Nothing will ever come of this. If you made a list of conservative politicians' favorite movies, most of them would be violent. This is simply an election year ploy to kiss up to the religious right and squeeze out a few more votes. After the election, this will not be mentioned again and if anyone asks about it, the failure to regulate TV will be blamed on liberals. Hollywood and TV networks donate to almost all political campaigns, and their donations are far larger than the Christian Coalition's, so that tells you where the legislative priorities are.
Shouldn't classified files be encrypted in a way that they would be useless when accessed from any machine outside of the secure network? It seems like this would be possible, and a much better form of security than just hoping that nobody plugs a removable drive into a classified computer. And yes, there are many reasons why classified military machines should not be running any Microsoft OS (who needs to deal with security exploits introduced by Media Player in a secure environment?).
Re:No recounts in districts with touchscreen votin
on
How To Lose An Election
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· Score: 1, Insightful
I'm not sure why "undervotes" were ever a big deal to begin with. Some people simply choose not to cast a vote for a particular race, and I don't see why they shouldn't be able to do this. If someone didn't cast a vote for a race, then there is no vote to record, period, end of story. Make the machine alert the voter that a vote wasn't cast and then if they approve the ballot anyway, it's nobody's fault but theirs if no vote is counted for that race. If someone can't figure out how to properly cast a vote despite clear written and verbal instructions, I don't want them picking our next president anyway.
Yes, this would be a very productive use of law enforcement. I'm sure some revenue minded city council has considered this, but all it would really do is distract cops from doing what they were hired to do, you know, protect society from real problems. And if there is a passenger, then the driver would apparently be able to use that as an excuse to be on the phone? No wait, we would have to ban absolutely all cell phone use from the vehicle because it would be too hard to tell who was using it. Cars would be getting pulled over because of some back seat passenger talking on the phone. But I'm not too worried about this, because too many people would oppose it for something like this to actually become law.
This is the way it should be, as a complete ban on driver cell phone use would be unenforceable. How would they see the little wire running up to your ear? Although I don't agree with the study that equates cell phone use with intoxication, I do think that if someone causes an accident while they were distracted, they should be punished rather severely regardless of the distracting device. I don't know why multitasking is such a serious problem for some people. If I am talking on a handsfree phone while driving, I have absolutely no problem paying attention to the road. I've had people pull out in front of me really close and been able to hit the brakes in time even while talking. It's all about focusing on the priority at hand.
Warranties do have to conform to consumer protection laws. In every state that I know of, merchants are required to exchange defective merchandise. I believe this only covers problems that exist at the time of sale, even though merchants usually choose to cover more than this due to customer demand. I doubt that it would be legal to replace a brand new but defective item with a refurbished model, unless they are giving you a price break. At the very least, this is a horrible policy and I would never do business with anyone who treats customers like this. Until Dell seriously improves their quality and service, I will not be buying another one.
Does anyone know how to destroy LCD crystals without it being obvious? If so, just destroy a few more of them to make it replacement-eligible. But seriously, if you ordered a new monitor and paid full price for a new one and they try to replace it with a refurbished model, that is fraud. If I sold you a new car and then tried to replace it with a 2003 model after you had already paid me for a brand new one, I would never get away with it. Threaten them with calls to your state attorney general. If you live in NY, you're extra lucky, since their attorney general is on a crusade against corrupt companies so they'll be extra scared of him.
No way would I ship in a laptop to have it repaired. If the warranty does not include either onsite service or some local authorized repair place I can take it to, then the warranty is worthless in my opinion. If I need the machine for business, I am not going to ship it, most likely at my expense both ways, risk damage in transit, and then wait a month or so to get it back and be without one in the mean time. If it is a critical device, I will gladly pay more for decent warranty support. I'm not sure exactly how Apple's warranties work, but I've seen this disturbing trend in electronics warranties over the last few years.
This is true. Which is why such actions will not instantly eliminate spam, but will make it much harder to do. Once many countries adopt such tough measures, the few remaining ones that permit these activities will soon have most of their outbound internet traffic consisting of spam or scamming activities. Then, system administrators will shut off connections from these places. When they want to rejoin the internet, they will have to show that they can be trusted to keep their users in line.
If the FBI can do this type of thing to some movie pirate, there's no reason at all why they are powerless to stop spammers and other online scams. This only needs to happen to a few spammers before most of the others decide to stop. I'd just love to see some spammer complaining to the press about how the FBI trashed his computers. I suspect the reason this isn't already happening is because there is no wealthy group of companies (ie campaign contributors) demanding that the government do something about it.
