MPEG-LA is not Apple. If lawsuits are going to happen and plans are being made what Jobs has done is leak inside knowledge as to what MPEG-LA is planning or wanting to do. Apple does not own MPEG-LA or control their actions.
What is unusual about MPEG-LA is that it is a 3rd party group that members belong to or pay fees to; while most stuff in the past was more of a mutually assured destruction pact between corps who owned each other's ideas - which allowed them to shut out bit players - but somehow doesn't seem as "evil" as creating an industry holding group - is this the future of widely held "I.P." - outsourced Patent trolling law firms that "represent" everybody?
Sounds like the mob... but all lawyers. You don't belong to the MPEG "union"? How you going to protect yourself? (from us...)
I was a scout and boy scout until I was allowed to quit. The whole process worked well on my father who ended up in 'nam.
The scouts prep you for the boy scouts like the 1st years of elementary prep you for school life. Then in the scouts its all about getting you into that old-age view of manhood that also happens to be closely tied to military ways. I pointed this out while in the cub scouts, having been raised on the old WW2 era films my father loved; it fell on deaf ears. I will say that the most gun ho ones were the not the vets... the vets were more into camping, nature etc-- and to me it seemed somehow the other men were making up for something. Needless to say, we didn't do much of the fun stuff and instead focused on earning stupid badges and the military prep work. Earning stickers, stars, points, candy, symbols stopped working on me early I suppose...
The scouts may have trouble getting with the times with internet and games distracting more youth; so they are trying to embrace it but I am far more skeptical and think of the recent words from some general who replied to the complaint that new recruits were too fat and out of shape: 'I don't care if they are fat as long as they can run a computer,' (paraphrasing.)
They are not cheap; they take forever to build with tons of government money. They require heavy regulation at multiple levels which again government pays for; including at the fuel and processing stages. Waste processing that is now "perfected" so we don't need a huge mountain to store it; yet other nations are still planning to do that... Like to see the costs for that part of it.
The money is better spent on grid storage plants and a modern power grid which could be done by the time the 1st nuclear plant is completed; not to mention those are cheaper to operate and do not get the level of government aid the nuclear "industry" has.
Aside from all that; it is still centralized power with all the problems that comes with; especially the monopolies that help corrupt / push around local governments.
Government does just fine with all the roads; how about they take over the darn grid and have us pay a connection fee? The guy up the street can sell me his excess power with the marketplace that could be created with an actually smart grid; I could build a bunch of flywheels and sell him back his power at night... It is possible.
FYI: The WTO is punishing/fining the USA for the internet gambling ban. This will please the WTO and lift the monetary losses that causes; but only if it allows foreign corps to gamble too.
Comedy Central won't care unless you make death threats. It worked before... besides you are opposing a more extreme group do you think they will risk management for SOME profits??? Writers quite possibly, employees sure-- but management?
Code obfustication will become a profession instead of a silly contest goal!
"Bad" programmers rejoice! You can be the next generation of financial legal scholars!
That is, assuming no meaningful regulation happens that simplifies the system so that it can actually be monitored. Say, CS academics rejoice! You can invent new systems and proofs to analyze this overly complex code!
Vouchers can not solve the societal and human problems that manifest in any school system.
A diverse nation needs to integrate the schools. After the blacks integrated there was a rise in private schools. duh.
We have a rise in racism but we ALSO have a huge push back in the culture wars - race used to to be a big issue there but its diminished in its role. The conflation of the two still continues to some degree so they get confused with each other.
One of the ways the culture war manifests itself is private schooling - can't let our children be influenced by THOSE PEOPLE! Each side in the war wants to alienate their children from the other side - and vouchers are way to doing public funding for private schooling while CHARTER SCHOOLS are an attempt to create public private schools in many cases. Sometimes they work out; over all the charter schools cost more and deliver no better and often do worse than the district model. The main reason for the push for them is the culture war; NOT accountability and better performance because they on a whole have not be delivering any improvements other than increased spending.
I went to inner city schools, suburban all white schools, and violent nun private school. I have education experts in the family. Just going to school does not make one an expert in education anymore than having a tooth pulled makes you a dentist. The school for your child and the teachers for your child quite likely are not what you think they should be; same goes for their peers.
