"When a "great guy" who is "liked by the court" and considered to be an "honest representative" decides to "change sides" and believes so strongly in that decision that he refuses to ever talk to his son again, perhaps you should ask yourself why?"
Nope. Franklin switched sides out of personal reasons because he felt slighted by one member of the Court. That and he started feeling alien about being on the Court's side when some of his fellow Colonials were opposing the Crown. In that aspect, its no different than General Lee fighting for the South in the Civil War, with the exception that Lee had never been slighted by the Federal Government. He just indicated he would not bear arms against his "homeland." Locking one's own son up for not switching sides I find inexcusable, especially after the hostilities ended.
"I suspect the truth is somewhere between the two extremes, but "your" extreme is certainly no closer to the truth than the one taught in K-12."
Maybe so, but my points aren't extreme opinion. They are factual, and you can find out for yourself by cracking open decent history books written for the university level. Even here in America.
"The only possible difference is that folks over here didn't get to elect members of Parliament, but now the question is whether or not the representation we have is actually effective, let alone worthwhile. Sure, we get to vote, but are we even "represented" any more?"
I agree with your earlier points, but again, as in my original post, the American Colonies were given the opportunity to elect seats to the House of Commons. The radicals turned the offer down. They wanted a loose confederation through the Crown, or nothing at all.
As for the question of proper representation today, compare America's official population (296 million) to the number of members of the House of Representatives, then compare the official population of the United Kingdom and the number of members of the House of Commons. And there you will have your answer.
"The difference between the described and your post is that the described used a seemingly FOREIGN tax with FOREIGN collectors. The suggested fix was to simply make the local governments impose a tax (anything really) and simply forward that money to Britain, without the colonists even knowing for the most part."
And that's part of the problem. Britain wasn't FOREIGN. They were the same people. Funny how a government raises a necessary tax and people forget where they came from, yet 15 years earlier they were demanding that their "brothers" protect them from their hated enemies, the French. Britain to the Colonials was no more FOREIGN than Washington D.C. is today to me as a Californian. The difference is, Washington D.C.'s level of taxation per capita is far more regressive than the British back in the day. Or even today, when you consider Britain today has guaranteed health care for its citizens.
And not all the tax collectors were *foreign.* Some of them were fellow Colonials.
"The mistake made by the British government was to impose socially unpopular taxes (sugar, stamp, tea, etc...) on the colonist to raise money which undercut the authority of the colonial legislatures. They then sent corrupt (from the colonist point of view) tax collectors to enforce the taxes further undermining local governance. The issue wasn't so much as 'why' the taxes needed to be levied, but rather the 'how'. If the British government instead had relied on the colonial legislatures levy their own local taxes for continued protection of the British army and help pay off the war debt the revolutionary war would potentially have been avoided."
The colonial legislatures never offered to pay their portion of the debt the British ran up during the 7 Years War to protect the North American Colonies from the French. Never. Because of that, Parliament had to find a way to pay that debt off without bankrupting the treasury. Since the Colonials failed to do so, Parliament had to raise taxes. The problem was the Colonials refused to pay any form of taxation. And the level of taxation argument is ridiculous. All of the proposed British taxes on the Colonies amounted to 1% of income per capita. Compare that to the British public who were paying far higher taxation rates on lots of different goods. In London, they were paying taxes on glass windows to make up for the failed tax collection in the Colonies. Ireland also suffered higher taxation to make up for the Colonial losses. Which is ironic, considering how many Americans later tried funding armed Irish rebellion against the Crown when had they actually paid their taxes, their wouldn't have been a need for an Irish rebellion. Your point about "corrupt" British agents collecting the taxes also applies to fellow Colonials who were granted that job as well.
"by your logic it should be alright for california etc. to secede."
Amen, even though I did vote for W. Its funny how the arguments used by the Founding Fathers are somehow considered "justified" yet if someone in California raises the issue today, since far more money flows out of our State to the Feds than is ever returned, we are offered the opinion that once a State joins the United States, it can never leave it, despite the fact that such a concept violates every principle of international law.
If anything, California *should* go it alone because the Federal Government fails to protect our border from illegal immigration from Mexico (or, even worse, potential Al Quaeda agents posing as migrants), tells our State to pay for their health care, and then won't properly refund us the money used by that because the illegal aliens do not have Social Security Numbers because they are illegal.
"Exactly. They knew damn well they'd just be out-voted every time on every issue, so what's the point?"
You miss the whole point. They could've voted in blocks. The concept of "party" was still a new idea at the time, even though most would have considered themselves "Whigs" just as the King himself did. The colonials also had sympathizers in Parliament at the time too, such as Charles Fox's faction.
