I did not intend to imply that Apple should try to monopolize the digital music market, although re-reading my post, I can see how one would get that impression.
I read Apple's business strategy as this: we've got this great new revenue stream (the iPod), how can we increase it.
Apple has succeeded early on using their strategy because it is still a relatively new market, both for online music downloads and portable music players. But as the market becomes more crowded, that's not going to work, especially if all of the other services basically play nice with each other and almost any portable player except for Apple's, this won't work. You basically have the "clone wars" all over again, and Apple will be isolating themselves back into the exact same 3% niche they are in now with their computers.
So I think Apple has a choice: support WMA (which I would not be happy to see, as I would like to see it become the "niche" format), or open FairPlay so that others will support downloads from iTMS. I think their best bet is to push open FairPlay and get others to incorporate support into their players.
Given everything Apple has done in recent years to be a nice computing citizen, including the great lengths they have gone to make their OS work better with Windows systems, it would be quite sad to see them relegating themselves once again to the position of being that niche little company that makes toys that are cool but basically irrelevant because really they only work with Macs.
On a side note, I've already seen people mistakenly refer to AAC as the "Apple Audio Codec". The incredible irony here is that while on paper AAC is the "standard", MS has been busy making WMA the de facto standard in real life. Where would that leave us iPod users in the future?
"Joking aside, though, there still needs to be a solid method for iTunes to connect and support ALL music with DRM included, and that is very likely to take some time, for Apple to coordinate with the many other companies that make the hardware."
I disagree. Re-write the SDK Apple used to (still does?) distribute to create plug-ins for third-party mp3 players, let them deal with writing them themselves. Apple should of course lobby them to include support, and provide some developer support, but they'd do the work themselves.
That doesn't change the fact that Apple IS locking you into using an iPod if you want to use the Music Store+iTunes. Your argument is basically "well, MS does it, so it's OK for Apple to". Granted, MS isn't eactly the best company to criticize Apple on this, but it doesn't change the fact that its true.
Even I can respect this fact, and I own and am quite fond of my iPod...
While I think this is a great point, it does point out to the what I think is the Achilles heel in Apple's strategy.
The fact is, right now, Apple is on top here because they have arguably the best portable music player on the market. And it's not just the best, it is the best arguably by a wide margin, except for of course on price. Design, usability, feature set, it's number one.
Combine this with one of the best free music programs and one of the best online music stores, and you've got a hit.
As long as Apple can continue to maintain that wide margin in quality, they will probably stay on top. The number one threat though is that somebody will come out with their own mp3/ogg/WMA/whatever random format player that will be ALMOST as good as the iPod, and perhaps even as good or better. Their player will work with the myriad WMA music stores, it will play mp3s, maybe even oggs and whatever else, it may even play non-DRM AAC files. And it will probably sell for $50-$100 less.
When this happens, Apple will be screwed.
Because Apple will have all of their eggs in this one basket, they will be marginalized. It will be "iPods (instead of Macs) are incompatible with everything else", and Apple will lose all of this great momentum and become a niche player again in a market they helped to pioneer.
To stave this off, Apple has a couple of options:
1. "the old Apple". Keep innovating and keep widening the quality margin between the iPod and the competition. As long as the iPod is considered a substantially better product (either because it really is or because people believe it is), then they can stay on top. Along with this, keep making killer deals like the one with AOL (as much as I despise AOL, I have to admit this was a brilliant move).
2. "the new Apple". Offer an iBook equivalent to the iPod. The iPod will be the PowerBook of their music player line up, along with a lower cost, not quite as cool babyPod. This will help them capture that segment of the market currently priced out of the iPod without compromising iPod sales (at least not much). As another option, they could drop the price of the iPod line $50-$100 across the board. Apple needs to realize that as things are, there is a segment of the market that is not going to purchase an iPod no matter how cool or how great it is because they simply can not afford to. Right now, these people are buying from their competitors, who do not support AAC, and therfore no matter how cool the Music Store and iTunes are they will not be using either one.
