Like any rational person, I walk or use mass transit for my everyday travels. I have a car for one purpose, and one purpose only: When the giant meteor is headed towards earth, or when the dead start getting up and walking, or the bird flu starts killing billions and civilization breaks down, I have a vehicle ready to go with a full tank of gas to head up to the Yukon.
Fuel might be a problem after the post-apocolypse... but in many end of the world scenarios, there will be plenty of abandoned vehicles to ciphen fuel from. But having to enter a number in order to use your car every so often makes owning a car as useless as FEMA in a disaster!
The trouble is, that everyone has their own pet facist policy that they like. Even if someone is against the War on Terror on the basis that it restricts freedom, or is unconstitutional... nearly all people support some blatently restrictive or unconstitutional policy.
For example, do you support one of the following?
1. Gun Control 2. "Hate Speech" Censorship Laws 3. IRS Auditing (forcing people to PROVE they are innocent of tax violations, instead of the other way around) 4. Forced Public Education 5. Eminent Domain 6. "War on Drugs" and Drug control 7. "Campaign Finance Reform" (political censorship laws) 8. Copyrights 9. Banning "Dangerous" animals 10. Public "Decentcy" Laws (anti-pornography cencorship) 11. Manditory Enviornmental Inspections (forcing people to PROVE they are innocent of enviornmental violations, instead of the other way around) 12. Sobriety Checkpoints 13. Laws against polyigamy. 14. Restricting people from promoting religion in public. (street corner preachers and such) 15. Restricting protests around abortion clinics.
That is just a few. Nearly everyone I know who rails against "The Patriot Act" or some other policy that is fashionable to hate, supports nearly all the restrictive, unconstitutional policies mentioned above. Even if you don't support most of them, it is almost garanteed that you support at least some of them.
The first part of realizing what happened in America (and what is happening elsewhere), is to realize you are part of the problem. You may not support the "Patriot Act", but that doesn't mean you are for freedom. Hardcore totalitarian Marxists are against the Patriot Act... people are against the Patriot Act because it is politicly unfashionable, or because it is promoted by a party that is considered "right wing". But lets focus on the restrictions of freedom, of exceptions to the constitution that you support.
If you are a leftist, and you speak out against citizen disarmament (gun control), or you speak out against feminists wanting to ban the Miss Universe pagent, or speak out against throwing people in jail for expressing controversial political beliefs on campus, you are going to be much more effective in promoting freedom that you would protesting the Patriot Act, or emergency powers to prevent bird flu, or whatever.
You need to eliminate the hatred of freedom from your own political ideology before you can work on someone elses hatred of freedom.
There are very good reasons to be against this. The reason for this is to make sure parents can restrict young viewers from watching adult content. However, that technology exists, by law, already, in nearly every TV. It is called the V-Chip, and it allows a parent to lock out all the content they don't like. The trouble is, that parents don't bother to use it.
So if this legislation passes, it is not going to do anything. Parents are not going to give up Showtime, or Spike TV, or any of the other possibly offensive channels.
Parents don't want the tools to raise their children. Parents want the government to raise their children. Deep down, the only thing that will eventually make them happy is when all children are taken away forcably to be raised in government camps... with the children coming home for holidays or whenever for token love and affection. We already have this for 5 days a week, 9 hours a day. But there is unfortunatly still large chunks of time where parents have responsibility. No-one wants responsibility anymore, so everyone wants the government to protect them from responsibility.
This is already the case. I can order many TV shows via my set top box.
The problem is that popular shows don't bother with this. It must be that the advertising revenue for high rated programs are so much greater than PPV, that for popular shows it is not worth it.
Much like TV shows being released on DVD, it only happens one those episodes are no longer being shown on the air.
Obviously this would be used in a situation where teens make up a small part of the customer base... or where teen trouble makers drive away far more people than teenage customers. Not everyplace would use it.
Maybe Diebold has already been paid for the machines, and there contract idemnifies them from having to return payment if there is a problem. If the state has to pay for a whole new bunch of machines, after already paying for Diebold machines, it could cost the state a lot of money, and so seriously be a threat.
The free market doesn't exist for governments, only people. YOU can choose not to use a device manufactured by Diebold or Microsoft, because you are an individual consumer. The government has a whole political process behind it's purchasing decisions (usually, the government purchases from a company that gives the biggest kickbacks to the people in charge).
