Further to supply-and-demand, one only needs to look at the population curves to see that there was a massive "baby boom" that's now entered its fifties and sixties; a mini-boom formed by the boomer's kids, who are now in their late twenties/early thirties; and a substantial decline in younger populations. Look at what's happening in public schools: elementary schools are being shut down and amalgamated, because there simply isn't enough student population to support them.
So, yes, of *course* there's been a decline in sales: there are fewer buyers. And there are especially fewer buyers of the crap pop that BS and her ilk have been pumping out.
Hmmm. According to the United Nations Development Program, the richest one percent of the world's population receives as much income as the poorest 57 percent. More than a billion people live on less than a dollar a day; nearly a billion lack any access to clean water; 826 million suffer from malnutrition; 10 million die annually due to lack of basic health care.
George Soros has $3000 million to his name. He could rid himself of $2500 million and still be one of the wealthiest men on earth.
That's seven million people fed for a year at a dollar a day. That'd be clean water for every person on the planet (clean water is easy; there's a sand-filter technology that's perhaps a hundred bucks a pop); that's all malnutrition eliminated; that's basic healthcare for everyone.
George Soros could singlehandly wipe out most of the starvation/dire health problems on this planet. But he doesn't.
For that matter, George is #60 on the Forbes list. Imagine if all those ultra-mega-elite rich were to get some compassion and donate 10% of their unimaginable wealth to solving these basic problems of human needs.
Globalism isn't going to fix a damn thing. The rich will get richer, and the impoverished will continue to drop like flies because the rich don't care to share enough. (Which isn't to say that non-globalism is a cure. It isn't. The only cure is for the ultra-rich to become ultra-generous.)
You'd think a hovercraft would be a better vehicle, too.
Aren't we Boycotting Hollywood?
on
Review: Panic Room
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
What the hell is wrong with you people? On the one hand, you get all pissy about Jack Valenti and the stupid shit he's trying to pull in the way of disallowing you ownership of the media you purchase, and then you go throw gobs of money at the asshole by going to the movies -- and then, just to prove your stupidity, you go to the worst movies Hollywood has to offer, which encourages them to make more trash.
On the other hand, perhaps it'll put an end to this idiocy. The technology is so new that it really shouldn't be used on humans yet. Let the monkeys suffer first; iron out the bugs and maybe a hundred years down the road we'll know enough to be able to pull it off successfully with humans.
Potential influence? Hell, LBJ handed the creep the job. What's your throwaway login to ancestry? I'd like to go digging there.
"Weekley & Valenti... was in charge of the press during the fateful visit of President John F. Kennedy and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson to Texas in November 1963. Within an hour after the assasination of President Kennedy, Mr. Valenti flew on Air Force One back to Washington as the first Special Assistant to the President"
Actually, when you start reading his biography, it looks like Jack is a bright boy who worked really hard as a kid and young man.
One suspects he's operating from an Leave It to Beaver mindset, though. Hasn't quite made the intellectual, technological, and social leap into this decade. He was one of LBJ's right-hand men, and it looks like LBJ was a real driving force for race equality. Jack hasn't come to understand that just as there were long-term social benefits to equality, there are long-term benefits to reducing copyright ownership and providing consumers with 'portable' data.
The secret, friend, is Google. Search for "Valenti mafia OR mob" and you get lots of information on that well-established family.
To paraphrase the consiglieri: "Now we have the unions, we have the gambling; and they're the best things to have. But entertainment is a thing of the future. And if we don't get a piece of that action, we risk everything we have. I mean not now, but, ah, ten years from now."
"In the wake of the infamous Apalachin Conference in November 1957, the New York State Crime Commission began an investigation of the individuals from New York who attended the meeting. Constenze "Stanley" Valenti, the recognized boss of the Rochester Family, and his brother Frank were jailed for civil contempt after failing to answer the questions of the commission members."
"By 1920, the Morello-Terranova-Saietta rule was being seriously challenged by Guiseppe Masseria. The challenge would not last long. Vincent Morello was murdered on East 116th Street and later powerful ally, Umberto Valenti, was ambushed by Masseria gunmen."