Your argument is also ridiculous when applied to any small State remaining within the United States today. You think Rhode Island, even with its same amount of Senate representation as California actually amounts to anything?
"Sure they offered a seat or two, but not enough to make a fucking difference."
They offered more than two. The point was, the radicals rejected the offer because they rejected the concept that Parliament had any right to make laws outside of England/Scotland. They also thought the King would rally to their side as well. When he didn't, they began to call him a "tyrant."
"Bodies in outer space are not supposed to be used for millitary purposes. Interesting that this is essentially a 'territory' which is not a physical body."
Those treaties will be considered null and void by the current Administration or its successor, just as the ABM Treaty was withdrawn.
Besides, if the U.S. goes ahead and does what it wants, who is going to stop us? The UN? Ha. Remember, their forces can't even shoot to protect themselves unless fired upon first. And even then its a 50/50 proposition.:)
"While we're at it, let's grab military control of Antarctica too, 'cause this shit about "sharing" as called for in the Antarctic Treaty just ain't workin' out!"
Yeah, but Antartica isn't exactly strategically important. At least not until the ice melts and Atlantis pops up from under it. As it stands now, only Argentina truly desires it. Of course, they also want the Falklands. Good thing the Brits still control that. Also lucky that there's as much oil under those islands as Kuwait has. I wonder if BP found that out before or after the war....hmmm...:)
The domination of space is crucial for military superiority on Earth through communications and yet another means of projecting strike capabilities. Access to the Moon and other bodies will also become important thanks to the natural resources that are present in those bodies.
"Look at it this way, it can start out as an irrelevant US military base and then flourish commercially, or France can get there first, claim it in the name of the EU, and establish a massive bureaucracy with a 60% tax on everything passing through. I'd rather have a quasi-Free Market gov't grab it first."
At least with an American space colony, the folks there will actually shower. A French space colony would smell of body odor.
If I had a choice between bathing (in this regard, showering) with soap or enjoying fine cheese, I'll pick personal hygiene every time.
"Yes, well, if you thought the American Revolution was a bloody war, just wait until our space Colonies get tired of the lack of representation and flaming death falls from the sky?"
Learn your history. The British Parliament offered seats to the Colonies. The radicals, members of the Sons of Liberty (who would be classified as terrorists today) put pressure on the colonial assemblies to reject the offer because the Sons of Liberty from the outset wanted independence. They especially did not want to pay the monies owed to Britain for finally dispatching the one true threat in North America to all of the colonies, that being the French, during the Seven Years War/French & Indian War.
Some other misnomers taught to us through our *great* K-12 educational system about the American Revolution.
*Quartering of soldiers. Did not happen. The Loyalist families volunteered to house some of the soldiers. The majority of the soldiers were housed in Inns. The British made the colonial legislatures pay the innkeepers for the soldiers staying. The Legislatures and some of the members did not appreciate this. But people were not forced to take soldiers into their homes as we are inaccurately taught in schools.
*Standing army a tyranny. The British soldiers stayed in the North American colonies to not only keep the peace between the colonials and the Native Americans, but also to keep the French from trying to regain Canada or assault the North American colonies. Some colonial morons, some of which became our "Founding Fathers" declared that such a move was to stomp on their liberty and curtail democracy, which was not the case at all. The British troops were also there because the colonial militias proved to be completely ineffective in the 7 Years War. The brunt of the fighting was left to the British Army.
*Tea tax. The stupidest thing of all the American Revolutionary history. The British East India Company was going bankrupt and essentially controlled India. The British needed a means to pay for it, as well as repaying the huge debt run up beating the French and protecting the North American Colonies during the 7 Years War. So they gave a monopoly to the East India Company to sell tea in the Colonies. This pissed off the smugglers, who violated British trade laws (as well as Naval laws) by importing inferior Dutch tea. The tea was then handled by wholesalers, distributors, and stores. The East India Monopoly threatened to destroy this black market trade, whose headquarters was in, ta da, Boston. Only select merchants would sell the East India tea. So what happened? Smugglers, merchants, and wholesalers protested, *disguised* themselves as "Indians," and dumped the British tea into Boston Harbor. This led to the closing of Boston Harbor by the British. Even Ben Franklin at the time thought it was fair for Boston to pay up for the damage before the harbor was re-opened.
*Trial-by-peers. The problems of Boston continued escalating. Even a British Naval vessel was burnt by colonial radicals. Since trial-by-jury - a standard Right of Englishmen - meant a "trial by peers," the British were unsuccessful in getting a conviction against smugglers, because the jury was made up of smugglers. So the British decided to send the smugglers to London for conviction. Of course, the radicals were pissed off by this trampling of their liberty.
