I submitted this story and it was rejected. Apparently Nintendo price cuts and the latest Star Wars box office figures are big news today, but not this.
Boo hoo for you, did you consider that maybe 13 other people submitted it before you, it's maybe 200 submissions down on the queue, and it might get posted later? Sorry your story got rejected and you don't get any karma, but please. Enough with the ragging on people because they talk about other stuff besides your pet topic.
message yet? If so, what did you do to clean up? Neither of the 2 articles gives a very good indication of that; I guess I'd start by deleting \windows\system32\explorer.scr and \windows\temp\Sys32, and removing these registry keys:
Seems like that should keep it from spreading, but that won't prevent a reinfection. Oh well; at least there's a popup notice when you get infected. that's nice.
Looks like fasttrack users (kazaa, morpheus, AND grokster) are catching on... about 1/5 as many users on as usual for this time of day. And before you flame me as a pirate, I only trade Simpsons episodes which aren't available for sale yet:)
Hm... since I suppose this thread will be filled with a ton of "verizon rules/verizon sucks" posts, I might as well chip in my 2 cents.
Basically, the coverage is excellent -- I've been covered from San Francisco to Rocky Point (Sonora) to Toronto to Boston. Basically the only time I lose coverage altogether is underground. I used to have analog-only in southwest Michigan, but a quick roaming-software upgrade fixed that; I think now they're piggybacking on sprint's network here, whereas they weren't before.
That said, Verizon leaves a TON to be desired in the customer service department. The reason I bought my phone is because I've truly been traveling across the country for the last year. Trying to change billing addresses is a HUGE hassle; Verizon was cobbled together from 3-4 disparate wireless companies across the country, and it still shows. You have to get a totally new account number when you move, and sometimes you get double-billed for up to a month.
That, and you're basically not allowed to move out of their "preferred market" areas. My new address was about 20 miles south of the Verizon market limits in SW Michigan, same area code and everything, and they were adamant about not allowing me to change my address to that "uncovered" location (note: digital service works just fine here). Long story short, I ended up using a friend's address and paying all my bills online; it's not perfect, but I'm getting along.
So, yeah. it doesn't surprise me that verizon has all these techs in trucks all over the country; their coverage shows it. Now if only they'd hire that clever IBM basketball team to integrate their billing across the nation.
Now announcing: a new telephone area code, 1AA, which will only be given to "really good people" who "aren't quacks." Yellow page ads, professional reputation, word of mouth, and popular reviews now all unnecessary.
Seriously. I know the web has a lot of crap, but is this the best way to deal with it? The point should be educating people about how to find the high-quality services by comparing rates, credentials, standing among community organizations, etc. This essentially places the work in the hands of the.pro domain vendor which is a) slow and cumbersome, and b) not really their job.
I guess my biggest concern is that someone can just buy the "premium" nametag as such. I mean, think about how you look for doctors, for example. You want to make damn sure they have "MD" after their names, but you want it to be backed up by a diploma on the wall, which at least ensures they've gone to an accreditted med school. This.pro idea smacks of a corespondence-course quality "reputation enhancer."
Just curious, did you write this ahead of time, or did you actually type this into the little textarea on the submission form? I ask because this has all the parts of a good essay.
Thanks:) I actually typed it up on the spot, but as I said, it's culled from conversations I've been having with other simpsons freaks for months. I am a freelance journalist, though, so I might look into brushing it up and getting it published somewhere.
No, boner, like The Financial Times (of London), or (from London). A clarification for the "inward-looking morons" who aren't familiar with every financial periodical in the Western world. Ease up.
Since the simpsons is one of my hobbies and I spend lots of time talking about it (or spewing quotes) with my buddies at the bar, I'd like to offer my rebuttal to the argument that "The Simpsons jumped the shark long ago."
The important concept is to look at the Simpsons in phases. The Tracy Ulman shorts and season 1, and to a lesser extent season 2, was basically Groening getting his feet wet in the television medium. The plots were decent, and by the end of 2, the characters were pretty damn fleshed out. But most of the time the progress was slow, the voices (especially Azaria's) were crappy, and the jokes didn't punch.
Seasons 3 through 6,7, or 8 (depending on how much of a hardass you are) were the good years. The characters hit their prime, all the voices solidified, the animation went from "crappy" to "simple but elegant." The plots were tight, the jokes zinged. Basically every really classic episode was from this period. Flaming Moe's, Homer the Heretic, Last Temptation, Lemon of Troy... there are too many to mention.
But the seeds of crappery were also sewed during this period. Not 1 but 2 clipshows, the spinoff showcase, and guest episodes like the johny cash and X-files episodes. I bring up those last 2 for a reason: one of the central complaints about the later seasons is all the random guest voices, but those 2 above are two of my all time FAVORITES. Which brings me, I guess, to my central point: one man's meat is another's poison. Yes, the X-files episode was a pastiche attempt to gain ratings, but it was done in a freakin' hilarious way.