The Creationists are fully within their rights. If they don't approve something that a corporation gives money to, they do not spend their money with said corporation. They might only be 5% of the population, but a lot of times a buisness works on slim profit margin, so a small but dedicated group of people can get together and make a big difference.
I am an athiest, so I don't believe in Creationism, but I can say with all confidence that the creationists are smarter than a lot of the people whining about them. While the whiners are thinking up retarded "solutions" like "TAX THE CHURCHES!!!" (love of kleptocracy and hatred of religious freedom all in one!), or use it as a way to say "Europe is more progressive than the United States" (except for the places in Europe were abortion is illegal, or where public schools are required to have crucifixes on the walls, or it is illegal to say bad things about the pope, or where a former president and EU politician can say 'Europe should be Christian only!' without anyone getting upset, or where the "Christian Democrats" are a major political party, or where there are still royalty blessed with the "divine right of kings", Europe is a pretty progressive place!).
If these people who were "outraged" or "embarrased" simply organized themselves in an even halfway decent manner, they would kick the Creationists asses (I mean, you only outnumber them 10 to 1 in the U.S., and that doesn't include people outside the U.S. who ALSO purchase things from U.S. corporations or have their own corporations that do buisness in the U.S.).
And, as far as I see it, Creationism is hardly the most dangerous scientific mythology... sure, they may be against the theory of evolution, but it is not like evolution is a cornerstone of practicle technology or everyday life. Someone could go their whole life being a Creationist, and as long as they understood math, chemistry, electronics, etc., they could still be an extremly productive person in the field of science and technology. I consider other forms of scientific mythology far more dangerous (i.e. geneticly modified plants are somehow inherently dangerous, thereby stopping us from developing crops that are disease resistant, don't need harmful pesticides, contain uncommon nutrients, that could help us feed millions of starving people... or that nuclear power is somehow more dangerous than our current forms of energy production, thereby eliminating a potential power source that helps combat global warming... or that paying women for eggs to produce stem cells somehow "exploits women"... or that DDT shouldn't be used to fight malaria in places in Africa where malaria kills 1 in 4 children, because it will harm polar bears or give people cancer late in life).
And don't even get me started on Psychology (as opposed to Psychiatry or Neuroscience or people who are real doctors or scientists)... Most of Psychology is pseudoscience as silly as Intelligent Design, and a lot more dangerous since it is used to treat people with real mental illness. Id, Ego, Superego, what kind of crap is that? Jungian race memory? Come on! And what about "scientific theories" like "Dialectal Materialism", or "Critical Race Theory", or Feminist "science" that teaches "All men are rapists and mysoginists by nature" and therefore "innocent until proven guilty should not be a protection given in cases of rape or sexual assult, because all men are proven to be rapists and therefore guilty", or any of the other things taken for granted as being unquestionably true science in your typical U.S. university?
Please, save yourself all the self-rightous "we are so much better than them" posturing, and demand that the corporations you purchase products from give money to projects like this muesum exhibit, and the problem will be solved. Just think if all you dorks who buy the newest ipod every time it comes out were to refuse to purchase the next toy unless Apple helped promote science and evolution, and Apple would be tripping over themselves to prove the bible is a load of crap.
Because that is too simple and makes too much sense... the anti-trust suit against Microsoft was brought against them by a rival media player company. If you give users the option of installing Windows Media Player, who is not going to want to install it?
I am absolutly certain that the founding fathers would not have eliminated freedom of speech for any reason.
Eliminating the effect of money in elections is a fantasy. These laws don't in any way, shape, form, or measure stop money from effecting elections. What they do is ensure only the richest and most politically powerful can get the FEC exemption so that only the rich and powerful are allowed political speech. They have the absolute opposite effect that they are intended to have. But even assuming that anyone is dumb enough to believe these laws are anything but a power grab by the people on top, destroying freedom of speech - the cornerstone of our democracy, in order to "protect" our democracy, is a contradiction. You cannot have democracy without freedom of speech.
Buy heck, I guess it is good that we have these laws, because otherwise those big evil political parties like the libertarians, green party, natural law party, communist party, might spend all there money and compete with the underdog parties like the Republicans and Democrats who definitly don't have the resources to buy votes (they only spend hundreds of millions on advertising).
