Does your definition of "liberty" include forcing privately-owned and operated Web sites to carry and publish material that the proprietors may fundamentally disagree with?
Curious... Were you up in arms when Masterpiece Cakeshop Bakery of Colorado was ordered by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission to custom create a wedding cake containing "material that the proprietors may fundamentally disagree with?"
Apparently, tolerance is something that needs to exist only if your politics are on the correct side of the fence.
You lost your own argument. Laws are there to provide a way to force people to take responsibility because there are too many people who won't without society forcing them to.
Sorry, but you lost the argument because you were too stupid to recognize what the argument was even about. Here's a hint:
It's been established for a long time that ANONYMOUS political speech is protected by the First....
The respondent thinks that is an irresponsible "conservative" position. Fascists with a pro-censorship agenda think people are too stupid and vulnerable to be exposed to anything not explicitly approved by the Ministry of Propaganda.
Starting with the 'mag connector' it has been fairly clear to me for some time now that Apple makes their laptops to be set down on a clean desk, plugged in, and left in place most of the time. If you try to move them around, power cords come out etc and it is very annoying.
I always though the mag connector was one of the genius things that Apple did. I have replaced countless power jacks on laptops over the years because people trip over the cords or pick up a plugged-in laptop and try to drag it away without thinking.
Since Windows 10 was such a major turd, I had anticipated moving to a Mac when my current laptop wears out, but Apple is working very hard to lose my business. I would never buy a laptop with only one USB port.
It seems pretty selfish... I'm guessing most of these drivers benefiting from these apps would not be happy if traffic outside their front door massively increased, but are willing to do the same to other people.
And demanding others not inconvenience them by driving on the roads "outside their front door" is not selfish?
Back in the day, I use to live a very short walk to the bus line. It was a twenty minute drive to work but it was a ninety minute bus ride with one transfer downtown. For the two weeks I rode the bus while my car was in the shop for repair, I spent nearly three hours on the bus every day. I lost almost one whole day (20 hours) sitting on the bus over those two weeks compared to driving.
Am I the only one that still uses the original Raspberry Pi?
A follow up question:
Has anyone owned one that broke down . . . ?
I've got three or the original B's, and all of them are going strong. If one breaks, I'll replace it. Otherwise the resources are fine for the things I use it for.
I have a mix of Pi Zero, ZeroW, B+, 2, and 3. I have 9 in total and every one runs perfect. I have only ever replaced one flaky microSD card. I learned to never get the kits with the included microSD card.
Yes, your ideas suck therefore everyone's ideas suck. Got it.
Ideas are not protectable. Only the specific expression of those ideas are. If an idea is all you have, you have nothing. The suckiness value of anyone's particular idea is irrelevant.
Straws have two use cases:
(1) If you're walking or driving and holding a drink
(2) If you're disabled.
I never understood why US restaurants gave straws with glasses or cups. If it's not clean enough to drink from, you shouldn't be drinking from it. If it's clean, you don't need a straw.
(3) You have teeth that are very sensitive to cold. Some of us experience real pain when ice or cold liquids come in contact with our incisors. When I encounter somewhere that does not offer straws (like the zoo) I have to order drinks sans ice.
How about instead, we break up the content and delivery into two different companies and make Comcast compete with itself. We no longer allow bundling "discounts". If Comcast TV has to pay the same rates to Comcast Commodity Delivery Network as the rest of us Internet subscribers, I'd bet we would see more competitive rates. There are those of us that remember the rape rates charged by long distance carriers back in the 80's and 90's so there are precedents for how well it works. I pay less now for calling around the country on my unlimited cell phone service ($25) than I used to pay for just my (extremely) local phone service in 1988 ($32) and that was in dollars worth about 49% of today's. And my land line costed less than $7 per month before I completely cancelled it, although it did piggyback on my $40 Internet service.
The problem is that revenues has to cover the fixed production costs as well as the marginal costs. The idea that users should only be responsible for the marginal cost of digital goods (which is zero, or very close to it) is ridiculous. That cannot support product development unless the "product" is something like the TechDirt blog, which not coincidentally, is perhaps the chief proponent of the "price must equal marginal cost, which equals zero" economic theory.