Most of the seasons after 9 typify this later approach: garish, sometimes slapdash, and always ridiculous ratings-fodder. Bart's a Jockey! Britney spears reads 2 lines! "It's N-Synch!" I would basically agree that the show had said everything meaningful it was going to say by the end of season 8 or so. And so it turned its energies outward: the long-loved and well-developed characters took on archtypal roles in critiques of pop culture.
Homer devolved from a dumb but lovable working class chump, to an archie bunker/fred flintstone obnoxious bastard. Lisa went from vulnerable geek to elitist snob. The thing is, these changes had a point: it's the way everyone ELSE was being, and now we're commenting on that, see? In fact, I would argue that the original Homer was a counterpoint to optimistic fans of "reaganomics" in the 80s, and the later Lisa similarly responded to the 90s' rising tide of "tree-hugging liberals" aloof from traditional democratic issues. The characters simply tracked what was going on in life and responded as necessary.
The Simpsons always had a healthy dose of biting critique, but in the end it had nothing but that. Even if it took the form of doing a totally asinine show and saying, "but you're still watching, eh?" Like the poochy episode or this most recent clip show. Basically, I commend the show for having the audacity, over the last few years, to flaunt and mock its own devolution. The fact that even this "smart" show is ultimately all about profit, and transitively, so must the rest of TV be. Not that we didn't know that, but... we're still watching, right? Granted, it's a different point than they started off trying to make in 1990, but their original idea got done to death. So they moved on. Let's, too.
but try to imagine a free society where the above situations are possible. Imagine what would happen not just to our economy, but to our society -- many charities and universities are non-profit corporations -- if these rights didn't exist.
Try to imagine a free society without corporations at all, would be one solution. Granted that's a drastic step from where we are now, but it's part of the reason the US fought for independence in the first place -- the boston tea party was a revolutionary response against monopolistic practices by the UK-based East India Tea Company.
First of all, in early America, a corporation wasn't a thing recognized by the federal government at all - they were state-based. And no, they didn't have any rights. They were legal entities to pool the financial interests of a several people for a specific transaction, or series of transactions. If someone acted illegally on behalf of the corporation, poof! It was dissolved.
Basically, yeah, it sounds like an okay system to me - corporations have their charter (right to exist) yanked if they act illegally. I understand your due process concerns, and yes, the alleged illegal behavior should be proven before a charter is revoked.
Thus, if the constitution doesn't grant the US the power to restrict the speech of corporations, it doesn't really matter if corporations are people or not.
I think the argument has become a bit confused by the introduction of the states rights issue. Basically, by ruling in 1886 that a corporation is a natural person, the US Supreme Court (a federal entity) greatly reduced the rights of states to control corporations as they saw fit.
Basically, in that ruling, the federal government didn't say "it's none of our (federal) business to restrict corporate speech," it actually said "no one gets to restrict corporate speech." If you approve of that, well, fine, but don't try to make it an Article X issue.
The general rights we are granted go against the laws of nature and survival of the fittest.
Excellent, at least we agree, then, on the point that the Constitution - indeed any such covenant between people and government - is a collection of essentially arbitrary rules which we, collectively, view as the essential foundation of our nation. Which seems to directly contradict the idea that...
We can't pick and choose which abstractions we like or not...
Well, sure we can. We do. We must. Oh wait, you had a disclaimer, "at least not on a personal level." Okay then. But can't we prefer, as a nation, the idea of a corporation as a profit-driven legal entity which is liable to protect the rights and lives of the people who work in and around it? Instead of corporations being profit-driven legal entities which have all the rights of "natural persons" but virtually none of the liabilities?
But if corporations don't have free speech, doesn't that mean that the people who work for corporations also don't have free speech?
Not at all. That's the thing - you don't become part of the corporation at all, ever, even if you devote your entire life to it. I'm not arguing against the right of individual people to say anything at all that they wish, but instead the ability of using a "corporate veil" to say things that aren't legally tied to any one person. Like company policy statements, for example.
Isn't a corporation just a collection of individuals, no matter how much the Left tries to depersonalize things?
I think that's a bit disingenuous. For one thing, no, a corporation isn't just a collection of individuals, it's a legal abstraction designed to protect the people behind it from liability for actions taken on behalf of the corporation. In general, this is a good thing; I don't think every sigle employee of Enron should be able to be sued by its creditors, for example.
But the end result is that the corporation itself has virtually no liability: it is a profit-driven entity, with no duties beyond making money for the shareholders. It seems like this is the depersonalizing part: a legal entity motivated only by profit can create all kinds of pollution, squalid working conditions, unsafe products, you name it, and they have way more rights to do all this than any of us have to resist it.
"What this decision means," she added, "is that one side of the debate gets full free speech protection, but a corporation trying to defend itself is subject to strict liability."
Well, good. That's an "inbalance" I can live with. Remember, the topic here is whether or not people are being subjected to sweatshop conditions at Nike factories (or contracted facilities) overseas. Whether you think this is wrong or "it's better than whatever else they'd be doing," I think you're at least entitled to hear the truth about how frequent and how severe it is. Making a corporation responsible to tell the truth in that situation seems like a great idea.
