I think they were remembering how much the fact that the PS2 could play DVD's drove sales. There is a huge difference though- DVD's were replacing the old, tired, crappy, bulky VHS format. DVD was revolutionary in almost every way- crisp images, small form factor, no dealing with rewinding, "tracking" or dirty heads, and the audio was just eons better. DVD's also age very well, whereas VHS tapes would lose quality in your average player after many plays. Everyone wanted a DVD player.
Not to mention that DVD was the standard that was replacing VHS, and while DVD was still gaining marketshare when the PS2 was released it was already established as a success. DVD drove PS2 sales, and surely PS2 sales helped gain marketshare for DVD, but DVD was taking off regardless of the PS2. Whereas now there are two competing formats, neither of which has established itself at all. They are depending on the PS3 to boost BluRay sales to cause the format to win, while simultaneously hoping the unestablished format will help PS3 to win.
As for the argument that "well you blew $2-3k on a home theater, you can afford it" argument, I don't really buy it.
Well I'm really saying the causation is the opposite: The people who are saying the PS3 is a great deal and the price not a big deal are the ones who blew $2-3k on a home theater and still have $600 to spare without blinking.
But your point is well taken that even among the already limited number of people with HD setups there are still a lot who are not going to see the value in a PS3, and again telling them "but you get so much for the money!" will simply miss the point.
It's certainly within the rights of the plaintiff to show a history of behavior (relationships with staff). I might point out there were more than a single claim of harassment out there.
A history of consensual relationships does not have any merit to a sexual harassment case. Strange how with all those victims of his harassment that they needed a consensual partner to try to show a pattern of non-consensual sexual aggression. If they couldn't show that behavior through actual sexual misconduct from all these victims, how were they supposed to do so with someone who was not a victim at all?
I have no qualms about him being caught in the lie and impeached -- Clinton was a consumate politician (until his fear of Hillary made him retarded), he played these political games all the time, so when he got caught in a political trap no sympathy from me. But that line of reasoning that Lewinsky was actually relevent to the case is brain damaged.
What Clinton did was proven and he plead out and was punished.
So before this occured, were you arguing that since the claims against Clinton had not been proven that there should have been no prosecution? You realize that impeachment would be such an attempt to prove the allegations of wrong doing?
"Innocent until proven guilty" is with regards to punishment, not actual prosecution. For prosecution, suspicion based on evidence is sufficient. Otherwise it'd be rather hard to enforce laws.
He had the same intelligence EVERYONE had.
No, everyone had the intelligence he gave them. Yes they were stupid for believing it.
Lied about Medicare costs? Is it a lie when numbers are just wrong? Or do you need any evidence to backup such claims? If it's a LIE, then lets impeach Kennedy and Kerry for The Big Dig fiasco. And every other federal government office holder with their name attached to anything.
I always find it funny when someone thinks a great way to steer blame away from a politician is to start listing names of people of the opposite party of the politician and say they did the same thing. As if I'm going to go "Oh, but I don't want my precious Democrats to be prosecuted! I'll let Bush slide!"
Ha ha! As if! Send all the fuckers to jail. I'm against all criminals no matter what animal-themed political club they belong to. So yes, I agree completely, go after Bush and the political architects of the Big Dig.
No, I made an argument why guilt seems likely, based on the fact that Bush has not claimed to have complied with the law. Maybe that's the same as presumption to you, which would explain a lot about your thought processes in very few words. Bush also thinks presumption is the same as thinking, which is why he's so bad at it.
Was the firing of certain federal prosecutes by bush any less questionable than Clinton firing *all* of them? (Probably yes in this case)
Please stop referring to this as though it has any impact on the current scandal. Nearly every president fires all of the federal prosecutors and replaces them with their own appointees, INCLUDING Bush. Bush *already* fired all of Clinton's appointees, and nobody complained because that was completely normal, just like when Clinton did it. The Bush Justice Department fired *Bush's* appointees mid-term because they weren't prosecuting according to the political agenda of the President. It is nothing like the previous firings, including the earlier firings by Bush.
You must have a lot of hate in you to be bring Clinton into this.
You must have a lot of retard in you if you think I brought Clinton into this. It was the post I was replying to who brought Clinton in, using the stupid partisan argument of "Clinton used WMDs to justify attacking Iraq, so you shouldn't say anything about Bush, you hypocrits!". I was pointing out that 1) some of use don't think that what Clinton did was okay because we aren't idiot partisans, and more importantly 2) what Bush has done is way, way, worse from any objective moral perspective.