"Uno "sgarro" commesso in ambienti criminali:...Filippo Musica, e della sua fidanzata, Elisa Valenti, di 24 anni, assassinati l'altra notte con colpi di fucile davanti..."
"[Raymond] Valenti...told her that he belonged to the Mafia. Valenti poked Ricker in the chest and warned her that if she talked to the IRS, she would be in trouble, too..."
A "James J. Valenti" is/was a member of the Tampa mob family.
"Ucciso a Scordia Gaetano Valenti, secondo gli inquirenti affiliato al clan Di Salvo."
As you can see, the Valenti name is well-established in the mob circles.
I have just developed the best copyright protection scheme, and I hereby lay exclusive claim to it. My patent application is hitting the office today, so that no one can steal it.
DNA-based decryption. This outdoes the GPS protection by leagues: you'll actually be able to use your copyright licensed material whereever you are in person, rather than being restricted to one location.
Not only that, but as far as I can tell, the damn menus don't work with Opera at all. Now, I know Opera's DHTML isn't the greatest, but other folk seem to be able to pull off dynamic menus for Opera. Sheesh.
FWIW, the legal department of Disney is named "Retlaw" -- simply Walter, spelled backward.
They're reknown as a aggressive, cut-throat, ruthless law firm. You just don't wanna tangle with them.
Disney is a schizophrenic organization. On the public face, it's all happy Magic Mountains and shit; on the private side, it's a mean-spirited regime that abuses employees and owns the government.
Or, instead of Lynx, browse using Opera with graphics/javascript/etc turned off. If your PDA Opera is like the Windows one, the "G" key toggles graphics instantly.
The invention of Google must surely have a lot to do with reducing the time people waste on the net.
Lord knows it took freakin' forever to find things back in the days of Archie and Gopher! Yahoo was just terrific... until it became impossible to catalog all web sites by hand.
There was a while there when we were all relying on crappy HotBot and Altavista and the like, spending ages trying to figure out just the "right" search term to find what we wanted.
Thank goodness for Google. Damn, I love those folk! I think I'll name my children after them.
Yes, of course. Because we don't have any adequate means of testing maturity, we should just throw our arbitrary definitions out. Let's let four-year-olds have sex with Uncle! Let's put eight-year-old Johnny to work in the coal mine! Bobby is going through puberty -- let's fire him into the army, where he won't be such a pain in the ass!
Unfortunately, you are wrong in your assumptions. Cats are a substantial problem for wildlife, and have reduced numbers of some birds to near-extinction.
The problem is that domesticated cats suffer none of the disadvantge of the wild animals: they're well-fed, don't have to suffer the elements, and are kept in tip-top health by their owners. Domestic cats simply are not a part of the natural ecosystem.
Further, cats are competing significantly against wild populations: owls, skunks, foxes, and such. It's a double whammy.
As for "no shortage of supply" of birds, you may want to consider that there are a dozen or so endangered or watch-list birds. The cats don't distinguish between them and the non-endangered species.
Cats are exerting a pressure against these populations that really isn't necessary: hell, it's not like we're giving any of these creatures a break, what with our exer-expanding lust for golf-courses, shopping malls, and parking lots.
There is absolutely no need to let one's cat roam and kill. Those who do do must be doing so out of ignorance of the consequences or out of sheer hatred of nature. Certainly they can not do it because it's good for the environment or good for the cat.
Slashdot Mirror
Further to supply-and-demand, one only needs to look at the population curves to see that there was a massive "baby boom" that's now entered its fifties and sixties; a mini-boom formed by the boomer's kids, who are now in their late twenties/early thirties; and a substantial decline in younger populations. Look at what's happening in public schools: elementary schools are being shut down and amalgamated, because there simply isn't enough student population to support them.
So, yes, of *course* there's been a decline in sales: there are fewer buyers. And there are especially fewer buyers of the crap pop that BS and her ilk have been pumping out.
Opps. I wsa thinking about teh "Digital Mellinium Copywrite Act," which charges you a penny eveyr tim yuo use a year number liek 2000.