Sadly, I think you're right. Just look at what SCO has been doing. I don't even think they were stupid enough to believe that every Linux user would write them a check. Surely someone told Darl that any infringing code could be replaced. They were just spreading FUD for their sponsor (MS) who was paying the bills that would allow them to run their stock scam. At this point, it seems likely that Microsoft, who has the most to lose from open source, will find another SCO-like partner to use as a FUD agent. And this one probably won't be so incompetent.
Privatizing something does not necessarily make it less safe than having it run by government. Remember, Chernobyl was a government run power plant. What makes things less safe is having no accountability. If there are inadequate laws or enforcement, things will become unsafe because the people in charge, whether it is a government or a corporation, will want to cut corners. Having an independent organization with oversight and enforcement powers is the best way to ensure safety in a situation like this.
In addition to the liability issues, SCO would lose it's FUD value if Microsoft bought them. The anti-Linux attacks would be too obvious, kind of like those studies that Microsoft paid for which claimed that Windows was cheaper than Linux. Nobody believed them once the source of funding was known, and nobody would care much about a Microsoft-owned SCO either. They'd be much better off letting SCO die and finding a new source of anti-Linux FUD.
What people don't care about is the fact that it is illegal to copy stuff. Make it impossible to copy stuff, and people will start caring. Will anyone buy a DVD recorder if the only thing it can record is MPAA sanctioned material? I highly doubt it. Most people don't know or care about the technical and legal details concerning recording equipment, but they do care when that new DVD recorder that they paid a lot of money for is basically useless. And when the public is truly outraged about something, that will have more power over congressmen than campaign contributions (see National do-not-call list).
What a lot of people don't realize is that the "working rich" get really really hosed by taxes. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, don't have too many places to shelter their wealth from insane levels of taxes. The old-money types can set up trusts, foundations, and various other schemes where they officially have no personal wealth but yet enjoy very comfortable lives. This set of rules is the only reason why rich people will support democratic politicians and high taxes, estate taxes, etc. Because they won't be paying them; only people who are working for their money pay high taxes.
I've always wondered how someone as incredibly stupid as Ted Turner can run a company this size and have so much money. I've heard the guy speak before, and he sounds only a little bit more intelligent than Mike Tyson. I don't think he has any real belief system, he simply likes whatever sounds good at the moment.
If AT&T had never been split up, I think we would still be making calls using a big rotory dial phone. Or you could pay $5 a month extra for tone dialing. Long distance would be $1 a minute. DSL would be unheard of. Sure this would all be federally regulated, but it's not hard to convince the regulators to let you raise rates as long as you put together a business case for it. Despite some of the headaches, deregulation is the best thing to ever happen to telecom. It worked out well for many companies, and would even have benefitted AT&T if they hadn't enormously screwed up.
Actually, many of the corporate abuses in the early 1900s are exactly what led to worker's rights legislation, workers comp and other safety programs, minimum wage laws, securities regulation, anti-monopoly laws, and many other regulations. I don't know what kind of system you would propose that would protect the little guy, but I think you need to remember that there are limits to what companies can do, and the more corrupt they become, the more efforts are made to reign them in. Example: corporate fraud is being cracked down on quite a bit now. The former Enron and Worldcom executives have been indicted, along with many other white collar criminals.
I think this falls under the theory of never going broke by underestimating the stupidity of the American public. Then again, people watch stupid shit on TV all over the world.
Not to mention, the Blackhawks play so terrible they aren't worth watching. Especially at the United Center for $50 a ticket. I say let this team die a well deserved death and then maybe the Chicago NHL franchise can be bought by a team owner that has half a clue.
The problem is, marketing types live in their own little world. The praise themselves for being so creative, but in reality they are anything but creative. Most marketing initiatives are cookie cutter rehashes of past marketing schemes. Stuff like "brand awareness" is so important to marketroids, but so unimportant to consumers. People don't care who makes the crap they buy, they care if it's cheap and satisfying. It would make a lot more sense to produce one or two great commercials instead of some annoying piece of crap that gets played during every commercial break (like those ditech.com commercials). At the very least, I'd be more likely to watch it and remember what I saw rather than immediately change the channel.
Remember, this is before Kerry's campaign really picked up. He was a nobody at that point. Although he won the Iowa primary, most of the country didn't care one way or the other about him. It seemed likely that Dean would win the Democrat nomination simply because nobody cared about the other candidates, then people would vote for Bush because they liked him more than Dean. I'm not saying that the Democratic party was the reason that the sound clip was played repeatedly; this happened because it was so damn amusing. The Democrats simply used this as an opportunity to start promoting Kerry more and to stop talking about Dean altogether.
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In related news, White Castle sales mysteriously increase. Customers said to be "looking for good fuel for their new cars".