To me, the whole problem starts with "Santa Clara vs. Southern Pacific Railroad," in which the (US) Supreme Court ruled that a corporation is a natural person for the purposes of constitutional rights protections. Which I think is a crock. A corporation shouldn't be entitled to free speech under Article I because it's not a person. It's a legal abstraction.
That said, I don't necessarily think that there should be severe limits on "corporate speech," but to protect them with the same constitutional power as a person creating an artwork or making a politcal protest... please. All corporate speech should be considered commercial speech and should be required, if nothing else, to be true.
I really do think we need to ensure that it is at least inconvenient.
Oh man. This is my central complaint with the anti-sharing party line; the fact that they crow about "you can just GO ONLINE and download ANY song INSTANTLY!!1"
Okay. I'm going to hit the gnutella network right *now*, when there are 1.4M users online (that I'm connecting to), and try to download the newest Sheryl Crowe album. Not because I want it, but because it has a single in the billboard top 5. Got it? Ready? Okay, here we go.
First, trying a search for audio files containing "Sheryl Crowe cmon," a word from the title of the single. Minutes pass...
No, really, it's still searching...
Nope, no result. Must've misspelled "cmon." We'll try "come on" and "c'mon." And I'll even cheat and go get an album description from cdnow.com so I can be sure to get all the songs. Alright! Here we go, guess it was important to put that apostrophe in there. Now, with my max hits set to 50, I find... 14 copies of "soak up the sun" and one of "It's only love."
Whee! 10 minutes have passed and I'm well on my way to beginning to pirate 2 songs. The transfer rate is really crappy on the one; the other will probably finish within 5 minutes or so. Now to find the other dozen songs on the album, I have to do a similarly laborious title search for each. At least one of which can't be found on the network at all thus far in my searching.
Granted, this is "just an anecdote," but it's meant as an illustration of the larger issue. Everyone who's really tried to download a whole album will be nodding in recognition by now: it's hard. Especially if you're searching for something that's NOT a billboard top hit. Maybe I put less effort into it than the average hax0r, but I've never gotten more than 70% of any given album off the network. To do so would require at least an hour of my active, dedicated attention, and then several more hours of letting it sit and download. I could spend that time doing work for my employer, and have enough money for 2-3 copies of the damn thing.
So, yeah, maybe it's "systematic," but it's sure not convenient. If anything it gives you a fuller tease of an album you might want, and encourages you to go pick it up for those last 5 or 6 tracks.
IMAO, this dichotomy reflects the contrast between the egalitarian USA and the more stratified European society. European feudalism may be long dead, but its effects still persist.
Um... if you really believe that the US is "egalatarian" and Europe is "stratified," please read this article and then come back so we can talk.
Basically, it uses - *gasp!* - hard data to establish a claim that virtually unchecked corporate power in America has actually lead to a society much more stratified than most European nations, and moreso than at any time in America's own past.
To a significantly larger degree than in the USA, European workers consider themselves as a class apart from and in opposition to the employers. The American worker considers him/herself just as good as the employer...
Yes, and that's actually sort of the problem with contemporary America: we consider these things to be true without insisting that they in fact be so. If workers consider themselves a seperate stratum in a European country, maybe it's a good first step to awareness of their current situation, which can lead to changes and protections as necessary.
I mean, what do you prefer: get cut outright, with a couple of months salary in your pocket and free tolook for something better; or losing half your pay for a month, maybe for the next month as well, then maybe get cut anyway and never see that money again...
Actually, I don't know; if I was working in a place I really liked with a community of folks I was close to, I might almost prefer the lower pay to keep the whole affair in gear. Call me idealistic or bleeding heart or whatever, but the hardest part of the.com crash for me was when 1/3 of our company got laid off, and so I lost touch with 1/3 of the people I knew in town.
Which is why, I think, companies shouldn't be so eager to go public so soon after they start. I mean, the reason is obvious: a huge influx of IPO cash to do with what you please. But then you're beholden to the shareholders forever. And they care about nothing but profit. If the company remained privately held, there could be a company-wide consensus that instead of increasing raw earnings, they would allow some "expenses" to grow: remember, salaries and benefits all count as expenses on a company's bottom line.
I personally would love to work for a small-ish company that wasn't rolling in cash, but had a steady revenue stream and put most of that back into marketing, development, salaries, and benefits instead of trying to cut any of the above for the profit of outside shareholders.
You have a contract that they can't change at will.
Um... shouldn't that read, "If you have a contract they can't change at will"? A fair share of employees these days are precisely "employees at will," with no obligation on either party aside from payment for services rendered. This is the way I've always worked.
This is actually kind of the problem with employment at will: management can hand down whatever terms they want, and it's their way or the highway. This is justified with deference to "the market," on the theory that if conditions get bad enough, you can just go work somewhere else. But a lot of times that's impossible or very difficult in practice; if they have you working long hours for low pay, you have very little time or resources to seek another job.
I'd prefer that I had a set contract for most of the jobs I've had, but that's not the way it's worked.
. If we're going to be serious about getting something accomplished, it has to be made hard to avoid. Otherwise, enough people would "free-load" on the system to make it ineffective.
