I spent the first eleven years of my life there. Of course, odds are they need the money to pay for educating and caring for their illegal alien population, and if thousands of programmers and tens of thousands of businesses get shafted, who really cares?
Also, you have to realize that outsourcing custom development is no panacea, and is fraught with problems. I've been doing this for twenty-seven years now, and no matter what anyone tells you, you're much better off having your hired programming talent able to come in and deal with your people and products directly. Sending code via The Tubes(tm) just doesn't cut it, because there are substantial hidden (and not so hidden) costs that are involved when dealing with non-local development staff. Frankly, it sucks, you don't get to know the people and you have no idea if you can trust them, or they you. Don't undervalue the power of personal relationships and face time when it comes to the contracting game. The Internet is simply no substitute for that, and never will be.
Furthermore, if you do what I do, which is write real-time data acquisition and process control systems, you really can't do it remotely. You have to work with the equipment, have to be on site. Sure, you can fly someone in to do the work, but that just adds to your costs and adds to your deadlines when you could have just hired a competent developer who lives in the vicinity. Worse, when you need support and your programmer is a few thousand miles away... well, now things get really expensive. Nobody with half a brain (or any understanding of the consequences) really wants to outsource: the only benefit is financial and that is by no means guaranteed. Odds are you won't get better quality code, and God help you if you need maintenance.
I'm sorry to say it but in this regard, my home State is full of little red ants. I'm damned glad I don't live there anymore. Idiots.
You know, at some point in the distant past that question actually had relevance. Nowadays, they're all on the take and want nothing more than to increase their take.
They tried the same thing here in my State: so far it's been voted down. Our Governor claimed that the State could bring in an extra 50 million a year if they taxed such services. That would only work for a year or so, because all the people like me would immediately look for greener pastures. I mean, for crying out loud, if the goal is to efficiently remove the ability of in-state companies to avail themselves of local software talent, this is a great idea. From any other perspective, it's just mind-bogglingly stupid.
In any event, I'm really tired of our taxing bodies looking for every possibly opportunity to increase their take, regardless of the effect it will have on the local population. Only a complete fucktard who is totally ignorant of what he or she is doing could possibly propose such regulation. Of course, I just described your typical politician. They are ignorant and they really don't care.
I did some contract work recently (software only), and the head accountant requested my Tax I.D. so they could apply the proper sales tax. I told them they couldn't have it because, as of this date, custom software was not taxable. Had my lawyer verify that, and I faxed them a copy of the appropriate language (right from the Department of Revenue Web site.) They were surprised, because they had been told by their people that custom software was taxable. I figure I saved them some few bucks.
They should be careful, because some of the "big users" you cited will soon be able to afford to buy some of these "telcos".
No kidding. Probably the telcos wouldn't be subject to a direct buyout, but those "big users" could just do an end-run around them. That's the direction in which Google appears to be heading: possibly they feel it's the only reasonable approach given the threats they're receiving from the big backbone players. Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft and all the rest of the "big users" should sit up and take note: if SBC and the rest succeed in upcharging Google they'll be next.
Heck, if I had a choice between a local "GoogleNet" or the two incumbents in my area (SBC or Comcast, take your pick), well, I'd sign up for Google in a heartbeat just on principle. The telcos are squeezing just a bit too hard, and the entire nation is suffering for their corrupt self-serving behavior, at a point in history where we desperately need any competitive edge we can find. Where are there profits going to come from when America's economy collapses? Still, I have no doubt that in the long run, the bloodsucking attitude of Mr. Edward J. "These are my pipes!" Whitacre and his corporate ilk will form the inspiration for their replacement.
It works both ways. Now, I'm fortunate to live in a fairly broadband-competitive area. A friend of mine had DSL installed a while ago, but couldn't get it to work. The modem would light up, everything looked good, DHCP was up... but no connection. So stopped by to take a look. The netmask was 255.255.254.0. Most of the DSL setups I've seen around here use 255.255.255.0. So I call up SBC to talk to tech support: no help there. Nobody seemed interested in helping until I mentioned the "C" word, Comcast. "Tell you what," I finally told the tech they "escalated" me to, "Cancel the account, we'll switch over to Comcast tomorrow. Thank you for playing." and hung up. A little while later I get a call back from a guy in provisioning (pretty sharp character as it happened) who said, "You're right, your net mask is wrong. Hang on a sec. Okay, try it now." Great, fixed. But had I been in a one-ISP town somewhere, I bet it would have been much more of an uphill battle.