*George Washington. We think of him as a great general, but he proved otherwise in the earlier 7 Years War, which started when his hat was shot off his head while riding horseback. The general could not speak French, which is required of a leading officer in the British Army at the time because you had to sometimes negotiate with the blood enemy (the French). The British told Washington to also listen to his Native American allies, and Washington hated the Native Americans. So Washington did not listen to his allies, did not abandon a fort during the winter, and got trapped inside of it because of the mud. The French c
Textbooks are one of the worst investments the public school system makes. Its beyond time now that schools acquired the text books online and printed out the portions of the books that were actually being used by the classes. There would be some sort of revenue share, but obviously much less money involved than acquiring physical books. Plus, most of the cost of the books involve manufacturing/printing, which would be eliminated in this process.
The other good point is, if the child loses a section, no sweat. No longer will parents be forced to pay $70 (or more) to replace some ancient text book.
The other great thing about this is less stress on a child's back tugging heavy books over their shoulder. Not to mention the fact that schools across the nation have removed lockers in the desperate (or pathetic) attempt to combat drug abuse.
Notice, I did not mention anything about school districts buying laptops for the students.
"Oh, that will be a happy day. I might even pay the British TV Tax just to get Dr. Who!;-)"
As an American, I would like to support the new Doctor Who show financially, especially since apparently all the American broadcasters/cable stations have passed on it, and of course, I've already viewed the entire first season (Season 27, to us old school fans) via the good ol' Torrents. If it can record that the money is coming from an American, I would prefer that approach than importing the Region 2 DVDs since that will only give a false sales figure for the UK and will not properly gauge interest in the show from the States. That and importing Region 2 DVDs violates the EULAs.
Granted, my Philips DVP-642 DVD player can play Region 2 DVDs as well as burnt CDs and burnt DVD +/-R discs that are encoded in Divx 3.0/5.0 and Xvid. The store stickers touts it as doing traditional MPEG4 as well, but I haven't tried it (especially not H.264) yet in that regard. $70 at Target. $59 at Best Buy if you can actually find one in stock at the store.
As for the SciFi Network and not picking up Doctor Who, there was the entire story/thread two days ago about SciFi's success with "cheap" scifi movies. That plays into the equation. Of course, in truth, BBC Worldwide was probably demanding too much of an "American surcharge" on the televising rights too, from what has been reported online from behind-the-scenes.
Nope. Daleks are fascists. They wouldn't be suitable for a collaborative effort. They'd operate like Microsoft's mantra, but instead of "embrace," it would be "exterminate and extend."
The Cybermen would be the better thing to reference, since they are the nightmare parable for socialism/communism. Calling the project "Mondas" (after the Cyber race's home planet, the twin planet of Earth, sorta like the Annunaki myths) would be more appropriate.
Granted, it would be much better to call a BBC project "Pharaos" or "Logopolis" if referencing the Doctor Who mythos for an open source project.
"I think the only films Apple would NOT get would be Columbia/Tristar which are owned by Sony (unless Sony doesn't care WHO sells their movies)"
I doubt Sony (ahem, Columbia) Pictures gives a frak about what the rest of Sony does. The only strategic thing they've done for Sony Corporate lately was agree to issue their movies on the UMD format for the PSP. Before that, Sony Pictures supported DVD exclusively (and refused to license their films to Circuit City's DIVX joke-of-a-platform) and also agreed to provide content for Sony's mini-Beta (I forget the brand) portable video players. Video-8. That's what it was.
Of course, you can count on Sony Pictures not licensing any content to HD-DVD and will exclusively support Blu-Ray.
Music wise, Sony Connect doesn't seem to have that many more exclusive cuts available versus iTunes. Although that could be due to the influence of BMG, since they co-own Sony BMG Music. I noticed one exclusive track of The Killers that was available on Sony Connect and not iTunes, which did piss me off since I am a fan and got the rest of their music courtesy of Pepsi/Mountain Dew and their iTunes promotion.
Sony Corporate probably wouldn't care about an Apple iMovie/iTunes Movie Download service as long as their was a plug about viewing the movies in the living room on Sony LCD televisions...:)
"The irony is that Toshiba, who supports HD-DVD, helped design the Cell processor, which is in the PlayStation 3, which uses Blu-Ray. Toshiba, the new AOL?"
No greater an irony than Sony shipping PCs with Windows for the operating system and then competing with Microsoft for practically everything else. Game systems, phones, online music stores, MP3 players, DVRs and satellite consoles, and formerly PDAs.
Or Matsushita, the blood rival of Sony, partnering up with Sony on Blu-Ray when it has opposed Sony on practically every other standard. In the early 90s, the only reason why Matsushita bought (and sank a fortune into) MCA/Universal was because Sony bought Columbia/Tri-Star from Coca-Cola. Matsushita was also a champion of 3DO if memory servers correctly....and VHS before that.