I don't give a rats ass about the blow job, or lying about it. I do care about playing politics with bombs dropped on other countries, and I care about things like roving wiretaps. Yet if you actually read my post and still came to the conclusion that it's Clinton who I hate most then you are, simply put, really stupid.
I made another post talking about this at greater length, but the fact is that you're right that without a court ruling we can't say with certainty that this program was illegal. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that Bush has not claimed that he has complied with the law, and rather has argued that he does not need to comply with the law because the Constitution grants him the power to ignore the 4th Ammendment when he wants to, is all I need to know to form an educated layman's opinion that the NSA program was not in compliance with the law, i.e. illegal.
The only real question is whether the court will agree with Bush's interpretation of the Constitution. The question of whether he complied with FISA has already been answered. And somehow I doubt the Judicial branch will agree that the Judicial power of granting warrants is irrelevent to the Executive branch.
Too bad until somebody figures out that they've been spied upon and sues the government we can't get a court ruling either way. But I do look to the Judiciary for help here, because even in todays climate they have handed Bush several major wakeup calls regarding his conception of how the law works.
The most telling thing to answer the question though of "were these wiretaps illegal without any new law needing to be passed making them so?" is the Bush team's defense of the program. They have never argued that they are operating in compliance with FISA, that the program was operating within the written law. They have only argued that Bush, being the President, has the inherent authority to conduct such searches as he deems fit in the interest of national security.
Obviously Bush's administration has been pushing very hard to increase the power of the Executive, and this is part of that. But if there was an actual legal explanation for the program that made it clear that Bush was complying with the law, wouldn't it be better to avoid the scandal and ongoing conflict? He wouldn't have to abandon the stance that he can do whatever he wants. So when his best reply is "yes I ignored the law but I can do that because I'm president", that's pretty much all I need to hear.
I highly doubt that should it come to it that SCOTUS would agree with the President's views.
P.S. I'm sure someone will bring up the "other presidents did warantless taps!" talking point, but if you actually read what all these other presidents did from Carter on it was in compliance with the terms of FISA that allow warrantless tapping. Bush isn't even pretending that he is doing the same thing, which is why it's only conservative talk show hosts and not the White House PR who bring this up.
Nope. My DM's guide does not include the "Teddy Bear Head of Vecna"
That's because Vecna kept it a secret so all the other liches wouldn't make fun of him. They didn't understand that Vecna just needed something that loved him unconditionally, and though he was damaged, Teddy's plush head was full of love.
The story about the Head of Vecna in the other reply is hilarious, btw, you should read it.
Hm, I don't know. Do you think it would be tacky to start using "At least, that's what the comic I drew while I was high said will happen" as my catch phrase?
Yeah, a teddy bear head is really going to make it look non-menacing. Take your favorite teddy, the one that comforted you as a child. Then imagine someone rips off its head and attaches it to a robot monstrosity. Is it still comforting? Or dreams of childhood turned into hideous nightmares?
I mean I guess it's better than one deliberately designed to be terrifying (though that would be funny, especially if given an evil robot voice "I am here to save your worthless flesh, meatbag!"), but not by much. It looks bug-eyed and un-earthly. I expect soldiers claims of alien abduction to increase.
I don't know, you tell me if $600 is chump change to you. If you don't balk at a $600 price point, then you are in Category A regardless of how much your last house's setup cost, and that's why you don't understand the perspective of people in Category B. They don't care that they get a "free" BluRay player because they don't want to spend $600 in the first place.
"Not exclusive toys for the insanely rich" is a far, far cry from "mass market".
I simply cannot justify, however, spending 600 on a PS3. I don't care if it is a Blu-Ray player, I still cannot justify it.
The valid point of view contrary to this is that if you have an HD setup, and are therefore probably considering getting some kind of next-gen player at some point, then the PS3 which is affordable as next-gen players go and is a game console actually looks like a decent deal. This is the standard argument against the PS3 being overpriced (the "you get a lot for the money" argument), and it is a valid viewpoint if it applies to you, but it misses the bigger point:
Basically nobody who is balking at the price of the PS3 gives a shit about the "you get a lot for the money" argument. If you have enough to blow on an HD home theatre then you can easily afford the PS3 and sure maybe it's a good deal. "Good deal" and "affordable" aren't the same, and the fact is the PS3 is not affordable to many people. Just like a 70ft yacht for $100k might be a great deal, you will still find sales of such a yacht limited to the wealthy. Duh. So why people think "you get a free bluray player!" will make people leary of spending $600 on an entertainment device more likely to buy a PS3, I don't know.
You need to learn to fucking read, because I couldn't have possibly made it any clearer that I think Bush and his idiotic invasion are vastly worse than anything Clinton did, what with that being my entire fucking point.
