Also I've never seen anything but incandescent supporters make that claim
That right there is the comment that I was referring to in which you implied that he was a shill. Since C64 made the claim, I read that to mean you were implying he is a shill. Your right, this isn't meatspace where you can deny saying something you actually said.
If I misinterpreted what you wrote that's fine, happens often enough in written text due to the lack of the normal context clues present in meatspace (Facial nuances, differences in pitch, volume, and inflection in voice). I won't deny I've misinterpreted others often enough, and am willing to grant the benefit of the doubt.
as you your point 2, you and I must be reading entirely different web pages. I've seen no fervor from anyone supporting incandescent bulbs. Instead I've seen lots of articles supporting attempts to legislate incancesdents out of existence despite some very serious potential problem (mercury contamination if a bulb breaks is serious if you have children who could break the bulbs, although it can be managed). As to the logic used to both defend and persecute CFLs, you've completely lost me.
On to point 3, I agree that there are vaporware products like the ionic breeze, organic food, battery and engine enhancers (one of my favorite MythBusters episodes, BTW), etc. I was just providing what I believed to be fairly obvious, legitimate, reasons for why these rumored high-efficiency incandescent bulbs have not made it to market.
As I said, maybe I saw implications in what you wrote that you did not intend to put there. If so, I apologize for putting words in your mouth. I know how angry it makes me when it happens to me.
I would like to know what "inevitable" thing you believe I'm trying to stave off? Especially since I was responding not to his claims, but to my perception of your overzealous willingness to dismiss others as being shills (wrong of me or not).
I'm not saying that the OP was wrong or right, just that he seemed to be dismissing someone else that disagreed with him by accusing him of being in big industries back pocket. Despite the member of big industry that he cited being a manufacturer of both CFL's and traditional bulbs.
Please re-read the post by commodore64_love and the response to that post by Shadow of Eternity, and you'll see the point I was actually making instead of the one you assumed I was making.
1. C64 indicated that there are claims by GE than they have incandescent bulbs capable of similar efficiency as CFLs without the potential for Mercury contamination, and the slow warm issue that bothers some people.
2. SoE responded by indicating that these claims are only ever made by those biased against CFLs because they have more to gain by maintaining the status quo, despite GE being the leading manufacturer of both CFLs and incandescent bulbs.
3. SoE also indicated that these bulbs not being available at the moment is due most likely to their being vaporware. As though it was not possible that the claims are not outright lies, just that something as mundane as manufacturing issues or political realities could be holding these up.
I'm not saying that these ultra efficient incandescent bulbs are real, or that C64 isn't in the employ of a company that makes incandescent bulbs but not CFLs. I AM saying that the post by SoE was not even remotely well thought out because there was nothing in the post by C64 that indicated any of the libelous claims implied by SoE were true.
Personally, I have 2 CFL's in my apartment that I purchase 6 years ago. They work fine just fine in the bedside lamps I installed them in, but since my electric bill is so low already, i've only added a couple, and they are only on for an hour most nights, any difference they may make has been lost in the standard deviation in my electric bill from month to month.
Also I've never seen anything but incandescent supporters make that claim, any sources?
Why is it that anytime someone questions the claims of the Green Brigade they have to be in the pocket of the status quo? Isn't it remotely possible that they are simply less credulous than the general population that believes damn near everything they read?
He mentions GE which makes both incadescent and CFL's. That would seem to imply that there are those that stand to benefit either way that are making the claims.
Why isn't it EVERYWHERE yet?
painfully obvious possible reasons:
1. Tricky to manufacture with acceptable Yields 2. Expensive to manufacture at this point 3. Not likely to be as profitable due to the Green Brigades love affair with CFLs
I thought that Slashdot was supposed to be populated by nerds that think, not cheerleaders that parrot what ever they are told.
I got about 1/3 of the way through the comments and decided to post without reading all of them. I've got other things to do today.
Maybe, just maybe Obama's decision to uphold the warantless wiretapping means that after careful review of its effectiveness, he's seen that it actually worked as originally intended. I'm a Republican, so maybe I'm just looking at this as vindication of Bush, but it seems to me that those with the best chance of determining the effectiveness of the policy are the people sitting the in the Oval Office. I'm not some optimist who believes everything my politician's/government/tv/mom/dog tell me, but it is possible that the plan hasn't been abused. I personally have no problem with a warantless wiretapping program as long as the information acquired this way is never used for criminal prosecutions. I view it as military intel in the war on terror.