Nice of the FEC to decide to give certain people that meet strict qualification the privledge of freedom of speech on political issues... However, I still think we need some garantee, maybe a constitutional amendment or something like that, that garantees freedom of speech for everyone.
If those companies refused to do buisness in China, it would be condemned as "American Imperialism" and "U.S. corporations trying to bully foriegn governments to change their policy" by people like you, so those companies are going to be condemned by you either way. Better than make a little money, and piss off a lot fewer people, by doing buisness in China.
Because the U.N. is also a monopoly. So it wasn't a choice between monopoly and non-monopoly, it was a choice between monopoly A, the U.S., which thus far has kept the Internet free, and monopoly B, the UN, which is the very antithesis of individual rights and person freedom - and is promising to completly restructure the internet for the purposes of censorship and control.
No one would have a problem if U.S. control of DNS was changed to a truly decentralized system.
How much do you want to bet that no matter how many coke heads are driving real fast on the highway, they won't kill anywhere near as many people as the 170 million killed by governments in the 20th century (not including wars).
Given the history of genocide, warefare, and mass-murder commited all around the world by governments, I would say I would rather err on the side of caution when it comes to police states.
Well, you mentioned the REAL problem. Most ISP TOS are so vauge that essentially any ISP can cut you off at a whim. In fact, they are probably designed to be so vauge on purpose to cover their ass. I don't think that is as much a problem with filesharing as it is a problem with ISP TOS.
Every ISP I have ever used, though, does not have a problem with filesharing. I can upload gigs every month and my ISP doesn't really care. Most would use TV shows on the Internet as a selling point of their service. I think it would be workplaces and college campuses that will be the ones hating this.
I see no problem with adding DRM for a free item. I would be very angry if I purchased an item and have to deal with all the DRM crap, but that is because there is an assumption that when you buy something, you own it and can do whatever you want with it (something that DRM doesn't jive with). If I purchase something, there are a whole set of rights I demand, because I have paid my money fair and square.
But for free, I don't think it is bad at all. The ads are funding the cost of distribution. As long as the DRM is passive (such as a protected.wmv or quicktime file), as opposed to something intrusive (like the news Sony copy protected CDs), there is no reason to be outraged.
While you are correct that the game should always be the most important thing, I think that the books shouldn't be neglected as an item of themselves.
I am far more likely to purchase a game is the graphic design is excellent, the artwork is excellent, it is hard cover, and is a desirable object. There are RPGs that I purchased that I have never played... but I enjoy reading the books, getting the background story of the setting, looking at the artwork, etc.
You don't have to make an economic case for people to go to hybrids... $12,000 will get you a damn good car nowadays...
People buy $100,000 sports cars, and then drive them below the speed limit in the slow lane. People buy performance offroad SUVs, and only use them to take the kids to soccer. Autos are all about the conspicuous consuption. The person who purchases the SUV is saying "Look at me, I may be a soccer mom dropping the kids off at school, but in my spare time I am a cool adventurous person who likes to drive in the wilderness"... of course that is total crap, but that is what purchasing a vehicle is about. It is about establishing identity, and distinguishing economic class.
So if you want to get people to use hybrid vehicles, you need to hype some other feature of hybrids. Perhaps, because it has independent control over an electric motor on each wheel, you can make the case of greater manuverability, or that electronics can compensate for slide on each wheel individually, and so they are safer or offer better performance. Maybe if hybrids have a smaller motor, they can offer more passenger space and more luxury. Hybrids need to find some other selling point besides being frugal and responsible. So cost, really, doesn't have a lot to do with it.
The world is going to end... you are all going to die from birdflu!!! Unless of course, you decide to give the government billions to "fight" birdflu, you agree to give the government the power to impose martial law and put all resources under the control of the military for the duration of the "epidemic", and we lock up our borders and don't let those possibly infected foriegners in!
Geez, Bird Flue is like terrorism, or global warming, or all those other things that provide fodder to fearmonger people into giving the government more power
I guess it is good and all that this women is documenting potential enviornmental problems in her subdivision... But really, a subdivision is a big giant enviornmental problem! It is kind of like driving a SUV, and then being pissed off because those people driving Hummers are wasting fuel.
