When humans and ships were expendable and inexpensive, using them to explore made sense. Now, humans are a burden on the exploration process unless they stay on the ground.
I'm sorry, maybe it was all the pot smoke floating around back in the '60s and '70s, but I must have missed the time where the most highly skilled, schooled, and trained humans the US could find to be astronauts were expendable & inexpensive.
Robot exploration is a tool. Like any other tool there are situations where that tool suites the job best, and other situations where another tool does a better job.
One thing about human exploration; there are no robotic systems that can compete with humans when it comes to quickly processing and analyzing data (especially unexpected data) on the spot and rendering a decision and taking actions on-the-fly that may not be within the original mission-scope.
If humans had been sent to Mars, we'd have known about the water there almost immediately as one of the explorers would certainly kick there heel or toes into the soil and reveal the frost/ice, and would have quickly done a couple simple (for humans) tests to determine it was water.
If only these same people who secured my passport were in charge of my healthcare as well, then everything would be great!
We live in a country that is protected by a military funded by the government If my house is on fire, the fire is managed by a fire department funded by the government Law enforcement is provided by a police or sheriff's department funded by the government I drive to work on roads whose maintenance are funded by the government I was educated at public schools funded by the government
(just to name a few government services that are entitled to US citizens) If you would rather not have any of those services, there may be countries on other continents where you can opt to not have them. But these are all different departments of government; why you would assume that any of them - or the department in charge of passports - would be connected to a health care system that hasn't even been proposed is beyond me.
First, I think you're confusing terms here. Some of those things you mention are mandated by the Constitution as *duties* of the *federal* government, and not "entitlements".
Next, there are the various things you mentioned that are either duties or services provided by local, state, county, or city government which is under more direct control of the local population. Many of those same things are also paid for, and their permissions for the taxes to pay for them, given (or not) by the local populace.
A universal health plan (at least the ones being considered) are all federal programs, the same kind of federal program as FEMA or Freddie Mac/Fannie May. Imagine how well FEMA did with water distribution in the 'Dome in the aftermath of Katrina, or at how well Fannie May/Freddie Mac were run.
These are the same type people, and in many cases would be some of the same people (think Congressmen & high-level departmental bureaucrats) that would be in charge of designing and operating a universal health system.
It will simply be used as a way to drain even more money from the economy for the government to spend and expand it's power and reach, and also as another vector to exert control over the populace.
According to NewsFactor, Pandora founder Tim Westergren proclaims that 'the royalty crisis is over, and we don't have to worry about any small competitors sneaking up and taking our business!'. I may have added that last part, but I'm sure he was thinking it. Like most regulations, it serves mainly to fuck small business and eliminate competition.
1. This isn't a regulation, it's a cartel whose licensing terms are enforced by [government] 2. And this $25K business sounds ripe for anti-trust investigation. How is it not abuse of a monopoly position?
That's easy.
Because many of the same people who were instrumental in putting this in place and that stand to gain from it also just happen to be the ones that would also be instrumental in deciding if it's fair or not.
Both agribusiness and small farmers are whining about something that will increase their costs.
Wait, I thought that small farmers were against it but big agribusiness was for it?
From TFS: 'Lobbyists from corporate mega-agribusiness designed this program to destroy traditional small sustainable agriculture,' says Genell Pridgen, an owner of Rainbow Meadow Farms.
Has anyone else noticed that there has not been a peep from the Democratic party about the PATRIOT Act since the Democratic party took control of both the executive and legislative branches of our government in the recent election? During both terms President Bush's ( a Republican ) Presidency, the Democrats loudly demanded that the PATRIOT Act be scaled back or repealed.
I'm sorry Citizen, but you are suffering from dehydration psychosis. Please remain calm and watch the "Hope & Change-He Is The One" video on loop while we secure you in the new Government Healthcare Re-Hydration Chair(TM) while the stomach tube replenishes your essential fluids with kool-aid that includes necessary nutrients like lithium, prozac, haldol, and thorazine among others. You'll get used to the eyelid & head-positioning clamps after the kool-aid has a chance to work.
They can expand production facilities cheaply by buying up old whoopy-cushion factories and doing minimal re-tooling! They could even re-hire the old employees, as the same skill-sets would apply!
However, I don't think I'll be the first in line to buy a new "Whoopy-Mobile". It would simply be too embarrassing to deflate at a public parking facility.
Where is the national security in forcing any remaining manufacturers offshore where they don't have to deal with carbon credits and higher electrical costs?
That's the elephant in the room that they don't want anyone to notice. Once the cap & tax hits, any business that can leave, will. Those that can't will raise their prices to consumers and if unable to maintain sufficient sales because nobody will be able to afford to buy anything, they will fail and disappear. These price increases will include everything, including food.
Other countries like India, China, Japan, Russia, etc are not silly enough to cripple themselves in this way. The USA will become a third- or fourth-rate economy with an unemployed, over-taxed, freezing & starving population ruled over by a semi-socialist, semi-fascist government.
One bright spot though. The illegal immigration problem will disappear and eventually reverse itself as Americans start fleeing south & north to escape the horrible economic conditions and oppression. Of course, *then* the government will build the fences on the borders and move troops to guard it, but it will be to prevent people leaving.
Get ready baby, 'cuz here it comes!
Unless of course the people finally wake the **** up and throw all the current politicians out, by force if need be. I've a bad feeling that if the politicians saw that the people really were determined to clean house in Washington and stopped paying their propaganda any attention, they'd find a pretext to declare martial law or something.
The Horton 229 was one of the planes in the 1990-ish DOS game Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, in which it was designated the Gotha 229. However, the manuals contained descriptions and pictured of the captured airframes, and it's the same plane.