However, if it does end up being linked to a domestic prosecution of say, tax fraud or even murder, then the program needs to be axed ASAP. The trick is determining if those in oversight over the program are being honest. I believe that the Bush administration was being faithful to the intent of the program. I'm even willing to extend that belief to Obama. Unfortunately, the majority of the Posts I read that were even on topic indicated that Obama agreeing with ANY decision by Bush makes him the clone of Bush. That kind of overly simplistic reasoning should only be the providence of people too young to vote.
Issues are complex and issues that involve the President of the United States are at least squared.
I totally agree that the majority of comics suck. They're better on average than they were in the 90's. I stopped collecting in the mid 90's and didn't start again until summer of 2003.
I've managed to find a handful of comics that were worth the time. Several of them are not appropriate for children, but then again I'm not a child so I can handle the adult material.
I'm definitely NOT looking forward to the hours upon hours of programing aimed at very young children. However, when my kids get to the point where they might be interested in full length "Chapter Novels", or violent video games, or "Graphic" comic books I plan to be the gate keeper.
Another law being passed based on the assumption that a certain medium is targeted and consumed exlusively by children.
I'm almost 30 and I own several thousand comic books, probably 30 graphic novels, and actively collect 6 or 7 titles every month. I own the Watchmen and several other titles that would be taboo under this law. None of what's in any of these is more pornographic that he Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean M. Auel, which my parents gave me to read when I was 13. They'd already read the books a couple of years before and knew about the sex scenes. My wife read Flowers in the Attic around the same age and she tells me that the oldest boy rapes his sister.
Neither of these books come with warnings about the graphic nature of their content or laws to prevent their dissemination to children 2 years above the legal age of consent (WTF, this is akin to the difference between the draft age and legal purchase of alcohol in the US).
My wife is pregnant with our first child and I hope that I never become so irresponsible that I want the government to censor artistic expression because I'm too lazy to investigate the media my children are interested in before I let them consume it. My parents used the Clan of the Cave Bear books as a starting point for the discussion of, not only reproduction, but relationships and human sexuality. I'm sure my parents were embarrased, but that was there job NOT the governments.
For the most part people have little problem with sex or sexuality in visual art. How many nude paintings did you see on your field trips to art museums growing up? For the most part people also have little problem with sex or sexuality in written art. I can't count the number of novels I read in middle school and high school that at least made reference to sex. However, when you combine the visual and written medium everyone looses their Fracking mind if anything taboo comes up (Drugs, sex, etc were the original reason for creating the Comics Code here in the US).
When has boycotting a vote, or election every helped?
In the first Iraq elections, the Sunni's boycotted the elections and had zero representation in the government as a result. They eneded up becoming more marginalized by not even being in the room when the politicians were making decisions then they would have been if they'd elected even a single official. In the second election they participated and were able to influence policy in their favor.
If the 13 countries that abstained had bothered to vote, they could have over ridden this BS and made the proponenets of cencorship look stupid. Instead, they boycotted and now they look to be stupid and ineffectual.
No one is ever going to thank you for NOT doing your job. Especially when your failure to act results in their rights and freedoms being taken away. Honest failure is infinitely preferable to a failure to even act.
"We asked Apple why they're more expensive, and took their word for it."
Except that attempts to verify every major point by indicating that Apple isn't the only one that does this.
He may or may not have actually verified that his industry sources told the truth as well or even asked the industry sources like he claims. However, that's not the criticism you are making.
At the end of the article he admited that he'd been running the server off of second hand hardware for years. The XServe was the first 'Server Grade' machine he'd actually used. That means he's not what is normally thought of as a Server Support person on this site.
If he were astroturfing, I would expect him to mention apple only. Instead he applies all of these explanations for why Apple claimes the drives are worth the money and then indicates that Dell and HP do the same thing.
Apple fans are not normally in the habbit of building up evidence of the Quality of Apple products and then assigning that same level of quality to Apple's competitors.
Ignorant, gullible, or wrong he may be, but I see no evidence of intentionally misleading anyone.
Evidence-based medicine is not the norm in the US, but you can't necessarily blame the doctors for failing to consider it: the whole system is the problem.
Evidence-based medicine is not the norm because physicians are not really scientists, despite the common assumption to the contrary. Doctors are biological machanics. Same thing goes for most veterinarians, although they often have a larger background in generalized biology due to the variability in their patients.