...
download your mp3s however you want, then pay the artists via fairtunes.
Let's see, the $25-35 per "computer" (CRT? Case? Motherboard? Individual card?)
Yeah, that's a bit confusing. But, as another post points out, this stuff is hazardous waste: it seems reasonable to implement a recycling fee on monitors in particular. But ICs also contain trace amounts of hazardous chemicals, so products that contain them could also be taxed, albeit much less; maybe $10 for the CRT and $1 for each IC-containing product, so you get a total of like $20 per box.
Under that logic, the cases would remain untaxed as they're just big peices of steel. I don't know, I wouldn't feel bad about paying it if that meant the lead and arsenic and whatnot would be reused instead of ending up in a landfill.
Yes, but which windows are you using? I swore off windows95/98/me a couple years ago because I was having stability problems, and now I'm having a bitch of a time finding a card that even works reliably with windows 2000, let alone nice software to go with it.
Take elephant balls (or lion, tiger, it seems that balls are popular). You see, these creatures are large and strong, and so if you eat their balls, you will no longer be impotent!
Well, for one thing, that isn't a totally ridiculous idea; synthetic testosterone replacement is a common therapy even now, and where do you suppose is a convenient, natural source of artificial testosterone? Other animals' testicles.
And one of my points was, even if you're offended/ disgusted/ confused by one treatment, it doesn't invalidate the rest of them. You can't give anecdotal evidence of one "stupid" cure and say "therefore, herbal remedies are stupid." WHO was talking about the scientific method, again?
due to a little problem called Avogadro's number (about 6.3x10^23, the number of molecules in one mole of a substance). Each of these serial dilutions of extracts causes the concentration to descend so far below avogadro's number that there is no chemical in what is administered.
See, this right here demonstrates that you're just trolling, not only because you got the number wrong (6.0E23), but because your application of it is simplistic and patronizing. Many drugs administered in liquid form have very much under avogadro's number of molecules per dose. A plainer way to make your point would have been to say, "the concentrations of homeopathic medicines seem too low to be effective." Instead you pushed the lingo to show off. How's that for snake oil?
Furthermore, just calling out one "alternative," or "augmentative" therapy as quackery does not invalidate any other one. The principle is sound: for millions of years, humans subsisted without a synthetic pharmaceutical industry. Herbal therapies merely argue that the value of natural curatives didn't disappear with the onset of the industrial age.
Of course we need to be cautious that herbs and other augmentative treatments are used safely, and that false claims about them are debased. But a lot of times it's a matter of funding; with no major R&D investment behind ginseng, for instance, who's going to put it through rigorous FDA testing?
Eventually, someone may. They'll have to if it ever gets really popular and/or appears to be an effective treatment for a serious ailment. So you should probably view augmentative therapies as those which do not have FDA approval yet: a point at which all currently approved drugs found themselves once.
By far the main enemy any author faces, except a handful of ones who are famous to the public at large, is simply obscurity. Even well-known SF authors are only read by a small percentage of the potential SF audience.
And there's the rub: "most authors" might benefit from having (some of) their texts available for free because their main problem is obscurity, and it'll increase exposure.
However, the publishing industry isn't concerned with the average obscure author. It's built around literary "stars" like grisham and king, who are not only widely known already, but have massive publicity machines to pump up each new book. In these cases, putting texts online for free wouldn't really increase exposure, and would more likely result in a torrent of people rushing in to get the book for free, and actually reduce sales. And, unlike Flint, I would argue that this is a legit concern; music sales have gone down as gnutella has become more popular, and while causality is not guaranteed in this case, neither is it in Flint's. It is a bit of a preemptive worry on the part of publishers, but that doesn't make it a groundless concern.
Hence, encryption and other access controls. Whether it helps or hurts the small-time author is really beside the point from the perspective of people pushing it. It's unfortunate, but true. And I doubt they have the lobbying clout to turn the publishing industry around on this.
A friend of mine owns a small record shop (which will remain nameless) in southeast Michigan.
Hey, you should name the record store already; I live near there and dozens of my records got ruined in a recent interstate move. So can I support your friend or what?
If I sell stock, I do not get much, or worse yet, my buying price is above the market price!
Speaking of arguments being crap. It's not our fault if your stupid options are underwater; if your company sucks, don't buy its stock. Amazon has been around for a few years now and to my knowledge never turned a profit, and even if they did manage to squeeze out a penny a share every quarter, their stock would still be overvalued at its current toilet-bowl price.
Applying your logic that "every business owner is motivated by pure profit": every investor is motivated by return on capital. If you're not, you'll quickly go out of money. I reserve the right to stick your employer with debt because they peddle defective CDs, and personally I can't wait to hear them squeal like a stuck pig about it in the next quarterly report.
Slashdot Mirror
I submitted this story and it was rejected. Apparently Nintendo price cuts and the latest Star Wars box office figures are big news today, but not this.
Boo hoo for you, did you consider that maybe 13 other people submitted it before you, it's maybe 200 submissions down on the queue, and it might get posted later? Sorry your story got rejected and you don't get any karma, but please. Enough with the ragging on people because they talk about other stuff besides your pet topic.
