Sure. It was supposedly "low cost" but when we were working for $3.35/hr, nothing was low cost. Later, I got my hands on an X-Pad and a TRS-80 Color Computer - that was pretty neat. I wasn't until 2008 that I ever had another tablet, a Wacom Bamboo.
I think I'm seeing flaws in the whole corporate model, not just its current effects. I'm am not convinced that corporations should enjoy the protections they do, if they don't "promote a social good" as a primary motivation. Probably just saying this makes me a Marxist or something. People aren't really given much option except to live inside of the system that is controlled by the profit-driven 'corporate' mentality, and it winds up having more influence than any system of government ever has.
As for 'putting up capital' I have no source of capital, and I see that as part of the problem.
Know what would be *news*? A report that some company's leaders have decided to bite the bullet and weather the storm. Not, massive layoffs, declaring bankruptcy, or trying to pass the problems to the consumer. Let's hear about a company whose execs are man enough to at least *try* to ride out this slump.
I am already sick and tired of everybody using "the economy" as their excuse for everything. And I don't remember seeing an article about how O'Reilly for instance, tried things like cutting unnecessary expenses, reducing executive bonuses, or really anything imaginative at all. No, the first we hear about trouble, they are addressing the economy by doing their part to make it worse. 31 people worse, to be exact. Come on, seriously, what all did they try first? Or is this just the first instinct?
>Javascript is actually a nice and clean language.
It is. I avoided it for years, just because I utterly hate that it was called Javascript. But AJAX forced me to use it. A good programmer can do good things with the language. I refuse to get into what bad programmers can do.
Or worse, the public, not as uneducated as we are led to believe, may be allowed to see the prosecution in a copyright case being ignorant of copyright law.
So why is a person who lacks authority, expecting to assert authority? This is always the part that confuses me. Authority does not come from below, and it's that simple. Get authority (promotion, getting an authoritative position in the first place, etc.) or start a business. But don't expect, *ever*, to have anyone follow your orders if you aren't in a position to decrease or eliminate their paycheck. And don't act like this is hard to understand, because it isn't.
Last week I was laptop shopping with a friend. I being a good consultant on such things of course, made sure she understood all the options, e.g., mail order, lightly used, Mac vs. PC, Intel vs. AMD, what kind of machine specs you need before Vista is happy, etc.
Anyway in this process I suggested that we should give CC a try before buying anything, the idea being they are going out of business (I've known this for a while, so why is it news?), and that surely they'd have fire-sale prices right?
So we go over there (across the street from BB), and sure enough, the car radio room is turned up so loud that I get a migraine just walking to the computer department, the computer stock has nothing at all in the performance range we're after (but they do have prices that SHOULD represent the upper mid-range!), and the only ones that would be worth considering, were Acer and something that looks like some OEM brand that starts with "I". I just checked the website to see what that brand was... wow. They shutdown the website? What if you had an order pending? Dang.
No matter what kind of "process" you apply to a retail business, if you don't have products that are attractive to your customer base, you're sunk. And maybe 20-30 years ago their strategy of taking mundane items but spreading the price and placement out so that your "low, middle, high end" look ok, even though you don't really have a "high", maybe that worked back then. People are savvy today, and even uneducated people know more than CC's sales force.
The only people who even seemed reasonably happy there, were actually contractors from Verizon. Probably sucks to work there as well, but at least they were immune to all the CC pinheads.
I don't think the state should "recognize" or "forbid" ANY "marriage."
If two people want to enter into a contract that obligates them to sexual monogamy or establishes joint custody of children, etc., so be it, they should be able to do that. And if an insurer wants to give a discount for people in such relationships, then more power to them.
But marriage shouldn't have any effect on how much tax you pay, and it should not elevate or abridge anyone's rights, ever.
Traditional marriage favors certain classes of people over others: Good looking people with money and people with certain other social advantages, and people who choose to reproduce, are in a category that finds a natural fit for "marriage", where others do not. The idiom of marriage is simply not a context that fits well in a system of government that is aimed at equal protection and equality.
