Quiet, you. The anti-Obama crowd has designated this the "Obama is a shadowy overlord" thread of the day. They don't want you shining actual facts in here and ruining it.
Don't pay attention to these authoritarian morons telling you you're at fault. You were lied to and taken advantage of. Prime fodder for a small-claims suit, I'd say. Followed by a bullshit firing, no doubt -- followed by a juicy wrongful-termination suit.
Why does every post pointing out shenanigans pulled by a corporation immediately pull a cadre of replies accusing the poster of "whining" and having "a sense of entitlement"(tm)?
Answer: there is a certain segment of our population (even here on Slashdot) that always sides with the more powerful party in any dispute. These people are called authoritarians.
Far be it from me to undercut your protestant-work-ethic-appealing "if you like it, it should cost a lot" ranting, but may I refer you to this extremely enlightening post? It has been a pleasure serving you here at Reality. Thank you, drive through.
Funny how someone who has "enough wealth behind me" to game the system would consider paying one's rightful share into the system that allowed him to get that wealth in the first place to be the activity of "useful idiots" who are also "disciples of authoritarianism".
You got rich in this system, and now you want to hoard your riches away from that same system. I say, pay the fuck up or get the fuck out, freeloader.
You're right that they've been systematically lied to, but from the other direction.
In the US in the 1950s, it was typical for a single earner at an ordinary blue-collar job to be able to support a family, pay for a new car every other year, and make payments on a house, with money left over for a few niceties. And since things are supposed to get better and easier over time, by now things should be as easy as it's portrayed in Friends, if not more so. But with the insane policies foisted on us by political hacks over the last 30 or 40 years, you're lucky if you can pull that off with two earners, at white-collar jobs.
Now that the system has finally come crashing down and people are waking up to the fact that the fantasies they've been fed on a policy level are just that, maybe, if we're lucky, we can get some reasonable policies in place and make people remember for longer than they did after the previous Great Depression.
This also applies to the big scary "protectionism" people are also frightened of in this thread. These types keep saying having protectionism in place only hurts you, but China and India have classic protectionist policies in place, and seem to be doing amazingly well compared to us, considering how we've essentially gutted ours and are now swirling the drain.
In fact, it was specifically their crappy VCRs that gave me the wisdom never to buy anything from JVC again. After having had four top-of-the-line SVHSes (~$600 per) develop incurable picture problems within a year of purchase, I vowed never to darken their coffers again.
One final plot... the venerable stairway to heaven is noted for its gradual increase in intensity - part of that is from the volume and part comes from in increase in tempo. Jimmy Page stated that the song "speeds up like an adrenaline flow". Let's see if we can see this:
[graph]
The steady downward slope shows shorter beat durations over the course of the song (meaning a faster song). That's something you just can't do with a click track.
Um...really? You can't make a click track gradually change rate over time? Or follow whatever kind of variation you program it to? That's news to me. I thought computers wuz like all smart 'n' stuff.
Well, we can't have an educated populace. After all:
An educated populace is harder to trick into going along with stupid ideas in general
A real education tends to include things like civics, economics, and critical thinking, which will only make it worse, and need I mention the specter of the dread Darwinian EVILution?
Paying for all that education as an investment in the public good is going to mean providing it via government, which takes away a profit opportunity, which is the kind of thing that would be dreamt up by some kind of commie, and you're not a commie, are you?
America was built on the principle of limited Government, not more of it.
Absolutely wrong. It was founded on the principle that the people are the ultimate authority. This has nothing to do with how much or little apparatus the people see fit to put in place, except that it is, in the end, their decision.
Right, because if it weren't for unions, the newspapers would be having no trouble at all. They would somehow magically not be outmoded by the Internet. <eyeroll/>
It's like when I went to an Asian market and saw the vegetarian section -- non-meat products simulating meat products which I, an avid meat-eater, could never make myself eat. Things like swallow balls, I kid you not. (That is, meatballs made of the meat of the swallow (birds of the family Hirundinidae).)
Or how they used to make TVs (and lots of other things) out of plastic, but with a printed-on wood-grain pattern.
There must be a name for this phenomenon of switching to something new, but unnecessarily simulating the thing you've left behind.
Slashdot Mirror
Quiet, you. The anti-Obama crowd has designated this the "Obama is a shadowy overlord" thread of the day. They don't want you shining actual facts in here and ruining it.
