That's the problem; fair use rules aren't spelled out, so if someone comes after you, you have to defend it. Deep pockets win unless someone like the EFF is willing to take on your fight.
I know this is a somewhat different topic, but it's still under the heading of ridiculous copyright BS. Here's one for the books; I recall that John Fogarty's old record label (from when he was with Creedence) sued him for copyright infringement because his solo stuff sounded too much like the stuff he'd written under contract with them. The dork only knows three chords and two rhythms; it was his signature, and when he went solo, they decided he couldn't take his signature with him.
Except for one thing: people are demonstrating the signal-loss thing holding the phone in their hands.
I personally think that problem has more to do with the front-facing camera. The phone probably sees these people and decides they're not good looking enough to call anyone. I mean, have you seen some of the antenna complainers?
Its only Apple who thinks that one product can be perfect for everyone, from the serious developer and power user to Joe Six-Pack. Other companies diversify to give each niche their own product at cheap price points.
To be fair, I don't think that Apple thinks that the iPhone is perfect for everyone. It's perfect for them--the people who make it--and they think it's perfect for enough people that it's a worthwhile product to make.
There are a lot of complaints about every company, including Apple, that I can understand. but their decision to focus on a limited product line is hardly a reason to get on them, any more than we should berate Samsung for making a mind-boggling 147 models.
The folks at Apple make what they make. If you don't like their phones, you've got hundreds of others to choose from.
The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Non Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations
Nice thing about that statement is that all you have to do is claim that they're hiding something--how the heck can they prove a negative? Iraq couldn't--and they you can start bandying about terms like "tactical nukes".
My understanding is that they didn't exactly disprove it mathematically; they simply showed that while the ignition was a possibility, it was an extremely, extremely small one.
So I guess the question is, how small was it, and how small is small enough? There were probably 2 billion people on the planet at the time; again, I don't know what the odds were that they calculated, but I'm hoping that they thought long and hard about it before deciding it was OK.
Of course, they might have just decided, "One in a million's good enough, and if we're wrong, well, the suffering will be short," so the perceived tangible repercussions (if everybody dies, nothing's tangible, right?) are minimal.
And here's the thing. If Elanor were such a hot musician, she wouldn't need the sheet music.
I'm a hobby guitarist, and I'm not amazing by any stretch, and I hate paying for guitar tab books; it's like buying the book on how to do the Rubik's Cube.
If I like a song, I listen to it, learn the lyrics and the music, and figure out how to play it in a way that I'll remember it.
What she suffers from is an acute lack of creativity in problem solving. The author suggests the library as a resource; she could also get a frickin' job. Or go to the music department at her school for assistance. Or form a theater project for herself and peers and get grant funding. People eat that shite up.
Land, feh. Tax their income. Hell, the public has to pay so much for the court system; may as well have the Catholic Church pay for some of the burden they bring to the gov't.
Heh; great write-up. The gov't is truly damned if they do--we don't want a @#$% nanny government--and damned if they don't--that crappy school didn't help me enough! Wahh!
Hate to say it, but you know who fucked up? The AC's parents. They should have made damn sure he got in class and prevented this whole tragedy.
Untrue. It hits uninformed, inflamatory liberals and conservatives alike. That being said, while I disagree with the GP post, as I said elsewhere, "flamebait" wasn't the right moderation.
Your post, on the other hand does seem to be asking for it.
Yes, but that added palatability is silly. If a politician tells me that they haven't created any new taxes, but they've removed old rebates, I'm going to feel like I've been lied to because the net effect is that I'm paying more taxes, regardless of how you sugar coat it.
I'm not against either idea (nor specifically for it), but I'd rather my politicians tell me right out, is my tax bill going to increase or decrease? Selling it to me by saying "you used to pay it, now you don't, and soon you will again, so that's not too bad," is weaselly at best.
I would suggest to you that unions and collective bargaining are tightly bound with the founding principals of this country. Free speech and right to assembly are right in there, bro.
Nobody broke GM but GM. With little exception, their various product lines suck. Ugly, inefficient and unsafe compared to their competitors.
No talking points here; the tea party is filled with misinformed, illiterate and outright criminal miscreants who are using inflammatory rhetoric to silence real debate on important issues. I'm not saying that there aren't some good people in their ranks, but they're a minority. If I could use one word to describe them, I'd use "cynical".