CA has tons of illegals and immigrants in the system and I can tell you from where I am (midwest) those people often test lower and its not because they have a low IQ it is the tests themselves that fail to measure them equally against the locals.
On top of that big problem, you have all the issues of measuring IQ and how that is impossible...
Its more telling in Louisiana and Mississippi because they don't have those excuses and some of those illiterate teacher stories come from there... but again its just an IQ test and doesn't mean a whole lot.
1) insurance costs rise ANYWAY because they have a captive market who must pay or die and they don't care if we die because its only a minority of us who are deathly ill at a time. I know of real death panels - they are the actuaries at the insurance company. I expect the bastards to raise rates simply to retaliate but they will raise them to the extremes that the market will carry (this was already exceeded in terms of harm to the rest the US market but that is not their concern.)
2) IT IS CONSTITUTIONAL. you show me where it is banned Mr. Expert 10th amendment conspiracy nut. Its NEW and quite upsetting to be forced to buy a private product; thats a given, however, the bill calls the penalty for not buying the product a TAX and therefore it's a penalty tax which is totally legit. Even then, its constitutional to make you buy stuff and put you in jail for not doing it - think of it as a FLAW or loophole in the constitution that should be plugged. (I'm for such an amendment.)
2a) Not required; but a remedy work around could be to eliminate the LAW that requires medical care in emergencies unless you buy a private product. Don't have ID? Well, then you die. Tough luck. Then this would be no different than state laws requiring purchase of private car insurance (don't have a car- then you are ok; except here the car is the hospital and you DO NEED ONE.)
2b) the constitution hasn't been followed for quite some time; its a buzz word now. bush finished it off the "quaint" thing just a while ago; remember?
3) Government loophole in constitution. Could go to extremes. All such things start out simple and wanted; think of the children!! Opposition often uses a slippery slope argument which is a fallacy BTW; one has to be made aware where it could head and put up road blocks but its illogical to oppose something on the grounds of where someone can take its logical extremes. (We can't give the Fire Marshal the power to control fire! He'll control our stoves and furnaces!! He'll control everything we can buy or build that is flammable!)
I probably lost you already before I brought up logic. oh, you should look up the history of firefighting back when it was privatized.
4) economy: you are so lost here you probably support the policies that got us into this mess. waste of time. I will say that healthcare in the USA is parasitic to the economy and shouldn't be where it is - when you nuts claim its bad to fool with 6% of the economy-- you are making the case that we NEED to mess with it!
5) Projections are just that predictions. Insurance and medical greed has grown faster than anybody predicted; and apparently higher than many thought the public would tolerate. You'd think that being the #1 cause of bankruptcies and foreclosures for a few decades would have made the point with the public. You'd think that canada's high taxes would make them more costly, but its actually cheaper to get canadian labor even when they are about even currency wise with the USA now.
6) At the last second, I heard the penalty tax "fine" could be zero in some cases. People who can't afford it will be subsidized by the people who can with taxes. This comes out cheaper because ER costs are crazy expensive - FYI: high insurance rates are a result of these ER costs. So insurance costs WILL go down as a result of this bill -- that is a FACT; however, nothing in the bill requires insurance corps to lower their rates to us. they will make huge profits as a result of this bill and continue to raise rates. Oh, BTW-- insurance works by making most people pay more to cover the people without the money; its a privatized welfare system of a sort. Few "win" and ever make out on the deal.
Why should MY insurance pay for your poor lazy ass? You should get a job and save your money for bad times! If you don't pay insurance then WHY should I pay the rates to cover you in the ER?? Now why is this so different than a government non-profit insurance? because in your mind one is good
I don't believe for 1 second that MS with its history is not looking at Firefox and/or Webkit to save time AT MINIMUM. If not just doing wholesale copy/paste of open source code! Unlike open source which has to be careful about volunteers with MS contractual ties getting them into legal troubles or threats of infringement without evidence, MS can steal all the open source code it wants and if they are ever caught who'd be able to go after them and win? Would the settlement be enough to offset the costs of in house development? Probably not.
I remember how hard it was for apple to force disclosure when they stole quicktime's source code - and all that time they didn't bother to delete the apple employee comments in that code... That is how arrogant they were dealing with a big company who likes lawsuits... Gates was in charge back then, now look who we have in charge...