Let Toshiba kill its own alleged "standard" due to its own stupidity, I say.
1080p is the future, and Blu-Ray/Sony Playstation3 supports 1080p. There are many televisions coming out now and in the near future that supports 1080p, which means Blu-Ray will have an advantage over broadcast, cable, and satellite in terms of image quality for some time to come.
HD-DVD is cheap to manufacture per disc and that is why some studios support it, and supposedly has an advantage over the number of Blu-Ray houses. I say, "big deal." Circuit City's DIVX DVD "standard" also had more studios (plus Steven Spielberg and George Lucas - supposedly) supporting it than open DVD, and we all know what happened there. The end users - us - boycotted DIVX and Circuit City flushed it down the toilet after sustaining massive losses which also led to Circuit City's retail strength collapsing in the face of Best Buy's expansion. It will be no different here. Toshiba is going to sink with HD-DVD, and Microsoft better wake up to that little tidbit and decide not to release and Xbox360 1.5 model with HD-DVD built in. Microsoft could always order Blu-Ray drives from Matsushita if they didn't want to give Sony money per drive.
"Mmmm, now that's something I could get behind. Screw all this picture/cellphone/video-iPod nonsense; I don't need or want that, nor could I effectively use it."
Exactly. There's no reason convergeance could not happen between PDAs and MP3 players. I'd much prefer that than convergeance with mobile phones, where the trend is making the smallest phone possible at the expense of the screen size.
I'd say the best candidates for adopting PDA functionality are the iPod (minus the Shuffle, of course) line and the Sony PSP. Why there isn't an option to download (for a price) PalmOS for the PSP is beyond me.
If you want a mini-OS X, PalmOS, or a revised version of NewtonOS on an iPod, write to Apple. They do have a suggestion area on their website for iPods, here:
"Another major factor in the GB's success over the Lynx was Tetris. I don't have the link handy, but I've seen stuff out there that shows just how much of an impact having the one true version of Tetris and packing it in with the GB had for Nintendo in their fight at that time."
I forgot about that. Good catch. But I wouldn't refer to Nintendo's version of TETRIS as "the one true version of Tetris." It was the "one true legal version of Tetris" at the time. Good for the author of the program, but disasterous for Spectrum Holybrite and disasterous for Atari Games/Tengen who had the best and funnest version of Tetris, both in the home and in the arcade. And consequently, disasterous for Atari Corp. and its Lynx game system because they couldn't get Tetris on their machine...whereas if Atari Games/Tengen had turned out to have held a legal claim, it could've been easily ported since Time Warner would've ordered Atari Games to have complied with the porting request. Unfortunately, the Lynx had to wait until Atari Games brought out "Klax" to the arcade and then ported it to the Lynx. And while Klax was awesome, it didn't have the impact of Tetris. And consequently, Nintendo has been able to pass off their inferior handhelds to the large gameplaying public for the last 16 years and as such, an undeserved/illegitimate de facto niche monopoly.
I actually hope Sony can make a dent in Nintendo's Gameboy charmed armour. I was hoping I'd win the PSP in the McDonald's contest, but alas, I won a PS2 yesterday instead.
"Sooo..... You're saying that the Xbox would be dead except for the fact that Microsoft spent cash on making it successful?"
Reread what I wrote. I was making the point that all the cash in the world does not guarantee success, in terms of the argument that Apple does not have enough cash ($5 billion +) in the bank to ensure a video/videogame iPod could not beat the PSP when compared to Sony's cash. Microsoft has something like $50-60 billion in cash and the only thing they've been able to do with the Xbox is keep it slightly above the Nintendo Gamecube here in America. When you compare the installed user base of the Playstation2 to the Xbox, the Xbox may not be dead, but its practically "undead." If there was no Xbox Live - and more importantly the Halo franchise - it would be deader than the 3DO or the parents on Party of Five. To me, Microsoft is fighting a war of attrition against Sony. Although if they keep playing their cards, they might be able to knock Nintendo out of the market as a hardware company. However, their #1 priority is to make sure the Xbox360 doesn't get "Dreamcasted" in the wake of the PS3 coming to the market.
Slashdot Mirror
"When a "great guy" who is "liked by the court" and considered to be an "honest representative" decides to "change sides" and believes so strongly in that decision that he refuses to ever talk to his son again, perhaps you should ask yourself why?"
Nope. Franklin switched sides out of personal reasons because he felt slighted by one member of the Court. That and he started feeling alien about being on the Court's side when some of his fellow Colonials were opposing the Crown. In that aspect, its no different than General Lee fighting for the South in the Civil War, with the exception that Lee had never been slighted by the Federal Government. He just indicated he would not bear arms against his "homeland." Locking one's own son up for not switching sides I find inexcusable, especially after the hostilities ended.