3. "the PC strategy". Open up iTunes and the store. While AAC is an industry standard format, as many have already stated, FairPlay is not. Apple needs to lobby other manufacturers to incorporate AAC support into their players, let them make plug-ins so that they can sync using iTunes (I know they used to be able to do this but I'm not sure if they still can. Anyone?).
In order of likelihood, I would say Apple is most likely to follow option 1, followed closely by option 2, and lastly option 3. 3 is probably the most threatening to Apple because it is the option most likely to cut into iPod sales, but it's also the one most likely to make iTMS ubiquitous, and it also offers the possibility that by making the AAC format more universal, it will actually increase iPod and its successors' sales (those people who can't afford an iPod as their first player will very likely upgrade to one later). 2 would let them capture a wider segment of the market while still controlling the whole thing. 1 I think is a recipe for disaster, as even Apple can't keep innovating the way they would need to to stay on top (Copland anyone?) and MS has the brute force to knock them out of the market with an inferior widget.
The reality right now is that every portable music player supports mp3s, a growing number support WMA, and exactly 1 supports AAC (to the best of my knowledge). WMA is going to win not because its the open format, not because its b
Actually law school is only 3 years...can't speak for med school though. Being nitpicky...
No joke about the UCC and contract law: in my short law school career so far (1st Year), contract is by far the most incomprehensible body of law, and the UCC and its derivatives are the most poorly written and difficult statutes (what's worse than a law written by lawyers and lobbyists? a law written by law professors...).
Tie me down and subject me to endless hours of torts, civil procedure or constitutional law if you want...but please, no more expectation, reliance, or restitution...
Who gives a damn about economics? So that the rich genetically "inferior" individuals will be able to afford health insurance and the poor won't? Kinda like what we have now (particularly here in the U.S.)? The problem with free market solutions is that in the end they boil down your worthiness and value to on thing: the size of your bank account. I'm sorry, but I refuse to agree the Bill Gates and his ilk are really more valuable to society than the millions of people who actually do the work that make them rich, and when it comes to something as fundamental as health care, socializing the costs (oh no, I said the 'S' word!) is probably the fairest solution you're going to develop to insure some semblance of equal access to all.
Furthermore, given that as the article states (as if you had actually read it) many of the genetic predispositions will amount to ABSOLUTELY NOTHING as the individual in question may not ever even develop the disorder or by diagnosing it earlier can take action to decrease the chances of developing it, it seems it would be rather unfair to discriminate on the basis of his/her genome.
Of course, what do free-marketeers really care about fairness...
I think you need to stop getting your history from your much-celebrated "U.S. media". The sixties space race was just as much a piece of nationalist propaganda as China's space program is today. It was as much about discrediting communism as it was anything else. The first satellite, the first astronaut were all serious embarrasments for the "leader of the free world", and the last thing the U.S. government was going to do at that point was let the Soviets beat them again.
Continuing, I don't know how you can say that the U.S. has the most diverse media in the world. You're extrapolating from the fact that yes, there are a large number of media sources ultimately available, but the fact remains that the majority of the news reoprted here comes from a very small number of large media corporations, whose loyalty to actually reporting the news is very questionable (i.e., Disney/ABC, General Electric/NBC, Westinghouse/CBS, The "vast right-wing conspiracy"/Fox, Time Warner/CNN). The existence of all those other media sources is irrelevant, as they realistically constitute a very small portion of the media spectrum, and not the portion that influences public opinion. Compare this to Europe, where a the media is more evenly divided between a greater number of news agencies, who arguably represent a larger spectrum of views, given the European tendency for individual media outlets to be far more ideological. Of course, when you compare the U.S. to the rest of the world, you're probably just thinking about Russia or Cuba...