I'm not knocking what doctors do, just of the opinion that they are not the best qualified in most cases to understand the difference between rigorous scientific investigation and the inherent selection bias involved in their own accumulation of anecdotal evidence.
But since that's not an option anymore for anyone wanting to use the TV instead of their computer, the library is cheaper than paying for cable, purchasing via iTunes and playing via AppleTV, or purchasing the DVD's.
I drive right past the local library 2x a day at least, so the gas thing isn't an issue for me. In the summer I can walk down to the library, although there isn't a sidewalk so I try to stop by when driving if possible.
Yeah, my wife has a que 5 pages long at the library. We drive by the library at least 2x/d anyway so the whole gas issue that C64 raises isn't an issue for us.
We watched the first 3 or 4 seasons of Battlestar Galactica (I can't remember which one we are on at the moment) after getting them from the library down the street essentially for free. Got my wife up to speed enough so that she started watching the current season with me on hulu via boxee. Now neither one of us will be viewing them with commercials, b/c we'll just wait until the library gets the next season on DVD and borrow it.
Someone needs to let the industry execs in on the old proverb "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".
You're probably right, but there are those like me that canceled their cable before they'd ever heard of Boxee. I knew about Hulu and had watched exactly 1 tv episode on it prior to Boxee. Last night alone I watched 4 programs.
I'm a gradstudent and my wife is pregnant. We need every penny we can save, and cable was not worth the money at $60/mo for basic service and a DVR to make it remotely worthwhile. Now I'll just go back to reading books, watching my DVD's, listening to music, playing video games, and using Boxee to watch content from the other websites outside of Hulu (CBS still works AFAIK, and an ABC plugin is in the works).
My understanding of the AP's job is to be the Principals assistant. That's like saying Steve Job's Secretary is a public figure because her boss is a public figure.
If this was about some legitimate satire or parody of say, the Superintendent then I would agree that the person involved is a public figure. However, even if we disagree on whether or not the AP is important enough to be considered a public figure is irrelevant in this case. Calling someone a name b/c you are frustrated != satire or parody. Look them up in the dictionary.
parody |ËparÉ(TM)dÄ"|
noun ( pl. -dies)
an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect : the movie is a parody of the horror genre | his provocative use of parody. See note at caricature.
â an imitation or a version of something that falls far short of the real thing; a travesty : he seems like a parody of an educated Englishman.
verb ( -dies, -died) [ trans. ]
produce a humorously exaggerated imitation of (a writer, artist, or genre) : his specialty was parodying schoolgirl fiction.
â mimic humorously : he parodied his friend's voice.
satire |ËsaËOEtÄr|
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. See note at wit.
â a play, novel, film, or other work that uses satire : a stinging satire on American politics.
â a genre of literature characterized by the use of satire.
â (in Latin literature) a literary miscellany, esp. a poem ridiculing prevalent vices or follies.
Calling someone a douchebag is not the exaggerated mimicry of parody, or the humorous pointing out of flaws seen in satire. It is a teenage being frustrated and resorting to 4th grade level name calling.
Everyone I work with knows my boss, but that doesn't make him a public figure. I bet everyone in her school knew who she was, but that wouldn't excuse the Assistant Principal calling her a bitch.
Besides, your definition of "Public Figure" is irrelevant since calling someone a douche bag is not Parody, it's juvenile name calling and is the textbook definition of libel. IIRC that's what she was convicted of
No, I went to a total of 7 different schools between kindergarden and my senior year of HS (My family moved a lot). At none of those schools was the Assistant Principal a job akin to that of an actor where they get up on stage and perform. Their job is largely administration and clerical work. None of the administration members were elect to office so they never had to grab the general publics attention as a routine part of their job.
Where YOU homeschool? You've got the manners of someone that lacked socialization. If you think I'm wrong you don't just say "WRONG" you also give evidence of how I'm supposedly wrong.
Yes, but actors jobs are to stand up in front of people in public and perform. That is not part of the job description of the average Assistant Principal. They do not perform their jobs in front of an audience, and do not have to get into the public eye in order to get the job.
Besides, all she did was call them douchebags and tell other to harass them with the contact information she provided. It's not that what she said was offensive, but that she made no effort to dress it up above the level of 4th grade name calling that makes it not parody. According to the dictionary on my computer the definition of Parody is:
parody |ËparÉ(TM)dÄ"|
noun ( pl. -dies)
an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect : the movie is a parody of the horror genre | his provocative use of parody. See note at caricature.