Don't pay attention to these authoritarian morons telling you you're at fault. You were lied to and taken advantage of. Prime fodder for a small-claims suit, I'd say. Followed by a bullshit firing, no doubt -- followed by a juicy wrongful-termination suit.
Why does every post pointing out shenanigans pulled by a corporation immediately pull a cadre of replies accusing the poster of "whining" and having "a sense of entitlement"(tm)?
Answer: there is a certain segment of our population (even here on Slashdot) that always sides with the more powerful party in any dispute. These people are called authoritarians.
Far be it from me to undercut your protestant-work-ethic-appealing "if you like it, it should cost a lot" ranting, but may I refer you to this extremely enlightening post? It has been a pleasure serving you here at Reality. Thank you, drive through.
Politefulness was superceditized by politefulnessity.
"Illegal broadband file sharing (P2P)"? Which is to say, "P2P" is an abbreviation used to refer to something illegal, I suppose.
Funny how someone who has "enough wealth behind me" to game the system would consider paying one's rightful share into the system that allowed him to get that wealth in the first place to be the activity of "useful idiots" who are also "disciples of authoritarianism".
You got rich in this system, and now you want to hoard your riches away from that same system. I say, pay the fuck up or get the fuck out, freeloader.
You're right that they've been systematically lied to, but from the other direction.
In the US in the 1950s, it was typical for a single earner at an ordinary blue-collar job to be able to support a family, pay for a new car every other year, and make payments on a house, with money left over for a few niceties. And since things are supposed to get better and easier over time, by now things should be as easy as it's portrayed in Friends, if not more so. But with the insane policies foisted on us by political hacks over the last 30 or 40 years, you're lucky if you can pull that off with two earners, at white-collar jobs.
Now that the system has finally come crashing down and people are waking up to the fact that the fantasies they've been fed on a policy level are just that, maybe, if we're lucky, we can get some reasonable policies in place and make people remember for longer than they did after the previous Great Depression.
Or you could use C#, where not initializing your variables before using them is simply a violation of the language specification.
This also applies to the big scary "protectionism" people are also frightened of in this thread. These types keep saying having protectionism in place only hurts you, but China and India have classic protectionist policies in place, and seem to be doing amazingly well compared to us, considering how we've essentially gutted ours and are now swirling the drain.
In fact, it was specifically their crappy VCRs that gave me the wisdom never to buy anything from JVC again. After having had four top-of-the-line SVHSes (~$600 per) develop incurable picture problems within a year of purchase, I vowed never to darken their coffers again.
I see. A whole website set up to shout "liberals are commies" gets a +5, Interesting, and a reply pointing that out gets a -1, Flamebait.
So much for the theory that Slashdot is a haven for said commie liberals, huh?
Yeah, it makes me wonder what kind of figure was involved.
From TFA:
Um...really? You can't make a click track gradually change rate over time? Or follow whatever kind of variation you program it to? That's news to me. I thought computers wuz like all smart 'n' stuff.
Well, we can't have an educated populace. After all:
...in what way is this "interesting"? Fatuous "LIBRULS SUCK!1!" drivel dressed up in slick graphics? Uh, no.
Vital but unprofitable? Sounds like a job for The People -- which is to say, government.
Maybe, but to be fair, JVC sucks ass. (This I know from personal experience.)
I'd just like to point out that you can simply turn Idle off if you don't like it and kwitchyerbitchin.
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edithome
I expect that I'll never again see a post from any of you complainers in Idle, yes?
Absolutely wrong. It was founded on the principle that the people are the ultimate authority. This has nothing to do with how much or little apparatus the people see fit to put in place, except that it is, in the end, their decision.
Exactly what I came in here to say. If you make money from providing the medium, you shouldn't also be in the message business -- and vice versa.
(Way past) Time to start enforcing anti-trust legislation again.
No, I mean such meatballs are what they simulated, using non-meat materials.
Right, because if it weren't for unions, the newspapers would be having no trouble at all. They would somehow magically not be outmoded by the Internet. <eyeroll />
That's really funny.
It's like when I went to an Asian market and saw the vegetarian section -- non-meat products simulating meat products which I, an avid meat-eater, could never make myself eat. Things like swallow balls, I kid you not. (That is, meatballs made of the meat of the swallow (birds of the family Hirundinidae).)
Or how they used to make TVs (and lots of other things) out of plastic, but with a printed-on wood-grain pattern.
There must be a name for this phenomenon of switching to something new, but unnecessarily simulating the thing you've left behind.
What kind of self-censorship is that? I mean, what the h**k?