It sucks that the woman is getting sued, that is an outrage. But I wouldn't glorify what this woman is doing too much. She seems more the neighborhood busy body who calls the police when kids are playing touch football in the street, or who get a restraining order to keep their neighbor from painting their house purple, than some real enviornmental crusader.
Because not everyone has the space to keep all their old consoles hooked up to their TV. And, the old xbox looked like crap, and stood out like an ugly sore thunb in my living room
Perfect, unbreakable encryption already exists! It is called a One Time Pad, and if used properly, it doesn't matter what type of super quantum computer the other guys have!
Now, many of you will say "There are logistics problems with one time pads that make them ineffective for things like ecommerce or cell phones etc.", and I agree. But banning the export of quantum computers isn't to protect ecommerce or cell phones... it is to protect high level diplomatic and military secrets. A U.S. embassy abroad can send their one time pads in a diplomatic pouch on some sort of high capacity data storage. Problem solved!
Yes it does. If the government makes something like blogging in favor of a candidate 30 days before an election illegal (which argueably it is illegal), and the politicians don't understand that one can blog anonymously from the server located outside the U.S., then they are not going to know that their law has no effect. If the government requires that all connections between machines be logged (like all telephone calls are required to be logged), and they don't understand that IPs can be spoofed, and that packets cannot be tracked accuratly, they won't know that their law will be ineffective. If the government bans all peer to peer file sharing in order to fight piracy, and they don't know that p2p file sharing is used for completly legit reasons, then they could end up implementing policy that could be disasterous.
There is all sorts of disasterous legislation that the government can come up with if it doesn't properly understand the technology.
You are being sarcastic of course, but what you are saying IS true even if you didn't intend to make the point. The government doesn't know anything about regulating automobiles, nor do they know anything about regulating the Internet. Most government regulations and initiatives are complete disasters.
If government regulation of the Internet is anything like their regulation of other things, we have big problems on our hand! Do you want the same people responsible for the War on Drugs, or the Hurricane Katrina debacle, to be micromanaging the Internet?
Slashdot Mirror
Like any rational person, I walk or use mass transit for my everyday travels. I have a car for one purpose, and one purpose only: When the giant meteor is headed towards earth, or when the dead start getting up and walking, or the bird flu starts killing billions and civilization breaks down, I have a vehicle ready to go with a full tank of gas to head up to the Yukon.
Fuel might be a problem after the post-apocolypse... but in many end of the world scenarios, there will be plenty of abandoned vehicles to ciphen fuel from. But having to enter a number in order to use your car every so often makes owning a car as useless as FEMA in a disaster!
The trouble is, that everyone has their own pet facist policy that they like. Even if someone is against the War on Terror on the basis that it restricts freedom, or is unconstitutional... nearly all people support some blatently restrictive or unconstitutional policy.
For example, do you support one of the following?
1. Gun Control
2. "Hate Speech" Censorship Laws
3. IRS Auditing (forcing people to PROVE they are innocent of tax violations, instead of the other way around)
4. Forced Public Education
5. Eminent Domain
6. "War on Drugs" and Drug control
7. "Campaign Finance Reform" (political censorship laws)
8. Copyrights
9. Banning "Dangerous" animals
10. Public "Decentcy" Laws (anti-pornography cencorship)
11. Manditory Enviornmental Inspections (forcing people to PROVE they are innocent of enviornmental violations, instead of the other way around)
12. Sobriety Checkpoints
13. Laws against polyigamy.
14. Restricting people from promoting religion in public. (street corner preachers and such)
15. Restricting protests around abortion clinics.
That is just a few. Nearly everyone I know who rails against "The Patriot Act" or some other policy that is fashionable to hate, supports nearly all the restrictive, unconstitutional policies mentioned above. Even if you don't support most of them, it is almost garanteed that you support at least some of them.
The first part of realizing what happened in America (and what is happening elsewhere), is to realize you are part of the problem. You may not support the "Patriot Act", but that doesn't mean you are for freedom. Hardcore totalitarian Marxists are against the Patriot Act... people are against the Patriot Act because it is politicly unfashionable, or because it is promoted by a party that is considered "right wing". But lets focus on the restrictions of freedom, of exceptions to the constitution that you support.
