The reason university town cops (usually not University cops themselves) get away with this crap is because college students are woefully ignorant about their rights, and lack the resources to get anyone to take them seriously. If someone was truly doing nothing wrong and got hassled as described above, the correct thing to do is contact the nearest Johnny Cochran and hit the city where it hurts. There are only so many lawsuit settlements the city will pay out on before they make it clear that officers have to behave themselves.
That being said, many people who find themselves in these situations are in fact doing something wrong. If you are breaking the law, get caught, give the cops a hard time and they overreact, putting you in the hospital; I'm not saying it would be right, but don't expect a lot of public sympathy.
I've heard this theory before, but the only evidence of it that I have ever seen has been stories posted on left wing kook sites like indymedia. Can anyone actually confirm this happening, with credible evidence?
This was obviously years ago. In this day and time, tuition and other fees even at state schools are so high, and minimum wage is still low, that it is no longer possible to work your way through school. It is admirable that people are willing to work so hard at the same time they are getting an education. Unfortunately now, all that seems to get for students is a lot of debt that they will be paying off forever.
The fact that ClearChannel can own any patents whatsoever is proof that the patent system is in desperate need of reform. ClearChannel does no innovative research of a scientific nature; they are purely a marketing firm. Anything technical that can be patented in AM/FM radio has already been patented, and concert venue management is not science. This being said, I'm sure there is an easy workaround for ClearChannel's recording patent unless the patent is broad to the point of being unenforceable.
This article may show some insight into the reasons why there were so many homeless people in the first place in S.F. and why the numbers might be going down soon. I couldn't believe the city gives cash handouts to the homeless. The money they give out is not enough to rent even the cheapest housing in the San Francisco area, but it is enough to fuel one hell of a drug binge, which regularly kills many homeless people every year. Cash assistance for the homeless was seen as a good idea for understandable reasons, but now that the negative effects from it are clear, the 'progressive' thing to do would be to stop the cash handouts and use the money to provide actual services to get people off the street.
Maybe it's a personal preference, but I'd rather not die waiting 3 years for heart bypass. If you think that's acceptable, so long as everyone has equal access, then great for you. In the United States, we have this thing called choice. Not everyone has to use the same government provided services. We also don't have a huge social welfare system that taxes the productive at about 80% to subsidize the unproductive. You may call that screaming right loonyism, we call it functioning society. Enjoy your welfare utopia, and whatever you do never come to the US.
It's the fatasses that have all kinds of chronic medical conditions due to their weight that really drive up the cost of health care. There were at least a couple of people at my company who I know of that had gastric bypass surgery at $100,000 a pop. We spend such an insane amount of money on medical care for a very preventable condition. If they can put smokers in their own risk pool and make them pay more for insurance, why not do it with obese people? And when I say obese, I'm talking 300-500lb people, not those that just have a bit of a gut. I for one am tired of subsidizing them.
I understand why someone would say universal health care is more fair, but I cannot for the life of me believe that it would be more efficient. When has a government program ever made anything more efficient? You'd get a bunch of bureaucrats putting their buddies on the payroll at the health administration, which would more than consume any possible savings. Meanwhile, we'd pay sky high medical taxes and people would wait forever for treatment. Health care in the U.S. is not in great shape right now, but a universal system could only make it worse.
Wait a second... Ted Turner, of Turner Broadcasting, says that big media conglomerates have too much power and should be broken up? Where does he think all his money came from? Where does he think his money will come from in the future? I think this man has lost his few remaining brain cells. I will forever wonder how someone of his severely deficient level of intelligence founded a media company that became so successful.
An ISP's takedown policy is crafted purely as a business decision. Will the company make more money by sticking up for the legal rights of their customers, or will they make more by immediately taking down anything that anyone doesn't like. You could make a case for either side, but I'm guessing that most ISPs have chosen the side of avoiding all controversy and taking down anything in question. Sure, their customers will take their business elsewhere, but someone will come along to replace them. The hosting business has pretty slim profit margins, so it's unlikely that most ISPs will be willing to spend money on lawyers if they don't absolutely have to.
The nice thing is, a website can be hosted anywhere in the world, so it's not like you can't find another host if your site is taken down on dubious grounds. For that matter, even if your site is blatantly illegal, somebody somewhere will host it for the right price.
It's been my experience that they SOLD top of the line stuff at one time. I have older Sony products that lasted for years. However their quality has gone to hell in recent years, and I think people are waking up to that fact. There are not a lot of people who still think Sony products are worth paying a premium for; at least not enough to sustain a national chain of Sony stores for a number of years. They'll get some impulse buyers, sure, but many people now do research on the internet before they make a major purchase. Those folks won't be heading into the Sony store.