Get off your high horse. The U.S. has a number of good things going for it, but your posting is way too in the vain of "America uber alles" nationalism to be taken seriously. If you're afraid to seriously critique and recognize the flaws in your own country, then you're also unreliable as a source of praise.
his own potential illegal activity aside, there is something substantially wrong though is Apple doesn't get with the program and fix the issues that still seem to be popping up with the 10.2.8 update. Regardless of the substantial arguments for upgrading to Panther (which I had the opportunity to try, and all I have to say is it rocks, aside from the crappy brushed metal windows (i still have to ask WTF are they thinking? it would be one thing if they went to an all metal GUI, which I wouldn't care for but at least it would be consistent, but this metal here and aqua ther crap has got to end...)) requiring customers to go for a paid upgrade to repair what was a working future is ludicrous and ought to be illegal in my mind.
And arguing that one should just re-install and roll back to 10.2.6 isn't a real solution either. Having had to do that myself with the first update, I can sympathize with the poster there. It would be little skin off of Apple's back to fix the problem and would probably win them at least a small amount of goodwill amongst those who will not be upgrading to Panther in the immediate future.
Granted, even if Apple doesn't fix it, it still doesn't give the OP a privilege to act illegally himself anf just download 10.3...
Although the way I read the OP is that he had no plans to buy Panther, but since getting Panther is the only way to get Bluetooth functionality back (short of rolling back to 10.2.6), he'll be downloading Panther.
Sorry you don't want to pay taxes to support welfare programs. I feel you pain man. I don't want to pay taxes to buy anymore tanks, bombers, nukes, depleted uranium shells, sketchy "star wars" missile defense systems, or to subsidize anymore nuclear power plants, coal companies, oil companies, sports stadiums or job-cutting taxpayer-gouging white-collar criminal CEOs.
Take heart in the fact that at least your team is doing better than mine.
Unfortunately, you'll just have to come to terms with the fact, as I have, that part of that whole bargain of being a citizen of a nation is that sometimes your government will do things you like and sometimes it will do things you don't like, but in the end you have to live with it all, or if it bothers you that much (as it does me), then you can vote, write letters to your representative or senator (which as far as I can tell will go unopened, but you'll get a nice form letter in exchange for your letter), go volunteer or donate to your local political organization or advocacy group or whatever.
And as far as once again whining about how unconstitutional your income taxes are, you may want to read that part of the consitution after the original articles, the one titled AMENDMENTS.
And finally, I can point to a number of wonderful private charities that would apparently surprise you as to how inefficient they are, a good number of them run by Bush's man Ralph Reed.
Agreed. Although I think the analogy to the DNC list would not be posting "no trespassing" sign as much as posting a "no soliciting" and then having an ordinance (or in this case, fed. regulation) that requires compliance.
I think my point was that what some have argued is that excluding charities and political entities from calling was an attempt to keep within the boundaries of previous court decisions giving higher protection to political and religious speech. A "no trespassing" sign for telephones would be less likely to be upheld. The Denver federal court is out of line with previous cases and will most likely be overturned on appeal.
I believe this makes a huge difference. Putting things in a standard free-speech context, solicitors have a right to come up to my door and knock, UNLESS I have told them to go away OR posted "No solicitation." In other words, when I have expressed my opinion as not wanting to hear their speech, they're obligated to cease disturbing me.
Not entirely correct. Your "no soliciting" sign is generally about as meaningless as declaring the sky is purple (setting aside the question of air pollution and sunsets for a moment), at least in the US. Unless your municipality has an ordinance providing for some sort of enforcement mechanism, a door2door solicitor or canvasser still can knock on your door to their heart's content, although as you correctly stated, if you tell him to leave he have to leave, because at that point he becomes a trespasser.
Furthermore, if in the case of political or religious canvassers, they can ignore your "no soliciting" sign period, as political and religious speech (as noted numerous times here and elsewhere) is afforded a higher degree of protection and local governments cannot restricting them other than time they can canvass (generally before 9pm is okay). Cantwell v. State of Connecticut (310 U.S. 296 (1940)), "Watchtower Bible and Tract Society v. Stratton, Ohio" (536 US 150 (2002)) For example, cities and counties can ban d2d solicitors, but not political or religious canvassers. Martin v. City of Struthers (319 U.S. 141 (1943))
In conclusion, what you really want is a "no trespassing" sign. That pretty much covers everybody.