â an imitation or a version of something that falls far short of the real thing; a travesty : he seems like a parody of an educated Englishman.
verb ( -dies, -died) [ trans. ]
produce a humorously exaggerated imitation of (a writer, artist, or genre) : his specialty was parodying schoolgirl fiction.
â mimic humorously : he parodied his friend's voice.
No attempt at humor, no attempt to do anything other than lash out at the administration because she was angry. And she was angry b/c she wasn't getting her way.
I'm glad that her behavior was ultimately punished (although I do agree that prison time is overkill) and I'm also glad that corrupt officials are also being punished. One has nothing to do with the other.
Principals are not elected, they are hired. That is a big component of what it takes for federal or state employees to be considered "Public Figures" in my mind.
Besides this guy wasn't event the Principal, he was the Assistant Principal. That makes him even less important. Prior to this case, I'd be surprised if more than 10% of the parents of children at that school could actually have told you this guys name off the top of their head.
Also, calling someone a Douchebag (which is what she did) != Parody.
At the moment, the drug companies say that drug X costs Y dollars everywhere. Then they look and see that there are a lot of people that can't afford to pay Y dollars b/c it's 20, 50, 100, 200% of their monthly income. They've decided to take a smaller profit in order to sell drug X for Z dollars where it's too expensive, but still charge Y dollars where the market can bare the weight. That's smart marketing and can save lives in 3rd world countries.
Explain to me how that translates into forcing the poor out of this country? Not everyone in the US can afford the current prices for all of the medications at price Y. However, in which ever third world country they decide to mark the price down, not everyone will be able to afford the drug at Z dollars. To say that an incomplete fix is some how worse than making no change at all is asinine.
No one is saying this move will completely fix the inequities inherent in who needs care vs who can afford care (that's the job of medicare/medicaid here in the US), but you appear to be the only one that says treating some that wouldn't normally be able to afford any care by dropping the prices in the poorest countries is somehow going to make things worse.
I think you are being needlessly dense. I'm well aware that they often spend millions if not billions on R&D for new medication. However, once they've discovered, licensed, and gotten the manufacturing kinks out the physical pills themselves often cost only pennies or a handful of dollars to actually make at the factory.
I'm not against them recouping their initial investment, or their making a profit off of their hard work after they've "Broken Even". My comment was not about the financial system they've developed where by they subsidize future development with the prices they charge now, only that the black hat conspiracy nuts want it both ways. They want to vilify them for charging too much (Which happens in some cases, but probably not even the majority when you consider the input costs you make reference to), but they also want to vilify them for reducing prices in some countries but not others.
Personally I have no real problem with their decision to price the drugs at a lower point in poorer countries. We get the benefit of the drugs first b/c they are often developed here. If that means we get a higher ticket price, that makes sense as well.
I know that Advertising is insane in the US. I'm all for banning direct to consumer advertising for medications again. Lifting the ban was stupid, and anti-consumer. Most MD's are not trained highly enough to be able to see through a lot of the drug companies BS, the general population is even less prepared.
I was just commenting on the dichotomy between the persistent POV on/. that the drug companies charge too much (probably true), and the idea that somehow dropping prices for those that can't afford medicine somehow also makes them Evil.
Would I like to pay less for my med? Damn right I would! However, just because they are not planning on changing my rates any time soon doesn't mean that dropping the rates to be affordable elsewhere is somehow a "Bad Thing".
So, their bastards for charging more than people can afford for life saving medicine that now only costs cents to manufacture (having already spent the millions on R&D), but they are also bastards when they reduce the cost, because they'll get everyone hooked on their drugs.
This strikes me as a Win/Win type situation for BlackHat conspiracy folks.
Why would it matter which party he's a member of. I'm a Republican (and a published scientist) who thinks that Open Access is a great idea. I'll grant that there is ther perception that Rep. are more likely to be owned by big business, but I don't believe that it's actually true. Or more accurately, I believe the difference in corruption rate probably stem more from whether or not your party is the majority or not. No use wasting money on the party that can't get what you want for you.
This bill was probably written by the publishing industry. I'd be surprised if Conyers has even read the bill he's put his name on.
The sooner you learn that politicans don't need to belong to any particular party to be purchased, the better off you'll be.