Nothing will ever come of this. If you made a list of conservative politicians' favorite movies, most of them would be violent. This is simply an election year ploy to kiss up to the religious right and squeeze out a few more votes. After the election, this will not be mentioned again and if anyone asks about it, the failure to regulate TV will be blamed on liberals. Hollywood and TV networks donate to almost all political campaigns, and their donations are far larger than the Christian Coalition's, so that tells you where the legislative priorities are.
Shouldn't classified files be encrypted in a way that they would be useless when accessed from any machine outside of the secure network? It seems like this would be possible, and a much better form of security than just hoping that nobody plugs a removable drive into a classified computer. And yes, there are many reasons why classified military machines should not be running any Microsoft OS (who needs to deal with security exploits introduced by Media Player in a secure environment?).
I'm not sure why "undervotes" were ever a big deal to begin with. Some people simply choose not to cast a vote for a particular race, and I don't see why they shouldn't be able to do this. If someone didn't cast a vote for a race, then there is no vote to record, period, end of story. Make the machine alert the voter that a vote wasn't cast and then if they approve the ballot anyway, it's nobody's fault but theirs if no vote is counted for that race. If someone can't figure out how to properly cast a vote despite clear written and verbal instructions, I don't want them picking our next president anyway.
Yes, this would be a very productive use of law enforcement. I'm sure some revenue minded city council has considered this, but all it would really do is distract cops from doing what they were hired to do, you know, protect society from real problems. And if there is a passenger, then the driver would apparently be able to use that as an excuse to be on the phone? No wait, we would have to ban absolutely all cell phone use from the vehicle because it would be too hard to tell who was using it. Cars would be getting pulled over because of some back seat passenger talking on the phone. But I'm not too worried about this, because too many people would oppose it for something like this to actually become law.
This is the way it should be, as a complete ban on driver cell phone use would be unenforceable. How would they see the little wire running up to your ear? Although I don't agree with the study that equates cell phone use with intoxication, I do think that if someone causes an accident while they were distracted, they should be punished rather severely regardless of the distracting device. I don't know why multitasking is such a serious problem for some people. If I am talking on a handsfree phone while driving, I have absolutely no problem paying attention to the road. I've had people pull out in front of me really close and been able to hit the brakes in time even while talking. It's all about focusing on the priority at hand.
Warranties do have to conform to consumer protection laws. In every state that I know of, merchants are required to exchange defective merchandise. I believe this only covers problems that exist at the time of sale, even though merchants usually choose to cover more than this due to customer demand. I doubt that it would be legal to replace a brand new but defective item with a refurbished model, unless they are giving you a price break. At the very least, this is a horrible policy and I would never do business with anyone who treats customers like this. Until Dell seriously improves their quality and service, I will not be buying another one.
Does anyone know how to destroy LCD crystals without it being obvious? If so, just destroy a few more of them to make it replacement-eligible. But seriously, if you ordered a new monitor and paid full price for a new one and they try to replace it with a refurbished model, that is fraud. If I sold you a new car and then tried to replace it with a 2003 model after you had already paid me for a brand new one, I would never get away with it. Threaten them with calls to your state attorney general. If you live in NY, you're extra lucky, since their attorney general is on a crusade against corrupt companies so they'll be extra scared of him.
No way would I ship in a laptop to have it repaired. If the warranty does not include either onsite service or some local authorized repair place I can take it to, then the warranty is worthless in my opinion. If I need the machine for business, I am not going to ship it, most likely at my expense both ways, risk damage in transit, and then wait a month or so to get it back and be without one in the mean time. If it is a critical device, I will gladly pay more for decent warranty support. I'm not sure exactly how Apple's warranties work, but I've seen this disturbing trend in electronics warranties over the last few years.
This is true. Which is why such actions will not instantly eliminate spam, but will make it much harder to do. Once many countries adopt such tough measures, the few remaining ones that permit these activities will soon have most of their outbound internet traffic consisting of spam or scamming activities. Then, system administrators will shut off connections from these places. When they want to rejoin the internet, they will have to show that they can be trusted to keep their users in line.
If the FBI can do this type of thing to some movie pirate, there's no reason at all why they are powerless to stop spammers and other online scams. This only needs to happen to a few spammers before most of the others decide to stop. I'd just love to see some spammer complaining to the press about how the FBI trashed his computers. I suspect the reason this isn't already happening is because there is no wealthy group of companies (ie campaign contributors) demanding that the government do something about it.
Sadly, I think you're right. Just look at what SCO has been doing. I don't even think they were stupid enough to believe that every Linux user would write them a check. Surely someone told Darl that any infringing code could be replaced. They were just spreading FUD for their sponsor (MS) who was paying the bills that would allow them to run their stock scam. At this point, it seems likely that Microsoft, who has the most to lose from open source, will find another SCO-like partner to use as a FUD agent. And this one probably won't be so incompetent.