Yeah, I'm aware. What part of my comment lead you to believe I think Clinton was honest? Was it the part where I put "chemical weapons factories" in quotes? Or maybe it was where I called him fuckface. I never even discussed the issue of lying to support the attacks either before 2000 or after.
I used virii in the past, so don't take this as being holier-than-though.
But the plural of cactus is cacti, and the equivalent pluralization of virus would be viri. The only word whose plural ends in two "i"s is "radii", and that's because the singular radius has an "i" followed by the "us". It's also pronounced "ra-dee-aye"
I really have no idea where the extra 'i' in virii came from.
But hey at least people like us can learn. I once heard someone who was corrected on virii go on a spiel about how because English is a living language and spellings change over time as determined by common usage yadda yadda, that he could spell however the fuck he wanted to and it was ipso facto correct.
Ah, that makes sense. Yeah, I consider flashblock to be the most essential extension for firefox, at least now that there is a lot of flash content that is actually worth seeing. I don't even bother with adblock because the built-in blocking of javascript popups is good enough and ads themselves don't really bother me as I have well trained my brain to ignore them.
I hate Clinton and I think those bombings were wrong. Yet you are incorrect that he did it for a few points in the polls, he did it to satisfy the Republican Congress, who had long accused him of being soft and demanded that he take action against Iraq. It was playing politics in order to get enough political capital to be able to accomplish things like the balanced budget. I just want to make it clear that while Clinton is responsible for those bombings, the hawks in government pushing him to do it were the Republicans in Congress.
Of course the later cruise missle attack against "al Qaeda training camps" in Iraq and "chemical weapons factories" in Sudan were done solely to get Republican pressure off of him in the early stages of the Lewinsky scandal. So yeah, no love for fuckface Clinton.
But you are still completely wrong that the invasion of Iraq is anything but a vastly worse sin than what Clinton did. You keep saying "try and make things better". Here's a hint: If you are going to try to make things better, then you need to have a plan to make things better. They had no plan, in fact they deliberately avoided making a plan and told anyone who suggested that they would need a plan to shut up. Ergo they were not trying to make things better. At best, they were wishing that things would magically become better.
The level of destruction that Bush has caused in Iraq needs a whole fucking lot more than wishful thinking before it becomes anything other than what it is: The destruction of a country.
Yes, he's playing directly into their plans! He knew PA would expect him to decline the offer, and thus he declined. He knew they would expect him to make a hystrionic claim that PA was once again conspiring against him, and thus he did. The goal is to make PA think that they completely understand Thompson and can predict his every move. Thompson will continue to play into this belief until they invite him to a private chat at their home to discuss the issues of violence in media. Again, exactly as they will be expecting, Thompson will suggest a game of his own to "break the ice". Two cups of tea, one spiked with iocane powder, which is tasteless, odorless, dissolves instantly in water, and is one of the deadlier poisons known to man. The PA crew must pick a cup and both drink from it, while Thompson drinks from the other. Then while they debate which to drink from, Thompson plays his card and does the unexpected -- he cries "what's that?!" and points, and while they aren't looking, he switches the cups. As they drink, he cackles and reveals his nefarious scheme!
Except before it is revealed who will fall victim to the poison, ninjas attack and behead all three of them. The last one to leave steals the Pac-Man watch.
At least, that's what the comic I drew while I was high said.
I'm not even using adblock. I have javascript enabled, and flash installed. The only relevent extension is Flashblock. I just have "Block Popups" clicked. I see no popup, and only once in a blue moon do I ever see one.
Whoever complained about the popup is clearly using an inferior browser. I pity them.
Which is exactly why the US was so surprised when they rejected our offers. The US media played it up as though they were afraid of GM "frankenfood" which would somehow mutate and kill them or something. I'm sure that in lots of places, the same places where they think sleeping with a virgin cures AIDS, that this was true. But then I read an actual response from an African President (yeah, wish i could remember the country even...), and he cited as the reason for rejecting the offer all the legal restrictions and the inability to replant seeds. He said that his country's agriculture -- limited though it was -- was based on the ability to replant seeds, and thus for the farmers to be independent. If he accepted the US deal, then his country and all its farmers would be forced to get new seeds every year from the US. What if the shipment doesn't come? What if the US decides to change the deal and charge extornionate prices? Then suddenly they go from formerly having poor agriculture to no agriculture at all.
So they're still poor, still starving, but also still mindful of the future to not be lured into a Faustian bargain. The Devil always offers you something good. It's the price where he gets you. And just like you don't want the Devil to own your soul, these countries did not want Monsanto to own their food production.