It was my favourite for flying in that game - fast and manoeverable, with good weapons, but insufficient ammo. P-51s, P-47s, P-38s, and suchlike were lambs to the slaughter, until your ammo ran out. Of course, you could patch the aircraft definition file to fix the ammo supply, and tweak its performance in other ways (thrust ramp, fuel, various rate of climb/turn parameters, etc.)
If you like SWOTL, you should love European Air War, another older WW2 combat flight sim. There are tons and tons of user-created add-ons, campaigns, aircraft, skins, terrains, utilities, etc etc. It will run under XP. It remains one of my all-time favorite flight sims.
One of these user-created additions is an entire what-if campaign package centered around the Focke-Wulf TA-183. This IMHO is an even more interesting design than the Ho-229/Go-229.
The Allies (Russia specifically) found/captured a number of TA-183 mock-ups and early test models in the last days of the war. This design, with further refinement and development, became the famous Soviet MiG jet the US battled in the Korean conflict. It was an even more-advanced design than the famous WW2 German Me-262A-1A, and was decades ahead of anything the Allies had even thought of.
IL-2 1946 Forgotten Battles also features the TA-183 in what-if campaigns, as does Combat Flight Simulator 3-"Firepower" Mod. The aircraft is usually modelled with either 4-30mm cannon or 2-20mm + 2-30mm cannon.
I shudder to think what might have been had Hitler & the Third Reich had the foresight to develop this aircraft and get it into production in numbers earlier in the war. US B-17's and P-51's & P-47's...heck even the early straight-winged Allied jets from the Korean conflict a decade later...would have been no match.
It's not so much arresting the person that's profitable, but arresting all that property is definitely profitable, especially when the property can be confiscated and used/sold even if there's no conviction of the original property owner for any crime after the seizure of said property.
"Forfeitures, however, can fall into two categories--criminal or civil--and due to some high-profile abuses, civil asset forfeiture has become extremely controversial. Under criminal law, the government can seize property as punishment only after its owner has been convicted of a crime, and our justice system ensures that they are considered innocent until proven guilty. But under civil law, it is the property itself--not the owner--that is charged with involvement in a crime. What's more, that property is considered "guilty" until proven innocent in court by its owner, thus turning our usual system of justice on its head.
According to a report prepared for the Senate Judiciary Committee, at least 90 percent of the property that the federal government seeks to forfeit is pursued through civil asset forfeiture. And although forfeiture is intended as punishment for illegal activity, over 80% of the people whose property is seized under civil law are never even charged with a crime according to one study of over 500 federal cases by the Pittsburgh Press. For this reason, critics say, the system can run roughshod over the rights of innocent property owners--and fail to distinguish them from the guilty."
Really? So how does the "have nots" get the government to pay the bill?
Silly Billy! The government doesn't pay anything to anyone, and never has. You and I and the rest of the tax base are the ones that pay.
The government has no money.
They don't need it.
They have ours!
Now thanks to insane government spending plans they have ours, our children's, and our great-great grandchildren's money too.
[sarcasm] That's as it should be, because everyone knows the government knows best how to spend our money, because we all are too busy clinging to our guns and religion. [/sarcasm]
You just don't get it. Your opinion of a particular business practice don't automatically equate to abuse. That some business uses a mass market model while you want a personal service model, that isn't abuse. The fact that you seem to think it is, that just means you're an entitlement minded child. Being an asshole doesn't make you a consumer rights freedom fighter, it just shows you to a dickhead.
If you don't like a company's practices, if you want them to deprive them of your custom, then don't do business with them. That is entirely your right. But going into their place of business and shitting on people is not.
Here is some advice your parents should have taught you long ago: If you treat people civilly, they will treat you the same and will go out of their way to help you. Screaming and crying and throwing a tantrum doesn't endear you to people.
Apparently you've got a whole different picture of my behavior and the reasons behind it. Firstly, I'm not going to kick up a fuss for some trivial reason, like they don't have the color I want in stock, etc.
I'm talking about actual abusive & dishonest/deceitful business practices and corporate policies. I'm not talking about demanding "special treatment". I also won't patronize a business in the first place if I know ahead of time that I'll more than likely be abused. I don't get off on looking for trouble, and the less "drama" I have in my life the better.
However, I will not be treated badly and be quiet about it so as not to offend employees.
By the way, as a customer, *MY* opinion and that of other customers as to what constitutes abuse is the only one that matters. I'm not unreasonable or petulant and throwing out strawman arguments based on your opinion of how you think I'm acting doesn't cut it.
I'm actually quite a civil and pleasant individual. I just refuse to make it easy & pleasant to abuse me as a customer. I run a business myself and deal with the public constantly, so I'm quite familiar with what it's reasonable to expect as a customer. I don't expect special treatment but I *do* demand to be treated fairly and equitably, and will settle for nothing less.
If that makes it unpleasant for the representative of that business who is abusing my reasonable rights and expectations as a customer, then that's their problem not mine. Don't work for assholes.
When a business that I attempt to patronize has a stupid/unfair/wrong policy and tries to do the "sorry, it's just corporate policy...nothing I can do" dance to shuffle me out the door, I make as big a stink and cause as much of a problem for every level of staff as I possibly legally can until the problem is resolved to my satisfaction, and make sure as many other customers as possible hear every word.
Wow. What a wanker. And stupid. And immature. And unrealistic. I can't believe how much of a dirt bag you are. And a putz. And ignorant.
What do you think I'm out of line? I'm flaming you? No, I'm just making as big a stink of your stupid/unfair/wrong policy as I can.
It sounds like you want personalized, private attention with custom agreements at a mass market price point. Why don't you just spine up and pay for the personal attention rather than just whine about it? No one is required to operate their business under model that you think they should.
