I agree. And texting? Frankly I see no need for texting at all, let alone while driving. I want to apply for a government grant. They can buy me some bullets and every time I see someone texting while driving, I just wait until they are in a safe area, then put them out of our misery. I figure it will save lives of innocent people, and get some of the bacteria out of the gene pool.
I used to not trust my kid. But he really tried to earn my trust, and finally I decided to trust him.
Then I got a call from the cops that he was busted with his friends in a nearby town, all of them underage, all of them had been drinking. At least he wasn't driving. Now I don't trust him and won't ever trust him.
Yes, I know, according to ever childless a-hole on slashdot, that if I were a better parent that this wouldn't have happened. Thank you for your sage advice. Now go have a kid, wait about 20 years, and the come back so I can laugh in your face. It doesn't matter how good, and to some extent, how bad, of a parent you are. A kid is still and individual and may grow up good or bad, independent of what you do. That is why you hold individuals, and not their parents, society, or other people, responsible for each person's own actions. Of course, I realize that in America, it is unusual to hold people responsible for their own actions. I'm just old fashioned I guess.
Curfew saves lives because accident rates for teens double after dark. Also most curfew laws are actually intelligent. If you are coming home from work, a school event, church etc., then no problem. However, if you are just out screwing around, then that is against the law. Again, statistics show that when teens are out screwing around in a car, they are more likely to get in an accident, then if they are just driving home from a function. Also, adding a passenger in a teens car has been shown to increase the chance of an accident by 50%, add some more people and by the time you hit 4, a teen is over 200% more likely to get in an accident then if they were alone in the car. It may look like the man is persecuting teens, but the statistics back it up. I'm all in favor of letting people kill themselves if they want to, but I am happy to curb their rights when they want to kill themselves and take other people with them.
Mine used to be able to boot up in about 15 minutes, but after installing Office 2007, it now takes more like half an hour. Particularly Outlook takes about 3 times longer to get going and stop slamming the hard drive and CPU than it did with Outlook 2k3. Shutting down gracefully takes about 10 minutes, because even when shutting down, Outlook takes about 10 minutes to thrash the drives for awhile.
I don't even have the option of hibernating because I am required to take my laptop home with me so that I can work at home, too. I'd say they are losing a good $3,000 a year worth of my time in shutting down and starting up, but that is not really accurate because I have a fixed amount of work to do, so it is really me that loses $3,000 a year worth of time.
I believe that the whole geocentric thought of the universe was more religiously motivated than any kind of rational exercise.
I don't believe that the geocentric idea was religiously based. I believe the clinging to the idea was religiously based. However, I think it is only natural to consider that the world revolves around you, until you learn otherwise. I believe that the geocentric ideas in books like the Bible were thought of long before they were set down in the Bible, as we know that the Bible does have some stories that predated the Jewish religion.
Also, many of the supposed geocentric passages in the Bible are not supporting a geocentric view, just making a statement about the movement of the sun and planets without even trying to make some sort of point about it. We don't consider the weatherman to have a geocentric point of view when he says "the sun will rise at 6:37 A.M. tomorrow".
Small claims courts generally don't allow time to be recovered unless it is a paid for contract.
Well, then make it a contract. In your ebay listing, put in there in plain view something to the effect of "by causing this sale of a legal second sale item to be delisted, you agree to pay $X for me to relist this item."
I wish with you there was an easy way to counteract this kind of chicanery.
There is. Small claims court. Keep relisting until you eventually get it sold, then sue NetEnforcers for your time to relist it X-1 time. I assume your time is worth $400 an hour, just like their lawyers, then also sue for the interest on whatever funds you eventually got from the sale, and also for court costs, filing costs, lawyers fees, and whatever else that their illegal takedown cost you. Perhaps some sort of "not doing your homework" punishment fine as well.
If I sell you an apple from my apple tree then what right should I have to say that you sell that apple at? Or what rights do I have to then your apple at all?
Once the retailer buys it from the manufacturer, they can sell it at any price they want with no legal recourse from the manufacturer. However, the manufacturer is under no legal obligation to continue selling to you and if they don't like the way you are selling their products, they can cut you off.
Issuing take down notices and the like is something I don't think they can legally do, unless they already have an agreement with the manufacturer saying they won't sell for less than the MAP, in which case they are in violation of a contract with the manufacturer.
Take your $50 dollar profit, if that's all you can get. Buy more speakers, and go "internet" as well.