Privatizing something does not necessarily make it less safe than having it run by government. Remember, Chernobyl was a government run power plant. What makes things less safe is having no accountability. If there are inadequate laws or enforcement, things will become unsafe because the people in charge, whether it is a government or a corporation, will want to cut corners. Having an independent organization with oversight and enforcement powers is the best way to ensure safety in a situation like this.
For the NIMBY folks, I'll volunteer to host a PBR in my backyard.
A Pabst Blue Ribbon? What are you thinking? You'll wipe out your whole neighborhood!
In addition to the liability issues, SCO would lose it's FUD value if Microsoft bought them. The anti-Linux attacks would be too obvious, kind of like those studies that Microsoft paid for which claimed that Windows was cheaper than Linux. Nobody believed them once the source of funding was known, and nobody would care much about a Microsoft-owned SCO either. They'd be much better off letting SCO die and finding a new source of anti-Linux FUD.
What people don't care about is the fact that it is illegal to copy stuff. Make it impossible to copy stuff, and people will start caring. Will anyone buy a DVD recorder if the only thing it can record is MPAA sanctioned material? I highly doubt it. Most people don't know or care about the technical and legal details concerning recording equipment, but they do care when that new DVD recorder that they paid a lot of money for is basically useless. And when the public is truly outraged about something, that will have more power over congressmen than campaign contributions (see National do-not-call list).
What a lot of people don't realize is that the "working rich" get really really hosed by taxes. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, don't have too many places to shelter their wealth from insane levels of taxes. The old-money types can set up trusts, foundations, and various other schemes where they officially have no personal wealth but yet enjoy very comfortable lives. This set of rules is the only reason why rich people will support democratic politicians and high taxes, estate taxes, etc. Because they won't be paying them; only people who are working for their money pay high taxes.
I've always wondered how someone as incredibly stupid as Ted Turner can run a company this size and have so much money. I've heard the guy speak before, and he sounds only a little bit more intelligent than Mike Tyson. I don't think he has any real belief system, he simply likes whatever sounds good at the moment.
If AT&T had never been split up, I think we would still be making calls using a big rotory dial phone. Or you could pay $5 a month extra for tone dialing. Long distance would be $1 a minute. DSL would be unheard of. Sure this would all be federally regulated, but it's not hard to convince the regulators to let you raise rates as long as you put together a business case for it. Despite some of the headaches, deregulation is the best thing to ever happen to telecom. It worked out well for many companies, and would even have benefitted AT&T if they hadn't enormously screwed up.
It's hard to beat free nights and weekends on a cell phone. I don't even need any other long distance plan.
Actually, many of the corporate abuses in the early 1900s are exactly what led to worker's rights legislation, workers comp and other safety programs, minimum wage laws, securities regulation, anti-monopoly laws, and many other regulations. I don't know what kind of system you would propose that would protect the little guy, but I think you need to remember that there are limits to what companies can do, and the more corrupt they become, the more efforts are made to reign them in. Example: corporate fraud is being cracked down on quite a bit now. The former Enron and Worldcom executives have been indicted, along with many other white collar criminals.
I think this falls under the theory of never going broke by underestimating the stupidity of the American public. Then again, people watch stupid shit on TV all over the world.
Not to mention, the Blackhawks play so terrible they aren't worth watching. Especially at the United Center for $50 a ticket. I say let this team die a well deserved death and then maybe the Chicago NHL franchise can be bought by a team owner that has half a clue.
The problem is, marketing types live in their own little world. The praise themselves for being so creative, but in reality they are anything but creative. Most marketing initiatives are cookie cutter rehashes of past marketing schemes. Stuff like "brand awareness" is so important to marketroids, but so unimportant to consumers. People don't care who makes the crap they buy, they care if it's cheap and satisfying. It would make a lot more sense to produce one or two great commercials instead of some annoying piece of crap that gets played during every commercial break (like those ditech.com commercials). At the very least, I'd be more likely to watch it and remember what I saw rather than immediately change the channel.
Remember, this is before Kerry's campaign really picked up. He was a nobody at that point. Although he won the Iowa primary, most of the country didn't care one way or the other about him. It seemed likely that Dean would win the Democrat nomination simply because nobody cared about the other candidates, then people would vote for Bush because they liked him more than Dean. I'm not saying that the Democratic party was the reason that the sound clip was played repeatedly; this happened because it was so damn amusing. The Democrats simply used this as an opportunity to start promoting Kerry more and to stop talking about Dean altogether.