If you're happy to bend over and take it up the rear and ask for more, be my guest. As long as there are sheep who will suck it up and beg for more, corporations will continue to do whatever they please.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that customers exist to service businesses, and that they shouldn't make a fuss at being treated badly so as not to offend or trouble the employees.
WRONG!
If you choose to work for a business that abuses and/or treats their customers badly, then I have zero sympathy for you. I'm sure the employees at the MPAA/RIAA & Safenet feel the same way as do you.
Businesses exist to meet the needs and desires of the customer. Those that do not don't deserve to continue to exist.
Yes, I *have* quit jobs because they wanted me to treat people badly/unfairly. Walked right out on the spot without a ready job to go to, and had to scrimp to survive while I found another.
That's because I have something it seems you lack.
Integrity.
If more people would make a fuss and make it unpleasant for the employees to abuse them then maybe the company wouldn't be able to get or retain help and be forced to change policies or go out of business.
If you think I'm a "wanker" for standing up and not allowing myself to be abused, then I consider it an honor to be considered by people like you to be a "wanker". If you're not willing to stand up to abusive corporate policies, then you're not a "wanker". You're a spineless coward willing to abuse & mistreat others for your own personal gain, and enable & empower corporations to continue to abuse the public.
It's the same attitude that the kind of person that would work as a guard in a gulag or death camp would have, happy to beat & torture prisoners who don't cooperate as long as the paychecks are on time, and when brought to trial would claim he was just following orders.
Sheesh, grow a set for heavens' sake and have a little self-respect!
So kicking up a stink in the store for 2 hours is mostly just making their (and your) life miserable for something they probably can't do, and if they could they'd probably get fired for doing it.
Well then, maybe they'll quit and go to work somewhere else if enough people make it too painful & annoying for them to continue working at a place of business that requires them to enforce a corporate policy that stinks. Then maybe if the stores can't keep enough employees on staff and they lose enough sales, maybe the policy will change. Or the company will go out of business and set an example to other companies of what *not* to do to be successful.
When a business that I attempt to patronize has a stupid/unfair/wrong policy and tries to do the "sorry, it's just corporate policy...nothing I can do" dance to shuffle me out the door, I make as big a stink and cause as much of a problem for every level of staff as I possibly legally can until the problem is resolved to my satisfaction, and make sure as many other customers as possible hear every word.
This actually helps the business improve as I outlined above, or contributes to it going bankrupt and making room for a competitor if it can't or won't properly service its' clientele in a fair and equitable manner.
It is not my goal to make sure the employees have a pleasant time treating me unfairly or screwing me over as a customer, especially if that's part of their job. Nobody is forcing them to keep working for a company that requires them to mistreat people. We don't live under a system that dictates where one will work.
Copyright law is there to protect the rights of the creators;[snip]
Incorrect by way of ommision. Copyright is intended "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings..."-U.S. Constitution
It seems that the judicial, legislative, and executive branches have all completely skipped over the entire first part, and only acknowledge the existence of the second part, as do many individuals.
The "securing...exclusive rights..." part is simply a method devised to, and derives from, the desire to accomplish the "To promote the progress of science and useful arts..." part. It doesn't stand on it's own, and that's one of the biggest problems with modern copyright law interpretation and enforcement as well as the laws written concerning copyright in recent times IMHO.
It's not. It's a liberal-Democrat talking-points story backing up a liberal-Democrat political play being made to further-burden the US economy as part of a planned and concerted effort to collapse the US economy so that the resulting chaos and power-vacuum allows the socialist frameworks being put in place (Acorn, Americorp, etc) to essentially rebuild the US as a socialist country after the collapse.
Being that Slashdot leans heavily-left due to the low average age of posters and submitters, combined with being largely American with little experience living through actual histories of socialist-style societies/governments and their failures & collapses, it's perfectly understandable that a topic that is purely political and on the socialist agenda with extremely-little actual "geek/nerd" content would make the editorial cut to be a posted report.
Reminds me of this quote: "If a man is not a socialist in his youth, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 30 he has no head" -- Georges Clemenceau, Former French Prime Minister and one-time radical.
Strat
"I disagree" !== "Troll"
Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, there *is* a heavily-backed, well-organized, and decades-long plan that has been in progress since the '60s to bankrupt this country and collapse the economy by those who wish to change the USA into a socialist experiment.
Things are coming to a crisis-point, and mark my words, there will be a major collapse in the next 3-8 years...10 years maximum...if the current spending & policy plans recently passed and those currently in Congress are implemented.
Other countries already see the handwriting on the wall. That's why two guys were caught at the Swiss-Italian border with approx. 135 *Billion* in US Treasuries. Notice how there is no reporting on this huge story, and nobody in the US government will make any meaningful statements? That's 1% of the US GDP. The other countries in the world can plainly see where we are headed, and are getting out. Expect more countries to dump our debt.
What's coming will make the Great Depression look like a minor blip, and it's being done intentionally with full knowledge of the results. It's what the socialist true-believers with wealth and power have decided is the way to finally be rid of that pesky "Constitution" thing for good.
It's not. It's a liberal-Democrat talking-points story backing up a liberal-Democrat political play being made to further-burden the US economy as part of a planned and concerted effort to collapse the US economy so that the resulting chaos and power-vacuum allows the socialist frameworks being put in place (Acorn, Americorp, etc) to essentially rebuild the US as a socialist country after the collapse.
Being that Slashdot leans heavily-left due to the low average age of posters and submitters, combined with being largely American with little experience living through actual histories of socialist-style societies/governments and their failures & collapses, it's perfectly understandable that a topic that is purely political and on the socialist agenda with extremely-little actual "geek/nerd" content would make the editorial cut to be a posted report.
Reminds me of this quote: "If a man is not a socialist in his youth, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 30 he has no head" -- Georges Clemenceau, Former French Prime Minister and one-time radical.