Makes sense that our politicians on both sides would sick up for our successful industries. Don't hear about those two needing bailouts... The USA doesn't EXPORT much of anything anymore: Military and related products Movies & Music & TV(?) IP lawsuits MSonopoly software Gambling (aka Banking "products")
It makes sense these "industries" are largely untouchable; even when they screw over their own country.
Same old games- and heavily 1st shooters and racing. Now its HD, you can see more details maybe have less gameplay and more realism. Same old thing new look with maybe a big new "revolutionary" feature like some comical weapon or gimmick.
I didn't plan on touching any new systems, I've been there and done that; plus I have more of a life so I can't invest the time to master something that is just version 8 of the same cliche with more controls than version 7! (except no keyboard...)
I ended up with a Wii- because it is new and has some new things plus it encourages real social gaming like we used to have before online games existed. Couldn't care less about the new 1st shooter's 1-2 "new" features.
Parent post is correct and is not a troll. Everybody who dares to refute any of the western propaganda against Chavez is labeled a troll. I don't give a rip about it other than how easily suckered and ignorant people are about their anti-Chavez positions. He is not a dictator; he is against the USA's empire and that is why there is a big movement against him and his attempt to spread the revolt to other nations. One can't even call the USA an empire without people getting irrational.
Exactly what I was thinking. Nobody seems to touch assembly anymore.
What about exceptions? I've always thought of them as a logical progression of the goto. Possibly as a result of goto being so useful in situations where you need to break out of multiple code blocks such as error conditions. Exceptions fulfill this use case while adding something goto always lacked-- indirection: I remember goto situations where I would redirect the goto or with some logic decide to goto another "higher" place to properly handle an error. Had goto been acceptable, I think that a "smarter" goto would have been associated with exceptions... "Advanced" goto involved labels instead of line numbers or memory locations- it was just the next logical step to make labels exist at run time so one could decide to catch or redirect them by their label.... I never encountered this because I learned goto was "bad" while learning C and pascal and the dogma at the time but when I ran into exceptions, I immediately thought "goto is back".
Think of java-- its all objects. So, we have these silly things called Singletons which only exist because we can't admit it was a mistake to kill global variables so we create a "new" concept that re-invents the wheel we couldn't live without. Even then, a Singleton is not built-in its a hack work around in for the rigid object only dogma (and where classes have runtime properties that is just paying lip service - those are still globals; one could do the same thing with a global struct but that would be taboo...)
When Chavez leaves office peacefully all the BS crybaby talk you have now will be put into its final context: You are full of crap.
As far as democracy, if most people support Chavez then he can do anything and as long as their input still works its a democracy- the republic could die but that another issue and debatable whether the democracy could continue for long without a republic.
Its a over-reaction; In the USA we have been on the edge of passing such laws for a long time now - just because they did doesn't make them that far a part from us-- because on this issue we are on the tip of doing similar things all the time. (but we do have a history of free speech and the ACLU etc fighting against it and they don't.)
The cynic in me says that the middle/upper class who are upset the poor are having their majority power recognized and getting back at them-- says that this is to discourage higher income kids from being violent or gaining skills at violence -- possibly also fear of the impact of US games, since the US military has been using them to sucker and train recruits - Chavez may think there is a plot to influence such kids; it would be a bit paranoid but then we are doing it on some level to our own people already.
Alberto Federico Ravell IS a propagandist and does peddle fear, but unless he is part of a terrorist plot he is no terrorist (opportunist perhaps.)
The pendulum tends to swing almost as far back the other way; hopefully settling in the middle someday. Problem is one side often feels like its just so unfair and when its their turn keeps pushing the thing out of spite and so it never settles. The poor of Venezuela are finally getting their turn for a change and one expects some backlash; it is far nicer than what has been done to them - not that it matters because its relative and that middle class family not being able to get a 2nd car is just as upset as the starving protester with sick children who is beaten and arrested.
When Chavez loses ground, the other side has to be more reasonable and realize they had it easy and not try to push hard to the other extreme; be mature adults so long term things can progress.