"I suspect the truth is somewhere between the two extremes, but "your" extreme is certainly no closer to the truth than the one taught in K-12."
Maybe so, but my points aren't extreme opinion. They are factual, and you can find out for yourself by cracking open decent history books written for the university level. Even here in America.
"The only possible difference is that folks over here didn't get to elect members of Parliament, but now the question is whether or not the representation we have is actually effective, let alone worthwhile. Sure, we get to vote, but are we even "represented" any more?"
I agree with your earlier points, but again, as in my original post, the American Colonies were given the opportunity to elect seats to the House of Commons. The radicals turned the offer down. They wanted a loose confederation through the Crown, or nothing at all.
As for the question of proper representation today, compare America's official population (296 million) to the number of members of the House of Representatives, then compare the official population of the United Kingdom and the number of members of the House of Commons. And there you will have your answer.
"The difference between the described and your post is that the described used a seemingly FOREIGN tax with FOREIGN collectors. The suggested fix was to simply make the local governments impose a tax (anything really) and simply forward that money to Britain, without the colonists even knowing for the most part."
And that's part of the problem. Britain wasn't FOREIGN. They were the same people. Funny how a government raises a necessary tax and people forget where they came from, yet 15 years earlier they were demanding that their "brothers" protect them from their hated enemies, the French. Britain to the Colonials was no more FOREIGN than Washington D.C. is today to me as a Californian. The difference is, Washington D.C.'s level of taxation per capita is far more regressive than the British back in the day. Or even today, when you consider Britain today has guaranteed health care for its citizens.
And not all the tax collectors were *foreign.* Some of them were fellow Colonials.
"The mistake made by the British government was to impose socially unpopular taxes (sugar, stamp, tea, etc...) on the colonist to raise money which undercut the authority of the colonial legislatures. They then sent corrupt (from the colonist point of view) tax collectors to enforce the taxes further undermining local governance. The issue wasn't so much as 'why' the taxes needed to be levied, but rather the 'how'. If the British government instead had relied on the colonial legislatures levy their own local taxes for continued protection of the British army and help pay off the war debt the revolutionary war would potentially have been avoided."
The colonial legislatures never offered to pay their portion of the debt the British ran up during the 7 Years War to protect the North American Colonies from the French. Never. Because of that, Parliament had to find a way to pay that debt off without bankrupting the treasury. Since the Colonials failed to do so, Parliament had to raise taxes. The problem was the Colonials refused to pay any form of taxation. And the level of taxation argument is ridiculous. All of the proposed British taxes on the Colonies amounted to 1% of income per capita. Compare that to the British public who were paying far higher taxation rates on lots of different goods. In London, they were paying taxes on glass windows to make up for the failed tax collection in the Colonies. Ireland also suffered higher taxation to make up for the Colonial losses. Which is ironic, considering how many Americans later tried funding armed Irish rebellion against the Crown when had they actually paid their taxes, their wouldn't have been a need for an Irish rebellion. Your point about "corrupt" British agents collecting the taxes also applies to fellow Colonials who were granted that job as well.
"by your logic it should be alright for california etc. to secede."
Amen, even though I did vote for W. Its funny how the arguments used by the Founding Fathers are somehow considered "justified" yet if someone in California raises the issue today, since far more money flows out of our State to the Feds than is ever returned, we are offered the opinion that once a State joins the United States, it can never leave it, despite the fact that such a concept violates every principle of international law.
If anything, California *should* go it alone because the Federal Government fails to protect our border from illegal immigration from Mexico (or, even worse, potential Al Quaeda agents posing as migrants), tells our State to pay for their health care, and then won't properly refund us the money used by that because the illegal aliens do not have Social Security Numbers because they are illegal.
"Exactly. They knew damn well they'd just be out-voted every time on every issue, so what's the point?"
You miss the whole point. They could've voted in blocks. The concept of "party" was still a new idea at the time, even though most would have considered themselves "Whigs" just as the King himself did. The colonials also had sympathizers in Parliament at the time too, such as Charles Fox's faction.
Your argument is also ridiculous when applied to any small State remaining within the United States today. You think Rhode Island, even with its same amount of Senate representation as California actually amounts to anything?
"Sure they offered a seat or two, but not enough to make a fucking difference."
They offered more than two. The point was, the radicals rejected the offer because they rejected the concept that Parliament had any right to make laws outside of England/Scotland. They also thought the King would rally to their side as well. When he didn't, they began to call him a "tyrant."
"You must be new here."
:)
Ha ha! That reply was worth the -1 troll factor of my prior post...
"Bodies in outer space are not supposed to be used for millitary purposes. Interesting that this is essentially a 'territory' which is not a physical body."