Yeah, I'm no expert in agriculture, but from what I've heard we've been using stupidly non-sustainable farming methods for quite a while now because they provided the best short-term yields. Monsanto is just trying to boost this retard-rocket into orbital velocity.
Wait, wait, do you mean "public funds" or do you mean "$10 dollars a pop"? You'd have the government pay $10 million each for a cure and sell it for $10 each?
No, it would be developed with public funds, and then any pharmaceutical could manufacture it, and since the R&D is already covered, and nobody has a monopoly so they can't charge monopoly prices, so they sell it for $10 a pop.
The only reason the drug costs $10 mill a pop in the private development case is that they spent four times as much marketing the drug as they did spending it, they want to make back all of that money in one quarter, and then above that they want a 25% profit margin. And then they don't drop the price, they continue charging $10 mil a pop simply because the monopoly allows them to.
I know that since money == value, you think that if the drug is sold for $10 mil then it must be worth $10 mil and no alternative form of developing or selling that drug could result in a price other than $10 mil. That's the inherent assumption of your statement, and an inherent problem of equating money with value. It is wrong. The drug, whose value is determined by what it does, could have many different prices in different situations.
The pool of money for medical research is only so large. Who decides what the money is spent on - the people spending the money, of some group of "smart people" chosen by Chris Burke? Somehow I prefer the former.
Try "Some group of 'smart people' chosen by the people". Once again the concept of Democracy gets no mention so you can present a false choice between me personally choosing and rich people choosing. Rich people choosing is closer to actual aristrocracy as it has occured in history.
And anyone who wants to spend money on private development can. That doesn't prevent the government from spending money on research development also. It's a completely false dichotomy. If you really are that against government-funded research at all, then do me a favor and get off the Internet.
Fraud is of course wrong, and an obvious problem with laise faire capitalism is the lack of policing of fraud, but that's just a distraction from the real question.
Um, wait, when did it become fraud for me to downplay my interest in a car to get a better deal? Oh right, it isn't. It isn't a question of fraud, that isn't the problem with laise fair capitalism. The problem with laise faire capitalism is that it only works -- even in theory -- if all players have perfect knowledge. It is not, has not, and never will be possible for anyone to provide anyone else with "perfect knowledge" about a product, and it certainly isn't a law.
Assuming that people actually know what they're buying, how would you assign a value for that product/service other than "what people will pay for it"? If someone pays a lot for a given pair of shoes "just because" of some ad campaign, are you some higher order of human who gets to tell them that their judgement is flawed?
But see already we've incorporated the idea of unquantifiable intangibles into the concept of "value". Part of the value of the Nike shoe comes from its brand. If they halved the price of Nikes tommorrow, does that reduce the value of Nike's brand by 50% as well? Do the people buying the shoes see it as 50% less cool? What about someone who can't afford the current price, but could afford the 50% off price? Did they always value the Nike shoe half as much? Or did they value it the same, but were simply unable to make the purchase? Does the fact that I wouldn't spend more than $20k on a car mean I don't see any "value" in a Porsche 911? I would seriously beg to differ!
I suppose AIDS treatments have no value to Africans since they aren't buying them... or they can't afford it. Either way.
Your whole problem is you are trying to "assign a value", as in a quantitative number that you can use to sort items by their "worth". That's the fundamental flaw. Value, wo
I'm trying to follow you here: you'd rather see no cure than a cure that costs $10 million a pop (and presumably $10 a pop in fifty years, technology being what it is)?
No, that's not what he said at all. He's saying he'd rather see a cure developed using public funds so that anybody can make it for $10 a pop today, vs a privately developed one sold at $10 million a pop with $10 being the hope for fifty years down the line.
As for "greed deciding": the only true measure of the worth of anything is what people are willing to pay for it. Or do you instead favor aristocracy? The "worthy, wise men" decide the value of everything and dictate it to the unwashed masses? I think I'll take "greed deciding" over "plague3106 deciding", thank you.
What a sad commentary when the only "worth" someone can see as "true" is the dollar value placed on it. Aside from more philosophical questions, it should be pretty obvious to any capitalist that one can distort and hide something's value so as to either artificially increase or decrease its price. If I convince you that a given item has little value, but in truth I value it highly, what represents its true value better?
And I see you only acknowledge laise faire capitalism and aristocracy as the only choices. Whatever happened to democracy? Or has the voice of the people no worth, since in a secret ballot election you can't (reliably) buy votes?