Mandatory Disclaimer: IANALY(et), but in a previous life spent waaaaaay too much time in far too many courtrooms across the country getting charges dropped against my canvassers...
Assuming your first point is correct (which I do not totally agree with, but we'll assume it is for now), your last point is wrong. If implementing the DNC list is unconstitutional for Congress to pass due to viloating the First Amendment, then it is illegal for states to do so as well (Fourteenth Amendment Section 1, "No state shall...").
I don't know about the specifics in the case, but having witnessed about half of the computers at my previous place of employment suddenly have their homepage reset to some porn site, I can definitely believe it is possible.
And by the insecure OS/clueless person line of reasoning, if somebody were to break into your home through the window, it would be your fault, as your home was not impregnable.
First of all, up until very recently, if both partners worked, marriage resulted in a tax increase. Second, if the supposed marriage tax breaks were for bearing children, then why would there be a separate child tax credit?
Obviously wrong as well. The so-called "marriage penalty" only applied to a fraction of two-income married couples, generally when they earned widely disparate incomes. There are a number of financial/legal benefits to being married, at least in U.S. society.
if you think it's the government's place to say what marriage is intendted to be, you should probably move to a country where those views are shared.
Well, the government (in the U.S. as well as other places) already is in the business of saying what marriage is. And I think that is the point of gay marriage advocates. If marriage was simply an institution defined and administered by religious institutions, without any sort of government involvement or benefit, then this would be a different story. Gay couples could get married all they want by establishing their own church institutions with other like-minded individuals or by seeking out friendly denominations. But the government is in the business of sanctioning marriages, which creates a completely different scenario, and in all fairness, it is marginalizing a group of people and denying them priveleges that are given to others, something that is antithetical to what we would like to believe the U.S. is about.
Well, given that you can't even spell gridlock correctly and you lack the ability to construct either a sentence or a paragraph that makes sense or has a logical basis, let me be the first to say that I hope you won't be voting anytime soon...
And there's even more crap out there then talent, so the need for scouting is not BS. I believe that the point is that the industry's distribution model itself is so expensive that they need to put moeny into scouting out not just good talent but also marketable talent, which are not always one and the same. Now if there was a better, cheaper distribution model where anybody could post their music up for sale and then consumers themselves could filter out the crap themselves and find the gems, then maybe those scouting and development costs dould be reduced. unfortunately, the only actual model for such a distribution system seems to be the internet itself, and I think as we've seen, it's gotten to the point where it is failing, given the high noise-to-signal ratio of any attempt to actually find useful information.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the recording industry. I am a big fan myself of indie bands, and have often with no outside knowledge plunked down a cover charge to see a local bar band, and often have found a good deal of music I really like. But more often have been quite dissapointed. There is a need for a service like what recording companies provide for artists (promotion and what-not), and until anybody finds a way to do it for less, we're going to be stuck with them.
Well, I would count myself as a member of the "fan club", and Ithink it's bullshit. And one of the reasons why I won't use the iTunes Music Store. It's bad enough that we have historically had a myriad of physical limitations to continued use of music we have purchased (ie, having to upgrade one's music collection from tapes to CDs), but now to have the issue of BS proprietary file formats is even worse. And yes I understand that ACC isn't Apple's proprietary format, but the DRM is. The fact that I would not be able to listen to music purchased on anything but a Mac and my iPod (and maybe Windows after they offer the service to that platform) is absurd. And burning a copy to CD or converting it to mp3 is not an acceptable workaround in my book. So I guess for the time being my only option is to keep taking it up the a$$ and buy the CD or scour the p2p scene for what I want (which I rarely seem to be able to find).
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But how much you want to bet they get a pretty damn good deal on those Xserves?
I did not intend to imply that Apple should try to monopolize the digital music market, although re-reading my post, I can see how one would get that impression.
I read Apple's business strategy as this: we've got this great new revenue stream (the iPod), how can we increase it.