:)
Those treaties will be considered null and void by the current Administration or its successor, just as the ABM Treaty was withdrawn.
Besides, if the U.S. goes ahead and does what it wants, who is going to stop us? The UN? Ha. Remember, their forces can't even shoot to protect themselves unless fired upon first. And even then its a 50/50 proposition.
"While we're at it, let's grab military control of Antarctica too, 'cause this shit about "sharing" as called for in the Antarctic Treaty just ain't workin' out!"
:)
Yeah, but Antartica isn't exactly strategically important. At least not until the ice melts and Atlantis pops up from under it. As it stands now, only Argentina truly desires it. Of course, they also want the Falklands. Good thing the Brits still control that. Also lucky that there's as much oil under those islands as Kuwait has. I wonder if BP found that out before or after the war....hmmm...
The domination of space is crucial for military superiority on Earth through communications and yet another means of projecting strike capabilities. Access to the Moon and other bodies will also become important thanks to the natural resources that are present in those bodies.
"Look at it this way, it can start out as an irrelevant US military base and then flourish commercially, or France can get there first, claim it in the name of the EU, and establish a massive bureaucracy with a 60% tax on everything passing through. I'd rather have a quasi-Free Market gov't grab it first."
At least with an American space colony, the folks there will actually shower. A French space colony would smell of body odor.
If I had a choice between bathing (in this regard, showering) with soap or enjoying fine cheese, I'll pick personal hygiene every time.
"Yes, well, if you thought the American Revolution was a bloody war, just wait until our space Colonies get tired of the lack of representation and flaming death falls from the sky?"
Learn your history. The British Parliament offered seats to the Colonies. The radicals, members of the Sons of Liberty (who would be classified as terrorists today) put pressure on the colonial assemblies to reject the offer because the Sons of Liberty from the outset wanted independence. They especially did not want to pay the monies owed to Britain for finally dispatching the one true threat in North America to all of the colonies, that being the French, during the Seven Years War/French & Indian War.
Some other misnomers taught to us through our *great* K-12 educational system about the American Revolution.
*Quartering of soldiers. Did not happen. The Loyalist families volunteered to house some of the soldiers. The majority of the soldiers were housed in Inns. The British made the colonial legislatures pay the innkeepers for the soldiers staying. The Legislatures and some of the members did not appreciate this. But people were not forced to take soldiers into their homes as we are inaccurately taught in schools.
*Standing army a tyranny. The British soldiers stayed in the North American colonies to not only keep the peace between the colonials and the Native Americans, but also to keep the French from trying to regain Canada or assault the North American colonies. Some colonial morons, some of which became our "Founding Fathers" declared that such a move was to stomp on their liberty and curtail democracy, which was not the case at all. The British troops were also there because the colonial militias proved to be completely ineffective in the 7 Years War. The brunt of the fighting was left to the British Army.
*Tea tax. The stupidest thing of all the American Revolutionary history. The British East India Company was going bankrupt and essentially controlled India. The British needed a means to pay for it, as well as repaying the huge debt run up beating the French and protecting the North American Colonies during the 7 Years War. So they gave a monopoly to the East India Company to sell tea in the Colonies. This pissed off the smugglers, who violated British trade laws (as well as Naval laws) by importing inferior Dutch tea. The tea was then handled by wholesalers, distributors, and stores. The East India Monopoly threatened to destroy this black market trade, whose headquarters was in, ta da, Boston. Only select merchants would sell the East India tea. So what happened? Smugglers, merchants, and wholesalers protested, *disguised* themselves as "Indians," and dumped the British tea into Boston Harbor. This led to the closing of Boston Harbor by the British. Even Ben Franklin at the time thought it was fair for Boston to pay up for the damage before the harbor was re-opened.
*Trial-by-peers. The problems of Boston continued escalating. Even a British Naval vessel was burnt by colonial radicals. Since trial-by-jury - a standard Right of Englishmen - meant a "trial by peers," the British were unsuccessful in getting a conviction against smugglers, because the jury was made up of smugglers. So the British decided to send the smugglers to London for conviction. Of course, the radicals were pissed off by this trampling of their liberty.
*George Washington. We think of him as a great general, but he proved otherwise in the earlier 7 Years War, which started when his hat was shot off his head while riding horseback. The general could not speak French, which is required of a leading officer in the British Army at the time because you had to sometimes negotiate with the blood enemy (the French). The British told Washington to also listen to his Native American allies, and Washington hated the Native Americans. So Washington did not listen to his allies, did not abandon a fort during the winter, and got trapped inside of it because of the mud. The French c
Textbooks are one of the worst investments the public school system makes. Its beyond time now that schools acquired the text books online and printed out the portions of the books that were actually being used by the classes. There would be some sort of revenue share, but obviously much less money involved than acquiring physical books. Plus, most of the cost of the books involve manufacturing/printing, which would be eliminated in this process.