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I think they were remembering how much the fact that the PS2 could play DVD's drove sales. There is a huge difference though- DVD's were replacing the old, tired, crappy, bulky VHS format. DVD was revolutionary in almost every way- crisp images, small form factor, no dealing with rewinding, "tracking" or dirty heads, and the audio was just eons better. DVD's also age very well, whereas VHS tapes would lose quality in your average player after many plays. Everyone wanted a DVD player.
Not to mention that DVD was the standard that was replacing VHS, and while DVD was still gaining marketshare when the PS2 was released it was already established as a success. DVD drove PS2 sales, and surely PS2 sales helped gain marketshare for DVD, but DVD was taking off regardless of the PS2. Whereas now there are two competing formats, neither of which has established itself at all. They are depending on the PS3 to boost BluRay sales to cause the format to win, while simultaneously hoping the unestablished format will help PS3 to win.
As for the argument that "well you blew $2-3k on a home theater, you can afford it" argument, I don't really buy it.
Well I'm really saying the causation is the opposite: The people who are saying the PS3 is a great deal and the price not a big deal are the ones who blew $2-3k on a home theater and still have $600 to spare without blinking.
But your point is well taken that even among the already limited number of people with HD setups there are still a lot who are not going to see the value in a PS3, and again telling them "but you get so much for the money!" will simply miss the point.
It's certainly within the rights of the plaintiff to show a history of behavior (relationships with staff). I might point out there were more than a single claim of harassment out there.
A history of consensual relationships does not have any merit to a sexual harassment case. Strange how with all those victims of his harassment that they needed a consensual partner to try to show a pattern of non-consensual sexual aggression. If they couldn't show that behavior through actual sexual misconduct from all these victims, how were they supposed to do so with someone who was not a victim at all?
I have no qualms about him being caught in the lie and impeached -- Clinton was a consumate politician (until his fear of Hillary made him retarded), he played these political games all the time, so when he got caught in a political trap no sympathy from me. But that line of reasoning that Lewinsky was actually relevent to the case is brain damaged.
What Clinton did was proven and he plead out and was punished.
So before this occured, were you arguing that since the claims against Clinton had not been proven that there should have been no prosecution? You realize that impeachment would be such an attempt to prove the allegations of wrong doing?
"Innocent until proven guilty" is with regards to punishment, not actual prosecution. For prosecution, suspicion based on evidence is sufficient. Otherwise it'd be rather hard to enforce laws.
He had the same intelligence EVERYONE had.
No, everyone had the intelligence he gave them. Yes they were stupid for believing it.
Lied about Medicare costs? Is it a lie when numbers are just wrong? Or do you need any evidence to backup such claims? If it's a LIE, then lets impeach Kennedy and Kerry for The Big Dig fiasco. And every other federal government office holder with their name attached to anything.
I always find it funny when someone thinks a great way to steer blame away from a politician is to start listing names of people of the opposite party of the politician and say they did the same thing. As if I'm going to go "Oh, but I don't want my precious Democrats to be prosecuted! I'll let Bush slide!"
Ha ha! As if! Send all the fuckers to jail. I'm against all criminals no matter what animal-themed political club they belong to. So yes, I agree completely, go after Bush and the political architects of the Big Dig.
No, I made an argument why guilt seems likely, based on the fact that Bush has not claimed to have complied with the law. Maybe that's the same as presumption to you, which would explain a lot about your thought processes in very few words. Bush also thinks presumption is the same as thinking, which is why he's so bad at it.
Was the firing of certain federal prosecutes by bush any less questionable than Clinton firing *all* of them? (Probably yes in this case)
Please stop referring to this as though it has any impact on the current scandal. Nearly every president fires all of the federal prosecutors and replaces them with their own appointees, INCLUDING Bush. Bush *already* fired all of Clinton's appointees, and nobody complained because that was completely normal, just like when Clinton did it. The Bush Justice Department fired *Bush's* appointees mid-term because they weren't prosecuting according to the political agenda of the President. It is nothing like the previous firings, including the earlier firings by Bush.
You must have a lot of hate in you to be bring Clinton into this.
You must have a lot of retard in you if you think I brought Clinton into this. It was the post I was replying to who brought Clinton in, using the stupid partisan argument of "Clinton used WMDs to justify attacking Iraq, so you shouldn't say anything about Bush, you hypocrits!". I was pointing out that 1) some of use don't think that what Clinton did was okay because we aren't idiot partisans, and more importantly 2) what Bush has done is way, way, worse from any objective moral perspective.
I don't give a rats ass about the blow job, or lying about it. I do care about playing politics with bombs dropped on other countries, and I care about things like roving wiretaps. Yet if you actually read my post and still came to the conclusion that it's Clinton who I hate most then you are, simply put, really stupid.
