The reality is that with the advent of Bit Torrent and swarming technology in general we're all rapidly becoming "bandwidth hogs" whether we're downloading licensed material or not. I know that, for my part, I have personally created a few (usually involving the installation of a good BT client and mentioning a fewgoodsites.) ISPs are getting away with banning heavy users because they presume it's for illegitimate purposes (and I suppose that, for the most part, they're correct at this point.)
The major content producers may shift their business models from distribution via traditional broadcast, satellite or cable technologies to an Internet-based approach. If that truly happens, there will be heavy pressure applied from the big boys to make the Comcasts and Verizons and AT&Ts of the country get with the program and beef up their networks. What we as consumers can't do (because we aren't the cable company's customer, content producers and their attendant advertisers are) big media can. And that'll benefit all of us indirectly, because when Internet capacity reaches the point where it can provide video delivery as easily as local cable networks currently do, the concept of "bandwidth hog" will go the way of the Dodo.
I must say, as a software engineer, this is one of the most useful and informative Slashdot threads I've ever encountered. Definitely belongs in YRO, though... my right to a good cup of coffee is not to be infringed.
For my part, I have a Bunn VPR-series restaurant coffeemaker. I bought this machine about ten years ago (got sick of replacing coffeemakers every six months) and it a. makes great coffee and b. is built like a tank. Stainless steel all the way though, no plastic anywhere in the coffee path. Came with a complete maintenance and repair manual... not something you get with your average Mr. Coffee.
I remember calling up a local restaurant supply house one afternoon to order it. I was going to just pick it up on a will-call, but they said that delivery was free since I was nearby. To my surprise, the president of the company showed up on at my back door the next day. He said he didn't know of any restaurants in the area and wanted to know who was buying a big Bunn! Real nice guy, brought over some of his company's best coffee to try it out with. The first attempt resulted in a nice pot of cold coffee, since it drew so much current it tripped a circuit breaker. I ended up putting in a separate branch circuit for it. In any event, he left me with several cans of their custom blend, and a three-year supply of filters! Well, I guess it wouldn't have been a three-year supply for a restaurant but that's how long the case lasted me.
I'm still using it to this very day. You do have to use it regularly though. The Bunn design has a low-powered fifty-watt heater that keeps the reservoir near brew temperature, and if you don't make a pot it will run dry after a week or so. That would probably be bad for the element. When you pour in cold water to brew some coffee, a 20A heater switches on... that's what popped my breaker the first time.
Still, one of the major ills of our society is that more and more of our important freedoms are being removed and replaced with specific "exemptions" in law. Why should my needs have to fit into one of their silly "exemptions"? Who are they to restrict my life so? Seriously, this is beginning to get ridiculous.
I'm of the opinion that every time our elected leaders decide to make a new law, they should be required to remove a minimum of four existing laws from the books. Period. This would force our fearless leaders to start having to look at what they've already done to us, in order to decide if what they want to do now is worth the effort.
Now, I admit that there are enough useless laws already on those books that this would take a while to have any noticeable effect, but at least we'd start clearing out some of the crap.
In my experience, the people who say "Amen" to just writing code end up with lousy architecture design.
In other words, "look before you leap."
Truly, a little planning does go a long way. There's no excuse for someone that is working on a project by himself, with no deadlines, no boss looking over his shoulder grumbling "aren't you coding yet?", to skip writing at least a preliminary specification. Oh sure, we all hack quick-and-dirty solutions now and then (sometimes it can be fun just to crank something out) but beyond a certain degree of complexity you really need to have a plan, some sort of structure or framework to build on and around.
We said when we released 1Q results we would be putting in place a series of actions to address cost issues in our U.S. strategic outsourcing business. We have undertaken efforts toward that, and recently implemented a focused resource reduction in the U.S. While any such reduction is difficult for those employees affected, these actions are well within the scope of our ongoing workforce rebalancing efforts.
I dunno, if I ever get "resource reduced" or "workforce balanced" I'll probably still feel like I was laid off.
People who join startups join for the stock, not the awesome monthly
More to the point, the creative minds in startups do it because they have ideas that they care about, and want the ability to bring those ideas to fruition on their own terms. Maybe their stock options become worth something, maybe they don't, but money is not always the most important reason. Maybe it never is. Page and Brin formed Google, rather than taking their ideas to an established search company. They got lucky: most startups fail. Most people who have a product idea, good or bad, know that before they even try to make something out of it. They go for it anyway, because it's more about creative control than money, about doing it your own way.