Slashdot Mirror
Also I've never seen anything but incandescent supporters make that claim
That right there is the comment that I was referring to in which you implied that he was a shill. Since C64 made the claim, I read that to mean you were implying he is a shill. Your right, this isn't meatspace where you can deny saying something you actually said.
If I misinterpreted what you wrote that's fine, happens often enough in written text due to the lack of the normal context clues present in meatspace (Facial nuances, differences in pitch, volume, and inflection in voice). I won't deny I've misinterpreted others often enough, and am willing to grant the benefit of the doubt.
as you your point 2, you and I must be reading entirely different web pages. I've seen no fervor from anyone supporting incandescent bulbs. Instead I've seen lots of articles supporting attempts to legislate incancesdents out of existence despite some very serious potential problem (mercury contamination if a bulb breaks is serious if you have children who could break the bulbs, although it can be managed). As to the logic used to both defend and persecute CFLs, you've completely lost me.
On to point 3, I agree that there are vaporware products like the ionic breeze, organic food, battery and engine enhancers (one of my favorite MythBusters episodes, BTW), etc. I was just providing what I believed to be fairly obvious, legitimate, reasons for why these rumored high-efficiency incandescent bulbs have not made it to market.
As I said, maybe I saw implications in what you wrote that you did not intend to put there. If so, I apologize for putting words in your mouth. I know how angry it makes me when it happens to me.
I would like to know what "inevitable" thing you believe I'm trying to stave off? Especially since I was responding not to his claims, but to my perception of your overzealous willingness to dismiss others as being shills (wrong of me or not).
I'm not saying that the OP was wrong or right, just that he seemed to be dismissing someone else that disagreed with him by accusing him of being in big industries back pocket. Despite the member of big industry that he cited being a manufacturer of both CFL's and traditional bulbs.
Please re-read the post by commodore64_love and the response to that post by Shadow of Eternity, and you'll see the point I was actually making instead of the one you assumed I was making.
1. C64 indicated that there are claims by GE than they have incandescent bulbs capable of similar efficiency as CFLs without the potential for Mercury contamination, and the slow warm issue that bothers some people.
2. SoE responded by indicating that these claims are only ever made by those biased against CFLs because they have more to gain by maintaining the status quo, despite GE being the leading manufacturer of both CFLs and incandescent bulbs.
3. SoE also indicated that these bulbs not being available at the moment is due most likely to their being vaporware. As though it was not possible that the claims are not outright lies, just that something as mundane as manufacturing issues or political realities could be holding these up.
I'm not saying that these ultra efficient incandescent bulbs are real, or that C64 isn't in the employ of a company that makes incandescent bulbs but not CFLs. I AM saying that the post by SoE was not even remotely well thought out because there was nothing in the post by C64 that indicated any of the libelous claims implied by SoE were true.
Personally, I have 2 CFL's in my apartment that I purchase 6 years ago. They work fine just fine in the bedside lamps I installed them in, but since my electric bill is so low already, i've only added a couple, and they are only on for an hour most nights, any difference they may make has been lost in the standard deviation in my electric bill from month to month.
Also I've never seen anything but incandescent supporters make that claim, any sources?
Why is it that anytime someone questions the claims of the Green Brigade they have to be in the pocket of the status quo? Isn't it remotely possible that they are simply less credulous than the general population that believes damn near everything they read?
He mentions GE which makes both incadescent and CFL's. That would seem to imply that there are those that stand to benefit either way that are making the claims.
Why isn't it EVERYWHERE yet?
painfully obvious possible reasons:
1. Tricky to manufacture with acceptable Yields
2. Expensive to manufacture at this point
3. Not likely to be as profitable due to the Green Brigades love affair with CFLs
I thought that Slashdot was supposed to be populated by nerds that think, not cheerleaders that parrot what ever they are told.
I got about 1/3 of the way through the comments and decided to post without reading all of them. I've got other things to do today.
Maybe, just maybe Obama's decision to uphold the warantless wiretapping means that after careful review of its effectiveness, he's seen that it actually worked as originally intended. I'm a Republican, so maybe I'm just looking at this as vindication of Bush, but it seems to me that those with the best chance of determining the effectiveness of the policy are the people sitting the in the Oval Office. I'm not some optimist who believes everything my politician's/government/tv/mom/dog tell me, but it is possible that the plan hasn't been abused. I personally have no problem with a warantless wiretapping program as long as the information acquired this way is never used for criminal prosecutions. I view it as military intel in the war on terror.
