The problem is the disconnection from reality. If that doesn't bother you, fine. But it's not healthy, and isn't conducive to living life outside of an online world.
Are you really that dense? Cereal brands don't make a natural monopoly, they aren't competing over usage of public areas, not to mention the cost to enter the market is very low as compared to rolling out your own network to all the houses in an area. There is NO neighborhood that it makes sense to lay 5 sets of cables, just like there's no reason to have 5 roads leading to your house. This isn't a "communist idea", this is not allowing a tragedy of the commons to happen (with umpteen cable systems competing over limited public land, wires and shit all over the place), as well as preventing a single company to control how someone is able to access what has become a basic tool of society, the Internet. Would you think that it's great if someone bought the only road to your house, and then started limiting what traffic went down it by their arbitrary rules? Such as, deliveries to your neighbors (whom they liked) would go through fine, but deliveries to you (who pissed them off by being stupid) would be held up for weeks. Just use an alternate delivery service, right? Let them airdrop your packages. Or dig tunnels to your house. Or build a whole new road in your backyard, so you have choice. I mean, that's the Libertarian way, right? It IS fundamental in some cases. Not on a market by market basis, but on a type of good or service basis. Some things we need just end up being natural monopolies.
The base price online is still MUCH better than the normal retail price at a big-box type store. Even if I don't ever get the rebate, I still feel I've paid a fair price, and it's HALF as much from newegg as it is from Best Buy. 1/3rd the price if I get the rebate. I win either way, and I don't feel like I have to "recover" any money from when I paid too much for the product in the first place. Rebates are a scam, and I never buy a product based on the price after a rebate.
And before you say "we have no choice of ISP here", that is your problem. Fix that and everything else will be fine. Sheesh. Do you have a choice of which road goes to your driveway? Same kinda thing. It's a critical infrastructure thing that really doesn't need multiple, redundant UNUSED installations. If you have 5 Internet suppliers all laying cable to your house, you have 5 cables buried, 5 networks all competing for right-of-way access, and you still only really need one at any given time, so 4/5ths of the infrastructure is being wasted at any given time. But if you have only one cable and network buried, which is all anyone really needs, then it should allow fair access. When it doesn't, you start running into problems like we're complaining about.
You want an ISP that filters nothing? Okay, no problem -- someone will make one. Not if the only ISP that owns lines to your house or in your neighborhood decides to do the traffic shaping. Then you're just straight-up screwed. And that's what's happening. I live in a fairly densely populated area, and my broadband options are cable, or fairly slow DSL due to my distance from the DSLAM. And if both the players in that market decide to shape traffic, or drop BitTorrent packets? I'm SOL. No one else can get in to give me the service because they don't own the lines.
Adblock is great. If an ad pisses me off, I block the server it's coming from. I very, very rarely get slowdowns any more, or annoying ads. But I still get ads I like, things like on Google.
I've learned even better: Stop dicking with mail-in rebate bullshit, and buy my stuff online. I'm not an animal to be trained to jump through hoops, thank you very little.
No wonder when I use the Duelo candy in Mario Party 8, the graphics start chugging for a half-second before they become normal again, when the character starts "burning".
And there you go proving my point. I can respect that I have these liberties, and the people that made it possible, and still not agree with the way things are happening. But a picture with a misspelling on it that a 4th grader wouldn't make, combined with the "let's bomb the terr'ists" attitude that shows a complete ignorance of WHAT MAKES TERRORISTS WANT TO KILL US, makes you an illiterate redneck. I don't have much of a sense of humor about ignorant things we do that make other nations hate us, sorry. Must be something wrong with me.
Frat boys don't play Doom on the PC, they play Halo 3 and Madden on their XBox 360's. PC is a niche when it comes to the general gaming public. Maybe not to "gamers", but to the public, it is, at least when you discount things like Pop Cap games. If you don't, then PC gaming wins, hands down.
Yay for illiterate, blindly patriotic morons. Let's drop us some bombs on people that we can't distinguish from the general population, that'll show 'em good, just like in Vietnam!
Because slave labor is the fault of people who want lower prices, not the fault of the people, you know, doing the enslaving. Perhaps the rest of the world should just police itself a little fucking better instead of expecting the United States to do so? You don't ask if any products you get out of the US are made by slave labor, do you? The rest of the world just needs to deal with it's own problems.