I made another post talking about this at greater length, but the fact is that you're right that without a court ruling we can't say with certainty that this program was illegal. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that Bush has not claimed that he has complied with the law, and rather has argued that he does not need to comply with the law because the Constitution grants him the power to ignore the 4th Ammendment when he wants to, is all I need to know to form an educated layman's opinion that the NSA program was not in compliance with the law, i.e. illegal.
The only real question is whether the court will agree with Bush's interpretation of the Constitution. The question of whether he complied with FISA has already been answered. And somehow I doubt the Judicial branch will agree that the Judicial power of granting warrants is irrelevent to the Executive branch.
Too bad until somebody figures out that they've been spied upon and sues the government we can't get a court ruling either way. But I do look to the Judiciary for help here, because even in todays climate they have handed Bush several major wakeup calls regarding his conception of how the law works.
The most telling thing to answer the question though of "were these wiretaps illegal without any new law needing to be passed making them so?" is the Bush team's defense of the program. They have never argued that they are operating in compliance with FISA, that the program was operating within the written law. They have only argued that Bush, being the President, has the inherent authority to conduct such searches as he deems fit in the interest of national security.
Obviously Bush's administration has been pushing very hard to increase the power of the Executive, and this is part of that. But if there was an actual legal explanation for the program that made it clear that Bush was complying with the law, wouldn't it be better to avoid the scandal and ongoing conflict? He wouldn't have to abandon the stance that he can do whatever he wants. So when his best reply is "yes I ignored the law but I can do that because I'm president", that's pretty much all I need to hear.
I highly doubt that should it come to it that SCOTUS would agree with the President's views.
P.S. I'm sure someone will bring up the "other presidents did warantless taps!" talking point, but if you actually read what all these other presidents did from Carter on it was in compliance with the terms of FISA that allow warrantless tapping. Bush isn't even pretending that he is doing the same thing, which is why it's only conservative talk show hosts and not the White House PR who bring this up.
Nope. My DM's guide does not include the "Teddy Bear Head of Vecna"
That's because Vecna kept it a secret so all the other liches wouldn't make fun of him. They didn't understand that Vecna just needed something that loved him unconditionally, and though he was damaged, Teddy's plush head was full of love.
The story about the Head of Vecna in the other reply is hilarious, btw, you should read it.
Hm, I don't know. Do you think it would be tacky to start using "At least, that's what the comic I drew while I was high said will happen" as my catch phrase?
Yeah, a teddy bear head is really going to make it look non-menacing. Take your favorite teddy, the one that comforted you as a child. Then imagine someone rips off its head and attaches it to a robot monstrosity. Is it still comforting? Or dreams of childhood turned into hideous nightmares?
I mean I guess it's better than one deliberately designed to be terrifying (though that would be funny, especially if given an evil robot voice "I am here to save your worthless flesh, meatbag!"), but not by much. It looks bug-eyed and un-earthly. I expect soldiers claims of alien abduction to increase.
I don't know, you tell me if $600 is chump change to you. If you don't balk at a $600 price point, then you are in Category A regardless of how much your last house's setup cost, and that's why you don't understand the perspective of people in Category B. They don't care that they get a "free" BluRay player because they don't want to spend $600 in the first place.
"Not exclusive toys for the insanely rich" is a far, far cry from "mass market".
It has a Blu-Ray player that you can't find on other systems... and those do sell for at least $500 all on their own,
Nobody who thinks $500 is a lot for a console cares.
I simply cannot justify, however, spending 600 on a PS3. I don't care if it is a Blu-Ray player, I still cannot justify it.
The valid point of view contrary to this is that if you have an HD setup, and are therefore probably considering getting some kind of next-gen player at some point, then the PS3 which is affordable as next-gen players go and is a game console actually looks like a decent deal. This is the standard argument against the PS3 being overpriced (the "you get a lot for the money" argument), and it is a valid viewpoint if it applies to you, but it misses the bigger point:
Basically nobody who is balking at the price of the PS3 gives a shit about the "you get a lot for the money" argument. If you have enough to blow on an HD home theatre then you can easily afford the PS3 and sure maybe it's a good deal. "Good deal" and "affordable" aren't the same, and the fact is the PS3 is not affordable to many people. Just like a 70ft yacht for $100k might be a great deal, you will still find sales of such a yacht limited to the wealthy. Duh. So why people think "you get a free bluray player!" will make people leary of spending $600 on an entertainment device more likely to buy a PS3, I don't know.
You need some perspective, FFS.
You need to learn to fucking read, because I couldn't have possibly made it any clearer that I think Bush and his idiotic invasion are vastly worse than anything Clinton did, what with that being my entire fucking point.