And it won't work for Sony. Both companies compete in the super-commoditized consumer electronics market. Neither of them have any real competitive advantage, other than Sony's fading brand name. Apple never tried to be the lowest cost provider; they have products that competitors either don't have or are not the same. The store model works for Apple because they compete on their own merits and people will go out of their way to buy Apple products. Granted, they are more expensive and often very proprietary, but they have a significant fan base. Sony and Gateway do not and will not have this advantage, therefore the only thing they will have to compete on will be features and price, just like every other electronics company. They will have a hard time keeping up with the massive flood of cheap consumer goods sold at Best Buy that are brought in by the boatload from Thailand and they will suffer miserably.
And people wonder why the cost of a college education keeps spiraling higher. Universities have no concept of real world financial restraints. If the money is there, spend it! I for one think students should be able to pay for their own damn cell phones.
But what is the next great thing? What is innovative about Microsoft? Where will their billions in profits come from once they no longer have the Windows/Office monopoly in corporate environments? If you think this will never end, you need some historical perspective. In the 1970s, who ever thought the IBM Mainframe monopoly days would ever end? When they did end, IBM almost collapsed, if not for the fact that they massively reinvented the company. Will Microsoft be up to that task a few years from now? Not with Balmer, they won't be.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to live my entire life according to what some insurance company thinks I should do, knowing that my rates will double if I don't. Do you think there should be any limit at all to the amount of data an insurance company can access? Oppression by government and oppression by insurance companies (especially when they all adopt the same policies) is not all that much different.
A common occurance is for you to see a nice long straight bit of road, pull out to overtake, and the thing you are overtaking speeds up
Any normal driver who has ever driven on the Wisconsin highways knows about this. What is it about the Cheeseheads that causes them to go about 60 MPH in the left lane and then speed up to 70 when they see someone passing them?
Balmer just keeps getting dumber and dumber. When will the board of Microsoft wake up and can his ass? He seems to be one of the few people in the world who just cannot grasp how fucked Microsoft will be once their Windows/Office revenue stream dries up. All he has to offer is excuses and half-baked ideas like product registration (did anyone not think this would be cracked?) and licensing deals that are so unappealing they lead companies to seriously consider other platforms. Balmer is the perfect example of a PHB in the extreme.
I must say, I'm impressed that SBC is actually making effort to compete with newer technology instead of generating press releases and lobbying congress about VOIP being a national security threat or some nonsense like that. Considering they own a lot of backbone, there's no reason they can't be profitable in the future if they're offering VOIP, cable TV alternatives, etc.
In a pinch, you could just use GOTOs to branch your code farther down on the screen. But don't forget to include the GOTO to bring it back up, or your execution will be off. Ah, fond memories.
This really depends on how well the professor defines the assignment. If every aspect of the programming assignment is spec'd out to the point that there would only be one correct answer, it would be easy to get away with cheating since all of the good submissions would look the same. If, however, the professor assigned a creative problem solving exercise and a proper solution could take many different paths, 2 or more identical submissions would be a dead giveaway of cheating. If professors really want to stop cheating, they need to take the initiative to assign work that requires creativity on the part of the students as opposed to submitting code that could be a cut and paste of textbook examples. Having had both kinds of professors in school, I saw first hand what kind of work students provide in each environment.
I think you just hit on an even bigger problem. People are not satisfied with their lives and think they will gain satisfaction from obtaining more material posessions. Lucky for me, I learned at a young age that it does not work that way, but many people don't figure this out. It's a very natural reaction to unhappiness, which most people will encounter at some point in their lives. As far as fixing the problem, there is no easy way. Consumer education is the only hope, but there are many people and companies that would like to obstruct that since it would mean reduced profits.
The reason many people buy so much crap is because they don't stop to think about whether they already have something that will work. I've seen people buy countertop pizza cookers, why? They also have a microwave and an oven with their stove; why not use one of those to cook the pizza? There are people who have every type of household cleaner on the market, when they are all made from about 4 or 5 basic ingredients. There was once a time when people made their own cleaning products and their houses were no less clean than they are now.
The answer isn't to withdraw from society to avoid seeing ads, but to just stop and think before spending money. Think of spending money as a bad thing, to only be done when necessary, and you'll find that it's perfectly possible to get by without $8000 in credit card debt.
It's funny how many people, men and women, will buy anything that is perceived to be a bargain, even if it is no bargain at all. That is why items that are stacked in a pyramid at the end of an aisle with a big price sign on them will sell better, even if there has been no reduction in price. Not too long ago I was buying contact lens saline and I noticed the bottles were available in a twin pack. Then I noticed individual bottles, which were priced at less than half of the twin pack price. Had I not looked, I would have thought the twin pack was a better deal and ended up paying a full dollar more. I'm sure people fall for this all the time, especially those who cannot do math in their heads.