Such toys wouldn't even get a chance to be recalled. The manufacturer's legal team would review it and say, "what, are you nuts? Do you want to be sued into oblivion?" I mean, the toys I had back in the sixties were just awesome compared to the useless crap on the shelves today. Hell, I had a Star Trek phaser that fired spinning plastic discs, an acetylene cannon, a machine cap gun that fired rubber bullets (ouch!), a slingshot (like David used on Goliath) and a ton of other way cool stuff that I somehow managed not to kill anyone with. All came from the toy store. Wish I'd managed to hang on to 'em, though... some of it is worth a small fortune on E-Bay, mainly because you can't buy it anymore.
In any event, I'm tired of all this interventionist/revisionist activity. So far as I'm concerned, if there's any paternalism needed it should be our parents that are doing it. It's nobody else's business.
How we govern ourselves beyond our foreign policy is utterly unimportant to their larger goals.
Which, in some cases, involves the elimination of us infidels. So you can't say that we're relevant to them only in terms of foreign policy: we're relevant simply because we exist, and that fact is intolerable to some people.
Slashdot Mirror
The Pirate Bay Facing "Old Fashioned" Pressure
Sounds more like good old-fashioned harrassment to me.
Are Aliens Living Among Us?
Ask the INS.
Kind of explains how the Japanese and Chinese managed to overcome the United States trade barriers so easily. A few backroom deals and Voila! ... free trade. If you're a foreign corporation that doesn't want to deal with tariffs or import duties when shipping products for sale in the U.S., a few well-placed bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hcontributions can work wonders.
serving sizes designed for normal humans for one single meal (Spain) versus servings for giant humans for multiple days (U.S.)
... "somewhat Mexican-y uniformity" pretty much describes the whole damn country nowadays, not just the food. My mother lives in Arizona, and the supermarkets down there have all the food packaging labeled in Spanish: if you can't see what's in it you have to ask someone to translate for you. Welcome to the United States of Mexico.
Well, and as one of those American giant humans I have to ask: what's your point? Seriously though, when we go out to dinner we often split a meal. Most restaurants have absolutely no problem with that, and it does leave you pleasantly full rather than stuffed to the gills. Portion sizes, I believe, are really more an issue of economy of scale: the more food the big corporations buy the cheaper the price. The consequence of that is huge portions. And yeah, I guess most of us like that or something.
- variety of spices, herbs and types of flavour (Spain) versus sugary, somewhat Mexican-y uniformity (U.S.)
Yes, well
Apparently you've never had Chicago pizza. In comparison, New York pizza borders on objectively disgusting.
Absolutely. A few charcoil-broiled trolls or GNAA-posters could only serve to improve the environment around here.
I'd say accept that $24,000 card and use the credit to hire a good lawyer to sue their pants off.
Two good books (that you've probably already read) are Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, M.D. and The China Study. The evidence is pretty damning that a diet high in animal protein and modified plant foods is largely responsible for the soaring levels of clinical obesity, diabetes and other ailments in the U.S. today. Dr. Fuhrman calls a typical American's eating habits the "Mainstream American Diet" (M.A.D.) What's interesting about Fuhrman's book is that he says flatly that his recommended diet isn't for everyone because most of us are thoroughly addicted to our lifelong killer foods. He also points out that if you want big results, you have to make big changes: just adding a little more fish or chicken to your diet won't help. He also cites all the studies he used in writing his book (some 3,000 of them.) That's in stark contrast to most diet books that want to make getting healthy sound painless and simple so they can sell more books, and are remarkably unconcerned about the validity of their claims.
High fructose corn syrup has been readily available since the sixties, when a company called UOP, known for petroleum refining technology among other things, pioneered the process that converts corn into corn syrup. It wasn't much used in soft drinks and as a sweetener until Congress finished dicking around with Latin American cane-sugar farmers and pretty much screwed us out of our supply of the stuff. Coca Cola, I believe, was the last soft drink manufacturer to switch to corn syrup back in the early eighties, with a noticeable loss of taste. As Cecil Adams put it, "The sad fact is that Coke hasn't been 'it' for a long time." He's right about that: I'm old enough to remember the wonderful, crisp taste of an ice-cold Coca Cola some four decades ago.
Well, supposedly the government is supposed to already be us. That's according to the Constitution and some other apparently outdated documents. I guess that there's been a certain disconnect that occurred somewhere along the way.
That's a decent analysis, actually. I'll buy that. My point is that from the perspective of how my tax bill keeps increasing, it doesn't seem to matter which group of bloodsuckers is in power.
What fuckwit modded this guy troll? He's only stating the truth. There are people that are against any progress, especially if it involves modification of the human genome. Somebody should convince Mr. Gates that this kind of research would be a worthy investment for some of his billions. Besides ... if it pans out he might live a lot longer.
Your signature makes a false assumption. That is that Religion is between people. Religion is about a relationship with God.