Many manufacturers, including most of the ones that I deal with, will not allow you to sell on the internet because the only authorize you to sell in your "territory". And that is not fair to other local businesses, supposedly. Unfortunately, since they let other businesses sell their products on the internet, what they are really doing is ensuring that ALL local businesses are not allowed to compete fairly with their internet competition.
I actually was up at Amazon getting ready to order it when I read the reviews mentioning the DRM.
So you read the biased reviews about how horrible the DRM is. They probably used words like "draconian" just like good old slashdot. But did you realize that some of what those reviews said was out-and-out lies? Did you know that my legal copy plays just fine with Daemon tools up and running? Did you know that I can run Spore without the CD in the tray?
Unfortunately, the people who put negative reviews of questionable content on Amazon probably cost EA millions, and convinced many to illegally download it instead. If I was EA, I would be pissed.
It's almost as bad as the media successfully campaigning for Obama.
The question is, if they released a DRM-free game for $50, would you buy it, or would you still download it? Nevermind, I think I know the answer to that question. But then, if there is no DRM, what would you use as an excuse for not paying for the game? I guess "It wasn't worth $50" is always a good fallback excuse. Too bad this isn't a haggling session. Your options are to pay the price or voice your displeasure by not obtaining the game. Believe me, if it sells poorly and there is no piracy, that sends a much more clear message then if it sells poorly, but there is a lot of piracy.
I agree with you 100%. If I as a publisher saw that my game sold poorly and had no piracy, then my conclusion is that it sucked. If it sold poorly and there was a lot of piracy, my conclusion would be that the game is good, but that people didn't like the price point and I had made it too easy for them to play it for free. If it sold well and there was a lot of piracy then I would have to conclude that it was a great game, but I had made it too easy to play for free.
DRM isn't there to stop someone experienced in illegally obtaining software. It is there to stop the average person from doing so. Most people don't know how to download software, run key generators, replace binaries and that sort of thing. They want to click on something and have it run. It is just like a lock on a house doesn't do anything to stop a professional thief, but it will stop the guy going door to door just trying doorknobs until he's found one that is unlocked. The people screaming "DRM is useless", are like the professional thieves saying "locks are useless" all the time justifying that they only break into houses because people put locks on them.
Yes, way to overdramatize, slashdot. "Draconian" DRM. You mean the fact that it won't even RUN if it finds evidence of a ROM loader on the system? Oh, wait, my legal copy of Spore ran just fine with daemon tools up and running. In fact, Spore doesn't even care if you have the CD in the drive or not. That's better than most other games these days. The only DRm they seem to have is limiting you to 3 installations, which is not even a hard limit because you could always call support an get more. No, the supposed draconian DRM is just an excuse people use to justify downloading the software illegally.
My local electric company does that, too. It's called a "convenience fee" for automatic monthly billing. In other words, for the convenience of them knowing that the amount will be drawn out automatically on a set date with no effort on their part, they charge you a fee. Deathstogoodforem.
Our local DMV has an extra charge if you use credit cards instead of cash or check. Someone should read their CC processing agreement aloud to them so that they will realize that they are in violation.
I mean, you can't have a cell phone powered on in the hospital. It damages the equipment. Or at least that's what all the hospitals I have been to in the last ten years have indicated. Certainly if it is so horrible to have a cell phone on in the lobby, then it must be that much worse in the actual surgery room. Surely, they are not just lying to us about how bad cell phones are for the equipment.
Till they can make an electric/hybrid car that looks and performs more like a Tesla, but at a bit more reasonable price. I'm not interested.
It would not be terribly difficult to make an electric vehicle out of most any current car. However, how would people be able to look at it and tell that it is an electric car and know that you are a wonderful person for saving the environment if it looked like a normal car? By making it ugly, then people can see it and know what great sacrifices you are making for the good of the environment.
In my experience, a chargeback was not that hard. I use Amex, which I am lead to believe is more customer focused than other brands. I have done about 5 or 6 chargebacks, and they didn't require anything other than a phone call to start the process and immediately issue me a credit pending review of the situation. I have never had a chargeback credit come back in the vendor's favor.
I am sort of surprised that Dell has charged you already. I expect an upstanding company like Dell to not charge until the item is shipped.