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The reason university town cops (usually not University cops themselves) get away with this crap is because college students are woefully ignorant about their rights, and lack the resources to get anyone to take them seriously. If someone was truly doing nothing wrong and got hassled as described above, the correct thing to do is contact the nearest Johnny Cochran and hit the city where it hurts. There are only so many lawsuit settlements the city will pay out on before they make it clear that officers have to behave themselves.
That being said, many people who find themselves in these situations are in fact doing something wrong. If you are breaking the law, get caught, give the cops a hard time and they overreact, putting you in the hospital; I'm not saying it would be right, but don't expect a lot of public sympathy.
I've heard this theory before, but the only evidence of it that I have ever seen has been stories posted on left wing kook sites like indymedia. Can anyone actually confirm this happening, with credible evidence?
This was obviously years ago. In this day and time, tuition and other fees even at state schools are so high, and minimum wage is still low, that it is no longer possible to work your way through school. It is admirable that people are willing to work so hard at the same time they are getting an education. Unfortunately now, all that seems to get for students is a lot of debt that they will be paying off forever.
The fact that ClearChannel can own any patents whatsoever is proof that the patent system is in desperate need of reform. ClearChannel does no innovative research of a scientific nature; they are purely a marketing firm. Anything technical that can be patented in AM/FM radio has already been patented, and concert venue management is not science. This being said, I'm sure there is an easy workaround for ClearChannel's recording patent unless the patent is broad to the point of being unenforceable.
This article may show some insight into the reasons why there were so many homeless people in the first place in S.F. and why the numbers might be going down soon. I couldn't believe the city gives cash handouts to the homeless. The money they give out is not enough to rent even the cheapest housing in the San Francisco area, but it is enough to fuel one hell of a drug binge, which regularly kills many homeless people every year. Cash assistance for the homeless was seen as a good idea for understandable reasons, but now that the negative effects from it are clear, the 'progressive' thing to do would be to stop the cash handouts and use the money to provide actual services to get people off the street.
I don't think it would be a good idea to use TicketBastard.
Maybe it's a personal preference, but I'd rather not die waiting 3 years for heart bypass. If you think that's acceptable, so long as everyone has equal access, then great for you. In the United States, we have this thing called choice. Not everyone has to use the same government provided services. We also don't have a huge social welfare system that taxes the productive at about 80% to subsidize the unproductive. You may call that screaming right loonyism, we call it functioning society. Enjoy your welfare utopia, and whatever you do never come to the US.
It's the fatasses that have all kinds of chronic medical conditions due to their weight that really drive up the cost of health care. There were at least a couple of people at my company who I know of that had gastric bypass surgery at $100,000 a pop. We spend such an insane amount of money on medical care for a very preventable condition. If they can put smokers in their own risk pool and make them pay more for insurance, why not do it with obese people? And when I say obese, I'm talking 300-500lb people, not those that just have a bit of a gut. I for one am tired of subsidizing them.
I understand why someone would say universal health care is more fair, but I cannot for the life of me believe that it would be more efficient. When has a government program ever made anything more efficient? You'd get a bunch of bureaucrats putting their buddies on the payroll at the health administration, which would more than consume any possible savings. Meanwhile, we'd pay sky high medical taxes and people would wait forever for treatment. Health care in the U.S. is not in great shape right now, but a universal system could only make it worse.
Wait a second... Ted Turner, of Turner Broadcasting, says that big media conglomerates have too much power and should be broken up? Where does he think all his money came from? Where does he think his money will come from in the future? I think this man has lost his few remaining brain cells. I will forever wonder how someone of his severely deficient level of intelligence founded a media company that became so successful.
An ISP's takedown policy is crafted purely as a business decision. Will the company make more money by sticking up for the legal rights of their customers, or will they make more by immediately taking down anything that anyone doesn't like. You could make a case for either side, but I'm guessing that most ISPs have chosen the side of avoiding all controversy and taking down anything in question. Sure, their customers will take their business elsewhere, but someone will come along to replace them. The hosting business has pretty slim profit margins, so it's unlikely that most ISPs will be willing to spend money on lawyers if they don't absolutely have to.
The nice thing is, a website can be hosted anywhere in the world, so it's not like you can't find another host if your site is taken down on dubious grounds. For that matter, even if your site is blatantly illegal, somebody somewhere will host it for the right price.
It's been my experience that they SOLD top of the line stuff at one time. I have older Sony products that lasted for years. However their quality has gone to hell in recent years, and I think people are waking up to that fact. There are not a lot of people who still think Sony products are worth paying a premium for; at least not enough to sustain a national chain of Sony stores for a number of years. They'll get some impulse buyers, sure, but many people now do research on the internet before they make a major purchase. Those folks won't be heading into the Sony store.