Okay, so... who's infected? any slashdotters get the
u rr entVersion\Run] . SC R"
:)
"Error:
Access error #03A:94574: Invalid pointer operation
File possibly corrupted."
message yet? If so, what did you do to clean up? Neither of the 2 articles gives a very good indication of that; I guess I'd start by deleting \windows\system32\explorer.scr and \windows\temp\Sys32, and removing these registry keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\C
"System-Service"="C:\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM\\EXPLORER
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft] "syscod"="0065D7DB20008306B6A1"
Seems like that should keep it from spreading, but that won't prevent a reinfection. Oh well; at least there's a popup notice when you get infected. that's nice.
Looks like fasttrack users (kazaa, morpheus, AND grokster) are catching on... about 1/5 as many users on as usual for this time of day. And before you flame me as a pirate, I only trade Simpsons episodes which aren't available for sale yet
Hm... since I suppose this thread will be filled with a ton of "verizon rules/verizon sucks" posts, I might as well chip in my 2 cents.
Basically, the coverage is excellent -- I've been covered from San Francisco to Rocky Point (Sonora) to Toronto to Boston. Basically the only time I lose coverage altogether is underground. I used to have analog-only in southwest Michigan, but a quick roaming-software upgrade fixed that; I think now they're piggybacking on sprint's network here, whereas they weren't before.
That said, Verizon leaves a TON to be desired in the customer service department. The reason I bought my phone is because I've truly been traveling across the country for the last year. Trying to change billing addresses is a HUGE hassle; Verizon was cobbled together from 3-4 disparate wireless companies across the country, and it still shows. You have to get a totally new account number when you move, and sometimes you get double-billed for up to a month.
That, and you're basically not allowed to move out of their "preferred market" areas. My new address was about 20 miles south of the Verizon market limits in SW Michigan, same area code and everything, and they were adamant about not allowing me to change my address to that "uncovered" location (note: digital service works just fine here). Long story short, I ended up using a friend's address and paying all my bills online; it's not perfect, but I'm getting along.
So, yeah. it doesn't surprise me that verizon has all these techs in trucks all over the country; their coverage shows it. Now if only they'd hire that clever IBM basketball team to integrate their billing across the nation.
Now announcing: a new telephone area code, 1AA, which will only be given to "really good people" who "aren't quacks." Yellow page ads, professional reputation, word of mouth, and popular reviews now all unnecessary.
.pro domain vendor which is a) slow and cumbersome, and b) not really their job.
.pro idea smacks of a corespondence-course quality "reputation enhancer."
Seriously. I know the web has a lot of crap, but is this the best way to deal with it? The point should be educating people about how to find the high-quality services by comparing rates, credentials, standing among community organizations, etc. This essentially places the work in the hands of the
I guess my biggest concern is that someone can just buy the "premium" nametag as such. I mean, think about how you look for doctors, for example. You want to make damn sure they have "MD" after their names, but you want it to be backed up by a diploma on the wall, which at least ensures they've gone to an accreditted med school. This
Just curious, did you write this ahead of time, or did you actually type this into the little textarea on the submission form? I ask because this has all the parts of a good essay.
:) I actually typed it up on the spot, but as I said, it's culled from conversations I've been having with other simpsons freaks for months. I am a freelance journalist, though, so I might look into brushing it up and getting it published somewhere.
Thanks
No, boner, like The Financial Times (of London), or (from London). A clarification for the "inward-looking morons" who aren't familiar with every financial periodical in the Western world. Ease up.
Since the simpsons is one of my hobbies and I spend lots of time talking about it (or spewing quotes) with my buddies at the bar, I'd like to offer my rebuttal to the argument that "The Simpsons jumped the shark long ago."
The important concept is to look at the Simpsons in phases. The Tracy Ulman shorts and season 1, and to a lesser extent season 2, was basically Groening getting his feet wet in the television medium. The plots were decent, and by the end of 2, the characters were pretty damn fleshed out. But most of the time the progress was slow, the voices (especially Azaria's) were crappy, and the jokes didn't punch.
Seasons 3 through 6,7, or 8 (depending on how much of a hardass you are) were the good years. The characters hit their prime, all the voices solidified, the animation went from "crappy" to "simple but elegant." The plots were tight, the jokes zinged. Basically every really classic episode was from this period. Flaming Moe's, Homer the Heretic, Last Temptation, Lemon of Troy... there are too many to mention.
But the seeds of crappery were also sewed during this period. Not 1 but 2 clipshows, the spinoff showcase, and guest episodes like the johny cash and X-files episodes. I bring up those last 2 for a reason: one of the central complaints about the later seasons is all the random guest voices, but those 2 above are two of my all time FAVORITES. Which brings me, I guess, to my central point: one man's meat is another's poison. Yes, the X-files episode was a pastiche attempt to gain ratings, but it was done in a freakin' hilarious way.