True, a rural user can make this argument. Just about anywhere else though you have the choice of cable, dsl, satellite, tethered cellphone, and I'm sure other options. Not all users may be aware of their options or be willing to invest in the equipment to exercise their choices. But that doesn't mean its ok to regulate an entire industry just because a small % have "no" choice.
I think perhaps you overestimate the number/size/area of places where there are practical alternatives to single-provider broadband service. I've lived in a number of rural and metro areas in various states, and nearly every place I resided typically had only one practical choice for broadband.
Of course this is anecdotal, and the FCC is fighting tooth-and-nail not to modernize the metrics and methods they use to determine coverage/quality in the US, and are also fighting to keep that info from consumers. They cite things like risk of terrorists using this info, but so what? It's no secret what time the gas station down the street opens in the morning and that could help a terrorist plan on when to leave in the morning to gas up his suicide vehicle on the way to his target too. Roadmaps and GPS navigation systems are useful to terrorists too.
The politicians and the ISPs don't want there to be maps available showing national & regional broadband coverage information that might be helpful to the average citizen, as that would also highlight what a crappy job they've done in regulating to provide coverage to outlying or lower-profit areas, protections against price-fixing/collusion schemes, along with options in providers in a particular market area.
The problem is there are too many stupid artists, and I say this as an artist myself. Most seem to not take any time or trouble at all to even learn about basic copyright, never mind researching the various types of contracts available or that could be demanded from labels if they bothered to organize and put collective pressure on all the labels. More are beginning to adopt online distribution, however there are still plenty of pitfalls for the unwary & lazy.
Most are too self-centered around their art and ego. The big "Gold Ring" they drive for is to "get signed", and most of them are without any real clue as to what that can actually mean when you're talking about dealing with a record label.
Those kinds of artists get chewed up and spit out, ending up as burned-out cynical husks touring crappy venues in a crappy bus, living on less income than they'd make at a burger joint, trying to pay off what they "owe" to the record label after the third album, which the label didn't really promote much anyway, while still tied contractually to the label and unable to break free without paying the label tons more money on top of the mint they've already made the label.
Here's a piece I post a link to when this topic comes up. It's a bit cynical and also dated, but the situation he describes here is generally pretty accurate in how labels tend to treat bands/artists, which is generally as crappy as the band/artist lets them get away with.
Until artists make more effort to educate themselves about the business/legal end of the music biz and stop throwing themselves into the big-label roasting pit carrying their own bucket of BBQ sauce, not much will change. As long as the labels have lambs begging to be slaughtered and handing them the axe while shoving the previous lambs' remains off the block to make room, why would they want to change?
Klink: "Schuuuuultz!! You idiot, you were supposed to turn the censoring OFF on *our* computers, and ON for the *POW*s' computers, not the other way around!"
Schultz: "I am sorry mein Colonel, I see NO-thing, I hear NO-thing!"
Klink: "I'll make sure you have plenty of time to figure it out, because you'll be standing guard duty until the end of the war!"
Schultz: "Can I borrow Hogans' PDA while I'm standing guard?"
Klink: "Not unless you want to spend the rest of the war standing guard on the Eastern Front!"
Well what on earth do you expect them to do? Relinquish the opportunity to spend money? Haha, fat chance. They've got to press on in the name of bipartisanship.:)
Perhaps things will change after the economy collapses and Congress and the other politicians start getting a first-hand French history lesson in what the guillotine is and what it was used for by a violently-enraged general public.
By way of analogy: the market tells the farmer what crops people will buy. It does not tell him what crops will keep his farmland sustainable unto his children's time.
Problem here is that when the crops are determined *for* the farmer by a politician or bureaucrat to keep the land "sustainable" (both the crops chosen and the definition of sustainable made by someone other than the farmer that lives many hundreds of miles away and doesn't particularly care about the farmers' individual well being) it often means the farmer can't make enough from his crops to pay the mortgage/taxes/other costs of that farm.
So his children may never have a chance to use the land, but probably a corporate mega-farm paying sufficient protection money...oops, "campaign contributions and lobbyist-paid excursions" may.
If the farmer decides, he has a vested interest in keeping the land producing by reinvesting in maintaining it and keeping it sustainable for his children & grandchildren.
It did/does affect Toyota/Honda/Kia/etc for the cars they sell in the US. It's just that they have much less operational overhead due to not being saddled with union labor costs, plus they can offset a good bit of the additional costs of mileage/emission compliance with their worldwide & native-country sales.
To the other poster citing a generational component, I'm sure that also comes into play. Myself, if I were in an upper-management position and going to spend a big chunk of money on a luxury vehicle, I'd buy something like a pristine black '64 suicide-door Lincoln Continental. (The geek-fantasies about having "Trinity" dressed in shiny black leather in the backseat with you should be enough to have most/.-ers drooling all over their moms' basement floor!:D)
Even without being well-off, I still won't buy a car newer than the middle to late '70s at the very newest. I want a car with a V8, more steel, and less electronics/more self-serviceability than the newer cars.
Slashdot Mirror
When humans and ships were expendable and inexpensive, using them to explore made sense. Now, humans are a burden on the exploration process unless they stay on the ground.
I'm sorry, maybe it was all the pot smoke floating around back in the '60s and '70s, but I must have missed the time where the most highly skilled, schooled, and trained humans the US could find to be astronauts were expendable & inexpensive.
Robot exploration is a tool. Like any other tool there are situations where that tool suites the job best, and other situations where another tool does a better job.
One thing about human exploration; there are no robotic systems that can compete with humans when it comes to quickly processing and analyzing data (especially unexpected data) on the spot and rendering a decision and taking actions on-the-fly that may not be within the original mission-scope.