However, if it does end up being linked to a domestic prosecution of say, tax fraud or even murder, then the program needs to be axed ASAP. The trick is determining if those in oversight over the program are being honest. I believe that the Bush administration was being faithful to the intent of the program. I'm even willing to extend that belief to Obama. Unfortunately, the majority of the Posts I read that were even on topic indicated that Obama agreeing with ANY decision by Bush makes him the clone of Bush. That kind of overly simplistic reasoning should only be the providence of people too young to vote.
Issues are complex and issues that involve the President of the United States are at least squared.
I totally agree that the majority of comics suck. They're better on average than they were in the 90's. I stopped collecting in the mid 90's and didn't start again until summer of 2003.
I've managed to find a handful of comics that were worth the time. Several of them are not appropriate for children, but then again I'm not a child so I can handle the adult material.
I'm definitely NOT looking forward to the hours upon hours of programing aimed at very young children. However, when my kids get to the point where they might be interested in full length "Chapter Novels", or violent video games, or "Graphic" comic books I plan to be the gate keeper.
It is MY job after all.
Another law being passed based on the assumption that a certain medium is targeted and consumed exlusively by children.
I'm almost 30 and I own several thousand comic books, probably 30 graphic novels, and actively collect 6 or 7 titles every month. I own the Watchmen and several other titles that would be taboo under this law. None of what's in any of these is more pornographic that he Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean M. Auel, which my parents gave me to read when I was 13. They'd already read the books a couple of years before and knew about the sex scenes. My wife read Flowers in the Attic around the same age and she tells me that the oldest boy rapes his sister.
Neither of these books come with warnings about the graphic nature of their content or laws to prevent their dissemination to children 2 years above the legal age of consent (WTF, this is akin to the difference between the draft age and legal purchase of alcohol in the US).
My wife is pregnant with our first child and I hope that I never become so irresponsible that I want the government to censor artistic expression because I'm too lazy to investigate the media my children are interested in before I let them consume it. My parents used the Clan of the Cave Bear books as a starting point for the discussion of, not only reproduction, but relationships and human sexuality. I'm sure my parents were embarrased, but that was there job NOT the governments.
For the most part people have little problem with sex or sexuality in visual art. How many nude paintings did you see on your field trips to art museums growing up? For the most part people also have little problem with sex or sexuality in written art. I can't count the number of novels I read in middle school and high school that at least made reference to sex. However, when you combine the visual and written medium everyone looses their Fracking mind if anything taboo comes up (Drugs, sex, etc were the original reason for creating the Comics Code here in the US).
It's all just Nanny State BS.
When has boycotting a vote, or election every helped?
In the first Iraq elections, the Sunni's boycotted the elections and had zero representation in the government as a result. They eneded up becoming more marginalized by not even being in the room when the politicians were making decisions then they would have been if they'd elected even a single official. In the second election they participated and were able to influence policy in their favor.
If the 13 countries that abstained had bothered to vote, they could have over ridden this BS and made the proponenets of cencorship look stupid. Instead, they boycotted and now they look to be stupid and ineffectual.
No one is ever going to thank you for NOT doing your job. Especially when your failure to act results in their rights and freedoms being taken away. Honest failure is infinitely preferable to a failure to even act.
"We asked Apple why they're more expensive, and took their word for it."
Except that attempts to verify every major point by indicating that Apple isn't the only one that does this.
He may or may not have actually verified that his industry sources told the truth as well or even asked the industry sources like he claims. However, that's not the criticism you are making.
At the end of the article he admited that he'd been running the server off of second hand hardware for years. The XServe was the first 'Server Grade' machine he'd actually used. That means he's not what is normally thought of as a Server Support person on this site.
If he were astroturfing, I would expect him to mention apple only. Instead he applies all of these explanations for why Apple claimes the drives are worth the money and then indicates that Dell and HP do the same thing.
Apple fans are not normally in the habbit of building up evidence of the Quality of Apple products and then assigning that same level of quality to Apple's competitors.
Ignorant, gullible, or wrong he may be, but I see no evidence of intentionally misleading anyone.
Evidence-based medicine is not the norm in the US, but you can't necessarily blame the doctors for failing to consider it: the whole system is the problem.