Most of the seasons after 9 typify this later approach: garish, sometimes slapdash, and always ridiculous ratings-fodder. Bart's a Jockey! Britney spears reads 2 lines! "It's N-Synch!" I would basically agree that the show had said everything meaningful it was going to say by the end of season 8 or so. And so it turned its energies outward: the long-loved and well-developed characters took on archtypal roles in critiques of pop culture.
Homer devolved from a dumb but lovable working class chump, to an archie bunker/fred flintstone obnoxious bastard. Lisa went from vulnerable geek to elitist snob. The thing is, these changes had a point: it's the way everyone ELSE was being, and now we're commenting on that, see? In fact, I would argue that the original Homer was a counterpoint to optimistic fans of "reaganomics" in the 80s, and the later Lisa similarly responded to the 90s' rising tide of "tree-hugging liberals" aloof from traditional democratic issues. The characters simply tracked what was going on in life and responded as necessary.
The Simpsons always had a healthy dose of biting critique, but in the end it had nothing but that. Even if it took the form of doing a totally asinine show and saying, "but you're still watching, eh?" Like the poochy episode or this most recent clip show. Basically, I commend the show for having the audacity, over the last few years, to flaunt and mock its own devolution. The fact that even this "smart" show is ultimately all about profit, and transitively, so must the rest of TV be. Not that we didn't know that, but... we're still watching, right? Granted, it's a different point than they started off trying to make in 1990, but their original idea got done to death. So they moved on. Let's, too.
but try to imagine a free society where the above situations are possible. Imagine what would happen not just to our economy, but to our society -- many charities and universities are non-profit corporations -- if these rights didn't exist.
Try to imagine a free society without corporations at all, would be one solution. Granted that's a drastic step from where we are now, but it's part of the reason the US fought for independence in the first place -- the boston tea party was a revolutionary response against monopolistic practices by the UK-based East India Tea Company.
First of all, in early America, a corporation wasn't a thing recognized by the federal government at all - they were state-based. And no, they didn't have any rights. They were legal entities to pool the financial interests of a several people for a specific transaction, or series of transactions. If someone acted illegally on behalf of the corporation, poof! It was dissolved.
Basically, yeah, it sounds like an okay system to me - corporations have their charter (right to exist) yanked if they act illegally. I understand your due process concerns, and yes, the alleged illegal behavior should be proven before a charter is revoked.
Thus, if the constitution doesn't grant the US the power to restrict the speech of corporations, it doesn't really matter if corporations are people or not.
I think the argument has become a bit confused by the introduction of the states rights issue. Basically, by ruling in 1886 that a corporation is a natural person, the US Supreme Court (a federal entity) greatly reduced the rights of states to control corporations as they saw fit.
Basically, in that ruling, the federal government didn't say "it's none of our (federal) business to restrict corporate speech," it actually said "no one gets to restrict corporate speech."
If you approve of that, well, fine, but don't try to make it an Article X issue.
The general rights we are granted go against the laws of nature and survival of the fittest.
Excellent, at least we agree, then, on the point that the Constitution - indeed any such covenant between people and government - is a collection of essentially arbitrary rules which we, collectively, view as the essential foundation of our nation. Which seems to directly contradict the idea that...
We can't pick and choose which abstractions we like or not...
Well, sure we can. We do. We must. Oh wait, you had a disclaimer, "at least not on a personal level." Okay then. But can't we prefer, as a nation, the idea of a corporation as a profit-driven legal entity which is liable to protect the rights and lives of the people who work in and around it? Instead of corporations being profit-driven legal entities which have all the rights of "natural persons" but virtually none of the liabilities?
But if corporations don't have free speech, doesn't that mean that the people who work for corporations also don't have free speech?
Not at all. That's the thing - you don't become part of the corporation at all, ever, even if you devote your entire life to it. I'm not arguing against the right of individual people to say anything at all that they wish, but instead the ability of using a "corporate veil" to say things that aren't legally tied to any one person. Like company policy statements, for example.
Isn't a corporation just a collection of individuals, no matter how much the Left tries to depersonalize things?
I think that's a bit disingenuous. For one thing, no, a corporation isn't just a collection of individuals, it's a legal abstraction designed to protect the people behind it from liability for actions taken on behalf of the corporation. In general, this is a good thing; I don't think every sigle employee of Enron should be able to be sued by its creditors, for example.
But the end result is that the corporation itself has virtually no liability: it is a profit-driven entity, with no duties beyond making money for the shareholders. It seems like this is the depersonalizing part: a legal entity motivated only by profit can create all kinds of pollution, squalid working conditions, unsafe products, you name it, and they have way more rights to do all this than any of us have to resist it.
"What this decision means," she added, "is that one side of the debate gets full free speech protection, but a corporation trying to defend itself is subject to strict liability."
Well, good. That's an "inbalance" I can live with. Remember, the topic here is whether or not people are being subjected to sweatshop conditions at Nike factories (or contracted facilities) overseas. Whether you think this is wrong or "it's better than whatever else they'd be doing," I think you're at least entitled to hear the truth about how frequent and how severe it is. Making a corporation responsible to tell the truth in that situation seems like a great idea.