If humans had been sent to Mars, we'd have known about the water there almost immediately as one of the explorers would certainly kick there heel or toes into the soil and reveal the frost/ice, and would have quickly done a couple simple (for humans) tests to determine it was water.
Strat
If only these same people who secured my passport were in charge of my healthcare as well, then everything would be great!
We live in a country that is protected by a military funded by the government
If my house is on fire, the fire is managed by a fire department funded by the government
Law enforcement is provided by a police or sheriff's department funded by the government
I drive to work on roads whose maintenance are funded by the government
I was educated at public schools funded by the government
(just to name a few government services that are entitled to US citizens) If you would rather not have any of those services, there may be countries on other continents where you can opt to not have them. But these are all different departments of government; why you would assume that any of them - or the department in charge of passports - would be connected to a health care system that hasn't even been proposed is beyond me.
First, I think you're confusing terms here. Some of those things you mention are mandated by the Constitution as *duties* of the *federal* government, and not "entitlements".
Next, there are the various things you mentioned that are either duties or services provided by local, state, county, or city government which is under more direct control of the local population. Many of those same things are also paid for, and their permissions for the taxes to pay for them, given (or not) by the local populace.
A universal health plan (at least the ones being considered) are all federal programs, the same kind of federal program as FEMA or Freddie Mac/Fannie May. Imagine how well FEMA did with water distribution in the 'Dome in the aftermath of Katrina, or at how well Fannie May/Freddie Mac were run.
These are the same type people, and in many cases would be some of the same people (think Congressmen & high-level departmental bureaucrats) that would be in charge of designing and operating a universal health system.
It will simply be used as a way to drain even more money from the economy for the government to spend and expand it's power and reach, and also as another vector to exert control over the populace.
Strat
"The cotton-top tamarin monkeys can apparently tell the difference between suffixes and prefixes..."
Now if only Slashdot editors could achieve this level of language skill & comprehension...
[sigh]
Strat
According to NewsFactor, Pandora founder Tim Westergren proclaims that 'the royalty crisis is over, and we don't have to worry about any small competitors sneaking up and taking our business!'. I may have added that last part, but I'm sure he was thinking it. Like most regulations, it serves mainly to fuck small business and eliminate competition.
1. This isn't a regulation, it's a cartel whose licensing terms are enforced by [government]
2. And this $25K business sounds ripe for anti-trust investigation. How is it not abuse of a monopoly position?
That's easy.
Because many of the same people who were instrumental in putting this in place and that stand to gain from it also just happen to be the ones that would also be instrumental in deciding if it's fair or not.
Wagers on their decision?
Strat
Both agribusiness and small farmers are whining about something that will increase their costs.
Wait, I thought that small farmers were against it but big agribusiness was for it?
From TFS: 'Lobbyists from corporate mega-agribusiness designed this program to destroy traditional small sustainable agriculture,' says Genell Pridgen, an owner of Rainbow Meadow Farms.
???
Strat
Has anyone else noticed that there has not been a peep from the Democratic party about the PATRIOT Act since the Democratic party took control of both the executive and legislative branches of our government in the recent election?
During both terms President Bush's ( a Republican ) Presidency, the Democrats loudly demanded that the PATRIOT Act be scaled back or repealed.
I'm sorry Citizen, but you are suffering from dehydration psychosis. Please remain calm and watch the "Hope & Change-He Is The One" video on loop while we secure you in the new Government Healthcare Re-Hydration Chair(TM) while the stomach tube replenishes your essential fluids with kool-aid that includes necessary nutrients like lithium, prozac, haldol, and thorazine among others. You'll get used to the eyelid & head-positioning clamps after the kool-aid has a chance to work.
Be Well!
Brilliant!
They can expand production facilities cheaply by buying up old whoopy-cushion factories and doing minimal re-tooling! They could even re-hire the old employees, as the same skill-sets would apply!
However, I don't think I'll be the first in line to buy a new "Whoopy-Mobile". It would simply be too embarrassing to deflate at a public parking facility.
Strat
Where is the national security in forcing any remaining manufacturers offshore where they don't have to deal with carbon credits and higher electrical costs?
That's the elephant in the room that they don't want anyone to notice. Once the cap & tax hits, any business that can leave, will. Those that can't will raise their prices to consumers and if unable to maintain sufficient sales because nobody will be able to afford to buy anything, they will fail and disappear. These price increases will include everything, including food.
Other countries like India, China, Japan, Russia, etc are not silly enough to cripple themselves in this way. The USA will become a third- or fourth-rate economy with an unemployed, over-taxed, freezing & starving population ruled over by a semi-socialist, semi-fascist government.
One bright spot though. The illegal immigration problem will disappear and eventually reverse itself as Americans start fleeing south & north to escape the horrible economic conditions and oppression. Of course, *then* the government will build the fences on the borders and move troops to guard it, but it will be to prevent people leaving.
Get ready baby, 'cuz here it comes!
Unless of course the people finally wake the **** up and throw all the current politicians out, by force if need be. I've a bad feeling that if the politicians saw that the people really were determined to clean house in Washington and stopped paying their propaganda any attention, they'd find a pretext to declare martial law or something.
Strat
The Horton 229 was one of the planes in the 1990-ish DOS game Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, in which it was designated the Gotha 229. However, the manuals contained descriptions and pictured of the captured airframes, and it's the same plane.
It was my favourite for flying in that game - fast and manoeverable, with good weapons, but insufficient ammo. P-51s, P-47s, P-38s, and suchlike were lambs to the slaughter, until your ammo ran out. Of course, you could patch the aircraft definition file to fix the ammo supply, and tweak its performance in other ways (thrust ramp, fuel, various rate of climb/turn parameters, etc.)
If you like SWOTL, you should love European Air War, another older WW2 combat flight sim. There are tons and tons of user-created add-ons, campaigns, aircraft, skins, terrains, utilities, etc etc. It will run under XP. It remains one of my all-time favorite flight sims.