He probably means "level of disposable income", and we used to have a lot more of it than we do now. A lot of people are spending money that they shouldn't be spending in order to maintain whatever lifestyle to which they are accustomed. "Unemployment is low" is meaningless if you don't account for type of employment: the fact that more of us are gainfully employed in lower-level, lower-paying jobs is not good. A much better metric would be the level of personal savings, and that is not a pretty picture either. Too many people are barely getting by and don't have anything left to put away for a rainy day.
Worse yet, many of those goods and services of which you speak are being paid for out of funds that, in previous generations, would have been saved or invested, not squandered. We've been convinced, as a people, that spending every dime to "stimulate the economy" is somehow good. We certainly are stimulating the economy... China's economy. We'd be better off dropping our cell phones, cable TV and satellite dishes, buying less useless crap at Wal-Mart, forgetting that V8-powered SUV this time around, and saving that money or investing in American manufacturing.
About forty-odd years ago I discovered, quite by accident, that my neighbors had a baby monitor that just happened to transmit on the same frequency as the Radio Shack walkie-talkie I had. At least, I'm assuming it was a baby monitor, maybe their house was bugged, I don't know. Well, it was bugged all right, the only question was whether or not they did it to themselves. Anyway, I could hear a woman's voice cooing to a baby, and I could hear a man's voice in the background.
So when the couple left the room I waited for a while, then turned on my transmitter and in my best Satanic voice rumbled, "You're all going to die!" Both parents came tearing back to the room so fast I was sure they'd left rug burns on the carpet. I was doubled over with laughter, but then again I've always been a bit of a practical joker. The opportunity was just too good to pass up.
I told my father about it (well, minus the "you're all going to die!" part) and I think he went over there to have a little talk with them. He was a physicist and electronics engineer and I presume they took him seriously, because the thing wasn't broadcasting after that. Good thing for them: I wasn't the only kid in the neighborhood with a walkie-talkie.
Like you, I'm not particularly voyeuristic (I prefer to maintain my illusions about other people) but there are plenty of folks out there for whom that cannot be said, and who will use anything you say against you. I might add that many of them work for government.
The unfortunate truth is that it doesn't matter whether or not you think you have something to hide. In the current legal climate, we all have something to hide. We can all be nailed for something, however insignificant it may seem to us, if someone wants us badly enough. Granted, most of the new electronic surveillance laws and technologies are ostensibly anti-terrorism measures, but as always they'll be applied indiscriminately and inappropriately, and in ways never intended by their authors.
This is a particularly interesting quotation from Thomas Jefferson:
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
--- Thomas Jefferson
To encourage their invention, copyright and patent law were developed in most Western countries. These laws were devoted to the delicate task of getting mental creations into the world where they could be used - and could enter the minds of others - while assuring their inventors compensation for the value of their use. And, as previously stated, the systems of both law and practice which grew up around that task were based on physical expression.
Since it is now possible to convey ideas from one mind to another without ever making them physical, we are now claiming to own ideas themselves and not merely their expression. And since it is likewise now possible to create useful tools that never take physical form, we have taken to patenting abstractions, sequences of virtual events, and mathematical formulae - the most unreal estate imaginable.
In certain areas, this leaves rights of ownership in such an ambiguous condition that property again adheres
Wikipedia is the best and most reliable site for that kind of stuff!
No, it's one of the most convenient. Unless you already know enough about a particular topic not to need Wikipedia, you have no idea whether it's the best or most reliable. It is unlikely to be the most reliable source of information: for most subjects there are probably other more authoritative sources on the Internet. As to "best": that's a matter of your own particular needs. If what you want is a vast readily-accessible hoard of information on everything under the Sun, but of largely unknown pedigree... Wikipedia is probably "best." For much of anything else, you're better off finding a more reliable source. In fact, that's how I often use Wikipedia, as an intro to further research.
I realize that most true humor comes at someone else's expense, but characterizing entire nations as being full of stupid people just isn't that funny to me. I guess it is to you, and I'd love to know where you come from. Odds are, ten seconds with Google would come up with a few good slams. It's always hilarious to hear someone like you say, "Hey. That's not funny." Racial stereotyping is a rarely entertaining when you're the target.
By way of example, here in the U.S. so-called "jokes" about the supposed stupidity of Polish people have been common for ages. As a gift, I once received a coffee mug with the handle on the inside. The outside said "Polish Mug". Ha ha. Very funny, and that particular gift ended up in the round file. For that matter, my last name is Greek: I've been the "butt" of more than a few such "jokes" myself.
I dunno... Serenity sold pretty well, and that was about as unfinished as it's possible to get.