Apple has succeeded early on using their strategy because it is still a relatively new market, both for online music downloads and portable music players. But as the market becomes more crowded, that's not going to work, especially if all of the other services basically play nice with each other and almost any portable player except for Apple's, this won't work. You basically have the "clone wars" all over again, and Apple will be isolating themselves back into the exact same 3% niche they are in now with their computers.
So I think Apple has a choice: support WMA (which I would not be happy to see, as I would like to see it become the "niche" format), or open FairPlay so that others will support downloads from iTMS. I think their best bet is to push open FairPlay and get others to incorporate support into their players.
Given everything Apple has done in recent years to be a nice computing citizen, including the great lengths they have gone to make their OS work better with Windows systems, it would be quite sad to see them relegating themselves once again to the position of being that niche little company that makes toys that are cool but basically irrelevant because really they only work with Macs.
On a side note, I've already seen people mistakenly refer to AAC as the "Apple Audio Codec". The incredible irony here is that while on paper AAC is the "standard", MS has been busy making WMA the de facto standard in real life. Where would that leave us iPod users in the future?
"Joking aside, though, there still needs to be a solid method for iTunes to connect and support ALL music with DRM included, and that is very likely to take some time, for Apple to coordinate with the many other companies that make the hardware."
I disagree. Re-write the SDK Apple used to (still does?) distribute to create plug-ins for third-party mp3 players, let them deal with writing them themselves. Apple should of course lobby them to include support, and provide some developer support, but they'd do the work themselves.
That doesn't change the fact that Apple IS locking you into using an iPod if you want to use the Music Store+iTunes. Your argument is basically "well, MS does it, so it's OK for Apple to". Granted, MS isn't eactly the best company to criticize Apple on this, but it doesn't change the fact that its true.
Even I can respect this fact, and I own and am quite fond of my iPod...
While I think this is a great point, it does point out to the what I think is the Achilles heel in Apple's strategy.
The fact is, right now, Apple is on top here because they have arguably the best portable music player on the market. And it's not just the best, it is the best arguably by a wide margin, except for of course on price. Design, usability, feature set, it's number one.
Combine this with one of the best free music programs and one of the best online music stores, and you've got a hit.
As long as Apple can continue to maintain that wide margin in quality, they will probably stay on top. The number one threat though is that somebody will come out with their own mp3/ogg/WMA/whatever random format player that will be ALMOST as good as the iPod, and perhaps even as good or better. Their player will work with the myriad WMA music stores, it will play mp3s, maybe even oggs and whatever else, it may even play non-DRM AAC files. And it will probably sell for $50-$100 less.
When this happens, Apple will be screwed.
Because Apple will have all of their eggs in this one basket, they will be marginalized. It will be "iPods (instead of Macs) are incompatible with everything else", and Apple will lose all of this great momentum and become a niche player again in a market they helped to pioneer.
To stave this off, Apple has a couple of options:
1. "the old Apple". Keep innovating and keep widening the quality margin between the iPod and the competition. As long as the iPod is considered a substantially better product (either because it really is or because people believe it is), then they can stay on top. Along with this, keep making killer deals like the one with AOL (as much as I despise AOL, I have to admit this was a brilliant move).
2. "the new Apple". Offer an iBook equivalent to the iPod. The iPod will be the PowerBook of their music player line up, along with a lower cost, not quite as cool babyPod. This will help them capture that segment of the market currently priced out of the iPod without compromising iPod sales (at least not much). As another option, they could drop the price of the iPod line $50-$100 across the board. Apple needs to realize that as things are, there is a segment of the market that is not going to purchase an iPod no matter how cool or how great it is because they simply can not afford to. Right now, these people are buying from their competitors, who do not support AAC, and therfore no matter how cool the Music Store and iTunes are they will not be using either one.
3. "the PC strategy". Open up iTunes and the store. While AAC is an industry standard format, as many have already stated, FairPlay is not. Apple needs to lobby other manufacturers to incorporate AAC support into their players, let them make plug-ins so that they can sync using iTunes (I know they used to be able to do this but I'm not sure if they still can. Anyone?).