So the grande dame bitch Kobrin will now need to send a DCMA warning letter about the DCMA warning letter... ad infinitum. Hah!
I'm pretty sure one could use a "Celestial Seasonings" tin can and a healthy dollop of silicone sealant to replace the copper box.
What happens when the global workforce is cheaper than we are, and more educated?
Er... then there'll be no more third-world nations, everyone will have adequate food and shelter and education, and maybe there'll be no need for war?
Hmmm. According to the United Nations Development Program, the richest one percent of the world's population receives as much income as the poorest 57 percent. More than a billion people live on less than a dollar a day; nearly a billion lack any access to clean water; 826 million suffer from malnutrition; 10 million die annually due to lack of basic health care.
George Soros has $3000 million to his name. He could rid himself of $2500 million and still be one of the wealthiest men on earth.
That's seven million people fed for a year at a dollar a day. That'd be clean water for every person on the planet (clean water is easy; there's a sand-filter technology that's perhaps a hundred bucks a pop); that's all malnutrition eliminated; that's basic healthcare for everyone.
George Soros could singlehandly wipe out most of the starvation/dire health problems on this planet. But he doesn't.
For that matter, George is #60 on the Forbes list. Imagine if all those ultra-mega-elite rich were to get some compassion and donate 10% of their unimaginable wealth to solving these basic problems of human needs.
Globalism isn't going to fix a damn thing. The rich will get richer, and the impoverished will continue to drop like flies because the rich don't care to share enough. (Which isn't to say that non-globalism is a cure. It isn't. The only cure is for the ultra-rich to become ultra-generous.)
Soros supports globalism, and not only because of the new wealth he believes it can produce.
The cynic in me reads "new wealth he believes it can produce for him."
You'd think a hovercraft would be a better vehicle, too.
What the hell is wrong with you people? On the one hand, you get all pissy about Jack Valenti and the stupid shit he's trying to pull in the way of disallowing you ownership of the media you purchase, and then you go throw gobs of money at the asshole by going to the movies -- and then, just to prove your stupidity, you go to the worst movies Hollywood has to offer, which encourages them to make more trash.
Gettafsckingcluealready!!
Too bad someone has to suffer for it.
On the other hand, perhaps it'll put an end to this idiocy. The technology is so new that it really shouldn't be used on humans yet. Let the monkeys suffer first; iron out the bugs and maybe a hundred years down the road we'll know enough to be able to pull it off successfully with humans.
Surely someone knows someone else in China, who can pose as frontman. I can't imagine China is going to take bossing-around by Microsoft at all well.
Potential influence? Hell, LBJ handed the creep the job. What's your throwaway login to ancestry? I'd like to go digging there.
"Weekley & Valenti... was in charge of the press during the fateful visit of President John F. Kennedy and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson to Texas in November 1963. Within an hour after the assasination of President Kennedy, Mr. Valenti flew on Air Force One back to Washington as the first Special Assistant to the President"
Actually, when you start reading his biography, it looks like Jack is a bright boy who worked really hard as a kid and young man.
One suspects he's operating from an Leave It to Beaver mindset, though. Hasn't quite made the intellectual, technological, and social leap into this decade. He was one of LBJ's right-hand men, and it looks like LBJ was a real driving force for race equality. Jack hasn't come to understand that just as there were long-term social benefits to equality, there are long-term benefits to reducing copyright ownership and providing consumers with 'portable' data.
Er, you make me an offer I can't refuse...
The secret, friend, is Google. Search for "Valenti mafia OR mob" and you get lots of information on that well-established family.
To paraphrase the consiglieri:
"Now we have the unions, we have the gambling; and they're the best things to have. But entertainment is a thing of the future. And if we don't get a piece of that action, we risk everything we have. I mean not now, but, ah, ten years from now."
The Valenti name has plenty of mob associations:
...Filippo Musica, e della sua fidanzata, Elisa Valenti, di 24 anni, assassinati l'altra notte con colpi di fucile davanti ..."
...told her that he belonged to the Mafia. Valenti poked Ricker in the chest and warned her that if she talked to the IRS, she would be in trouble, too..."