Venezuela is in a lose-lose situation and was stuck there and continues to be put there until they sell out their own people; that is how the game has worked for a long time. Trying to get out of the cycle is extremely hard and Chavez is attempting to do so, I give him credit for the attempt and depth of his reading. I don't profess to know the answers and he seems to wonder on his as well; there may be no good answer. The global economics is bent towards exploiting such nations while rewarding a minority to help maintain it who are not that aware of their participation - some are, but many are not and even get these foolish attitudes of thinking the poor are lazy or stupid or god is punishing them etc. Which is easier than learning the role they play in what actually is happening. I have seen it here in the USA where we blame nations that we purposely wreak for their bad conditions. Hati being one of them. I know a few businessmen here in the USA who get tons of government services and money and resent every penny they must pay in taxes while complaining about their min-wage staff who is lazy because they have 2 full time jobs and need welfare! They simply can't grasp if they paid more their workers could have 1 job and lower the burden on the welfare state - or that if government stopped corporate welfare their businesses would be struggling (or they personally would be broke since they take advantages of bankruptcy protections that let them leverage risk.)
Some nations are in such bad shape one can argue they are emergency conditions all the time and therefore conventional ideals must be set aside. This is a problem but also a reality that should get more thought during rational times than it does.
You could reply in the affirmative. You could say its a logical statement without supporting premises and possibly not mere name calling and then list some of them.
You could point out the one I missed: dishonesty. You could be a grammar nazi. You could be a PC type and try to tell me I need to be nice to these people (possibly you.)
I'd rather take slow acting poison than a shot to the head anyday. I might find a cure or live but a shot in the head has worse odds.
Hell, there is a running joke using poll data on the undecided voters; they largely are suckers.
I am decided and I was well aware of the issues and compromises required. I wasn't an Obama supporter but it was clear which one would ease the pain. The only question was slow pain or fast and if we would survive it. We might not in the end anyhow.
I'm sick of being nice to the morons who get unfairly equal treatment. The same mentality that causes the news media here to put a top scientist on a level footing with a superstitious crackpod (for ratings) has spread into other areas of the culture. Some stuff is stupid or batshit crazy and needs to be put down like like we do with the KKK. At least we are not in that bad a condition (yet.)
Removing people from the act in which they participate makes them capable of doing truly horrible acts they could not do alone. Plus the underlings have an added benefit of shifting blame and they can do even more horrible things. Plenty of studies to back this - some famious. In addition, more recent studies show that people are way more dishonest with things removed from their monetary value - ex: you won't steal a buck from a coworker but you'll take their coke from the fridge much more easily.
Corporations can exploit the human morality loopholes just as much as government, military or cults do and while they are smaller, they distribute their profits to the shareholders while the others are not so even handed with the rewards. The behavior is somewhat organic in how it evolves and runs on the collective minds of the members like a distributed virus - the system can minimize or encourage this.
Example: My cousin does math problems for a living. He doesn't see the connection between them and insurance policies for a reason. He knows his work may shift policy or decide something that could kill somebody but he can't make that connection because they purposely remove that - he prefers to think he is not part of the problem and does not feel a connection other than working for an evil corp which a lot of people must do and somebody else would take his job if he refused. This is how it gets done. Little Eichmanns are just a dark part of human nature that everybody at some point participates to various degrees - which is likely why so many get upset at the concept..
I thought the theoretical limit for solar to electrical conversion was about 40%?
This 86% inside that 40% limit? I thought they were talking about radiation absorption in which case the power would be much less and the panels would heat up and likely pose another issue (unless you can run water behind them and use it as a heater which is the best use for solar anyhow.)
What about that new thing I saw on the BBC last year which was working on radio-like antennas for the IR wavelength?? Seemed to me to be a good idea.
Nixon did immeasurable harm; we are still feeling the damage today. HMOs, bad food, family farms dying, rise of GM food; and going off the gold standard to the oil dollar standard; putting us at the mercy of OPEC... Starting of trade with China for the purposes that came to fruition later; don't think for a second that wasn't the intention. it was.
You forgot Reagan and Bush 1. Yet you mention Carter who did not do as much as any of the other recent ones.
Obama has just gotten started and is not on their level yet. The bailout wasn't on his watch (and is largely payed back no thanks to Bush and Republicans who never wanted the bailout money back... or ANY measure to prevent a repeat kissing bankster ass to the extreme. except ron paul and his hopeless move to audit the fed.)