One of these user-created additions is an entire what-if campaign package centered around the Focke-Wulf TA-183. This IMHO is an even more interesting design than the Ho-229/Go-229.
http://www.kitreview.com/reviews/images/ta183boxartbg_1.JPG
The Allies (Russia specifically) found/captured a number of TA-183 mock-ups and early test models in the last days of the war. This design, with further refinement and development, became the famous Soviet MiG jet the US battled in the Korean conflict. It was an even more-advanced design than the famous WW2 German Me-262A-1A, and was decades ahead of anything the Allies had even thought of.
IL-2 1946 Forgotten Battles also features the TA-183 in what-if campaigns, as does Combat Flight Simulator 3-"Firepower" Mod. The aircraft is usually modelled with either 4-30mm cannon or 2-20mm + 2-30mm cannon.
I shudder to think what might have been had Hitler & the Third Reich had the foresight to develop this aircraft and get it into production in numbers earlier in the war. US B-17's and P-51's & P-47's...heck even the early straight-winged Allied jets from the Korean conflict a decade later...would have been no match.
Strat
Your paranoia can actually be explained scientifically these days. It's quite fascinating.
So can your delusions. It's even more fascinating.
How? How do you make a profit arresting someone?
It's not so much arresting the person that's profitable, but arresting all that property is definitely profitable, especially when the property can be confiscated and used/sold even if there's no conviction of the original property owner for any crime after the seizure of said property.
"Forfeitures, however, can fall into two categories--criminal or civil--and due to some high-profile abuses, civil asset forfeiture has become extremely controversial. Under criminal law, the government can seize property as punishment only after its owner has been convicted of a crime, and our justice system ensures that they are considered innocent until proven guilty. But under civil law, it is the property itself--not the owner--that is charged with involvement in a crime. What's more, that property is considered "guilty" until proven innocent in court by its owner, thus turning our usual system of justice on its head.
According to a report prepared for the Senate Judiciary Committee, at least 90 percent of the property that the federal government seeks to forfeit is pursued through civil asset forfeiture. And although forfeiture is intended as punishment for illegal activity, over 80% of the people whose property is seized under civil law are never even charged with a crime according to one study of over 500 federal cases by the Pittsburgh Press. For this reason, critics say, the system can run roughshod over the rights of innocent property owners--and fail to distinguish them from the guilty."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/forfeiture.html
Strat
Really? So how does the "have nots" get the government to pay the bill?
Silly Billy! The government doesn't pay anything to anyone, and never has. You and I and the rest of the tax base are the ones that pay.
The government has no money.
They don't need it.
They have ours!
Now thanks to insane government spending plans they have ours, our children's, and our great-great grandchildren's money too.
[sarcasm]
That's as it should be, because everyone knows the government knows best how to spend our money, because we all are too busy clinging to our guns and religion.
[/sarcasm]
Strat
You just don't get it. Your opinion of a particular business practice don't automatically equate to abuse. That some business uses a mass market model while you want a personal service model, that isn't abuse. The fact that you seem to think it is, that just means you're an entitlement minded child. Being an asshole doesn't make you a consumer rights freedom fighter, it just shows you to a dickhead.
If you don't like a company's practices, if you want them to deprive them of your custom, then don't do business with them. That is entirely your right. But going into their place of business and shitting on people is not.
Here is some advice your parents should have taught you long ago: If you treat people civilly, they will treat you the same and will go out of their way to help you. Screaming and crying and throwing a tantrum doesn't endear you to people.
Apparently you've got a whole different picture of my behavior and the reasons behind it. Firstly, I'm not going to kick up a fuss for some trivial reason, like they don't have the color I want in stock, etc.
I'm talking about actual abusive & dishonest/deceitful business practices and corporate policies. I'm not talking about demanding "special treatment". I also won't patronize a business in the first place if I know ahead of time that I'll more than likely be abused. I don't get off on looking for trouble, and the less "drama" I have in my life the better.
However, I will not be treated badly and be quiet about it so as not to offend employees.
By the way, as a customer, *MY* opinion and that of other customers as to what constitutes abuse is the only one that matters. I'm not unreasonable or petulant and throwing out strawman arguments based on your opinion of how you think I'm acting doesn't cut it.
I'm actually quite a civil and pleasant individual. I just refuse to make it easy & pleasant to abuse me as a customer. I run a business myself and deal with the public constantly, so I'm quite familiar with what it's reasonable to expect as a customer. I don't expect special treatment but I *do* demand to be treated fairly and equitably, and will settle for nothing less.
If that makes it unpleasant for the representative of that business who is abusing my reasonable rights and expectations as a customer, then that's their problem not mine. Don't work for assholes.
Strat
When a business that I attempt to patronize has a stupid/unfair/wrong policy and tries to do the "sorry, it's just corporate policy...nothing I can do" dance to shuffle me out the door, I make as big a stink and cause as much of a problem for every level of staff as I possibly legally can until the problem is resolved to my satisfaction, and make sure as many other customers as possible hear every word.
Wow. What a wanker. And stupid. And immature. And unrealistic. I can't believe how much of a dirt bag you are. And a putz. And ignorant.
What do you think I'm out of line? I'm flaming you? No, I'm just making as big a stink of your stupid/unfair/wrong policy as I can.
It sounds like you want personalized, private attention with custom agreements at a mass market price point. Why don't you just spine up and pay for the personal attention rather than just whine about it? No one is required to operate their business under model that you think they should.
If you're happy to bend over and take it up the rear and ask for more, be my guest. As long as there are sheep who will suck it up and beg for more, corporations will continue to do whatever they please.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that customers exist to service businesses, and that they shouldn't make a fuss at being treated badly so as not to offend or trouble the employees.