The other good point is, if the child loses a section, no sweat. No longer will parents be forced to pay $70 (or more) to replace some ancient text book.
The other great thing about this is less stress on a child's back tugging heavy books over their shoulder. Not to mention the fact that schools across the nation have removed lockers in the desperate (or pathetic) attempt to combat drug abuse.
Notice, I did not mention anything about school districts buying laptops for the students.
"We are in the world of 299 PCs... The new game systems will cost more then a end user PC platform."
But those $299 PCs won't have:
1. Gigabit ethernet built-in.
2. Won't export 1080p video.
3. Won't have a Blu-Ray drive standard.
4. Won't have decent WIFI from the start.
5. Won't have a bundled Bluetooth based gamepad.
6. Won't have a decent videocard included.
So yeah, there are reasons why the new console (I'm referencing the PS3, btw) won't debut at the $299 MSRP.
"In the past, BBC developments have shaped (or at least steered) the adoption of technology in the UK"
:)
You mean like how the majority of Europe uses PAL for analog television broadcasts?
"Oh, that will be a happy day. I might even pay the British TV Tax just to get Dr. Who! ;-)"
As an American, I would like to support the new Doctor Who show financially, especially since apparently all the American broadcasters/cable stations have passed on it, and of course, I've already viewed the entire first season (Season 27, to us old school fans) via the good ol' Torrents. If it can record that the money is coming from an American, I would prefer that approach than importing the Region 2 DVDs since that will only give a false sales figure for the UK and will not properly gauge interest in the show from the States. That and importing Region 2 DVDs violates the EULAs.
Granted, my Philips DVP-642 DVD player can play Region 2 DVDs as well as burnt CDs and burnt DVD +/-R discs that are encoded in Divx 3.0/5.0 and Xvid. The store stickers touts it as doing traditional MPEG4 as well, but I haven't tried it (especially not H.264) yet in that regard. $70 at Target. $59 at Best Buy if you can actually find one in stock at the store.
As for the SciFi Network and not picking up Doctor Who, there was the entire story/thread two days ago about SciFi's success with "cheap" scifi movies. That plays into the equation. Of course, in truth, BBC Worldwide was probably demanding too much of an "American surcharge" on the televising rights too, from what has been reported online from behind-the-scenes.
"A couple questions, though. What inspired the British Broadcasting Corporation to suddenly leap into the software programming foray?"
Uhm, they have a long historical association with computers. Look at the BBC Micro. Of course, it wasn't marketed here in the States.
"BBC should have called it Dalek!"
Nope. Daleks are fascists. They wouldn't be suitable for a collaborative effort. They'd operate like Microsoft's mantra, but instead of "embrace," it would be "exterminate and extend."
The Cybermen would be the better thing to reference, since they are the nightmare parable for socialism/communism. Calling the project "Mondas" (after the Cyber race's home planet, the twin planet of Earth, sorta like the Annunaki myths) would be more appropriate.
Granted, it would be much better to call a BBC project "Pharaos" or "Logopolis" if referencing the Doctor Who mythos for an open source project.
"I think the only films Apple would NOT get would be Columbia/Tristar which are owned by Sony (unless Sony doesn't care WHO sells their movies)"
:)
I doubt Sony (ahem, Columbia) Pictures gives a frak about what the rest of Sony does. The only strategic thing they've done for Sony Corporate lately was agree to issue their movies on the UMD format for the PSP. Before that, Sony Pictures supported DVD exclusively (and refused to license their films to Circuit City's DIVX joke-of-a-platform) and also agreed to provide content for Sony's mini-Beta (I forget the brand) portable video players. Video-8. That's what it was.
Of course, you can count on Sony Pictures not licensing any content to HD-DVD and will exclusively support Blu-Ray.
Music wise, Sony Connect doesn't seem to have that many more exclusive cuts available versus iTunes. Although that could be due to the influence of BMG, since they co-own Sony BMG Music. I noticed one exclusive track of The Killers that was available on Sony Connect and not iTunes, which did piss me off since I am a fan and got the rest of their music courtesy of Pepsi/Mountain Dew and their iTunes promotion.
Sony Corporate probably wouldn't care about an Apple iMovie/iTunes Movie Download service as long as their was a plug about viewing the movies in the living room on Sony LCD televisions...
"The irony is that Toshiba, who supports HD-DVD, helped design the Cell processor, which is in the PlayStation 3, which uses Blu-Ray. Toshiba, the new AOL?"
No greater an irony than Sony shipping PCs with Windows for the operating system and then competing with Microsoft for practically everything else. Game systems, phones, online music stores, MP3 players, DVRs and satellite consoles, and formerly PDAs.