And it won't work for Sony. Both companies compete in the super-commoditized consumer electronics market. Neither of them have any real competitive advantage, other than Sony's fading brand name. Apple never tried to be the lowest cost provider; they have products that competitors either don't have or are not the same. The store model works for Apple because they compete on their own merits and people will go out of their way to buy Apple products. Granted, they are more expensive and often very proprietary, but they have a significant fan base. Sony and Gateway do not and will not have this advantage, therefore the only thing they will have to compete on will be features and price, just like every other electronics company. They will have a hard time keeping up with the massive flood of cheap consumer goods sold at Best Buy that are brought in by the boatload from Thailand and they will suffer miserably.
And people wonder why the cost of a college education keeps spiraling higher. Universities have no concept of real world financial restraints. If the money is there, spend it! I for one think students should be able to pay for their own damn cell phones.
But what is the next great thing? What is innovative about Microsoft? Where will their billions in profits come from once they no longer have the Windows/Office monopoly in corporate environments? If you think this will never end, you need some historical perspective. In the 1970s, who ever thought the IBM Mainframe monopoly days would ever end? When they did end, IBM almost collapsed, if not for the fact that they massively reinvented the company. Will Microsoft be up to that task a few years from now? Not with Balmer, they won't be.
In Soviet Russia, music leg-boots you!
I don't know about you, but I don't want to live my entire life according to what some insurance company thinks I should do, knowing that my rates will double if I don't. Do you think there should be any limit at all to the amount of data an insurance company can access? Oppression by government and oppression by insurance companies (especially when they all adopt the same policies) is not all that much different.
A common occurance is for you to see a nice long straight bit of road, pull out to overtake, and the thing you are overtaking speeds up
Any normal driver who has ever driven on the Wisconsin highways knows about this. What is it about the Cheeseheads that causes them to go about 60 MPH in the left lane and then speed up to 70 when they see someone passing them?
Balmer just keeps getting dumber and dumber. When will the board of Microsoft wake up and can his ass? He seems to be one of the few people in the world who just cannot grasp how fucked Microsoft will be once their Windows/Office revenue stream dries up. All he has to offer is excuses and half-baked ideas like product registration (did anyone not think this would be cracked?) and licensing deals that are so unappealing they lead companies to seriously consider other platforms. Balmer is the perfect example of a PHB in the extreme.
I must say, I'm impressed that SBC is actually making effort to compete with newer technology instead of generating press releases and lobbying congress about VOIP being a national security threat or some nonsense like that. Considering they own a lot of backbone, there's no reason they can't be profitable in the future if they're offering VOIP, cable TV alternatives, etc.
In a pinch, you could just use GOTOs to branch your code farther down on the screen. But don't forget to include the GOTO to bring it back up, or your execution will be off. Ah, fond memories.
This really depends on how well the professor defines the assignment. If every aspect of the programming assignment is spec'd out to the point that there would only be one correct answer, it would be easy to get away with cheating since all of the good submissions would look the same. If, however, the professor assigned a creative problem solving exercise and a proper solution could take many different paths, 2 or more identical submissions would be a dead giveaway of cheating. If professors really want to stop cheating, they need to take the initiative to assign work that requires creativity on the part of the students as opposed to submitting code that could be a cut and paste of textbook examples. Having had both kinds of professors in school, I saw first hand what kind of work students provide in each environment.
I think you just hit on an even bigger problem. People are not satisfied with their lives and think they will gain satisfaction from obtaining more material posessions. Lucky for me, I learned at a young age that it does not work that way, but many people don't figure this out. It's a very natural reaction to unhappiness, which most people will encounter at some point in their lives. As far as fixing the problem, there is no easy way. Consumer education is the only hope, but there are many people and companies that would like to obstruct that since it would mean reduced profits.
The reason many people buy so much crap is because they don't stop to think about whether they already have something that will work. I've seen people buy countertop pizza cookers, why? They also have a microwave and an oven with their stove; why not use one of those to cook the pizza? There are people who have every type of household cleaner on the market, when they are all made from about 4 or 5 basic ingredients. There was once a time when people made their own cleaning products and their houses were no less clean than they are now.
The answer isn't to withdraw from society to avoid seeing ads, but to just stop and think before spending money. Think of spending money as a bad thing, to only be done when necessary, and you'll find that it's perfectly possible to get by without $8000 in credit card debt.
It's funny how many people, men and women, will buy anything that is perceived to be a bargain, even if it is no bargain at all. That is why items that are stacked in a pyramid at the end of an aisle with a big price sign on them will sell better, even if there has been no reduction in price. Not too long ago I was buying contact lens saline and I noticed the bottles were available in a twin pack. Then I noticed individual bottles, which were priced at less than half of the twin pack price. Had I not looked, I would have thought the twin pack was a better deal and ended up paying a full dollar more. I'm sure people fall for this all the time, especially those who cannot do math in their heads.