"In the wake of the infamous Apalachin Conference in November 1957, the New York State Crime Commission began an investigation of the individuals from New York who attended the meeting. Constenze "Stanley" Valenti, the recognized boss of the Rochester Family, and his brother Frank were jailed for civil contempt after failing to answer the questions of the commission members."
"By 1920, the Morello-Terranova-Saietta rule was being seriously challenged by Guiseppe Masseria. The challenge would not last long. Vincent Morello was murdered on East 116th Street and later powerful ally, Umberto Valenti, was ambushed by Masseria gunmen."
"Uno "sgarro" commesso in ambienti criminali:
"[Raymond] Valenti
A "James J. Valenti" is/was a member of the Tampa mob family.
"Ucciso a Scordia Gaetano Valenti, secondo gli inquirenti affiliato al clan Di Salvo."
As you can see, the Valenti name is well-established in the mob circles.
Now, can anyone trace ol' Jack's family tree...?
I have just developed the best copyright protection scheme, and I hereby lay exclusive claim to it. My patent application is hitting the office today, so that no one can steal it.
DNA-based decryption. This outdoes the GPS protection by leagues: you'll actually be able to use your copyright licensed material whereever you are in person, rather than being restricted to one location.
Hah! I'm gonna be sooooo g.d. rich!
Don't turn on anonymous posting!
My god, there is so much less crap in the threads, even in spite of all the whinging-on about the so-called jokes.
I *like* Slashdot non-anon.
Not only that, but as far as I can tell, the damn menus don't work with Opera at all. Now, I know Opera's DHTML isn't the greatest, but other folk seem to be able to pull off dynamic menus for Opera. Sheesh.
FWIW, the legal department of Disney is named "Retlaw" -- simply Walter, spelled backward.
They're reknown as a aggressive, cut-throat, ruthless law firm. You just don't wanna tangle with them.
Disney is a schizophrenic organization. On the public face, it's all happy Magic Mountains and shit; on the private side, it's a mean-spirited regime that abuses employees and owns the government.
Or, instead of Lynx, browse using Opera with graphics/javascript/etc turned off. If your PDA Opera is like the Windows one, the "G" key toggles graphics instantly.
The invention of Google must surely have a lot to do with reducing the time people waste on the net.
Lord knows it took freakin' forever to find things back in the days of Archie and Gopher! Yahoo was just terrific... until it became impossible to catalog all web sites by hand.
There was a while there when we were all relying on crappy HotBot and Altavista and the like, spending ages trying to figure out just the "right" search term to find what we wanted.
Thank goodness for Google. Damn, I love those folk! I think I'll name my children after them.
Damn straight. Paper is sexy. EBooks are sterile.
Thanks for throwing cash at the likes of Jack Valenti, everyone!
Yes, of course. Because we don't have any adequate means of testing maturity, we should just throw our arbitrary definitions out. Let's let four-year-olds have sex with Uncle! Let's put eight-year-old Johnny to work in the coal mine! Bobby is going through puberty -- let's fire him into the army, where he won't be such a pain in the ass!
Let's rephrase that opening line: have *contributed* to reducing the population of some bird species to near-extinction.
Unfortunately, you are wrong in your assumptions. Cats are a substantial problem for wildlife, and have reduced numbers of some birds to near-extinction.
The problem is that domesticated cats suffer none of the disadvantge of the wild animals: they're well-fed, don't have to suffer the elements, and are kept in tip-top health by their owners. Domestic cats simply are not a part of the natural ecosystem.
Further, cats are competing significantly against wild populations: owls, skunks, foxes, and such. It's a double whammy.
As for "no shortage of supply" of birds, you may want to consider that there are a dozen or so endangered or watch-list birds. The cats don't distinguish between them and the non-endangered species.
Cats are exerting a pressure against these populations that really isn't necessary: hell, it's not like we're giving any of these creatures a break, what with our exer-expanding lust for golf-courses, shopping malls, and parking lots.
There is absolutely no need to let one's cat roam and kill. Those who do do must be doing so out of ignorance of the consequences or out of sheer hatred of nature. Certainly they can not do it because it's good for the environment or good for the cat.