Playing that song in support of your team is the musical equivalent of loser talk.
But it does mean you hope to win in the next 4 seasons! And then try to make a ridiculous come back from retirement twenty years later, I guess...
Yeah, I'm aware. What part of my comment lead you to believe I think Clinton was honest? Was it the part where I put "chemical weapons factories" in quotes? Or maybe it was where I called him fuckface. I never even discussed the issue of lying to support the attacks either before 2000 or after.
I used virii in the past, so don't take this as being holier-than-though.
But the plural of cactus is cacti, and the equivalent pluralization of virus would be viri. The only word whose plural ends in two "i"s is "radii", and that's because the singular radius has an "i" followed by the "us". It's also pronounced "ra-dee-aye"
I really have no idea where the extra 'i' in virii came from.
But hey at least people like us can learn. I once heard someone who was corrected on virii go on a spiel about how because English is a living language and spellings change over time as determined by common usage yadda yadda, that he could spell however the fuck he wanted to and it was ipso facto correct.
Ah, that makes sense. Yeah, I consider flashblock to be the most essential extension for firefox, at least now that there is a lot of flash content that is actually worth seeing. I don't even bother with adblock because the built-in blocking of javascript popups is good enough and ads themselves don't really bother me as I have well trained my brain to ignore them.
I hate Clinton and I think those bombings were wrong. Yet you are incorrect that he did it for a few points in the polls, he did it to satisfy the Republican Congress, who had long accused him of being soft and demanded that he take action against Iraq. It was playing politics in order to get enough political capital to be able to accomplish things like the balanced budget. I just want to make it clear that while Clinton is responsible for those bombings, the hawks in government pushing him to do it were the Republicans in Congress.
Of course the later cruise missle attack against "al Qaeda training camps" in Iraq and "chemical weapons factories" in Sudan were done solely to get Republican pressure off of him in the early stages of the Lewinsky scandal. So yeah, no love for fuckface Clinton.
But you are still completely wrong that the invasion of Iraq is anything but a vastly worse sin than what Clinton did. You keep saying "try and make things better". Here's a hint: If you are going to try to make things better, then you need to have a plan to make things better. They had no plan, in fact they deliberately avoided making a plan and told anyone who suggested that they would need a plan to shut up. Ergo they were not trying to make things better. At best, they were wishing that things would magically become better.
The level of destruction that Bush has caused in Iraq needs a whole fucking lot more than wishful thinking before it becomes anything other than what it is: The destruction of a country.
Yes, he's playing directly into their plans! He knew PA would expect him to decline the offer, and thus he declined. He knew they would expect him to make a hystrionic claim that PA was once again conspiring against him, and thus he did. The goal is to make PA think that they completely understand Thompson and can predict his every move. Thompson will continue to play into this belief until they invite him to a private chat at their home to discuss the issues of violence in media. Again, exactly as they will be expecting, Thompson will suggest a game of his own to "break the ice". Two cups of tea, one spiked with iocane powder, which is tasteless, odorless, dissolves instantly in water, and is one of the deadlier poisons known to man. The PA crew must pick a cup and both drink from it, while Thompson drinks from the other. Then while they debate which to drink from, Thompson plays his card and does the unexpected -- he cries "what's that?!" and points, and while they aren't looking, he switches the cups. As they drink, he cackles and reveals his nefarious scheme!
Except before it is revealed who will fall victim to the poison, ninjas attack and behead all three of them. The last one to leave steals the Pac-Man watch.
At least, that's what the comic I drew while I was high said.
I'm not even using adblock. I have javascript enabled, and flash installed. The only relevent extension is Flashblock. I just have "Block Popups" clicked. I see no popup, and only once in a blue moon do I ever see one.
Whoever complained about the popup is clearly using an inferior browser. I pity them.
Which is exactly why the US was so surprised when they rejected our offers. The US media played it up as though they were afraid of GM "frankenfood" which would somehow mutate and kill them or something. I'm sure that in lots of places, the same places where they think sleeping with a virgin cures AIDS, that this was true. But then I read an actual response from an African President (yeah, wish i could remember the country even...), and he cited as the reason for rejecting the offer all the legal restrictions and the inability to replant seeds. He said that his country's agriculture -- limited though it was -- was based on the ability to replant seeds, and thus for the farmers to be independent. If he accepted the US deal, then his country and all its farmers would be forced to get new seeds every year from the US. What if the shipment doesn't come? What if the US decides to change the deal and charge extornionate prices? Then suddenly they go from formerly having poor agriculture to no agriculture at all.