WRONG!
If you choose to work for a business that abuses and/or treats their customers badly, then I have zero sympathy for you. I'm sure the employees at the MPAA/RIAA & Safenet feel the same way as do you.
Businesses exist to meet the needs and desires of the customer. Those that do not don't deserve to continue to exist.
Yes, I *have* quit jobs because they wanted me to treat people badly/unfairly. Walked right out on the spot without a ready job to go to, and had to scrimp to survive while I found another.
That's because I have something it seems you lack.
Integrity.
If more people would make a fuss and make it unpleasant for the employees to abuse them then maybe the company wouldn't be able to get or retain help and be forced to change policies or go out of business.
If you think I'm a "wanker" for standing up and not allowing myself to be abused, then I consider it an honor to be considered by people like you to be a "wanker". If you're not willing to stand up to abusive corporate policies, then you're not a "wanker". You're a spineless coward willing to abuse & mistreat others for your own personal gain, and enable & empower corporations to continue to abuse the public.
It's the same attitude that the kind of person that would work as a guard in a gulag or death camp would have, happy to beat & torture prisoners who don't cooperate as long as the paychecks are on time, and when brought to trial would claim he was just following orders.
Sheesh, grow a set for heavens' sake and have a little self-respect!
Strat
So kicking up a stink in the store for 2 hours is mostly just making their (and your) life miserable for something they probably can't do, and if they could they'd probably get fired for doing it.
Well then, maybe they'll quit and go to work somewhere else if enough people make it too painful & annoying for them to continue working at a place of business that requires them to enforce a corporate policy that stinks. Then maybe if the stores can't keep enough employees on staff and they lose enough sales, maybe the policy will change. Or the company will go out of business and set an example to other companies of what *not* to do to be successful.
When a business that I attempt to patronize has a stupid/unfair/wrong policy and tries to do the "sorry, it's just corporate policy...nothing I can do" dance to shuffle me out the door, I make as big a stink and cause as much of a problem for every level of staff as I possibly legally can until the problem is resolved to my satisfaction, and make sure as many other customers as possible hear every word.
This actually helps the business improve as I outlined above, or contributes to it going bankrupt and making room for a competitor if it can't or won't properly service its' clientele in a fair and equitable manner.
It is not my goal to make sure the employees have a pleasant time treating me unfairly or screwing me over as a customer, especially if that's part of their job. Nobody is forcing them to keep working for a company that requires them to mistreat people. We don't live under a system that dictates where one will work.
Yet.
Strat
Copyright law is there to protect the rights of the creators;[snip]
Incorrect by way of ommision. Copyright is intended "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings ..."-U.S. Constitution
It seems that the judicial, legislative, and executive branches have all completely skipped over the entire first part, and only acknowledge the existence of the second part, as do many individuals.
The "securing...exclusive rights..." part is simply a method devised to, and derives from, the desire to accomplish the "To promote the progress of science and useful arts..." part. It doesn't stand on it's own, and that's one of the biggest problems with modern copyright law interpretation and enforcement as well as the laws written concerning copyright in recent times IMHO.
Strat
How is this geek centric news?
It's not. It's a liberal-Democrat talking-points story backing up a liberal-Democrat political play being made to further-burden the US economy as part of a planned and concerted effort to collapse the US economy so that the resulting chaos and power-vacuum allows the socialist frameworks being put in place (Acorn, Americorp, etc) to essentially rebuild the US as a socialist country after the collapse.
Being that Slashdot leans heavily-left due to the low average age of posters and submitters, combined with being largely American with little experience living through actual histories of socialist-style societies/governments and their failures & collapses, it's perfectly understandable that a topic that is purely political and on the socialist agenda with extremely-little actual "geek/nerd" content would make the editorial cut to be a posted report.
Reminds me of this quote: "If a man is not a socialist in his youth, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 30 he has no head" -- Georges Clemenceau, Former French Prime Minister and one-time radical.
Strat
"I disagree" !== "Troll"
Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, there *is* a heavily-backed, well-organized, and decades-long plan that has been in progress since the '60s to bankrupt this country and collapse the economy by those who wish to change the USA into a socialist experiment.
Things are coming to a crisis-point, and mark my words, there will be a major collapse in the next 3-8 years...10 years maximum...if the current spending & policy plans recently passed and those currently in Congress are implemented.
Other countries already see the handwriting on the wall. That's why two guys were caught at the Swiss-Italian border with approx. 135 *Billion* in US Treasuries. Notice how there is no reporting on this huge story, and nobody in the US government will make any meaningful statements? That's 1% of the US GDP. The other countries in the world can plainly see where we are headed, and are getting out. Expect more countries to dump our debt.
What's coming will make the Great Depression look like a minor blip, and it's being done intentionally with full knowledge of the results. It's what the socialist true-believers with wealth and power have decided is the way to finally be rid of that pesky "Constitution" thing for good.
You've been warned.
Strat
How is this geek centric news?
It's not. It's a liberal-Democrat talking-points story backing up a liberal-Democrat political play being made to further-burden the US economy as part of a planned and concerted effort to collapse the US economy so that the resulting chaos and power-vacuum allows the socialist frameworks being put in place (Acorn, Americorp, etc) to essentially rebuild the US as a socialist country after the collapse.
Being that Slashdot leans heavily-left due to the low average age of posters and submitters, combined with being largely American with little experience living through actual histories of socialist-style societies/governments and their failures & collapses, it's perfectly understandable that a topic that is purely political and on the socialist agenda with extremely-little actual "geek/nerd" content would make the editorial cut to be a posted report.
Reminds me of this quote: "If a man is not a socialist in his youth, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 30 he has no head" -- Georges Clemenceau, Former French Prime Minister and one-time radical.