If you are a leftist, and you speak out against citizen disarmament (gun control), or you speak out against feminists wanting to ban the Miss Universe pagent, or speak out against throwing people in jail for expressing controversial political beliefs on campus, you are going to be much more effective in promoting freedom that you would protesting the Patriot Act, or emergency powers to prevent bird flu, or whatever.
You need to eliminate the hatred of freedom from your own political ideology before you can work on someone elses hatred of freedom.
There are very good reasons to be against this. The reason for this is to make sure parents can restrict young viewers from watching adult content. However, that technology exists, by law, already, in nearly every TV. It is called the V-Chip, and it allows a parent to lock out all the content they don't like. The trouble is, that parents don't bother to use it.
So if this legislation passes, it is not going to do anything. Parents are not going to give up Showtime, or Spike TV, or any of the other possibly offensive channels.
Parents don't want the tools to raise their children. Parents want the government to raise their children. Deep down, the only thing that will eventually make them happy is when all children are taken away forcably to be raised in government camps... with the children coming home for holidays or whenever for token love and affection. We already have this for 5 days a week, 9 hours a day. But there is unfortunatly still large chunks of time where parents have responsibility. No-one wants responsibility anymore, so everyone wants the government to protect them from responsibility.
This is already the case. I can order many TV shows via my set top box.
The problem is that popular shows don't bother with this. It must be that the advertising revenue for high rated programs are so much greater than PPV, that for popular shows it is not worth it.
Much like TV shows being released on DVD, it only happens one those episodes are no longer being shown on the air.
Obviously this would be used in a situation where teens make up a small part of the customer base... or where teen trouble makers drive away far more people than teenage customers. Not everyplace would use it.
Maybe Diebold has already been paid for the machines, and there contract idemnifies them from having to return payment if there is a problem. If the state has to pay for a whole new bunch of machines, after already paying for Diebold machines, it could cost the state a lot of money, and so seriously be a threat.
The free market doesn't exist for governments, only people. YOU can choose not to use a device manufactured by Diebold or Microsoft, because you are an individual consumer. The government has a whole political process behind it's purchasing decisions (usually, the government purchases from a company that gives the biggest kickbacks to the people in charge).
The Creationists are fully within their rights. If they don't approve something that a corporation gives money to, they do not spend their money with said corporation. They might only be 5% of the population, but a lot of times a buisness works on slim profit margin, so a small but dedicated group of people can get together and make a big difference.
I am an athiest, so I don't believe in Creationism, but I can say with all confidence that the creationists are smarter than a lot of the people whining about them. While the whiners are thinking up retarded "solutions" like "TAX THE CHURCHES!!!" (love of kleptocracy and hatred of religious freedom all in one!), or use it as a way to say "Europe is more progressive than the United States" (except for the places in Europe were abortion is illegal, or where public schools are required to have crucifixes on the walls, or it is illegal to say bad things about the pope, or where a former president and EU politician can say 'Europe should be Christian only!' without anyone getting upset, or where the "Christian Democrats" are a major political party, or where there are still royalty blessed with the "divine right of kings", Europe is a pretty progressive place!).
If these people who were "outraged" or "embarrased" simply organized themselves in an even halfway decent manner, they would kick the Creationists asses (I mean, you only outnumber them 10 to 1 in the U.S., and that doesn't include people outside the U.S. who ALSO purchase things from U.S. corporations or have their own corporations that do buisness in the U.S.).
And, as far as I see it, Creationism is hardly the most dangerous scientific mythology... sure, they may be against the theory of evolution, but it is not like evolution is a cornerstone of practicle technology or everyday life. Someone could go their whole life being a Creationist, and as long as they understood math, chemistry, electronics, etc., they could still be an extremly productive person in the field of science and technology. I consider other forms of scientific mythology far more dangerous (i.e. geneticly modified plants are somehow inherently dangerous, thereby stopping us from developing crops that are disease resistant, don't need harmful pesticides, contain uncommon nutrients, that could help us feed millions of starving people... or that nuclear power is somehow more dangerous than our current forms of energy production, thereby eliminating a potential power source that helps combat global warming... or that paying women for eggs to produce stem cells somehow "exploits women"... or that DDT shouldn't be used to fight malaria in places in Africa where malaria kills 1 in 4 children, because it will harm polar bears or give people cancer late in life).