It should not be an institution of the state *at all*, and if it were simply a social phenomenon, we wouldn't be having this argument -- and if the ideas behind conventional "marriage" were enforced by binding *contracts*, we would also see very different patterns in the realm known today as "divorce."
I've just started telling people I don't "recognize" marriage using exactly the same talking points being used against "same sex" marriage, just leaving out the "same sex" parts.
>A lot of people on slashdot argue that downloading copyrighted material isn't theft
That's because it isn't. For one thing, "legal and illegal" music downloading are both described by "downloading copyrighted material" so you need to be much more specific. For another thing, copyright protection is aimed at very different goals from laws concerning theft.
Copyright law does a poor job at "punishing people who consume your work without paying you."
What copyright law is good at, is punishing someone who has taken your work, claimed it as his own, and profiting. But in the situation the RIAA finds itself, this is rarely the case.
You might want to argue that copyright law doesn't go far enough, but that's between you and your representatives.
>Well, other than the 1930's, which had a much larger foreclosure rate than we're having >now.
Family farms, back then, which led directly to the culture of "agribusiness" that we all enjoy today. You could argue that it was necessary, or we'd not have been able to grow to 300 million.
But was the foreclosure rate in single-family, urban homes anything like today?
There are a lot of things I really like about my Macbook Pro and the touchpad (quality and behavior) is one of them. I take it you disagree, so whatever.
I think there are two levels of irony going on, c.f., the quote from Field of Dreams, "...HE will come...", which mapped a quote by Theodore Roosevelt onto a novel by W.P. Kinsella, for a screenplay.
Invest in things that people need when they are buying houses at low prices. When you buy a foreclosed home, you want lots of home repair and remodel stuff. And there has never been a bigger foreclosure market.
>Especially not at a street price of ~$2500-3000. No thanks. The cost of the Canon system is in the lenses, and for many professional photographers, this camera is in the territory of "the only serious choice." But if you're freaking on the camera body price, you really don't want to know what the glass costs in this system.
Yes, thank you Mr. Bush for the massive increase in Presidential power, thank you for handing that power directly to the hand of your opposition party, and thank you for leaving office.
It might be a joke for some, but the few guy's I've known who were in the Canadian military scared the living crap out of me. They may not seem like a threat, but then they haven't turned loose their armies of psychopathic berserkers.
I like your attitude. I worked in a really huge (by any standard) corporation. I was among the lowest-paid employees, but at the time I was very happy with that (fairly well-off compared with my peers, and it was a nice job that opened doors.) I wouldn't exactly call it "IT" but let's pretend it was for the sake of discussion. So the people I supported were direct reports to the board, and I was privy to their business at a very close level of detail. What I learned from that was, the people at the highest level of decision making authority that anyone actually had contact with, felt as powerless as what you express in your post. And the people above them had almost no hands-on dealings with the operation of the company. That situation meant it always seemed really weird if anything *at all* got done, that was to any degree outside of the standard day-to-day operation of the company. And we did indeed have to float certain issues so that they might find a stakeholder somewhere who would take it upon himself to devote resources.
Oh man, did I learn a lot in that job. Trouble is, I didn't realize I'd learned anything until years later.
>I'm not sure how this will work out in the current economic climate
We need trailblazers, we need more people willing to say "damn the torpeodes!" I'm sick and tired of everyone blaming everything on "the economic climate."
Slashdot Mirror
>Koala pad? Does anyone remember that?
Sure. It was supposedly "low cost" but when we were working for $3.35/hr, nothing was low cost. Later, I got my hands on an X-Pad and a TRS-80 Color Computer - that was pretty neat. I wasn't until 2008 that I ever had another tablet, a Wacom Bamboo.
I think I'm seeing flaws in the whole corporate model, not just its current effects.