Space exploration can not be likened to a trip to the Bahamas. Space exploration is an investment in research. Research results in innovation. However, research doesn't pay off in a quarter or a year, it pays off over decades. Because of our greed, we have forced our publicly traded companies to focus on quarterly improvements, rather than long term innovations. Yes, improvements make money, and they make it more quickly, however they do not make nearly as much money as innovations. We jeer at the automakers who have their hands out looking for money from the government, however, we are the investors who told them quarter after quarter to slightly improve their product to get us that quick buck, rather than invest in research into new technology such as alternative fuels, which would cause them to lose money for many quarters but would undoubtedly have paid off heavily over the last couple of years when gas prices skyrocketed. Yes, we, the American investor, are to blame. We have turned Lucent from a company who's innovations made billions into a company who struggles to survive trying to make small improvements to existing technology.
I don't want this to happen to NASA. I would like very much for the private sector to invest in space travel, but the amount of money it takes to fund such a thing is not available in the private sector. If it was, then when it paid off, a few people would get extremely rich. Wouldn't it be better if our government made the investment into space research and when it paid off, that it would pay off for all the people?
I feel eliminating the national debt can be good for the economy.
REDUCING the national debt would be good for the economy. ELIMINATING it would be bad for the economy. National debt is not like the kind of debt that most consumers have, ie credit card payments, loans on depreciating assets (cars, boats), etc. Government debt is like investment debt. When you take out debt to start a new business or fund an existing business, that is good debt. As long as the ROI is better than your interest rate, a good businessman will borrow all he can. However, in the case of the government, they have borrowed more than the ROI, and need to reduce their debt. However, I strongly believe that the government should always have SOME debt, in order to "grow the business" so to speak. Figuring out the right amount is the challenge, just like in a small business.
That doesn't fit this scenario. This is more like, when you are not at home, a stranger breaks into your house and trains your dog to be a killer and then turns it loose on the neighborhood. I don't think that the dog owner should be responsible. Instead, the guy who trained it to be a killer should be.
I like the look of plasma over LCD but sadly, it seems LCD is winning out.
I find it interesting that there are so many posts in this thread about LCD versus plasma, but only one post so far even mentioning DLP. I find this interesting because at least 1/2 of the large sets I see are DLP.
18% of audiophiles were surprised that they could tell no difference between sound coming through standard 18 gauge wiring and sound coming through $200 per foot premium cables. The other 82% of audiophiles distinctly heard the difference.
However, it turns out that the engineers performing the test forgot to actually switch over from the cheap ones to the expensive ones so both tests were on the same cheap wires.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. And texting? Frankly I see no need for texting at all, let alone while driving. I want to apply for a government grant. They can buy me some bullets and every time I see someone texting while driving, I just wait until they are in a safe area, then put them out of our misery. I figure it will save lives of innocent people, and get some of the bacteria out of the gene pool.
I used to not trust my kid. But he really tried to earn my trust, and finally I decided to trust him. Then I got a call from the cops that he was busted with his friends in a nearby town, all of them underage, all of them had been drinking. At least he wasn't driving. Now I don't trust him and won't ever trust him.
Yes, I know, according to ever childless a-hole on slashdot, that if I were a better parent that this wouldn't have happened. Thank you for your sage advice. Now go have a kid, wait about 20 years, and the come back so I can laugh in your face. It doesn't matter how good, and to some extent, how bad, of a parent you are. A kid is still and individual and may grow up good or bad, independent of what you do. That is why you hold individuals, and not their parents, society, or other people, responsible for each person's own actions. Of course, I realize that in America, it is unusual to hold people responsible for their own actions. I'm just old fashioned I guess.
Curfew saves lives because accident rates for teens double after dark. Also most curfew laws are actually intelligent. If you are coming home from work, a school event, church etc., then no problem. However, if you are just out screwing around, then that is against the law. Again, statistics show that when teens are out screwing around in a car, they are more likely to get in an accident, then if they are just driving home from a function. Also, adding a passenger in a teens car has been shown to increase the chance of an accident by 50%, add some more people and by the time you hit 4, a teen is over 200% more likely to get in an accident then if they were alone in the car. It may look like the man is persecuting teens, but the statistics back it up. I'm all in favor of letting people kill themselves if they want to, but I am happy to curb their rights when they want to kill themselves and take other people with them.
Mine used to be able to boot up in about 15 minutes, but after installing Office 2007, it now takes more like half an hour. Particularly Outlook takes about 3 times longer to get going and stop slamming the hard drive and CPU than it did with Outlook 2k3. Shutting down gracefully takes about 10 minutes, because even when shutting down, Outlook takes about 10 minutes to thrash the drives for awhile.
I don't even have the option of hibernating because I am required to take my laptop home with me so that I can work at home, too. I'd say they are losing a good $3,000 a year worth of my time in shutting down and starting up, but that is not really accurate because I have a fixed amount of work to do, so it is really me that loses $3,000 a year worth of time.