... you might be right. But that's not the way it is. Organized religion is, at the core, all about social control, with compliance encouraged by the threat of eternal damnation and the dangling promise of everlasting life.
Word games. That sounds all well and good, but ignores reality. You see, organized religion (which is what we all mean when we say "religion" hereabouts, it does not refer to some unique personal profession of faith) is all about people, not God. In the end, if it turns out that God is just another of Man's less useful inventions, even that caveat will go away.
More to the point, it's all about people doing things to each other in the name of God. If it were true (and it isn't) that the bulk of the faithful were permitted their own personal belief systems, their own ways of communing with God, without any dogma or ritual being imposed upon them from without
God has less to do with that most people want to admit.
It's like a couple of Arkansas cops that were sent to arrest a white-collar criminal, and when asked why he was carrying a crowbar, one of them said, "In case we have to get any information out of the computer."
Nothing really changed in terms of music availability, other than that now we can now find more "illegal" tracks at higher bitrates, better quality, more quickly and conveniently than we could then. Amazing, isn't it? The Gnutella network alone is just bursting with music, and it's hardly the only one. The fact is, the RIAA's effort to shut down Napster was an absolutely classic Pyrrhic victory. Hell, a few more "successes" like that and they'll put the studios out of business entirely. Personally, I think the RIAA's poor decisionmaking in that situation would have justified the studios shutting them down instead. It really was a massive fuckup.
... and he would be right.
Put it this way: not only was that lawsuit a dismal failure in terms of discouraging copyright infringement, but also yet another clear example of the RIAA mindset simply not getting it. They failed to grasp either the technological potential of P2P (there's more than one way to skin a cat) or the human element (we've had a taste of this and we want more.) Had they asked, I would have told them that all they were doing was forcing a phase change on the technology. The appearance of Frankel's prototype Gnutella client so close on the heels of Napster's shutdown was no surprise to me. I grabbed a copy the night it was released, before AOL tried to shut it down (horse, barndoor, all that.) I could not believe how fast music began to appear on it. The thing had a serious memory leak, but I'll be damned if it didn't work! Anyway, if it hadn't been Justin Frankel, sooner or later somebody would have released the next generation of peer-to-peer, because Napster gave millions upon millions of people something they wanted. Here's the thing: some of those people were programmers.
That was something that even an RIAA lawyer should have been able to predict, and I think it should have been sufficient motivation to make them work with Napster so as to maintain a level of control over distribution. That would have required some vision, though, and a willingness to tell their bosses, "Hey, things are about to go from bad to worse and you had better do something NOW." Instead, they did the only thing they know how to do: throw lawyers at the problem. So they blew it.
So the GP can claim that the RIAA was successful in eliminating Napster as a source of illegal downloads
Not that it mattered.
If only there was some way to write the code out-of-state, and then transfer it to the buyer in Maryland... ... like a big series of tubes ...
... that's the thing isn't it. Nobody is saying that custom programming cannot be done via outsourced projects (I've done a few jobs that way and it's unlikely I'll ever do it again.) What is relevant is that States claim they want to keep good jobs in-state for their residents. I mean, those are the people whose best interests the Legislatures are supposed to serve. Then they pull crap like this which obviously has the express purpose of encouraging the export of said jobs to other States or even overseas so the whole country loses out. Why does it seem that the United States is deliberately shooting holes in both feet? Good job, Maryland. Makes me regret that I spent the first eleven years of my life there. Of course, odds are they need the money to pay for educating and caring for their illegal alien population, and if thousands of programmers and tens of thousands of businesses get shafted, who really cares?
... well, now things get really expensive. Nobody with half a brain (or any understanding of the consequences) really wants to outsource: the only benefit is financial and that is by no means guaranteed. Odds are you won't get better quality code, and God help you if you need maintenance.
Yes, well
Also, you have to realize that outsourcing custom development is no panacea, and is fraught with problems. I've been doing this for twenty-seven years now, and no matter what anyone tells you, you're much better off having your hired programming talent able to come in and deal with your people and products directly. Sending code via The Tubes(tm) just doesn't cut it, because there are substantial hidden (and not so hidden) costs that are involved when dealing with non-local development staff. Frankly, it sucks, you don't get to know the people and you have no idea if you can trust them, or they you. Don't undervalue the power of personal relationships and face time when it comes to the contracting game. The Internet is simply no substitute for that, and never will be.
Furthermore, if you do what I do, which is write real-time data acquisition and process control systems, you really can't do it remotely. You have to work with the equipment, have to be on site. Sure, you can fly someone in to do the work, but that just adds to your costs and adds to your deadlines when you could have just hired a competent developer who lives in the vicinity. Worse, when you need support and your programmer is a few thousand miles away
I'm sorry to say it but in this regard, my home State is full of little red ants. I'm damned glad I don't live there anymore. Idiots.