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MPEG-LA is not Apple. If lawsuits are going to happen and plans are being made what Jobs has done is leak inside knowledge as to what MPEG-LA is planning or wanting to do. Apple does not own MPEG-LA or control their actions.
What is unusual about MPEG-LA is that it is a 3rd party group that members belong to or pay fees to; while most stuff in the past was more of a mutually assured destruction pact between corps who owned each other's ideas - which allowed them to shut out bit players - but somehow doesn't seem as "evil" as creating an industry holding group - is this the future of widely held "I.P." - outsourced Patent trolling law firms that "represent" everybody?
Sounds like the mob... but all lawyers. You don't belong to the MPEG "union"? How you going to protect yourself? (from us...)
I was a scout and boy scout until I was allowed to quit. The whole process worked well on my father who ended up in 'nam.
The scouts prep you for the boy scouts like the 1st years of elementary prep you for school life. Then in the scouts its all about getting you into that old-age view of manhood that also happens to be closely tied to military ways. I pointed this out while in the cub scouts, having been raised on the old WW2 era films my father loved; it fell on deaf ears. I will say that the most gun ho ones were the not the vets... the vets were more into camping, nature etc-- and to me it seemed somehow the other men were making up for something. Needless to say, we didn't do much of the fun stuff and instead focused on earning stupid badges and the military prep work. Earning stickers, stars, points, candy, symbols stopped working on me early I suppose...
The scouts may have trouble getting with the times with internet and games distracting more youth; so they are trying to embrace it but I am far more skeptical and think of the recent words from some general who replied to the complaint that new recruits were too fat and out of shape: 'I don't care if they are fat as long as they can run a computer,' (paraphrasing.)
They are not cheap; they take forever to build with tons of government money. They require heavy regulation at multiple levels which again government pays for; including at the fuel and processing stages. Waste processing that is now "perfected" so we don't need a huge mountain to store it; yet other nations are still planning to do that... Like to see the costs for that part of it.
The money is better spent on grid storage plants and a modern power grid which could be done by the time the 1st nuclear plant is completed; not to mention those are cheaper to operate and do not get the level of government aid the nuclear "industry" has.
Aside from all that; it is still centralized power with all the problems that comes with; especially the monopolies that help corrupt / push around local governments.
Government does just fine with all the roads; how about they take over the darn grid and have us pay a connection fee? The guy up the street can sell me his excess power with the marketplace that could be created with an actually smart grid; I could build a bunch of flywheels and sell him back his power at night... It is possible.
FYI: The WTO is punishing/fining the USA for the internet gambling ban. This will please the WTO and lift the monetary losses that causes; but only if it allows foreign corps to gamble too.
Comedy Central won't care unless you make death threats. It worked before... besides you are opposing a more extreme group do you think they will risk management for SOME profits??? Writers quite possibly, employees sure-- but management?
Code obfustication will become a profession instead of a silly contest goal!
"Bad" programmers rejoice! You can be the next generation of financial legal scholars!
That is, assuming no meaningful regulation happens that simplifies the system so that it can actually be monitored. Say, CS academics rejoice! You can invent new systems and proofs to analyze this overly complex code!
Job security here we come!
Vouchers can not solve the societal and human problems that manifest in any school system.
A diverse nation needs to integrate the schools. After the blacks integrated there was a rise in private schools. duh.
We have a rise in racism but we ALSO have a huge push back in the culture wars - race used to to be a big issue there but its diminished in its role. The conflation of the two still continues to some degree so they get confused with each other.
One of the ways the culture war manifests itself is private schooling - can't let our children be influenced by THOSE PEOPLE! Each side in the war wants to alienate their children from the other side - and vouchers are way to doing public funding for private schooling while CHARTER SCHOOLS are an attempt to create public private schools in many cases. Sometimes they work out; over all the charter schools cost more and deliver no better and often do worse than the district model. The main reason for the push for them is the culture war; NOT accountability and better performance because they on a whole have not be delivering any improvements other than increased spending.
I went to inner city schools, suburban all white schools, and violent nun private school. I have education experts in the family. Just going to school does not make one an expert in education anymore than having a tooth pulled makes you a dentist. The school for your child and the teachers for your child quite likely are not what you think they should be; same goes for their peers.
CA has tons of illegals and immigrants in the system and I can tell you from where I am (midwest) those people often test lower and its not because they have a low IQ it is the tests themselves that fail to measure them equally against the locals.