Even the ugliest Asian guys still get hot asian chicks.
I believe that the whole geocentric thought of the universe was more religiously motivated than any kind of rational exercise.
I don't believe that the geocentric idea was religiously based. I believe the clinging to the idea was religiously based. However, I think it is only natural to consider that the world revolves around you, until you learn otherwise. I believe that the geocentric ideas in books like the Bible were thought of long before they were set down in the Bible, as we know that the Bible does have some stories that predated the Jewish religion.
Also, many of the supposed geocentric passages in the Bible are not supporting a geocentric view, just making a statement about the movement of the sun and planets without even trying to make some sort of point about it. We don't consider the weatherman to have a geocentric point of view when he says "the sun will rise at 6:37 A.M. tomorrow".
Small claims courts generally don't allow time to be recovered unless it is a paid for contract.
Well, then make it a contract. In your ebay listing, put in there in plain view something to the effect of "by causing this sale of a legal second sale item to be delisted, you agree to pay $X for me to relist this item."
I wish with you there was an easy way to counteract this kind of chicanery.
There is. Small claims court. Keep relisting until you eventually get it sold, then sue NetEnforcers for your time to relist it X-1 time. I assume your time is worth $400 an hour, just like their lawyers, then also sue for the interest on whatever funds you eventually got from the sale, and also for court costs, filing costs, lawyers fees, and whatever else that their illegal takedown cost you. Perhaps some sort of "not doing your homework" punishment fine as well.
If I sell you an apple from my apple tree then what right should I have to say that you sell that apple at? Or what rights do I have to then your apple at all?
Once the retailer buys it from the manufacturer, they can sell it at any price they want with no legal recourse from the manufacturer. However, the manufacturer is under no legal obligation to continue selling to you and if they don't like the way you are selling their products, they can cut you off.
Issuing take down notices and the like is something I don't think they can legally do, unless they already have an agreement with the manufacturer saying they won't sell for less than the MAP, in which case they are in violation of a contract with the manufacturer.
Take your $50 dollar profit, if that's all you can get. Buy more speakers, and go "internet" as well.
Many manufacturers, including most of the ones that I deal with, will not allow you to sell on the internet because the only authorize you to sell in your "territory". And that is not fair to other local businesses, supposedly. Unfortunately, since they let other businesses sell their products on the internet, what they are really doing is ensuring that ALL local businesses are not allowed to compete fairly with their internet competition.
I actually was up at Amazon getting ready to order it when I read the reviews mentioning the DRM.
So you read the biased reviews about how horrible the DRM is. They probably used words like "draconian" just like good old slashdot. But did you realize that some of what those reviews said was out-and-out lies? Did you know that my legal copy plays just fine with Daemon tools up and running? Did you know that I can run Spore without the CD in the tray?
Unfortunately, the people who put negative reviews of questionable content on Amazon probably cost EA millions, and convinced many to illegally download it instead. If I was EA, I would be pissed.
It's almost as bad as the media successfully campaigning for Obama.
So if they put in no DRM, then you think people won't pirate it? You must not know very many people.
The question is, if they released a DRM-free game for $50, would you buy it, or would you still download it? Nevermind, I think I know the answer to that question. But then, if there is no DRM, what would you use as an excuse for not paying for the game? I guess "It wasn't worth $50" is always a good fallback excuse. Too bad this isn't a haggling session. Your options are to pay the price or voice your displeasure by not obtaining the game. Believe me, if it sells poorly and there is no piracy, that sends a much more clear message then if it sells poorly, but there is a lot of piracy.
I agree with you 100%. If I as a publisher saw that my game sold poorly and had no piracy, then my conclusion is that it sucked. If it sold poorly and there was a lot of piracy, my conclusion would be that the game is good, but that people didn't like the price point and I had made it too easy for them to play it for free. If it sold well and there was a lot of piracy then I would have to conclude that it was a great game, but I had made it too easy to play for free.
DRM isn't there to stop someone experienced in illegally obtaining software. It is there to stop the average person from doing so. Most people don't know how to download software, run key generators, replace binaries and that sort of thing. They want to click on something and have it run. It is just like a lock on a house doesn't do anything to stop a professional thief, but it will stop the guy going door to door just trying doorknobs until he's found one that is unlocked. The people screaming "DRM is useless", are like the professional thieves saying "locks are useless" all the time justifying that they only break into houses because people put locks on them.