Evidence-based medicine is not the norm because physicians are not really scientists, despite the common assumption to the contrary. Doctors are biological machanics. Same thing goes for most veterinarians, although they often have a larger background in generalized biology due to the variability in their patients.
I'm not knocking what doctors do, just of the opinion that they are not the best qualified in most cases to understand the difference between rigorous scientific investigation and the inherent selection bias involved in their own accumulation of anecdotal evidence.
But since that's not an option anymore for anyone wanting to use the TV instead of their computer, the library is cheaper than paying for cable, purchasing via iTunes and playing via AppleTV, or purchasing the DVD's.
I drive right past the local library 2x a day at least, so the gas thing isn't an issue for me. In the summer I can walk down to the library, although there isn't a sidewalk so I try to stop by when driving if possible.
Yeah, my wife has a que 5 pages long at the library. We drive by the library at least 2x/d anyway so the whole gas issue that C64 raises isn't an issue for us.
We watched the first 3 or 4 seasons of Battlestar Galactica (I can't remember which one we are on at the moment) after getting them from the library down the street essentially for free. Got my wife up to speed enough so that she started watching the current season with me on hulu via boxee. Now neither one of us will be viewing them with commercials, b/c we'll just wait until the library gets the next season on DVD and borrow it.
Someone needs to let the industry execs in on the old proverb "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".
You're probably right, but there are those like me that canceled their cable before they'd ever heard of Boxee. I knew about Hulu and had watched exactly 1 tv episode on it prior to Boxee. Last night alone I watched 4 programs.
I'm a gradstudent and my wife is pregnant. We need every penny we can save, and cable was not worth the money at $60/mo for basic service and a DVR to make it remotely worthwhile. Now I'll just go back to reading books, watching my DVD's, listening to music, playing video games, and using Boxee to watch content from the other websites outside of Hulu (CBS still works AFAIK, and an ABC plugin is in the works).
That's pretty good. I ended up with 3 left over screws, at least one screw floating around inside the case, and my trackpad didn't work anymore.
Ended up having to buy a bluetooth mouse to make up for it (The MB was my dad's, D'oht!)
If this was about some legitimate satire or parody of say, the Superintendent then I would agree that the person involved is a public figure. However, even if we disagree on whether or not the AP is important enough to be considered a public figure is irrelevant in this case. Calling someone a name b/c you are frustrated != satire or parody. Look them up in the dictionary.
parody |ËparÉ(TM)dÄ"| .
.
noun ( pl. -dies)
an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect : the movie is a parody of the horror genre | his provocative use of parody. See note at caricature
â an imitation or a version of something that falls far short of the real thing; a travesty : he seems like a parody of an educated Englishman.
verb ( -dies, -died) [ trans. ]
produce a humorously exaggerated imitation of (a writer, artist, or genre) : his specialty was parodying schoolgirl fiction.
â mimic humorously : he parodied his friend's voice.
satire |ËsaËOEtÄr|
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. See note at wit
â a play, novel, film, or other work that uses satire : a stinging satire on American politics.
â a genre of literature characterized by the use of satire.
â (in Latin literature) a literary miscellany, esp. a poem ridiculing prevalent vices or follies.
Calling someone a douchebag is not the exaggerated mimicry of parody, or the humorous pointing out of flaws seen in satire. It is a teenage being frustrated and resorting to 4th grade level name calling.
That's not how it works.
Everyone I work with knows my boss, but that doesn't make him a public figure. I bet everyone in her school knew who she was, but that wouldn't excuse the Assistant Principal calling her a bitch.
Besides, your definition of "Public Figure" is irrelevant since calling someone a douche bag is not Parody, it's juvenile name calling and is the textbook definition of libel. IIRC that's what she was convicted of
No, I went to a total of 7 different schools between kindergarden and my senior year of HS (My family moved a lot). At none of those schools was the Assistant Principal a job akin to that of an actor where they get up on stage and perform. Their job is largely administration and clerical work. None of the administration members were elect to office so they never had to grab the general publics attention as a routine part of their job.
Where YOU homeschool? You've got the manners of someone that lacked socialization. If you think I'm wrong you don't just say "WRONG" you also give evidence of how I'm supposedly wrong.