Come back to me when the central group that runs tp events is not a for-profit organization.
You're forgetting that many of the people who moved off the farms did so because they were forced out by corporate take-overs. Remember the dust bowl? It was caused, in part, by huge corporate farms over-planting cotton, without appropriate crop rotation, so that they could maximize profits and move on. But it wasn't just cotton; anywhere they had local competition from small family farms, they'd flood the market with cheaper products so the smaller farms would have to sell out for cheap and end up working for the corpofarms or moving to town to get a "better" life.
I've spent time in rural Bolivia, where average income for a family is about $3/mo. But they have sustenance farms which provide them with the great majority of what they need, and trade and barter locally for whatever else they need. They may never bee anyone's overlords, but there's something to be said for a less-efficient, more relaxed lifestyle.
Did I say we shouldn't listen to him? I think he's right now. But we should also take care that whatever solutions go into place won't simply benefit his ilk. Think of it this way: if we were a little village, this would be like someone taking a dump in our well, over and over again, for years. And then, after seeing the havoc it caused, going around and yelling, "Everyone, we shouldn't shit in the well!"
The first thing that would happen is that everyone who hadn't already kicked the guy's ass for dumping in the well would do so for his hypocrisy. But beyond that, it would be wise to be sure that he couldn't suddenly profit by becoming the premier seller of extra-wellular toilet facilities.
Unrelated claims of purgatory? Have you no knowledge of history? The GP's description is exactly as things were before unions and gov't regulation of employment practices in the states.
I think the "flamebait" rating on your comment is unfair. Maybe "overrated". I wish there were a "wrong" or "misinformed" option.
Unions are not the problem. Without them, we'd still be eating hot dogs with up to 1% human flesh in them, much of that flesh coming from children whom companies would have no problem putting in danger for little or no pay.
Healthcare has had years of light regulation to get it right. Making it totally open is theoretically great, but if you think there wouldn't be collusion and price fixing, you're blind. And a truly "open" market is contradicted by your suggestion of regulation: who would choose the "fair" prices?
Do you even know how little most corporations pay in taxes? If it were less, the government would be paying most corps to do business.
Regime uncertainty? Vote for your tea party people if you will, but they're the wild card. This is a party built of folks who are in it for themselves and nothing else. I'm not saying that Obama nor the current congress have been perfect, but I believe they're trying to move things in the right direction.
I agree with your last point. I think that we should drop personal income/payroll taxes for anyone making less than $200,000/year and have corporations pay strictly based on gross revenue minus non-executive salaries of US workers. That would cut costs and get more money moving throughout the economy.
Isn't that the same thing? Effectively removing tax breaks that have been in place for 5, 10, 15, or 20+ years is just like creating a new tax, at least in the minds of people who will have to oversee its payment, potentially for the first time in their careers.
No CFO in the world will say, "Thank goodness we've been saving so much over the years with those tax breaks! All that money is right here in a piggy bank, so we're ready to start paying those taxes again." Those same CFOs already received huge bonuses based on those breaks, and that money's long spent.
Some years back, my uncle got an MBA at UC Berkeley's Haas school of business, and the commencement speaker was none other than Andy Grove.
He basically told them they were all fscked. "Somewhere in India," he said, "there's someone willing to do what you do and more for 1/10 your salary. Sitting next to you are people who will do anything to beat you at your own job," and so on. He talked on and on about how much you have to compete to survive, effectively saying, "your work needs to be your life and you need to expect nothing from it."
And that'd all be well and good, but that same year, he was compensated over $100M, partially because of the cost savings of outsourcing, of forcing his employees to compete ruthlessly for each other, and so on. It seemed disingenuous at best to say, "This is the reality," when it's the decision of him and people like him to enforce that reality.
What this change in tone says to me is that he feels that other companies are beating Intel at the outsourcing racket. Maybe he's upset that Samsung is making Apple's A4 for the iPad and iPhone, and he wishes it had been Intel ARM chips going into those millions of devices over the last quarter or so. Maybe it's something else, but this rings of the spoiled kid down the block leaving the game with his football because his team is losing.
There is another way to run your company. Treat your employees like valued contributors. If they don't contribute, find out if they want to be in another role, or another company and let them do that. But if you're always looking to get the cheapest workers, you're in danger of losing your best people, and being beaten at the bottom dollar game as well.