On top of that big problem, you have all the issues of measuring IQ and how that is impossible...
Its more telling in Louisiana and Mississippi because they don't have those excuses and some of those illiterate teacher stories come from there... but again its just an IQ test and doesn't mean a whole lot.
1) insurance costs rise ANYWAY because they have a captive market who must pay or die and they don't care if we die because its only a minority of us who are deathly ill at a time. I know of real death panels - they are the actuaries at the insurance company. I expect the bastards to raise rates simply to retaliate but they will raise them to the extremes that the market will carry (this was already exceeded in terms of harm to the rest the US market but that is not their concern.)
2) IT IS CONSTITUTIONAL. you show me where it is banned Mr. Expert 10th amendment conspiracy nut. Its NEW and quite upsetting to be forced to buy a private product; thats a given, however, the bill calls the penalty for not buying the product a TAX and therefore it's a penalty tax which is totally legit. Even then, its constitutional to make you buy stuff and put you in jail for not doing it - think of it as a FLAW or loophole in the constitution that should be plugged. (I'm for such an amendment.)
2a) Not required; but a remedy work around could be to eliminate the LAW that requires medical care in emergencies unless you buy a private product. Don't have ID? Well, then you die. Tough luck. Then this would be no different than state laws requiring purchase of private car insurance (don't have a car- then you are ok; except here the car is the hospital and you DO NEED ONE.)
2b) the constitution hasn't been followed for quite some time; its a buzz word now. bush finished it off the "quaint" thing just a while ago; remember?
3) Government loophole in constitution. Could go to extremes. All such things start out simple and wanted; think of the children!! Opposition often uses a slippery slope argument which is a fallacy BTW; one has to be made aware where it could head and put up road blocks but its illogical to oppose something on the grounds of where someone can take its logical extremes. (We can't give the Fire Marshal the power to control fire! He'll control our stoves and furnaces!! He'll control everything we can buy or build that is flammable!)
I probably lost you already before I brought up logic. oh, you should look up the history of firefighting back when it was privatized.
4) economy: you are so lost here you probably support the policies that got us into this mess. waste of time. I will say that healthcare in the USA is parasitic to the economy and shouldn't be where it is - when you nuts claim its bad to fool with 6% of the economy-- you are making the case that we NEED to mess with it!
5) Projections are just that predictions. Insurance and medical greed has grown faster than anybody predicted; and apparently higher than many thought the public would tolerate. You'd think that being the #1 cause of bankruptcies and foreclosures for a few decades would have made the point with the public. You'd think that canada's high taxes would make them more costly, but its actually cheaper to get canadian labor even when they are about even currency wise with the USA now.
6) At the last second, I heard the penalty tax "fine" could be zero in some cases. People who can't afford it will be subsidized by the people who can with taxes. This comes out cheaper because ER costs are crazy expensive - FYI: high insurance rates are a result of these ER costs. So insurance costs WILL go down as a result of this bill -- that is a FACT; however, nothing in the bill requires insurance corps to lower their rates to us. they will make huge profits as a result of this bill and continue to raise rates. Oh, BTW-- insurance works by making most people pay more to cover the people without the money; its a privatized welfare system of a sort. Few "win" and ever make out on the deal.
Why should MY insurance pay for your poor lazy ass? You should get a job and save your money for bad times! If you don't pay insurance then WHY should I pay the rates to cover you in the ER?? Now why is this so different than a government non-profit insurance? because in your mind one is good
Now that dictator Chavez wants to ban violent video games in Switzerland!? WTF? These leftist dictatorships need to be stopped! ;-)
I don't believe for 1 second that MS with its history is not looking at Firefox and/or Webkit to save time AT MINIMUM. If not just doing wholesale copy/paste of open source code!
Unlike open source which has to be careful about volunteers with MS contractual ties getting them into legal troubles or threats of infringement without evidence, MS can steal all the open source code it wants and if they are ever caught who'd be able to go after them and win? Would the settlement be enough to offset the costs of in house development? Probably not.
I remember how hard it was for apple to force disclosure when they stole quicktime's source code - and all that time they didn't bother to delete the apple employee comments in that code... That is how arrogant they were dealing with a big company who likes lawsuits... Gates was in charge back then, now look who we have in charge...