That means it's probably a small company, and you had just as much chance of getting the owner as the "salesperson" at any given time. He probably didn't want to undermine his employee in front of you, but I can guarantee you that he talked to her if it upset him, if not just outright fired her. No one ever directly has more power than the person above them on the org chart. That's not saying people towards the bottom can't have any power, I'm just saying that they don't have more than anyone above them, like their manager.
...no logical reason for morality? Besides the fact that if you're immoral in many primitive societies (which is where humans have lived for most of their existence), you will be shunned, and cast out of society, probably to die? If you consider basic things like property rights ("Thats my banana!"), even monkeys recognize when they're being stolen from, and will dislike the one doing the taking, and be more likely to help someone who gives them things. From that, you can easily interpret all moral behavior, such as pretty much anything is ok to do, as long as you don't get caught (which seems to be especially en-vogue lately), but are the risks of being caught worth the punishment that is possible? These are decisions all "moral" people have. You throw in a magical bogeyman that can see everything, and you all of a sudden have people behaving for the good of society even when they probably would get away with it, which is basically win-win for everyone, so it keeps being selected for genetically, with a few aberrations.
Personally, I prefer mocking people who can't spell "pansy" or "wannabe";) People do take things too personally on the web, and conversely, people are unafraid to be jackasses because of the lack of repercussions. But it's just a symptom of people adapting to a world-changing new technology. Give it 20 years, and there may still be people offended about different stuff, but by and large things will have settled down, and people will be better able to deal with being offended online.
No, we're taking CPI's numbers to be true. So it's the country's relative amount corruption that's correlated to the voting, not the fact that their numbers caused anything. Way to understand the numbers, but miss the point.
So it would take the US and England just to MATCH China's vote? It'd become something like the US presidential elections rather than a "one voice, one vote" system like it is now. Not to mention that China's population is primarily rural, as is India's, whereas the UK and the US would likely have a much greater stake in having proper standards established, especially for new technology. The only thing I'd like to see is the corruption index weighting votes. But then that would make the index a target for corruption, so maybe not...
Because the votes of a primarily agricultural population must be counted for more than, say, Sweden's, because there are just more people, right? Population adjustment isn't a great idea. Relative corruption adjustment is.
Since you're an AC, I don't feel bad telling you that you meant to use the word cue (second definition), rather than queue. They're what are known as homonyms, and lazy people have problems with them quite often.
Just because YOU can't make sense of it doesn't mean it can't make sense. That's a bit presumptuous of you, don't you think? Believing that if your experiences defy your limited ability to "logically" resolve them, they must be "magic". Logic operates in a playpen, but the playpen can be expanded if you know how. Just jumping out of it lands you into places where Jonah is eaten by a gigantic "fish", yet isn't digested.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is the disconnection from reality. If that doesn't bother you, fine. But it's not healthy, and isn't conducive to living life outside of an online world.
Are you really that dense? Cereal brands don't make a natural monopoly, they aren't competing over usage of public areas, not to mention the cost to enter the market is very low as compared to rolling out your own network to all the houses in an area. There is NO neighborhood that it makes sense to lay 5 sets of cables, just like there's no reason to have 5 roads leading to your house. This isn't a "communist idea", this is not allowing a tragedy of the commons to happen (with umpteen cable systems competing over limited public land, wires and shit all over the place), as well as preventing a single company to control how someone is able to access what has become a basic tool of society, the Internet. Would you think that it's great if someone bought the only road to your house, and then started limiting what traffic went down it by their arbitrary rules? Such as, deliveries to your neighbors (whom they liked) would go through fine, but deliveries to you (who pissed them off by being stupid) would be held up for weeks. Just use an alternate delivery service, right? Let them airdrop your packages. Or dig tunnels to your house. Or build a whole new road in your backyard, so you have choice. I mean, that's the Libertarian way, right? It IS fundamental in some cases. Not on a market by market basis, but on a type of good or service basis. Some things we need just end up being natural monopolies.
The base price online is still MUCH better than the normal retail price at a big-box type store. Even if I don't ever get the rebate, I still feel I've paid a fair price, and it's HALF as much from newegg as it is from Best Buy. 1/3rd the price if I get the rebate. I win either way, and I don't feel like I have to "recover" any money from when I paid too much for the product in the first place. Rebates are a scam, and I never buy a product based on the price after a rebate.
Adblock is great. If an ad pisses me off, I block the server it's coming from. I very, very rarely get slowdowns any more, or annoying ads. But I still get ads I like, things like on Google.
Alright, back on topic...