Or Matsushita, the blood rival of Sony, partnering up with Sony on Blu-Ray when it has opposed Sony on practically every other standard. In the early 90s, the only reason why Matsushita bought (and sank a fortune into) MCA/Universal was because Sony bought Columbia/Tri-Star from Coca-Cola. Matsushita was also a champion of 3DO if memory servers correctly....and VHS before that.
Let Toshiba kill its own alleged "standard" due to its own stupidity, I say.
1080p is the future, and Blu-Ray/Sony Playstation3 supports 1080p. There are many televisions coming out now and in the near future that supports 1080p, which means Blu-Ray will have an advantage over broadcast, cable, and satellite in terms of image quality for some time to come.
HD-DVD is cheap to manufacture per disc and that is why some studios support it, and supposedly has an advantage over the number of Blu-Ray houses. I say, "big deal." Circuit City's DIVX DVD "standard" also had more studios (plus Steven Spielberg and George Lucas - supposedly) supporting it than open DVD, and we all know what happened there. The end users - us - boycotted DIVX and Circuit City flushed it down the toilet after sustaining massive losses which also led to Circuit City's retail strength collapsing in the face of Best Buy's expansion. It will be no different here. Toshiba is going to sink with HD-DVD, and Microsoft better wake up to that little tidbit and decide not to release and Xbox360 1.5 model with HD-DVD built in. Microsoft could always order Blu-Ray drives from Matsushita if they didn't want to give Sony money per drive.
"Mmmm, now that's something I could get behind. Screw all this picture/cellphone/video-iPod nonsense; I don't need or want that, nor could I effectively use it."
Exactly. There's no reason convergeance could not happen between PDAs and MP3 players. I'd much prefer that than convergeance with mobile phones, where the trend is making the smallest phone possible at the expense of the screen size.
I'd say the best candidates for adopting PDA functionality are the iPod (minus the Shuffle, of course) line and the Sony PSP. Why there isn't an option to download (for a price) PalmOS for the PSP is beyond me.
If you want a mini-OS X, PalmOS, or a revised version of NewtonOS on an iPod, write to Apple. They do have a suggestion area on their website for iPods, here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html
That, or go buy some Apple shares and complain/recommend through that avenue...
"Another major factor in the GB's success over the Lynx was Tetris. I don't have the link handy, but I've seen stuff out there that shows just how much of an impact having the one true version of Tetris and packing it in with the GB had for Nintendo in their fight at that time."
I forgot about that. Good catch. But I wouldn't refer to Nintendo's version of TETRIS as "the one true version of Tetris." It was the "one true legal version of Tetris" at the time. Good for the author of the program, but disasterous for Spectrum Holybrite and disasterous for Atari Games/Tengen who had the best and funnest version of Tetris, both in the home and in the arcade. And consequently, disasterous for Atari Corp. and its Lynx game system because they couldn't get Tetris on their machine...whereas if Atari Games/Tengen had turned out to have held a legal claim, it could've been easily ported since Time Warner would've ordered Atari Games to have complied with the porting request. Unfortunately, the Lynx had to wait until Atari Games brought out "Klax" to the arcade and then ported it to the Lynx. And while Klax was awesome, it didn't have the impact of Tetris. And consequently, Nintendo has been able to pass off their inferior handhelds to the large gameplaying public for the last 16 years and as such, an undeserved/illegitimate de facto niche monopoly.
I actually hope Sony can make a dent in Nintendo's Gameboy charmed armour. I was hoping I'd win the PSP in the McDonald's contest, but alas, I won a PS2 yesterday instead.
"Sooo..... You're saying that the Xbox would be dead except for the fact that Microsoft spent cash on making it successful?"
Reread what I wrote. I was making the point that all the cash in the world does not guarantee success, in terms of the argument that Apple does not have enough cash ($5 billion +) in the bank to ensure a video/videogame iPod could not beat the PSP when compared to Sony's cash. Microsoft has something like $50-60 billion in cash and the only thing they've been able to do with the Xbox is keep it slightly above the Nintendo Gamecube here in America. When you compare the installed user base of the Playstation2 to the Xbox, the Xbox may not be dead, but its practically "undead." If there was no Xbox Live - and more importantly the Halo franchise - it would be deader than the 3DO or the parents on Party of Five. To me, Microsoft is fighting a war of attrition against Sony. Although if they keep playing their cards, they might be able to knock Nintendo out of the market as a hardware company. However, their #1 priority is to make sure the Xbox360 doesn't get "Dreamcasted" in the wake of the PS3 coming to the market.
Sooo..... You're saying that the Xbox would be dead except for the fact that Microsoft spent cash on making it successful?