In order of likelihood, I would say Apple is most likely to follow option 1, followed closely by option 2, and lastly option 3. 3 is probably the most threatening to Apple because it is the option most likely to cut into iPod sales, but it's also the one most likely to make iTMS ubiquitous, and it also offers the possibility that by making the AAC format more universal, it will actually increase iPod and its successors' sales (those people who can't afford an iPod as their first player will very likely upgrade to one later). 2 would let them capture a wider segment of the market while still controlling the whole thing. 1 I think is a recipe for disaster, as even Apple can't keep innovating the way they would need to to stay on top (Copland anyone?) and MS has the brute force to knock them out of the market with an inferior widget.
The reality right now is that every portable music player supports mp3s, a growing number support WMA, and exactly 1 supports AAC (to the best of my knowledge). WMA is going to win not because its the open format, not because its b
But does it play the DRM'ed tracks from the music store? I think that was the point. I would expect AAC tracks ripped from CDs to work fine.
Actually law school is only 3 years...can't speak for med school though. Being nitpicky...
No joke about the UCC and contract law: in my short law school career so far (1st Year), contract is by far the most incomprehensible body of law, and the UCC and its derivatives are the most poorly written and difficult statutes (what's worse than a law written by lawyers and lobbyists? a law written by law professors...).
Tie me down and subject me to endless hours of torts, civil procedure or constitutional law if you want...but please, no more expectation, reliance, or restitution...
Who gives a damn about economics? So that the rich genetically "inferior" individuals will be able to afford health insurance and the poor won't? Kinda like what we have now (particularly here in the U.S.)? The problem with free market solutions is that in the end they boil down your worthiness and value to on thing: the size of your bank account. I'm sorry, but I refuse to agree the Bill Gates and his ilk are really more valuable to society than the millions of people who actually do the work that make them rich, and when it comes to something as fundamental as health care, socializing the costs (oh no, I said the 'S' word!) is probably the fairest solution you're going to develop to insure some semblance of equal access to all.
Furthermore, given that as the article states (as if you had actually read it) many of the genetic predispositions will amount to ABSOLUTELY NOTHING as the individual in question may not ever even develop the disorder or by diagnosing it earlier can take action to decrease the chances of developing it, it seems it would be rather unfair to discriminate on the basis of his/her genome.
Of course, what do free-marketeers really care about fairness...
Sorry to burst the bubble, but it's only half time: the House still needs to pass it...
I think you need to stop getting your history from your much-celebrated "U.S. media". The sixties space race was just as much a piece of nationalist propaganda as China's space program is today. It was as much about discrediting communism as it was anything else. The first satellite, the first astronaut were all serious embarrasments for the "leader of the free world", and the last thing the U.S. government was going to do at that point was let the Soviets beat them again.
Continuing, I don't know how you can say that the U.S. has the most diverse media in the world. You're extrapolating from the fact that yes, there are a large number of media sources ultimately available, but the fact remains that the majority of the news reoprted here comes from a very small number of large media corporations, whose loyalty to actually reporting the news is very questionable (i.e., Disney/ABC, General Electric/NBC, Westinghouse/CBS, The "vast right-wing conspiracy"/Fox, Time Warner/CNN). The existence of all those other media sources is irrelevant, as they realistically constitute a very small portion of the media spectrum, and not the portion that influences public opinion. Compare this to Europe, where a the media is more evenly divided between a greater number of news agencies, who arguably represent a larger spectrum of views, given the European tendency for individual media outlets to be far more ideological. Of course, when you compare the U.S. to the rest of the world, you're probably just thinking about Russia or Cuba...