Strat
True, a rural user can make this argument. Just about anywhere else though you have the choice of cable, dsl, satellite, tethered cellphone, and I'm sure other options. Not all users may be aware of their options or be willing to invest in the equipment to exercise their choices. But that doesn't mean its ok to regulate an entire industry just because a small % have "no" choice.
I think perhaps you overestimate the number/size/area of places where there are practical alternatives to single-provider broadband service. I've lived in a number of rural and metro areas in various states, and nearly every place I resided typically had only one practical choice for broadband.
Of course this is anecdotal, and the FCC is fighting tooth-and-nail not to modernize the metrics and methods they use to determine coverage/quality in the US, and are also fighting to keep that info from consumers. They cite things like risk of terrorists using this info, but so what? It's no secret what time the gas station down the street opens in the morning and that could help a terrorist plan on when to leave in the morning to gas up his suicide vehicle on the way to his target too. Roadmaps and GPS navigation systems are useful to terrorists too.
The politicians and the ISPs don't want there to be maps available showing national & regional broadband coverage information that might be helpful to the average citizen, as that would also highlight what a crappy job they've done in regulating to provide coverage to outlying or lower-profit areas, protections against price-fixing/collusion schemes, along with options in providers in a particular market area.
Strat
Yeah, the only difference is, like it or not, right now the studio artist makes $1-2 for each album sold, without it, well, he'd make nothing.
That's actually not so true today. Check out the distribution one can buy these days:
http://gc.guitarcenter.com/tunecore/
The problem is there are too many stupid artists, and I say this as an artist myself. Most seem to not take any time or trouble at all to even learn about basic copyright, never mind researching the various types of contracts available or that could be demanded from labels if they bothered to organize and put collective pressure on all the labels. More are beginning to adopt online distribution, however there are still plenty of pitfalls for the unwary & lazy.
Most are too self-centered around their art and ego. The big "Gold Ring" they drive for is to "get signed", and most of them are without any real clue as to what that can actually mean when you're talking about dealing with a record label.
Those kinds of artists get chewed up and spit out, ending up as burned-out cynical husks touring crappy venues in a crappy bus, living on less income than they'd make at a burger joint, trying to pay off what they "owe" to the record label after the third album, which the label didn't really promote much anyway, while still tied contractually to the label and unable to break free without paying the label tons more money on top of the mint they've already made the label.
Here's a piece I post a link to when this topic comes up. It's a bit cynical and also dated, but the situation he describes here is generally pretty accurate in how labels tend to treat bands/artists, which is generally as crappy as the band/artist lets them get away with.
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
Until artists make more effort to educate themselves about the business/legal end of the music biz and stop throwing themselves into the big-label roasting pit carrying their own bucket of BBQ sauce, not much will change. As long as the labels have lambs begging to be slaughtered and handing them the axe while shoving the previous lambs' remains off the block to make room, why would they want to change?
Strat
Hoooooooooooogan!
Klink: "Schuuuuultz!! You idiot, you were supposed to turn the censoring OFF on *our* computers, and ON for the *POW*s' computers, not the other way around!"
Schultz: "I am sorry mein Colonel, I see NO-thing, I hear NO-thing!"
Klink: "I'll make sure you have plenty of time to figure it out, because you'll be standing guard duty until the end of the war!"
Schultz: "Can I borrow Hogans' PDA while I'm standing guard?"
Klink: "Not unless you want to spend the rest of the war standing guard on the Eastern Front!"
Schultz: "[sigh] Yawohl, mein Colonel!"
Strat
Nuclear winter comes after nuclear fall.
Which is immediately preceded by nuclear summer, wherein you can take your nuclear family to the nuclear seashore to gather nuclear seashells.
Tra-la. Tra-la.
Tra-la.
Strat
Well what on earth do you expect them to do? Relinquish the opportunity to spend money? Haha, fat chance. They've got to press on in the name of bipartisanship. :)
Perhaps things will change after the economy collapses and Congress and the other politicians start getting a first-hand French history lesson in what the guillotine is and what it was used for by a violently-enraged general public.
Strat
By way of analogy: the market tells the farmer what crops people will buy. It does not tell him what crops will keep his farmland sustainable unto his children's time.
Problem here is that when the crops are determined *for* the farmer by a politician or bureaucrat to keep the land "sustainable" (both the crops chosen and the definition of sustainable made by someone other than the farmer that lives many hundreds of miles away and doesn't particularly care about the farmers' individual well being) it often means the farmer can't make enough from his crops to pay the mortgage/taxes/other costs of that farm.
So his children may never have a chance to use the land, but probably a corporate mega-farm paying sufficient protection money...oops, "campaign contributions and lobbyist-paid excursions" may.
If the farmer decides, he has a vested interest in keeping the land producing by reinvesting in maintaining it and keeping it sustainable for his children & grandchildren.
Strat
Didn't seem to affect Toyota.
It did/does affect Toyota/Honda/Kia/etc for the cars they sell in the US. It's just that they have much less operational overhead due to not being saddled with union labor costs, plus they can offset a good bit of the additional costs of mileage/emission compliance with their worldwide & native-country sales.
To the other poster citing a generational component, I'm sure that also comes into play. Myself, if I were in an upper-management position and going to spend a big chunk of money on a luxury vehicle, I'd buy something like a pristine black '64 suicide-door Lincoln Continental. (The geek-fantasies about having "Trinity" dressed in shiny black leather in the backseat with you should be enough to have most /.-ers drooling all over their moms' basement floor! :D)
http://www.dreamcarclassicsonline.com/cgi/displaydetails.pl?stockno=0247-3485&allphotos=L13
Even without being well-off, I still won't buy a car newer than the middle to late '70s at the very newest. I want a car with a V8, more steel, and less electronics/more self-serviceability than the newer cars.
Strat