To me, the whole problem starts with "Santa Clara vs. Southern Pacific Railroad," in which the (US) Supreme Court ruled that a corporation is a natural person for the purposes of constitutional rights protections. Which I think is a crock. A corporation shouldn't be entitled to free speech under Article I because it's not a person. It's a legal abstraction.
That said, I don't necessarily think that there should be severe limits on "corporate speech," but to protect them with the same constitutional power as a person creating an artwork or making a politcal protest... please. All corporate speech should be considered commercial speech and should be required, if nothing else, to be true.
I really do think we need to ensure that it is at least inconvenient.
Oh man. This is my central complaint with the anti-sharing party line; the fact that they crow about "you can just GO ONLINE and download ANY song INSTANTLY!!1"
Okay. I'm going to hit the gnutella network right *now*, when there are 1.4M users online (that I'm connecting to), and try to download the newest Sheryl Crowe album. Not because I want it, but because it has a single in the billboard top 5. Got it? Ready? Okay, here we go.
First, trying a search for audio files containing "Sheryl Crowe cmon," a word from the title of the single. Minutes pass...
No, really, it's still searching...
Nope, no result. Must've misspelled "cmon." We'll try "come on" and "c'mon." And I'll even cheat and go get an album description from cdnow.com so I can be sure to get all the songs. Alright! Here we go, guess it was important to put that apostrophe in there. Now, with my max hits set to 50, I find... 14 copies of "soak up the sun" and one of "It's only love."
Whee! 10 minutes have passed and I'm well on my way to beginning to pirate 2 songs. The transfer rate is really crappy on the one; the other will probably finish within 5 minutes or so. Now to find the other dozen songs on the album, I have to do a similarly laborious title search for each. At least one of which can't be found on the network at all thus far in my searching.
Granted, this is "just an anecdote," but it's meant as an illustration of the larger issue. Everyone who's really tried to download a whole album will be nodding in recognition by now: it's hard. Especially if you're searching for something that's NOT a billboard top hit. Maybe I put less effort into it than the average hax0r, but I've never gotten more than 70% of any given album off the network. To do so would require at least an hour of my active, dedicated attention, and then several more hours of letting it sit and download. I could spend that time doing work for my employer, and have enough money for 2-3 copies of the damn thing.
So, yeah, maybe it's "systematic," but it's sure not convenient. If anything it gives you a fuller tease of an album you might want, and encourages you to go pick it up for those last 5 or 6 tracks.
IMAO, this dichotomy reflects the contrast between the egalitarian USA and the more stratified European society. European feudalism may be long dead, but its effects still persist.
Um... if you really believe that the US is "egalatarian" and Europe is "stratified," please read this article and then come back so we can talk.
Basically, it uses - *gasp!* - hard data to establish a claim that virtually unchecked corporate power in America has actually lead to a society much more stratified than most European nations, and moreso than at any time in America's own past.
To a significantly larger degree than in the USA, European workers consider themselves as a class apart from and in opposition to the employers. The American worker considers him/herself just as good as the employer...
Yes, and that's actually sort of the problem with contemporary America: we consider these things to be true without insisting that they in fact be so. If workers consider themselves a seperate stratum in a European country, maybe it's a good first step to awareness of their current situation, which can lead to changes and protections as necessary.
I mean, what do you prefer: get cut outright, with a couple of months salary in your pocket and free tolook for something better; or losing half your pay for a month, maybe for the next month as well, then maybe get cut anyway and never see that money again...
.com crash for me was when 1/3 of our company got laid off, and so I lost touch with 1/3 of the people I knew in town.
Actually, I don't know; if I was working in a place I really liked with a community of folks I was close to, I might almost prefer the lower pay to keep the whole affair in gear. Call me idealistic or bleeding heart or whatever, but the hardest part of the
Which is why, I think, companies shouldn't be so eager to go public so soon after they start. I mean, the reason is obvious: a huge influx of IPO cash to do with what you please. But then you're beholden to the shareholders forever. And they care about nothing but profit. If the company remained privately held, there could be a company-wide consensus that instead of increasing raw earnings, they would allow some "expenses" to grow: remember, salaries and benefits all count as expenses on a company's bottom line.
I personally would love to work for a small-ish company that wasn't rolling in cash, but had a steady revenue stream and put most of that back into marketing, development, salaries, and benefits instead of trying to cut any of the above for the profit of outside shareholders.
You have a contract that they can't change at will.
Um... shouldn't that read, "If you have a contract they can't change at will"? A fair share of employees these days are precisely "employees at will," with no obligation on either party aside from payment for services rendered. This is the way I've always worked.
This is actually kind of the problem with employment at will: management can hand down whatever terms they want, and it's their way or the highway. This is justified with deference to "the market," on the theory that if conditions get bad enough, you can just go work somewhere else. But a lot of times that's impossible or very difficult in practice; if they have you working long hours for low pay, you have very little time or resources to seek another job.
I'd prefer that I had a set contract for most of the jobs I've had, but that's not the way it's worked.