I'm am not convinced that corporations should enjoy the protections they do, if they don't "promote a social good" as a primary motivation. Probably just saying this makes me a Marxist or something. People aren't really given much option except to live inside of the system that is controlled by the profit-driven 'corporate' mentality, and it winds up having more influence than any system of government ever has.
As for 'putting up capital' I have no source of capital, and I see that as part of the problem.
Know what would be *news*? A report that some company's leaders have decided to bite the bullet and weather the storm. Not, massive layoffs, declaring bankruptcy, or trying to pass the problems to the consumer. Let's hear about a company whose execs are man enough to at least *try* to ride out this slump.
I am already sick and tired of everybody using "the economy" as their excuse for everything. And I don't remember seeing an article about how O'Reilly for instance, tried things like cutting unnecessary expenses, reducing executive bonuses, or really anything imaginative at all. No, the first we hear about trouble, they are addressing the economy by doing their part to make it worse. 31 people worse, to be exact. Come on, seriously, what all did they try first? Or is this just the first instinct?
>Javascript is actually a nice and clean language.
It is. I avoided it for years, just because I utterly hate that it was called Javascript. But AJAX forced me to use it. A good programmer can do good things with the language. I refuse to get into what bad programmers can do.
I think you're dismissing the radiation and UV problems a little too hastily. The most hardy Noweigian whaler wouldn't last 3 minutes on Mars.
>Forward by email to the State Attorney General's office and request an audit of the store.
If that makes you feel better, then go for it. I know of actual violent crimes that the Texas AG ignored. YMMV.
>So which type of autist are you, and how long have you been a virgin?
I'll claim to be an assburger if it'll get me a job, but I haven't been a virgin since the late 1970s.
Or worse, the public, not as uneducated as we are led to believe, may be allowed to see the prosecution in a copyright case being ignorant of copyright law.
So why is a person who lacks authority, expecting to assert authority? This is always the part that confuses me. Authority does not come from below, and it's that simple. Get authority (promotion, getting an authoritative position in the first place, etc.) or start a business. But don't expect, *ever*, to have anyone follow your orders if you aren't in a position to decrease or eliminate their paycheck. And don't act like this is hard to understand, because it isn't.
It's good to see a former big player withdrawing from a market. It just makes that much more room for an independent artist.
Warner reached a peak with the inception of Bugs Bunny. I'll maybe shed a nostalgic tear or something.
Last week I was laptop shopping with a friend. I being a good consultant on such things of course, made sure she understood all the options, e.g., mail order, lightly used, Mac vs. PC, Intel vs. AMD, what kind of machine specs you need before Vista is happy, etc.
Anyway in this process I suggested that we should give CC a try before buying anything, the idea being they are going out of business (I've known this for a while, so why is it news?), and that surely they'd have fire-sale prices right?
So we go over there (across the street from BB), and sure enough, the car radio room is turned up so loud that I get a migraine just walking to the computer department, the computer stock has nothing at all in the performance range we're after (but they do have prices that SHOULD represent the upper mid-range!), and the only ones that would be worth considering, were Acer and something that looks like some OEM brand that starts with "I". I just checked the website to see what that brand was... wow. They shutdown the website? What if you had an order pending? Dang.
No matter what kind of "process" you apply to a retail business, if you don't have products that are attractive to your customer base, you're sunk. And maybe 20-30 years ago their strategy of taking mundane items but spreading the price and placement out so that your "low, middle, high end" look ok, even though you don't really have a "high", maybe that worked back then. People are savvy today, and even uneducated people know more than CC's sales force.
The only people who even seemed reasonably happy there, were actually contractors from Verizon. Probably sucks to work there as well, but at least they were immune to all the CC pinheads.
I don't think the state should "recognize" or "forbid" ANY "marriage."
If two people want to enter into a contract that obligates them to sexual monogamy or establishes joint custody of children, etc., so be it, they should be able to do that. And if an insurer wants to give a discount for people in such relationships, then more power to them.
But marriage shouldn't have any effect on how much tax you pay, and it should not elevate or abridge anyone's rights, ever.