And don't even get me started on Psychology (as opposed to Psychiatry or Neuroscience or people who are real doctors or scientists)... Most of Psychology is pseudoscience as silly as Intelligent Design, and a lot more dangerous since it is used to treat people with real mental illness. Id, Ego, Superego, what kind of crap is that? Jungian race memory? Come on! And what about "scientific theories" like "Dialectal Materialism", or "Critical Race Theory", or Feminist "science" that teaches "All men are rapists and mysoginists by nature" and therefore "innocent until proven guilty should not be a protection given in cases of rape or sexual assult, because all men are proven to be rapists and therefore guilty", or any of the other things taken for granted as being unquestionably true science in your typical U.S. university?
Please, save yourself all the self-rightous "we are so much better than them" posturing, and demand that the corporations you purchase products from give money to projects like this muesum exhibit, and the problem will be solved. Just think if all you dorks who buy the newest ipod every time it comes out were to refuse to purchase the next toy unless Apple helped promote science and evolution, and Apple would be tripping over themselves to prove the bible is a load of crap.
Because that is too simple and makes too much sense... the anti-trust suit against Microsoft was brought against them by a rival media player company. If you give users the option of installing Windows Media Player, who is not going to want to install it?
I am absolutly certain that the founding fathers would not have eliminated freedom of speech for any reason.
Eliminating the effect of money in elections is a fantasy. These laws don't in any way, shape, form, or measure stop money from effecting elections. What they do is ensure only the richest and most politically powerful can get the FEC exemption so that only the rich and powerful are allowed political speech. They have the absolute opposite effect that they are intended to have. But even assuming that anyone is dumb enough to believe these laws are anything but a power grab by the people on top, destroying freedom of speech - the cornerstone of our democracy, in order to "protect" our democracy, is a contradiction. You cannot have democracy without freedom of speech.
Buy heck, I guess it is good that we have these laws, because otherwise those big evil political parties like the libertarians, green party, natural law party, communist party, might spend all there money and compete with the underdog parties like the Republicans and Democrats who definitly don't have the resources to buy votes (they only spend hundreds of millions on advertising).
I forgot the [sarcasm] funny post [/sarcasm] tags on the message I posted for the irony impaired...
Nice of the FEC to decide to give certain people that meet strict qualification the privledge of freedom of speech on political issues... However, I still think we need some garantee, maybe a constitutional amendment or something like that, that garantees freedom of speech for everyone.
If those companies refused to do buisness in China, it would be condemned as "American Imperialism" and "U.S. corporations trying to bully foriegn governments to change their policy" by people like you, so those companies are going to be condemned by you either way. Better than make a little money, and piss off a lot fewer people, by doing buisness in China.
Because the U.N. is also a monopoly. So it wasn't a choice between monopoly and non-monopoly, it was a choice between monopoly A, the U.S., which thus far has kept the Internet free, and monopoly B, the UN, which is the very antithesis of individual rights and person freedom - and is promising to completly restructure the internet for the purposes of censorship and control.
No one would have a problem if U.S. control of DNS was changed to a truly decentralized system.
How much do you want to bet that no matter how many coke heads are driving real fast on the highway, they won't kill anywhere near as many people as the 170 million killed by governments in the 20th century (not including wars).
Check out:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
Given the history of genocide, warefare, and mass-murder commited all around the world by governments, I would say I would rather err on the side of caution when it comes to police states.
Well, you mentioned the REAL problem. Most ISP TOS are so vauge that essentially any ISP can cut you off at a whim. In fact, they are probably designed to be so vauge on purpose to cover their ass. I don't think that is as much a problem with filesharing as it is a problem with ISP TOS.
Every ISP I have ever used, though, does not have a problem with filesharing. I can upload gigs every month and my ISP doesn't really care. Most would use TV shows on the Internet as a selling point of their service. I think it would be workplaces and college campuses that will be the ones hating this.
I see no problem with adding DRM for a free item. I would be very angry if I purchased an item and have to deal with all the DRM crap, but that is because there is an assumption that when you buy something, you own it and can do whatever you want with it (something that DRM doesn't jive with). If I purchase something, there are a whole set of rights I demand, because I have paid my money fair and square.