Besides, all she did was call them douchebags and tell other to harass them with the contact information she provided. It's not that what she said was offensive, but that she made no effort to dress it up above the level of 4th grade name calling that makes it not parody. According to the dictionary on my computer the definition of Parody is:
parody |ËparÉ(TM)dÄ"| .
noun ( pl. -dies)
an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect : the movie is a parody of the horror genre | his provocative use of parody. See note at caricature
â an imitation or a version of something that falls far short of the real thing; a travesty : he seems like a parody of an educated Englishman.
verb ( -dies, -died) [ trans. ]
produce a humorously exaggerated imitation of (a writer, artist, or genre) : his specialty was parodying schoolgirl fiction.
â mimic humorously : he parodied his friend's voice.
No attempt at humor, no attempt to do anything other than lash out at the administration because she was angry. And she was angry b/c she wasn't getting her way.
I'm glad that her behavior was ultimately punished (although I do agree that prison time is overkill) and I'm also glad that corrupt officials are also being punished. One has nothing to do with the other.
Principals are not elected, they are hired. That is a big component of what it takes for federal or state employees to be considered "Public Figures" in my mind.
Besides this guy wasn't event the Principal, he was the Assistant Principal. That makes him even less important. Prior to this case, I'd be surprised if more than 10% of the parents of children at that school could actually have told you this guys name off the top of their head.
Also, calling someone a Douchebag (which is what she did) != Parody.
WTF? Are you being sarcastic?
At the moment, the drug companies say that drug X costs Y dollars everywhere. Then they look and see that there are a lot of people that can't afford to pay Y dollars b/c it's 20, 50, 100, 200% of their monthly income. They've decided to take a smaller profit in order to sell drug X for Z dollars where it's too expensive, but still charge Y dollars where the market can bare the weight. That's smart marketing and can save lives in 3rd world countries.
Explain to me how that translates into forcing the poor out of this country? Not everyone in the US can afford the current prices for all of the medications at price Y. However, in which ever third world country they decide to mark the price down, not everyone will be able to afford the drug at Z dollars. To say that an incomplete fix is some how worse than making no change at all is asinine.
No one is saying this move will completely fix the inequities inherent in who needs care vs who can afford care (that's the job of medicare/medicaid here in the US), but you appear to be the only one that says treating some that wouldn't normally be able to afford any care by dropping the prices in the poorest countries is somehow going to make things worse.
I think you are being needlessly dense. I'm well aware that they often spend millions if not billions on R&D for new medication. However, once they've discovered, licensed, and gotten the manufacturing kinks out the physical pills themselves often cost only pennies or a handful of dollars to actually make at the factory.
I'm not against them recouping their initial investment, or their making a profit off of their hard work after they've "Broken Even". My comment was not about the financial system they've developed where by they subsidize future development with the prices they charge now, only that the black hat conspiracy nuts want it both ways. They want to vilify them for charging too much (Which happens in some cases, but probably not even the majority when you consider the input costs you make reference to), but they also want to vilify them for reducing prices in some countries but not others.
Personally I have no real problem with their decision to price the drugs at a lower point in poorer countries. We get the benefit of the drugs first b/c they are often developed here. If that means we get a higher ticket price, that makes sense as well.
I know that Advertising is insane in the US. I'm all for banning direct to consumer advertising for medications again. Lifting the ban was stupid, and anti-consumer. Most MD's are not trained highly enough to be able to see through a lot of the drug companies BS, the general population is even less prepared.
/. that the drug companies charge too much (probably true), and the idea that somehow dropping prices for those that can't afford medicine somehow also makes them Evil.
I was just commenting on the dichotomy between the persistent POV on
Would I like to pay less for my med? Damn right I would! However, just because they are not planning on changing my rates any time soon doesn't mean that dropping the rates to be affordable elsewhere is somehow a "Bad Thing".
So, their bastards for charging more than people can afford for life saving medicine that now only costs cents to manufacture (having already spent the millions on R&D), but they are also bastards when they reduce the cost, because they'll get everyone hooked on their drugs.
This strikes me as a Win/Win type situation for BlackHat conspiracy folks.
Why would it matter which party he's a member of. I'm a Republican (and a published scientist) who thinks that Open Access is a great idea. I'll grant that there is ther perception that Rep. are more likely to be owned by big business, but I don't believe that it's actually true. Or more accurately, I believe the difference in corruption rate probably stem more from whether or not your party is the majority or not. No use wasting money on the party that can't get what you want for you.
This bill was probably written by the publishing industry. I'd be surprised if Conyers has even read the bill he's put his name on.
The sooner you learn that politicans don't need to belong to any particular party to be purchased, the better off you'll be.