Makes sense that our politicians on both sides would sick up for our successful industries. Don't hear about those two needing bailouts...
The USA doesn't EXPORT much of anything anymore:
Military and related products
Movies & Music & TV(?)
IP lawsuits
MSonopoly software
Gambling (aka Banking "products")
It makes sense these "industries" are largely untouchable; even when they screw over their own country.
Same old games- and heavily 1st shooters and racing. Now its HD, you can see more details maybe have less gameplay and more realism. Same old thing new look with maybe a big new "revolutionary" feature like some comical weapon or gimmick.
I didn't plan on touching any new systems, I've been there and done that; plus I have more of a life so I can't invest the time to master something that is just version 8 of the same cliche with more controls than version 7! (except no keyboard...)
I ended up with a Wii- because it is new and has some new things plus it encourages real social gaming like we used to have before online games existed. Couldn't care less about the new 1st shooter's 1-2 "new" features.
Parent post is correct and is not a troll. Everybody who dares to refute any of the western propaganda against Chavez is labeled a troll. I don't give a rip about it other than how easily suckered and ignorant people are about their anti-Chavez positions. He is not a dictator; he is against the USA's empire and that is why there is a big movement against him and his attempt to spread the revolt to other nations. One can't even call the USA an empire without people getting irrational.
Exactly what I was thinking. Nobody seems to touch assembly anymore.
What about exceptions? I've always thought of them as a logical progression of the goto. Possibly as a result of goto being so useful in situations where you need to break out of multiple code blocks such as error conditions. Exceptions fulfill this use case while adding something goto always lacked-- indirection: I remember goto situations where I would redirect the goto or with some logic decide to goto another "higher" place to properly handle an error. Had goto been acceptable, I think that a "smarter" goto would have been associated with exceptions... "Advanced" goto involved labels instead of line numbers or memory locations- it was just the next logical step to make labels exist at run time so one could decide to catch or redirect them by their label.... I never encountered this because I learned goto was "bad" while learning C and pascal and the dogma at the time but when I ran into exceptions, I immediately thought "goto is back".
Think of java-- its all objects. So, we have these silly things called Singletons which only exist because we can't admit it was a mistake to kill global variables so we create a "new" concept that re-invents the wheel we couldn't live without. Even then, a Singleton is not built-in its a hack work around in for the rigid object only dogma (and where classes have runtime properties that is just paying lip service - those are still globals; one could do the same thing with a global struct but that would be taboo...)
When Chavez leaves office peacefully all the BS crybaby talk you have now will be put into its final context:
You are full of crap.
As far as democracy, if most people support Chavez then he can do anything and as long as their input still works its a democracy- the republic could die but that another issue and debatable whether the democracy could continue for long without a republic.
Its a over-reaction; In the USA we have been on the edge of passing such laws for a long time now - just because they did doesn't make them that far a part from us-- because on this issue we are on the tip of doing similar things all the time. (but we do have a history of free speech and the ACLU etc fighting against it and they don't.)
The cynic in me says that the middle/upper class who are upset the poor are having their majority power recognized and getting back at them-- says that this is to discourage higher income kids from being violent or gaining skills at violence -- possibly also fear of the impact of US games, since the US military has been using them to sucker and train recruits - Chavez may think there is a plot to influence such kids; it would be a bit paranoid but then we are doing it on some level to our own people already.
Alberto Federico Ravell IS a propagandist and does peddle fear, but unless he is part of a terrorist plot he is no terrorist (opportunist perhaps.)
Venezuela was never really democratic. wake up.
The pendulum tends to swing almost as far back the other way; hopefully settling in the middle someday. Problem is one side often feels like its just so unfair and when its their turn keeps pushing the thing out of spite and so it never settles. The poor of Venezuela are finally getting their turn for a change and one expects some backlash; it is far nicer than what has been done to them - not that it matters because its relative and that middle class family not being able to get a 2nd car is just as upset as the starving protester with sick children who is beaten and arrested.
When Chavez loses ground, the other side has to be more reasonable and realize they had it easy and not try to push hard to the other extreme; be mature adults so long term things can progress.