I've learned even better: Stop dicking with mail-in rebate bullshit, and buy my stuff online. I'm not an animal to be trained to jump through hoops, thank you very little.
s/renegade/renege
Stop backing up your refutations of comments with facts, logic and comprehension. You're making us armchair engineers look bad ;)
No wonder when I use the Duelo candy in Mario Party 8, the graphics start chugging for a half-second before they become normal again, when the character starts "burning".
Truth is strange than fiction
And there you go proving my point. I can respect that I have these liberties, and the people that made it possible, and still not agree with the way things are happening. But a picture with a misspelling on it that a 4th grader wouldn't make, combined with the "let's bomb the terr'ists" attitude that shows a complete ignorance of WHAT MAKES TERRORISTS WANT TO KILL US, makes you an illiterate redneck. I don't have much of a sense of humor about ignorant things we do that make other nations hate us, sorry. Must be something wrong with me.
Frat boys don't play Doom on the PC, they play Halo 3 and Madden on their XBox 360's. PC is a niche when it comes to the general gaming public. Maybe not to "gamers", but to the public, it is, at least when you discount things like Pop Cap games. If you don't, then PC gaming wins, hands down.
Yay for illiterate, blindly patriotic morons. Let's drop us some bombs on people that we can't distinguish from the general population, that'll show 'em good, just like in Vietnam!
Because slave labor is the fault of people who want lower prices, not the fault of the people, you know, doing the enslaving. Perhaps the rest of the world should just police itself a little fucking better instead of expecting the United States to do so? You don't ask if any products you get out of the US are made by slave labor, do you? The rest of the world just needs to deal with it's own problems.
That means it's probably a small company, and you had just as much chance of getting the owner as the "salesperson" at any given time. He probably didn't want to undermine his employee in front of you, but I can guarantee you that he talked to her if it upset him, if not just outright fired her. No one ever directly has more power than the person above them on the org chart. That's not saying people towards the bottom can't have any power, I'm just saying that they don't have more than anyone above them, like their manager.
...no logical reason for morality? Besides the fact that if you're immoral in many primitive societies (which is where humans have lived for most of their existence), you will be shunned, and cast out of society, probably to die? If you consider basic things like property rights ("Thats my banana!"), even monkeys recognize when they're being stolen from, and will dislike the one doing the taking, and be more likely to help someone who gives them things. From that, you can easily interpret all moral behavior, such as pretty much anything is ok to do, as long as you don't get caught (which seems to be especially en-vogue lately), but are the risks of being caught worth the punishment that is possible? These are decisions all "moral" people have. You throw in a magical bogeyman that can see everything, and you all of a sudden have people behaving for the good of society even when they probably would get away with it, which is basically win-win for everyone, so it keeps being selected for genetically, with a few aberrations.
Personally, I prefer mocking people who can't spell "pansy" or "wannabe" ;) People do take things too personally on the web, and conversely, people are unafraid to be jackasses because of the lack of repercussions. But it's just a symptom of people adapting to a world-changing new technology. Give it 20 years, and there may still be people offended about different stuff, but by and large things will have settled down, and people will be better able to deal with being offended online.
No, we're taking CPI's numbers to be true. So it's the country's relative amount corruption that's correlated to the voting, not the fact that their numbers caused anything. Way to understand the numbers, but miss the point.
"Please sir, I like your dick in my ass... could you make it larger, perchance?" I don't think Canada is that stupid, eh?
So it would take the US and England just to MATCH China's vote? It'd become something like the US presidential elections rather than a "one voice, one vote" system like it is now. Not to mention that China's population is primarily rural, as is India's, whereas the UK and the US would likely have a much greater stake in having proper standards established, especially for new technology. The only thing I'd like to see is the corruption index weighting votes. But then that would make the index a target for corruption, so maybe not...
Because the votes of a primarily agricultural population must be counted for more than, say, Sweden's, because there are just more people, right? Population adjustment isn't a great idea. Relative corruption adjustment is.
To fix that, you need to use < instead of just typing a <
Since you're an AC, I don't feel bad telling you that you meant to use the word cue (second definition), rather than queue. They're what are known as homonyms, and lazy people have problems with them quite often.
Just because YOU can't make sense of it doesn't mean it can't make sense. That's a bit presumptuous of you, don't you think? Believing that if your experiences defy your limited ability to "logically" resolve them, they must be "magic". Logic operates in a playpen, but the playpen can be expanded if you know how. Just jumping out of it lands you into places where Jonah is eaten by a gigantic "fish", yet isn't digested.