Of course, it was also truly solid material. The fact that the story arc was never completed didn't detract from the essential quality of the production.
I think it's like writing a term paper while smoking pot. You just think you're writing great paper. Problem is, a failing grade on the expressway is fatal.
A nice bonus would be to have the British population implanted with the American attitude to guns.
May I ask to which attitude you are referring? I hope you mean the Constitutionally protected Right to Bear Arms, and the attitude that government had damn well better be By, Of, and For the People. It worked well for us for a long, long time, and I think that many of our current ills can be traced to our having forgotten a few important things along those lines.
There is a dichotomy on that subject, with many of us taking the (historically well-supported) stance that firearms are a valuable deterrent to government-mandated injustice and our last line of defense against it. Others believe that we are too "civilized" to need such things, that whatever bad things are occurring elsewhere in the world they most certainly "can't happen here". They're wrong, of course: those bad things are already happening.
The worst thing about Jackson and Sharpton is that they insult blacks because they further the notion that blacks need help to get ahead.
And specifically, that blacks need their help to get ahead. I'll admit, Jackson has said some good things along the way... that black people need education to better their lives, for example. Obvious, of course, but nevertheless true. But it's all hot air: the man is a media hound and a hypocrite of the highest caliber. Were I black, and that man offered me some of his "help" I'd say "No, thank you!" and run away. My fiancee (who is a naturalized African) told me she'd do the same thing: for some reason he just irritates her. And before any of you jump on my case for being racist, I'm criticizing Jesse Jackson, not black people. Besides, I have every right to criticize anyone I want, actually, but in this case I'm being very specific.
The only time I didn't change the channel when Jesse Jackson came on the air was when he was the guest host of an old SNL episode. He was the MC of a fake game show called "The Answer is Moot" or something like that. As I remember, he was almost funny.
Slashdot Mirror
... less number of bugs is much better than Microsoft, Sun and the others.
Microsoft sure, but Solaris is pretty reliable.
The reality is that with the advent of Bit Torrent and swarming technology in general we're all rapidly becoming "bandwidth hogs" whether we're downloading licensed material or not. I know that, for my part, I have personally created a few (usually involving the installation of a good BT client and mentioning a few good sites.) ISPs are getting away with banning heavy users because they presume it's for illegitimate purposes (and I suppose that, for the most part, they're correct at this point.)
The major content producers may shift their business models from distribution via traditional broadcast, satellite or cable technologies to an Internet-based approach. If that truly happens, there will be heavy pressure applied from the big boys to make the Comcasts and Verizons and AT&Ts of the country get with the program and beef up their networks. What we as consumers can't do (because we aren't the cable company's customer, content producers and their attendant advertisers are) big media can. And that'll benefit all of us indirectly, because when Internet capacity reaches the point where it can provide video delivery as easily as local cable networks currently do, the concept of "bandwidth hog" will go the way of the Dodo.
I must say, as a software engineer, this is one of the most useful and informative Slashdot threads I've ever encountered. Definitely belongs in YRO, though ... my right to a good cup of coffee is not to be infringed.
... not something you get with your average Mr. Coffee.
... that's what popped my breaker the first time.
For my part, I have a Bunn VPR-series restaurant coffeemaker. I bought this machine about ten years ago (got sick of replacing coffeemakers every six months) and it a. makes great coffee and b. is built like a tank. Stainless steel all the way though, no plastic anywhere in the coffee path. Came with a complete maintenance and repair manual
I remember calling up a local restaurant supply house one afternoon to order it. I was going to just pick it up on a will-call, but they said that delivery was free since I was nearby. To my surprise, the president of the company showed up on at my back door the next day. He said he didn't know of any restaurants in the area and wanted to know who was buying a big Bunn! Real nice guy, brought over some of his company's best coffee to try it out with. The first attempt resulted in a nice pot of cold coffee, since it drew so much current it tripped a circuit breaker. I ended up putting in a separate branch circuit for it. In any event, he left me with several cans of their custom blend, and a three-year supply of filters! Well, I guess it wouldn't have been a three-year supply for a restaurant but that's how long the case lasted me.
I'm still using it to this very day. You do have to use it regularly though. The Bunn design has a low-powered fifty-watt heater that keeps the reservoir near brew temperature, and if you don't make a pot it will run dry after a week or so. That would probably be bad for the element. When you pour in cold water to brew some coffee, a 20A heater switches on
Still, one of the major ills of our society is that more and more of our important freedoms are being removed and replaced with specific "exemptions" in law. Why should my needs have to fit into one of their silly "exemptions"? Who are they to restrict my life so? Seriously, this is beginning to get ridiculous.