Venezuela is in a lose-lose situation and was stuck there and continues to be put there until they sell out their own people; that is how the game has worked for a long time. Trying to get out of the cycle is extremely hard and Chavez is attempting to do so, I give him credit for the attempt and depth of his reading. I don't profess to know the answers and he seems to wonder on his as well; there may be no good answer. The global economics is bent towards exploiting such nations while rewarding a minority to help maintain it who are not that aware of their participation - some are, but many are not and even get these foolish attitudes of thinking the poor are lazy or stupid or god is punishing them etc. Which is easier than learning the role they play in what actually is happening. I have seen it here in the USA where we blame nations that we purposely wreak for their bad conditions. Hati being one of them. I know a few businessmen here in the USA who get tons of government services and money and resent every penny they must pay in taxes while complaining about their min-wage staff who is lazy because they have 2 full time jobs and need welfare! They simply can't grasp if they paid more their workers could have 1 job and lower the burden on the welfare state - or that if government stopped corporate welfare their businesses would be struggling (or they personally would be broke since they take advantages of bankruptcy protections that let them leverage risk.)
Some nations are in such bad shape one can argue they are emergency conditions all the time and therefore conventional ideals must be set aside. This is a problem but also a reality that should get more thought during rational times than it does.
You could reply in the affirmative. You could say its a logical statement without supporting premises and possibly not mere name calling and then list some of them.
You could point out the one I missed: dishonesty.
You could be a grammar nazi.
You could be a PC type and try to tell me I need to be nice to these people (possibly you.)
I'd rather take slow acting poison than a shot to the head anyday. I might find a cure or live but a shot in the head has worse odds.
Hell, there is a running joke using poll data on the undecided voters; they largely are suckers.
I am decided and I was well aware of the issues and compromises required. I wasn't an Obama supporter but it was clear which one would ease the pain. The only question was slow pain or fast and if we would survive it. We might not in the end anyhow.
I'm sick of being nice to the morons who get unfairly equal treatment. The same mentality that causes the news media here to put a top scientist on a level footing with a superstitious crackpod (for ratings) has spread into other areas of the culture. Some stuff is stupid or batshit crazy and needs to be put down like like we do with the KKK. At least we are not in that bad a condition (yet.)
Removing people from the act in which they participate makes them capable of doing truly horrible acts they could not do alone. Plus the underlings have an added benefit of shifting blame and they can do even more horrible things. Plenty of studies to back this - some famious. In addition, more recent studies show that people are way more dishonest with things removed from their monetary value - ex: you won't steal a buck from a coworker but you'll take their coke from the fridge much more easily.
Corporations can exploit the human morality loopholes just as much as government, military or cults do and while they are smaller, they distribute their profits to the shareholders while the others are not so even handed with the rewards. The behavior is somewhat organic in how it evolves and runs on the collective minds of the members like a distributed virus - the system can minimize or encourage this.
Example: My cousin does math problems for a living. He doesn't see the connection between them and insurance policies for a reason. He knows his work may shift policy or decide something that could kill somebody but he can't make that connection because they purposely remove that - he prefers to think he is not part of the problem and does not feel a connection other than working for an evil corp which a lot of people must do and somebody else would take his job if he refused. This is how it gets done. Little Eichmanns are just a dark part of human nature that everybody at some point participates to various degrees - which is likely why so many get upset at the concept..
I thought the theoretical limit for solar to electrical conversion was about 40%?
This 86% inside that 40% limit? I thought they were talking about radiation absorption in which case the power would be much less and the panels would heat up and likely pose another issue (unless you can run water behind them and use it as a heater which is the best use for solar anyhow.)
What about that new thing I saw on the BBC last year which was working on radio-like antennas for the IR wavelength?? Seemed to me to be a good idea.
Nixon did immeasurable harm; we are still feeling the damage today. HMOs, bad food, family farms dying, rise of GM food; and going off the gold standard to the oil dollar standard; putting us at the mercy of OPEC... Starting of trade with China for the purposes that came to fruition later; don't think for a second that wasn't the intention. it was.
You forgot Reagan and Bush 1. Yet you mention Carter who did not do as much as any of the other recent ones.
Obama has just gotten started and is not on their level yet. The bailout wasn't on his watch (and is largely payed back no thanks to Bush and Republicans who never wanted the bailout money back... or ANY measure to prevent a repeat kissing bankster ass to the extreme. except ron paul and his hopeless move to audit the fed.)