Get off your high horse. The U.S. has a number of good things going for it, but your posting is way too in the vain of "America uber alles" nationalism to be taken seriously. If you're afraid to seriously critique and recognize the flaws in your own country, then you're also unreliable as a source of praise.
and how does that deviate from standard /. operating procedure? :)
shouldn't this be shortened to YMBNH by now?
his own potential illegal activity aside, there is something substantially wrong though is Apple doesn't get with the program and fix the issues that still seem to be popping up with the 10.2.8 update. Regardless of the substantial arguments for upgrading to Panther (which I had the opportunity to try, and all I have to say is it rocks, aside from the crappy brushed metal windows (i still have to ask WTF are they thinking? it would be one thing if they went to an all metal GUI, which I wouldn't care for but at least it would be consistent, but this metal here and aqua ther crap has got to end...)) requiring customers to go for a paid upgrade to repair what was a working future is ludicrous and ought to be illegal in my mind.
And arguing that one should just re-install and roll back to 10.2.6 isn't a real solution either. Having had to do that myself with the first update, I can sympathize with the poster there. It would be little skin off of Apple's back to fix the problem and would probably win them at least a small amount of goodwill amongst those who will not be upgrading to Panther in the immediate future.
Granted, even if Apple doesn't fix it, it still doesn't give the OP a privilege to act illegally himself anf just download 10.3...
Although the way I read the OP is that he had no plans to buy Panther, but since getting Panther is the only way to get Bluetooth functionality back (short of rolling back to 10.2.6), he'll be downloading Panther.
Sorry you don't want to pay taxes to support welfare programs. I feel you pain man. I don't want to pay taxes to buy anymore tanks, bombers, nukes, depleted uranium shells, sketchy "star wars" missile defense systems, or to subsidize anymore nuclear power plants, coal companies, oil companies, sports stadiums or job-cutting taxpayer-gouging white-collar criminal CEOs.
Take heart in the fact that at least your team is doing better than mine.
Unfortunately, you'll just have to come to terms with the fact, as I have, that part of that whole bargain of being a citizen of a nation is that sometimes your government will do things you like and sometimes it will do things you don't like, but in the end you have to live with it all, or if it bothers you that much (as it does me), then you can vote, write letters to your representative or senator (which as far as I can tell will go unopened, but you'll get a nice form letter in exchange for your letter), go volunteer or donate to your local political organization or advocacy group or whatever.
And as far as once again whining about how unconstitutional your income taxes are, you may want to read that part of the consitution after the original articles, the one titled AMENDMENTS.
And finally, I can point to a number of wonderful private charities that would apparently surprise you as to how inefficient they are, a good number of them run by Bush's man Ralph Reed.
Agreed. Although I think the analogy to the DNC list would not be posting "no trespassing" sign as much as posting a "no soliciting" and then having an ordinance (or in this case, fed. regulation) that requires compliance.
I think my point was that what some have argued is that excluding charities and political entities from calling was an attempt to keep within the boundaries of previous court decisions giving higher protection to political and religious speech. A "no trespassing" sign for telephones would be less likely to be upheld. The Denver federal court is out of line with previous cases and will most likely be overturned on appeal.
I believe this makes a huge difference. Putting things in a standard free-speech context, solicitors have a right to come up to my door and knock, UNLESS I have told them to go away OR posted "No solicitation." In other words, when I have expressed my opinion as not wanting to hear their speech, they're obligated to cease disturbing me.
Not entirely correct. Your "no soliciting" sign is generally about as meaningless as declaring the sky is purple (setting aside the question of air pollution and sunsets for a moment), at least in the US. Unless your municipality has an ordinance providing for some sort of enforcement mechanism, a door2door solicitor or canvasser still can knock on your door to their heart's content, although as you correctly stated, if you tell him to leave he have to leave, because at that point he becomes a trespasser.
Furthermore, if in the case of political or religious canvassers, they can ignore your "no soliciting" sign period, as political and religious speech (as noted numerous times here and elsewhere) is afforded a higher degree of protection and local governments cannot restricting them other than time they can canvass (generally before 9pm is okay). Cantwell v. State of Connecticut (310 U.S. 296 (1940)), "Watchtower Bible and Tract Society v. Stratton, Ohio" (536 US 150 (2002)) For example, cities and counties can ban d2d solicitors, but not political or religious canvassers. Martin v. City of Struthers (319 U.S. 141 (1943))
In conclusion, what you really want is a "no trespassing" sign. That pretty much covers everybody.