So they're still poor, still starving, but also still mindful of the future to not be lured into a Faustian bargain. The Devil always offers you something good. It's the price where he gets you. And just like you don't want the Devil to own your soul, these countries did not want Monsanto to own their food production.
Yeah, I'm no expert in agriculture, but from what I've heard we've been using stupidly non-sustainable farming methods for quite a while now because they provided the best short-term yields. Monsanto is just trying to boost this retard-rocket into orbital velocity.
Wait, wait, do you mean "public funds" or do you mean "$10 dollars a pop"? You'd have the government pay $10 million each for a cure and sell it for $10 each?
No, it would be developed with public funds, and then any pharmaceutical could manufacture it, and since the R&D is already covered, and nobody has a monopoly so they can't charge monopoly prices, so they sell it for $10 a pop.
The only reason the drug costs $10 mill a pop in the private development case is that they spent four times as much marketing the drug as they did spending it, they want to make back all of that money in one quarter, and then above that they want a 25% profit margin. And then they don't drop the price, they continue charging $10 mil a pop simply because the monopoly allows them to.
I know that since money == value, you think that if the drug is sold for $10 mil then it must be worth $10 mil and no alternative form of developing or selling that drug could result in a price other than $10 mil. That's the inherent assumption of your statement, and an inherent problem of equating money with value. It is wrong. The drug, whose value is determined by what it does, could have many different prices in different situations.
The pool of money for medical research is only so large. Who decides what the money is spent on - the people spending the money, of some group of "smart people" chosen by Chris Burke? Somehow I prefer the former.
Try "Some group of 'smart people' chosen by the people". Once again the concept of Democracy gets no mention so you can present a false choice between me personally choosing and rich people choosing. Rich people choosing is closer to actual aristrocracy as it has occured in history.
And anyone who wants to spend money on private development can. That doesn't prevent the government from spending money on research development also. It's a completely false dichotomy. If you really are that against government-funded research at all, then do me a favor and get off the Internet.
Fraud is of course wrong, and an obvious problem with laise faire capitalism is the lack of policing of fraud, but that's just a distraction from the real question.
Um, wait, when did it become fraud for me to downplay my interest in a car to get a better deal? Oh right, it isn't. It isn't a question of fraud, that isn't the problem with laise fair capitalism. The problem with laise faire capitalism is that it only works -- even in theory -- if all players have perfect knowledge. It is not, has not, and never will be possible for anyone to provide anyone else with "perfect knowledge" about a product, and it certainly isn't a law.
Assuming that people actually know what they're buying, how would you assign a value for that product/service other than "what people will pay for it"? If someone pays a lot for a given pair of shoes "just because" of some ad campaign, are you some higher order of human who gets to tell them that their judgement is flawed?
But see already we've incorporated the idea of unquantifiable intangibles into the concept of "value". Part of the value of the Nike shoe comes from its brand. If they halved the price of Nikes tommorrow, does that reduce the value of Nike's brand by 50% as well? Do the people buying the shoes see it as 50% less cool? What about someone who can't afford the current price, but could afford the 50% off price? Did they always value the Nike shoe half as much? Or did they value it the same, but were simply unable to make the purchase? Does the fact that I wouldn't spend more than $20k on a car mean I don't see any "value" in a Porsche 911? I would seriously beg to differ!
I suppose AIDS treatments have no value to Africans since they aren't buying them... or they can't afford it. Either way.
Your whole problem is you are trying to "assign a value", as in a quantitative number that you can use to sort items by their "worth". That's the fundamental flaw. Value, wo
I'm trying to follow you here: you'd rather see no cure than a cure that costs $10 million a pop (and presumably $10 a pop in fifty years, technology being what it is)?
No, that's not what he said at all. He's saying he'd rather see a cure developed using public funds so that anybody can make it for $10 a pop today, vs a privately developed one sold at $10 million a pop with $10 being the hope for fifty years down the line.
As for "greed deciding": the only true measure of the worth of anything is what people are willing to pay for it. Or do you instead favor aristocracy? The "worthy, wise men" decide the value of everything and dictate it to the unwashed masses? I think I'll take "greed deciding" over "plague3106 deciding", thank you.
What a sad commentary when the only "worth" someone can see as "true" is the dollar value placed on it. Aside from more philosophical questions, it should be pretty obvious to any capitalist that one can distort and hide something's value so as to either artificially increase or decrease its price. If I convince you that a given item has little value, but in truth I value it highly, what represents its true value better?
And I see you only acknowledge laise faire capitalism and aristocracy as the only choices. Whatever happened to democracy? Or has the voice of the people no worth, since in a secret ballot election you can't (reliably) buy votes?