I'm of the opinion that every time our elected leaders decide to make a new law, they should be required to remove a minimum of four existing laws from the books. Period. This would force our fearless leaders to start having to look at what they've already done to us, in order to decide if what they want to do now is worth the effort.
Now, I admit that there are enough useless laws already on those books that this would take a while to have any noticeable effect, but at least we'd start clearing out some of the crap.
It does seem like corruption is becoming more transparently obvious these days.
... but leave Melinda outa of it. At least until she gives us reason not to leave her out of it, of course.
She already did. His name is "Bob".
In my experience, the people who say "Amen" to just writing code end up with lousy architecture design.
In other words, "look before you leap."
Truly, a little planning does go a long way. There's no excuse for someone that is working on a project by himself, with no deadlines, no boss looking over his shoulder grumbling "aren't you coding yet?", to skip writing at least a preliminary specification. Oh sure, we all hack quick-and-dirty solutions now and then (sometimes it can be fun just to crank something out) but beyond a certain degree of complexity you really need to have a plan, some sort of structure or framework to build on and around.
I'm not. Virginia Woolf now ...
We said when we released 1Q results we would be putting in place a series of actions to address cost issues in our U.S. strategic outsourcing business. We have undertaken efforts toward that, and recently implemented a focused resource reduction in the U.S. While any such reduction is difficult for those employees affected, these actions are well within the scope of our ongoing workforce rebalancing efforts.
I dunno, if I ever get "resource reduced" or "workforce balanced" I'll probably still feel like I was laid off.
People who join startups join for the stock, not the awesome monthly
More to the point, the creative minds in startups do it because they have ideas that they care about, and want the ability to bring those ideas to fruition on their own terms. Maybe their stock options become worth something, maybe they don't, but money is not always the most important reason. Maybe it never is. Page and Brin formed Google, rather than taking their ideas to an established search company. They got lucky: most startups fail. Most people who have a product idea, good or bad, know that before they even try to make something out of it. They go for it anyway, because it's more about creative control than money, about doing it your own way.
He probably means "level of disposable income", and we used to have a lot more of it than we do now. A lot of people are spending money that they shouldn't be spending in order to maintain whatever lifestyle to which they are accustomed. "Unemployment is low" is meaningless if you don't account for type of employment: the fact that more of us are gainfully employed in lower-level, lower-paying jobs is not good. A much better metric would be the level of personal savings, and that is not a pretty picture either. Too many people are barely getting by and don't have anything left to put away for a rainy day.
... China's economy. We'd be better off dropping our cell phones, cable TV and satellite dishes, buying less useless crap at Wal-Mart, forgetting that V8-powered SUV this time around, and saving that money or investing in American manufacturing.
Worse yet, many of those goods and services of which you speak are being paid for out of funds that, in previous generations, would have been saved or invested, not squandered. We've been convinced, as a people, that spending every dime to "stimulate the economy" is somehow good. We certainly are stimulating the economy
About forty-odd years ago I discovered, quite by accident, that my neighbors had a baby monitor that just happened to transmit on the same frequency as the Radio Shack walkie-talkie I had. At least, I'm assuming it was a baby monitor, maybe their house was bugged, I don't know. Well, it was bugged all right, the only question was whether or not they did it to themselves. Anyway, I could hear a woman's voice cooing to a baby, and I could hear a man's voice in the background.
So when the couple left the room I waited for a while, then turned on my transmitter and in my best Satanic voice rumbled, "You're all going to die!" Both parents came tearing back to the room so fast I was sure they'd left rug burns on the carpet. I was doubled over with laughter, but then again I've always been a bit of a practical joker. The opportunity was just too good to pass up.
I told my father about it (well, minus the "you're all going to die!" part) and I think he went over there to have a little talk with them. He was a physicist and electronics engineer and I presume they took him seriously, because the thing wasn't broadcasting after that. Good thing for them: I wasn't the only kid in the neighborhood with a walkie-talkie.
Like you, I'm not particularly voyeuristic (I prefer to maintain my illusions about other people) but there are plenty of folks out there for whom that cannot be said, and who will use anything you say against you. I might add that many of them work for government.
The unfortunate truth is that it doesn't matter whether or not you think you have something to hide. In the current legal climate, we all have something to hide. We can all be nailed for something, however insignificant it may seem to us, if someone wants us badly enough. Granted, most of the new electronic surveillance laws and technologies are ostensibly anti-terrorism measures, but as always they'll be applied indiscriminately and inappropriately, and in ways never intended by their authors.