Mandatory Disclaimer: IANALY(et), but in a previous life spent waaaaaay too much time in far too many courtrooms across the country getting charges dropped against my canvassers...
Assuming your first point is correct (which I do not totally agree with, but we'll assume it is for now), your last point is wrong. If implementing the DNC list is unconstitutional for Congress to pass due to viloating the First Amendment, then it is illegal for states to do so as well (Fourteenth Amendment Section 1, "No state shall...").
first the original poster, and now this - i laughed so hard i almost shat my pants...
it's nice to see some of the posts that get modded funny really ARE funny...
kudos to you my friend...
I don't know about the specifics in the case, but having witnessed about half of the computers at my previous place of employment suddenly have their homepage reset to some porn site, I can definitely believe it is possible.
And by the insecure OS/clueless person line of reasoning, if somebody were to break into your home through the window, it would be your fault, as your home was not impregnable.
First of all, up until very recently, if both partners worked, marriage resulted in a tax increase. Second, if the supposed marriage tax breaks were for bearing children, then why would there be a separate child tax credit?
Obviously wrong as well. The so-called "marriage penalty" only applied to a fraction of two-income married couples, generally when they earned widely disparate incomes. There are a number of financial/legal benefits to being married, at least in U.S. society.
if you think it's the government's place to say what marriage is intendted to be, you should probably move to a country where those views are shared.
Well, the government (in the U.S. as well as other places) already is in the business of saying what marriage is. And I think that is the point of gay marriage advocates. If marriage was simply an institution defined and administered by religious institutions, without any sort of government involvement or benefit, then this would be a different story. Gay couples could get married all they want by establishing their own church institutions with other like-minded individuals or by seeking out friendly denominations. But the government is in the business of sanctioning marriages, which creates a completely different scenario, and in all fairness, it is marginalizing a group of people and denying them priveleges that are given to others, something that is antithetical to what we would like to believe the U.S. is about.
Back on-topic now...
Well, given that you can't even spell gridlock correctly and you lack the ability to construct either a sentence or a paragraph that makes sense or has a logical basis, let me be the first to say that I hope you won't be voting anytime soon...
Like, the U.S., which probably has the fewest number of official languages of any major "English" country"...*
*The correct answer is 0.
And there's even more crap out there then talent, so the need for scouting is not BS. I believe that the point is that the industry's distribution model itself is so expensive that they need to put moeny into scouting out not just good talent but also marketable talent, which are not always one and the same. Now if there was a better, cheaper distribution model where anybody could post their music up for sale and then consumers themselves could filter out the crap themselves and find the gems, then maybe those scouting and development costs dould be reduced. unfortunately, the only actual model for such a distribution system seems to be the internet itself, and I think as we've seen, it's gotten to the point where it is failing, given the high noise-to-signal ratio of any attempt to actually find useful information.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the recording industry. I am a big fan myself of indie bands, and have often with no outside knowledge plunked down a cover charge to see a local bar band, and often have found a good deal of music I really like. But more often have been quite dissapointed. There is a need for a service like what recording companies provide for artists (promotion and what-not), and until anybody finds a way to do it for less, we're going to be stuck with them.
Well, I would count myself as a member of the "fan club", and Ithink it's bullshit. And one of the reasons why I won't use the iTunes Music Store. It's bad enough that we have historically had a myriad of physical limitations to continued use of music we have purchased (ie, having to upgrade one's music collection from tapes to CDs), but now to have the issue of BS proprietary file formats is even worse. And yes I understand that ACC isn't Apple's proprietary format, but the DRM is. The fact that I would not be able to listen to music purchased on anything but a Mac and my iPod (and maybe Windows after they offer the service to that platform) is absurd. And burning a copy to CD or converting it to mp3 is not an acceptable workaround in my book. So I guess for the time being my only option is to keep taking it up the a$$ and buy the CD or scour the p2p scene for what I want (which I rarely seem to be able to find).