.wmv or quicktime file), as opposed to something intrusive (like the news Sony copy protected CDs), there is no reason to be outraged.
But for free, I don't think it is bad at all. The ads are funding the cost of distribution. As long as the DRM is passive (such as a protected
While you are correct that the game should always be the most important thing, I think that the books shouldn't be neglected as an item of themselves.
I am far more likely to purchase a game is the graphic design is excellent, the artwork is excellent, it is hard cover, and is a desirable object. There are RPGs that I purchased that I have never played... but I enjoy reading the books, getting the background story of the setting, looking at the artwork, etc.
You don't have to make an economic case for people to go to hybrids... $12,000 will get you a damn good car nowadays...
People buy $100,000 sports cars, and then drive them below the speed limit in the slow lane. People buy performance offroad SUVs, and only use them to take the kids to soccer. Autos are all about the conspicuous consuption. The person who purchases the SUV is saying "Look at me, I may be a soccer mom dropping the kids off at school, but in my spare time I am a cool adventurous person who likes to drive in the wilderness"... of course that is total crap, but that is what purchasing a vehicle is about. It is about establishing identity, and distinguishing economic class.
So if you want to get people to use hybrid vehicles, you need to hype some other feature of hybrids. Perhaps, because it has independent control over an electric motor on each wheel, you can make the case of greater manuverability, or that electronics can compensate for slide on each wheel individually, and so they are safer or offer better performance. Maybe if hybrids have a smaller motor, they can offer more passenger space and more luxury. Hybrids need to find some other selling point besides being frugal and responsible. So cost, really, doesn't have a lot to do with it.
The world is going to end... you are all going to die from birdflu!!! Unless of course, you decide to give the government billions to "fight" birdflu, you agree to give the government the power to impose martial law and put all resources under the control of the military for the duration of the "epidemic", and we lock up our borders and don't let those possibly infected foriegners in!
Geez, Bird Flue is like terrorism, or global warming, or all those other things that provide fodder to fearmonger people into giving the government more power
I guess it is good and all that this women is documenting potential enviornmental problems in her subdivision... But really, a subdivision is a big giant enviornmental problem! It is kind of like driving a SUV, and then being pissed off because those people driving Hummers are wasting fuel.
It sucks that the woman is getting sued, that is an outrage. But I wouldn't glorify what this woman is doing too much. She seems more the neighborhood busy body who calls the police when kids are playing touch football in the street, or who get a restraining order to keep their neighbor from painting their house purple, than some real enviornmental crusader.
Because not everyone has the space to keep all their old consoles hooked up to their TV. And, the old xbox looked like crap, and stood out like an ugly sore thunb in my living room
Perfect, unbreakable encryption already exists! It is called a One Time Pad, and if used properly, it doesn't matter what type of super quantum computer the other guys have!
Now, many of you will say "There are logistics problems with one time pads that make them ineffective for things like ecommerce or cell phones etc.", and I agree. But banning the export of quantum computers isn't to protect ecommerce or cell phones... it is to protect high level diplomatic and military secrets. A U.S. embassy abroad can send their one time pads in a diplomatic pouch on some sort of high capacity data storage. Problem solved!
Yes it does. If the government makes something like blogging in favor of a candidate 30 days before an election illegal (which argueably it is illegal), and the politicians don't understand that one can blog anonymously from the server located outside the U.S., then they are not going to know that their law has no effect. If the government requires that all connections between machines be logged (like all telephone calls are required to be logged), and they don't understand that IPs can be spoofed, and that packets cannot be tracked accuratly, they won't know that their law will be ineffective. If the government bans all peer to peer file sharing in order to fight piracy, and they don't know that p2p file sharing is used for completly legit reasons, then they could end up implementing policy that could be disasterous.
There is all sorts of disasterous legislation that the government can come up with if it doesn't properly understand the technology.
You are being sarcastic of course, but what you are saying IS true even if you didn't intend to make the point. The government doesn't know anything about regulating automobiles, nor do they know anything about regulating the Internet. Most government regulations and initiatives are complete disasters.
If government regulation of the Internet is anything like their regulation of other things, we have big problems on our hand! Do you want the same people responsible for the War on Drugs, or the Hurricane Katrina debacle, to be micromanaging the Internet?