This is a particularly interesting quotation from Thomas Jefferson:
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
--- Thomas Jefferson
To encourage their invention, copyright and patent law were developed in most Western countries. These laws were devoted to the delicate task of getting mental creations into the world where they could be used - and could enter the minds of others - while assuring their inventors compensation for the value of their use. And, as previously stated, the systems of both law and practice which grew up around that task were based on physical expression.
Since it is now possible to convey ideas from one mind to another without ever making them physical, we are now claiming to own ideas themselves and not merely their expression. And since it is likewise now possible to create useful tools that never take physical form, we have taken to patenting abstractions, sequences of virtual events, and mathematical formulae - the most unreal estate imaginable.
In certain areas, this leaves rights of ownership in such an ambiguous condition that property again adheres
Wikipedia is the best and most reliable site for that kind of stuff!
... Wikipedia is probably "best." For much of anything else, you're better off finding a more reliable source. In fact, that's how I often use Wikipedia, as an intro to further research.
No, it's one of the most convenient. Unless you already know enough about a particular topic not to need Wikipedia, you have no idea whether it's the best or most reliable. It is unlikely to be the most reliable source of information: for most subjects there are probably other more authoritative sources on the Internet. As to "best": that's a matter of your own particular needs. If what you want is a vast readily-accessible hoard of information on everything under the Sun, but of largely unknown pedigree
Joke? What joke?
I realize that most true humor comes at someone else's expense, but characterizing entire nations as being full of stupid people just isn't that funny to me. I guess it is to you, and I'd love to know where you come from. Odds are, ten seconds with Google would come up with a few good slams. It's always hilarious to hear someone like you say, "Hey. That's not funny." Racial stereotyping is a rarely entertaining when you're the target.
By way of example, here in the U.S. so-called "jokes" about the supposed stupidity of Polish people have been common for ages. As a gift, I once received a coffee mug with the handle on the inside. The outside said "Polish Mug". Ha ha. Very funny, and that particular gift ended up in the round file. For that matter, my last name is Greek: I've been the "butt" of more than a few such "jokes" myself.
Just goes to show, some people never grow up.
I dunno ... Serenity sold pretty well, and that was about as unfinished as it's possible to get.
Of course, it was also truly solid material. The fact that the story arc was never completed didn't detract from the essential quality of the production.
No, it's more an issue of avoiding legal liability if some mindnumbingly-stupid individual leaves it in place and drives his car into a wall.
I think it's like writing a term paper while smoking pot. You just think you're writing great paper. Problem is, a failing grade on the expressway is fatal.
A nice bonus would be to have the British population implanted with the American attitude to guns.
May I ask to which attitude you are referring? I hope you mean the Constitutionally protected Right to Bear Arms, and the attitude that government had damn well better be By, Of, and For the People. It worked well for us for a long, long time, and I think that many of our current ills can be traced to our having forgotten a few important things along those lines.
There is a dichotomy on that subject, with many of us taking the (historically well-supported) stance that firearms are a valuable deterrent to government-mandated injustice and our last line of defense against it. Others believe that we are too "civilized" to need such things, that whatever bad things are occurring elsewhere in the world they most certainly "can't happen here". They're wrong, of course: those bad things are already happening.
In English there is a saying: "too much of a good thing."
I think you mean "point of diminishing returns."
Yes, although his early experiments did result in a number of charred and radiation-burned Oompa Loompas.
The worst thing about Jackson and Sharpton is that they insult blacks because they further the notion that blacks need help to get ahead.
... that black people need education to better their lives, for example. Obvious, of course, but nevertheless true. But it's all hot air: the man is a media hound and a hypocrite of the highest caliber. Were I black, and that man offered me some of his "help" I'd say "No, thank you!" and run away. My fiancee (who is a naturalized African) told me she'd do the same thing: for some reason he just irritates her. And before any of you jump on my case for being racist, I'm criticizing Jesse Jackson, not black people. Besides, I have every right to criticize anyone I want, actually, but in this case I'm being very specific.
And specifically, that blacks need their help to get ahead. I'll admit, Jackson has said some good things along the way
The only time I didn't change the channel when Jesse Jackson came on the air was when he was the guest host of an old SNL episode. He was the MC of a fake game show called "The Answer is Moot" or something like that. As I remember, he was almost funny.
wake me when it's a law.
Spock will figure out the only logical place it could be.
You can tell the difference much more easily than that. A cult becomes a religion when it begins to kill people outside its own membership.