You know, at some point in the distant past that question actually had relevance. Nowadays, they're all on the take and want nothing more than to increase their take.
They tried the same thing here in my State: so far it's been voted down. Our Governor claimed that the State could bring in an extra 50 million a year if they taxed such services. That would only work for a year or so, because all the people like me would immediately look for greener pastures. I mean, for crying out loud, if the goal is to efficiently remove the ability of in-state companies to avail themselves of local software talent, this is a great idea. From any other perspective, it's just mind-bogglingly stupid.
In any event, I'm really tired of our taxing bodies looking for every possibly opportunity to increase their take, regardless of the effect it will have on the local population. Only a complete fucktard who is totally ignorant of what he or she is doing could possibly propose such regulation. Of course, I just described your typical politician. They are ignorant and they really don't care.
I did some contract work recently (software only), and the head accountant requested my Tax I.D. so they could apply the proper sales tax. I told them they couldn't have it because, as of this date, custom software was not taxable. Had my lawyer verify that, and I faxed them a copy of the appropriate language (right from the Department of Revenue Web site.) They were surprised, because they had been told by their people that custom software was taxable. I figure I saved them some few bucks.
They should be careful, because some of the "big users" you cited will soon be able to afford to buy some of these "telcos".
No kidding. Probably the telcos wouldn't be subject to a direct buyout, but those "big users" could just do an end-run around them. That's the direction in which Google appears to be heading: possibly they feel it's the only reasonable approach given the threats they're receiving from the big backbone players. Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft and all the rest of the "big users" should sit up and take note: if SBC and the rest succeed in upcharging Google they'll be next.
Heck, if I had a choice between a local "GoogleNet" or the two incumbents in my area (SBC or Comcast, take your pick), well, I'd sign up for Google in a heartbeat just on principle. The telcos are squeezing just a bit too hard, and the entire nation is suffering for their corrupt self-serving behavior, at a point in history where we desperately need any competitive edge we can find. Where are there profits going to come from when America's economy collapses? Still, I have no doubt that in the long run, the bloodsucking attitude of Mr. Edward J. "These are my pipes!" Whitacre and his corporate ilk will form the inspiration for their replacement.
No great loss, either.
Perhaps the fact that there's more than one person with moderation points?
Maybe so, but that doesn't explain the "In Soviet Russia" jokes that crop up every so often.
I dunno, but you guys are really stretching the point.
Or, even better, take the cameras off, and put them in a circle around a room, and film all those ancient martial arts masters from every angle.
They kinda did that already. It was called "The Matrix".
It works both ways. Now, I'm fortunate to live in a fairly broadband-competitive area. A friend of mine had DSL installed a while ago, but couldn't get it to work. The modem would light up, everything looked good, DHCP was up ... but no connection. So stopped by to take a look. The netmask was 255.255.254.0. Most of the DSL setups I've seen around here use 255.255.255.0. So I call up SBC to talk to tech support: no help there. Nobody seemed interested in helping until I mentioned the "C" word, Comcast. "Tell you what," I finally told the tech they "escalated" me to, "Cancel the account, we'll switch over to Comcast tomorrow. Thank you for playing." and hung up. A little while later I get a call back from a guy in provisioning (pretty sharp character as it happened) who said, "You're right, your net mask is wrong. Hang on a sec. Okay, try it now." Great, fixed. But had I been in a one-ISP town somewhere, I bet it would have been much more of an uphill battle.
Such toys wouldn't even get a chance to be recalled. The manufacturer's legal team would review it and say, "what, are you nuts? Do you want to be sued into oblivion?" I mean, the toys I had back in the sixties were just awesome compared to the useless crap on the shelves today. Hell, I had a Star Trek phaser that fired spinning plastic discs, an acetylene cannon, a machine cap gun that fired rubber bullets (ouch!), a slingshot (like David used on Goliath) and a ton of other way cool stuff that I somehow managed not to kill anyone with. All came from the toy store. Wish I'd managed to hang on to 'em, though ... some of it is worth a small fortune on E-Bay, mainly because you can't buy it anymore.
In any event, I'm tired of all this interventionist/revisionist activity. So far as I'm concerned, if there's any paternalism needed it should be our parents that are doing it. It's nobody else's business.
Who are the "National Safety Administration"?
They're the sister outfit to the "National Highway Traffic Security Administration".
How we govern ourselves beyond our foreign policy is utterly unimportant to their larger goals.
Which, in some cases, involves the elimination of us infidels. So you can't say that we're relevant to them only in terms of foreign policy: we're relevant simply because we exist, and that fact is intolerable to some people.