Yes, way to overdramatize, slashdot. "Draconian" DRM. You mean the fact that it won't even RUN if it finds evidence of a ROM loader on the system? Oh, wait, my legal copy of Spore ran just fine with daemon tools up and running. In fact, Spore doesn't even care if you have the CD in the drive or not. That's better than most other games these days. The only DRm they seem to have is limiting you to 3 installations, which is not even a hard limit because you could always call support an get more. No, the supposed draconian DRM is just an excuse people use to justify downloading the software illegally.
My local electric company does that, too. It's called a "convenience fee" for automatic monthly billing. In other words, for the convenience of them knowing that the amount will be drawn out automatically on a set date with no effort on their part, they charge you a fee. Deathstogoodforem.
Our local DMV has an extra charge if you use credit cards instead of cash or check. Someone should read their CC processing agreement aloud to them so that they will realize that they are in violation.
I mean, you can't have a cell phone powered on in the hospital. It damages the equipment. Or at least that's what all the hospitals I have been to in the last ten years have indicated. Certainly if it is so horrible to have a cell phone on in the lobby, then it must be that much worse in the actual surgery room. Surely, they are not just lying to us about how bad cell phones are for the equipment.
Till they can make an electric/hybrid car that looks and performs more like a Tesla, but at a bit more reasonable price. I'm not interested.
It would not be terribly difficult to make an electric vehicle out of most any current car. However, how would people be able to look at it and tell that it is an electric car and know that you are a wonderful person for saving the environment if it looked like a normal car? By making it ugly, then people can see it and know what great sacrifices you are making for the good of the environment.
In my experience, a chargeback was not that hard. I use Amex, which I am lead to believe is more customer focused than other brands. I have done about 5 or 6 chargebacks, and they didn't require anything other than a phone call to start the process and immediately issue me a credit pending review of the situation. I have never had a chargeback credit come back in the vendor's favor.
I am sort of surprised that Dell has charged you already. I expect an upstanding company like Dell to not charge until the item is shipped.
Space exploration can not be likened to a trip to the Bahamas. Space exploration is an investment in research. Research results in innovation. However, research doesn't pay off in a quarter or a year, it pays off over decades. Because of our greed, we have forced our publicly traded companies to focus on quarterly improvements, rather than long term innovations. Yes, improvements make money, and they make it more quickly, however they do not make nearly as much money as innovations. We jeer at the automakers who have their hands out looking for money from the government, however, we are the investors who told them quarter after quarter to slightly improve their product to get us that quick buck, rather than invest in research into new technology such as alternative fuels, which would cause them to lose money for many quarters but would undoubtedly have paid off heavily over the last couple of years when gas prices skyrocketed. Yes, we, the American investor, are to blame. We have turned Lucent from a company who's innovations made billions into a company who struggles to survive trying to make small improvements to existing technology.
I don't want this to happen to NASA. I would like very much for the private sector to invest in space travel, but the amount of money it takes to fund such a thing is not available in the private sector. If it was, then when it paid off, a few people would get extremely rich. Wouldn't it be better if our government made the investment into space research and when it paid off, that it would pay off for all the people?
I feel eliminating the national debt can be good for the economy.
REDUCING the national debt would be good for the economy. ELIMINATING it would be bad for the economy. National debt is not like the kind of debt that most consumers have, ie credit card payments, loans on depreciating assets (cars, boats), etc. Government debt is like investment debt. When you take out debt to start a new business or fund an existing business, that is good debt. As long as the ROI is better than your interest rate, a good businessman will borrow all he can. However, in the case of the government, they have borrowed more than the ROI, and need to reduce their debt. However, I strongly believe that the government should always have SOME debt, in order to "grow the business" so to speak. Figuring out the right amount is the challenge, just like in a small business.
That doesn't fit this scenario. This is more like, when you are not at home, a stranger breaks into your house and trains your dog to be a killer and then turns it loose on the neighborhood. I don't think that the dog owner should be responsible. Instead, the guy who trained it to be a killer should be.
I like the look of plasma over LCD but sadly, it seems LCD is winning out.
I find it interesting that there are so many posts in this thread about LCD versus plasma, but only one post so far even mentioning DLP. I find this interesting because at least 1/2 of the large sets I see are DLP.
18% of audiophiles were surprised that they could tell no difference between sound coming through standard 18 gauge wiring and sound coming through $200 per foot premium cables. The other 82% of audiophiles distinctly heard the difference. However, it turns out that the engineers performing the test forgot to actually switch over from the cheap ones to the expensive ones so both tests were on the same cheap wires.