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That's the problem; fair use rules aren't spelled out, so if someone comes after you, you have to defend it. Deep pockets win unless someone like the EFF is willing to take on your fight.
I know this is a somewhat different topic, but it's still under the heading of ridiculous copyright BS. Here's one for the books; I recall that John Fogarty's old record label (from when he was with Creedence) sued him for copyright infringement because his solo stuff sounded too much like the stuff he'd written under contract with them. The dork only knows three chords and two rhythms; it was his signature, and when he went solo, they decided he couldn't take his signature with him.
Oh and you math geeks, figure out how many pounds of coal was burned to charge that battery halfway.
How about none? I'm not a huge fan of nuclear power, but guess what runs the grid in much of Japan?
Except for one thing: people are demonstrating the signal-loss thing holding the phone in their hands.
I personally think that problem has more to do with the front-facing camera. The phone probably sees these people and decides they're not good looking enough to call anyone. I mean, have you seen some of the antenna complainers?
Its only Apple who thinks that one product can be perfect for everyone, from the serious developer and power user to Joe Six-Pack. Other companies diversify to give each niche their own product at cheap price points.
To be fair, I don't think that Apple thinks that the iPhone is perfect for everyone. It's perfect for them--the people who make it--and they think it's perfect for enough people that it's a worthwhile product to make.
There are a lot of complaints about every company, including Apple, that I can understand. but their decision to focus on a limited product line is hardly a reason to get on them, any more than we should berate Samsung for making a mind-boggling 147 models.
The folks at Apple make what they make. If you don't like their phones, you've got hundreds of others to choose from.
Two words: space poo.
The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Non Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations
Nice thing about that statement is that all you have to do is claim that they're hiding something--how the heck can they prove a negative? Iraq couldn't--and they you can start bandying about terms like "tactical nukes".
I can finally bathe myself in chocolate sauce, whip cream, nuts and ride my bike around town screaming who has a banana!
Someone beat you to it.
My understanding is that they didn't exactly disprove it mathematically; they simply showed that while the ignition was a possibility, it was an extremely, extremely small one.
So I guess the question is, how small was it, and how small is small enough? There were probably 2 billion people on the planet at the time; again, I don't know what the odds were that they calculated, but I'm hoping that they thought long and hard about it before deciding it was OK.
Of course, they might have just decided, "One in a million's good enough, and if we're wrong, well, the suffering will be short," so the perceived tangible repercussions (if everybody dies, nothing's tangible, right?) are minimal.
And here's the thing. If Elanor were such a hot musician, she wouldn't need the sheet music.
I'm a hobby guitarist, and I'm not amazing by any stretch, and I hate paying for guitar tab books; it's like buying the book on how to do the Rubik's Cube.
If I like a song, I listen to it, learn the lyrics and the music, and figure out how to play it in a way that I'll remember it.
What she suffers from is an acute lack of creativity in problem solving. The author suggests the library as a resource; she could also get a frickin' job. Or go to the music department at her school for assistance. Or form a theater project for herself and peers and get grant funding. People eat that shite up.
Land, feh. Tax their income. Hell, the public has to pay so much for the court system; may as well have the Catholic Church pay for some of the burden they bring to the gov't.
Ahhhh... no sales tax. Life's better here.
Heh; great write-up. The gov't is truly damned if they do--we don't want a @#$% nanny government--and damned if they don't--that crappy school didn't help me enough! Wahh!
Hate to say it, but you know who fucked up? The AC's parents. They should have made damn sure he got in class and prevented this whole tragedy.
How long is the long term? This stuff has been going on for at least 40 years. How much longer do we have to wait before it starts helping everyone?
Well, as soon as China and India's economies and middle classes are too strong, they'll start outsourcing back here. And then we'll show 'em!
There may be a lost generation or two, but it'll happen, sure as sh*t.
Untrue. It hits uninformed, inflamatory liberals and conservatives alike. That being said, while I disagree with the GP post, as I said elsewhere, "flamebait" wasn't the right moderation.
Your post, on the other hand does seem to be asking for it.
Huzzah, fellow socialist rabble rouser. Huzzah.
Yes, but that added palatability is silly. If a politician tells me that they haven't created any new taxes, but they've removed old rebates, I'm going to feel like I've been lied to because the net effect is that I'm paying more taxes, regardless of how you sugar coat it.