. If we're going to be serious about getting something accomplished, it has to be made hard to avoid. Otherwise, enough people would "free-load" on the system to make it ineffective.
...
download your mp3s however you want, then pay the artists via fairtunes.
Let's see, the $25-35 per "computer" (CRT? Case? Motherboard? Individual card?)
Yeah, that's a bit confusing. But, as another post points out, this stuff is hazardous waste: it seems reasonable to implement a recycling fee on monitors in particular. But ICs also contain trace amounts of hazardous chemicals, so products that contain them could also be taxed, albeit much less; maybe $10 for the CRT and $1 for each IC-containing product, so you get a total of like $20 per box.
Under that logic, the cases would remain untaxed as they're just big peices of steel. I don't know, I wouldn't feel bad about paying it if that meant the lead and arsenic and whatnot would be reused instead of ending up in a landfill.
Yes, but which windows are you using? I swore off windows95/98/me a couple years ago because I was having stability problems, and now I'm having a bitch of a time finding a card that even works reliably with windows 2000, let alone nice software to go with it.
Take elephant balls (or lion, tiger, it seems that balls are popular). You see, these creatures are large and strong, and so if you eat their balls, you will no longer be impotent!
Well, for one thing, that isn't a totally ridiculous idea; synthetic testosterone replacement is a common therapy even now, and where do you suppose is a convenient, natural source of artificial testosterone? Other animals' testicles.
And one of my points was, even if you're offended/ disgusted/ confused by one treatment, it doesn't invalidate the rest of them. You can't give anecdotal evidence of one "stupid" cure and say "therefore, herbal remedies are stupid." WHO was talking about the scientific method, again?
due to a little problem called Avogadro's number (about 6.3x10^23, the number of molecules in one mole of a substance). Each of these serial dilutions of extracts causes the concentration to descend so far below avogadro's number that there is no chemical in what is administered.
See, this right here demonstrates that you're just trolling, not only because you got the number wrong (6.0E23), but because your application of it is simplistic and patronizing. Many drugs administered in liquid form have very much under avogadro's number of molecules per dose. A plainer way to make your point would have been to say, "the concentrations of homeopathic medicines seem too low to be effective." Instead you pushed the lingo to show off. How's that for snake oil?
Furthermore, just calling out one "alternative," or "augmentative" therapy as quackery does not invalidate any other one. The principle is sound: for millions of years, humans subsisted without a synthetic pharmaceutical industry. Herbal therapies merely argue that the value of natural curatives didn't disappear with the onset of the industrial age.
Of course we need to be cautious that herbs and other augmentative treatments are used safely, and that false claims about them are debased. But a lot of times it's a matter of funding; with no major R&D investment behind ginseng, for instance, who's going to put it through rigorous FDA testing?
Eventually, someone may. They'll have to if it ever gets really popular and/or appears to be an effective treatment for a serious ailment. So you should probably view augmentative therapies as those which do not have FDA approval yet: a point at which all currently approved drugs found themselves once.
By far the main enemy any author faces, except a handful of ones who are famous to the public at large, is simply obscurity. Even well-known SF authors are only read by a small percentage of the potential SF audience.
And there's the rub: "most authors" might benefit from having (some of) their texts available for free because their main problem is obscurity, and it'll increase exposure.
However, the publishing industry isn't concerned with the average obscure author. It's built around literary "stars" like grisham and king, who are not only widely known already, but have massive publicity machines to pump up each new book. In these cases, putting texts online for free wouldn't really increase exposure, and would more likely result in a torrent of people rushing in to get the book for free, and actually reduce sales. And, unlike Flint, I would argue that this is a legit concern; music sales have gone down as gnutella has become more popular, and while causality is not guaranteed in this case, neither is it in Flint's. It is a bit of a preemptive worry on the part of publishers, but that doesn't make it a groundless concern.
Hence, encryption and other access controls. Whether it helps or hurts the small-time author is really beside the point from the perspective of people pushing it. It's unfortunate, but true. And I doubt they have the lobbying clout to turn the publishing industry around on this.
A friend of mine owns a small record shop (which will remain nameless) in southeast Michigan.
Hey, you should name the record store already; I live near there and dozens of my records got ruined in a recent interstate move. So can I support your friend or what?
If I sell stock, I do not get much, or worse yet, my buying price is above the market price!
Speaking of arguments being crap. It's not our fault if your stupid options are underwater; if your company sucks, don't buy its stock. Amazon has been around for a few years now and to my knowledge never turned a profit, and even if they did manage to squeeze out a penny a share every quarter, their stock would still be overvalued at its current toilet-bowl price.
Applying your logic that "every business owner is motivated by pure profit": every investor is motivated by return on capital. If you're not, you'll quickly go out of money. I reserve the right to stick your employer with debt because they peddle defective CDs, and personally I can't wait to hear them squeal like a stuck pig about it in the next quarterly report.
With one stupid letter they managed to get more free advertising and even active links than X10 has purchased during its entire lifetime.
Yeah, and it's really served companies to be widely known as clueless. Like eToys and boo.com? "Any publicity is good publicity" really helped them.