Traditional marriage favors certain classes of people over others: Good looking people with money and people with certain other social advantages, and people who choose to reproduce, are in a category that finds a natural fit for "marriage", where others do not. The idiom of marriage is simply not a context that fits well in a system of government that is aimed at equal protection and equality.
It should not be an institution of the state *at all*, and if it were simply a social phenomenon, we wouldn't be having this argument -- and if the ideas behind conventional "marriage" were enforced by binding *contracts*, we would also see very different patterns in the realm known today as "divorce."
I've just started telling people I don't "recognize" marriage using exactly the same talking points being used against "same sex" marriage, just leaving out the "same sex" parts.
>A lot of people on slashdot argue that downloading copyrighted material isn't theft
That's because it isn't. For one thing, "legal and illegal" music downloading are both described by "downloading copyrighted material" so you need to be much more specific. For another thing, copyright protection is aimed at very different goals from laws concerning theft.
Copyright law does a poor job at "punishing people who consume your work without paying you."
What copyright law is good at, is punishing someone who has taken your work, claimed it as his own, and profiting. But in the situation the RIAA finds itself, this is rarely the case.
You might want to argue that copyright law doesn't go far enough, but that's between you and your representatives.
>Well, other than the 1930's, which had a much larger foreclosure rate than we're having >now.
Family farms, back then, which led directly to the culture of "agribusiness" that we all enjoy today. You could argue that it was necessary, or we'd not have been able to grow to 300 million.
But was the foreclosure rate in single-family, urban homes anything like today?
There are a lot of things I really like about my Macbook Pro and the touchpad (quality and behavior) is one of them. I take it you disagree, so whatever.
I think there are two levels of irony going on, c.f., the quote from Field of Dreams, "...HE will come...", which mapped a quote by Theodore Roosevelt onto a novel by W.P. Kinsella, for a screenplay.
>I wish apple would sell a powerbook with a real right-click.
And I wish other laptops had the "two finger" right click and the two-finger scroll.
Invest in things that people need when they are buying houses at low prices. When you buy a foreclosed home, you want lots of home repair and remodel stuff. And there has never been a bigger foreclosure market.
>Especially not at a street price of ~$2500-3000. No thanks.
The cost of the Canon system is in the lenses, and for many professional photographers, this camera is in the territory of "the only serious choice." But if you're freaking on the camera body price, you really don't want to know what the glass costs in this system.
>The "incompetence" excuse is not going to get them out of this one.
How will it not?
Yes, thank you Mr. Bush for the massive increase in Presidential power, thank you for handing that power directly to the hand of your opposition party, and thank you for leaving office.
The gentleman in question is not a member of Obama's staff.
The article stops short of identifying what law was broken. That makes it a non-story.
It might be a joke for some, but the few guy's I've known who were in the Canadian military scared the living crap out of me. They may not seem like a threat, but then they haven't turned loose their armies of psychopathic berserkers.
I like your attitude. I worked in a really huge (by any standard) corporation. I was among the lowest-paid employees, but at the time I was very happy with that (fairly well-off compared with my peers, and it was a nice job that opened doors.) I wouldn't exactly call it "IT" but let's pretend it was for the sake of discussion. So the people I supported were direct reports to the board, and I was privy to their business at a very close level of detail. What I learned from that was, the people at the highest level of decision making authority that anyone actually had contact with, felt as powerless as what you express in your post. And the people above them had almost no hands-on dealings with the operation of the company. That situation meant it always seemed really weird if anything *at all* got done, that was to any degree outside of the standard day-to-day operation of the company. And we did indeed have to float certain issues so that they might find a stakeholder somewhere who would take it upon himself to devote resources.
Oh man, did I learn a lot in that job. Trouble is, I didn't realize I'd learned anything until years later.
>I'm not sure how this will work out in the current economic climate
We need trailblazers, we need more people willing to say "damn the torpeodes!"
I'm sick and tired of everyone blaming everything on "the economic climate."