I'm not against either idea (nor specifically for it), but I'd rather my politicians tell me right out, is my tax bill going to increase or decrease? Selling it to me by saying "you used to pay it, now you don't, and soon you will again, so that's not too bad," is weaselly at best.
Huh? How did I say that? I said no such thing.
I would suggest to you that unions and collective bargaining are tightly bound with the founding principals of this country. Free speech and right to assembly are right in there, bro.
Nobody broke GM but GM. With little exception, their various product lines suck. Ugly, inefficient and unsafe compared to their competitors.
No talking points here; the tea party is filled with misinformed, illiterate and outright criminal miscreants who are using inflammatory rhetoric to silence real debate on important issues. I'm not saying that there aren't some good people in their ranks, but they're a minority. If I could use one word to describe them, I'd use "cynical".
Come back to me when the central group that runs tp events is not a for-profit organization.
You're forgetting that many of the people who moved off the farms did so because they were forced out by corporate take-overs. Remember the dust bowl? It was caused, in part, by huge corporate farms over-planting cotton, without appropriate crop rotation, so that they could maximize profits and move on. But it wasn't just cotton; anywhere they had local competition from small family farms, they'd flood the market with cheaper products so the smaller farms would have to sell out for cheap and end up working for the corpofarms or moving to town to get a "better" life.
I've spent time in rural Bolivia, where average income for a family is about $3/mo. But they have sustenance farms which provide them with the great majority of what they need, and trade and barter locally for whatever else they need. They may never bee anyone's overlords, but there's something to be said for a less-efficient, more relaxed lifestyle.
Did I say we shouldn't listen to him? I think he's right now. But we should also take care that whatever solutions go into place won't simply benefit his ilk. Think of it this way: if we were a little village, this would be like someone taking a dump in our well, over and over again, for years. And then, after seeing the havoc it caused, going around and yelling, "Everyone, we shouldn't shit in the well!"
The first thing that would happen is that everyone who hadn't already kicked the guy's ass for dumping in the well would do so for his hypocrisy. But beyond that, it would be wise to be sure that he couldn't suddenly profit by becoming the premier seller of extra-wellular toilet facilities.
Unrelated claims of purgatory? Have you no knowledge of history? The GP's description is exactly as things were before unions and gov't regulation of employment practices in the states.
I agree with your last point. I think that we should drop personal income/payroll taxes for anyone making less than $200,000/year and have corporations pay strictly based on gross revenue minus non-executive salaries of US workers. That would cut costs and get more money moving throughout the economy.
Isn't that the same thing? Effectively removing tax breaks that have been in place for 5, 10, 15, or 20+ years is just like creating a new tax, at least in the minds of people who will have to oversee its payment, potentially for the first time in their careers.
No CFO in the world will say, "Thank goodness we've been saving so much over the years with those tax breaks! All that money is right here in a piggy bank, so we're ready to start paying those taxes again." Those same CFOs already received huge bonuses based on those breaks, and that money's long spent.
And don't forget about torturing your competition but decrying that torture when used against your own people!
Some years back, my uncle got an MBA at UC Berkeley's Haas school of business, and the commencement speaker was none other than Andy Grove.
He basically told them they were all fscked. "Somewhere in India," he said, "there's someone willing to do what you do and more for 1/10 your salary. Sitting next to you are people who will do anything to beat you at your own job," and so on. He talked on and on about how much you have to compete to survive, effectively saying, "your work needs to be your life and you need to expect nothing from it."
And that'd all be well and good, but that same year, he was compensated over $100M, partially because of the cost savings of outsourcing, of forcing his employees to compete ruthlessly for each other, and so on. It seemed disingenuous at best to say, "This is the reality," when it's the decision of him and people like him to enforce that reality.
What this change in tone says to me is that he feels that other companies are beating Intel at the outsourcing racket. Maybe he's upset that Samsung is making Apple's A4 for the iPad and iPhone, and he wishes it had been Intel ARM chips going into those millions of devices over the last quarter or so. Maybe it's something else, but this rings of the spoiled kid down the block leaving the game with his football because his team is losing.
There is another way to run your company. Treat your employees like valued contributors. If they don't contribute, find out if they want to be in another role, or another company and let them do that. But if you're always looking to get the cheapest workers, you're in danger of losing your best people, and being beaten at the bottom dollar game as well.
OK, end of rant.