Show me where I said "users should only be responsible for the marginal cost of digital goods" or anything like that. I said:
the product should be priced lower than when the same product has marginal costs that are much higher.
Take your strawman elsewhere, asshole. Let me explain it to you. I said products with lower marginal costs should be lower than the same product when it is available in another form with higher marginal costs. I did not say it should be the price of marginal costs or free.
Another one that isn't always considered by those who haven't worked in this sort of market is that people who purchase low value products and services are much more likely to cause customer support issues later.
That is a true concern. Particularly with complicated products. I deal with software licensing problems every day for my job and although the software itself has zero marginal cost, the licensing and activation schemes can be ridiculously complicated at times and require tech support to resolve. And I am aware of the phenomenon of "firing your customer." Just yesterday, my bank notified me that they were closing my credit card since it had been too long since I had used it. There are other hidden costs that need to be covered too. I know someone who has a habit of a high rate of returning items, often just because she changed her mind afterwards.
In short, it's not an easy decision to make. I have businesses where we've debated these issues many times, and we've done some experiments, and we know that small changes can make big differences. We also know that it's very difficult to wind back a big cut in your headline price, and that making such a cut and then finding it didn't result in a big enough increase in customer numbers would without doubt result in the business failing. It's easy to look from the customer's side and say businesses should try it, but that's a tough call to make when your staff have mortgages to pay and kids to put through school and you're being asked to gamble with their livelihoods.
You won't get an argument from me on that. It is a gamble. However, when dealing with a zero marginal cost product, it's a much smaller gamble, particularly with media when your leftover demand is being pirated already.
Most customers don't _care_ about fixed and variable costs. That's if they even know the difference.
Sure... That's why nobody complains when ebooks cost more than their hard bound counterparts.
The media market is actually similar to the water market.
Wrong again. The "water" market is way different because water is a necessary component for life. SOME amount is necessary to survive and beyond the required amount to fulfill all your needs and, nobody would pay for more at any price. You would pay everything you have for a cup of water if you were dying of thirst, but you wouldn't pay $1.00 for a million gallons extra beyond what your needs are.
But I assume you meant the bottled water market. You assumptions are wrong again. The bottled water market is a convenience market. Most customers buy because it is easier to pick up a bottle at the local gas station or quickie mart than locate a water fountain or carry their own containers from home. You can carry it with you and it's disposable. And once again, unlike media, we require water during our daily lives. We PAY for the convenience, not the product itself. Personally, I am a customer because I am on a well and I have children at home. If I were on treated city water, I would never buy bottled water since the convenience is not worth the cost to me and I buy in bulk.
The point you are trying (and failing) to make is the fungible goods substitution which is wholly separate from the expectations of zero marginal cost.
Read any Slashdot discussion on this subject, and after a few hundred comments you'll find no shortage of people who think that because the marginal cost of online distribution is close to zero, the price should be as well.
Most customers understand the difference between fixed and variable costs, but many believe that when the marginal costs are near zero, the product should be priced lower than when the same product has marginal costs that are much higher. Suppliers of course believe that pricing should reflect what the market can bear. Therein lies the dilemma.
If demand can be increased by reducing price such that more profit can be made, suppliers would be better off. Unfortunately many suppliers are afraid of upsetting existing markets by changing strategies. And of course some take the alternative tactic and increase price (and profit) per unit [cough] Apple [cough] while reducing overall demand for a product. This, however, makes very little sense in a market with near zero marginal cost unless you have totally inelastic demand.
HBO licenses content on the basis that they will charge people to see it. Youtube licenses content on the basis that they will display it to people free of charge. The app does not attempt to circumvent Google's monetization scheme for Youtube (commercials) so there is no legitimate reason to ban it.
I think your logic is pretty close to what Aereo used before they got slapped down. "It's over the air, so it's free", right? Google is being generous. They could shut down Amazon's Firestick completely. disclaimer: I own a Firestick and a Chromecast.
In Canada where the market is very costly this could mean over those 4 years you are spending $4,000 on a plan for that phone....
Wow. Do they at least buy you dinner first? I spend about $25 for Google Fi each month, taxes included. I use very little data because since most of the time I'm in WiFi areas. My kids cost me $15 per month each for unlimited talk/text with no data on Republic Wireless. We all have recent smartphones (Not Apple) and if I were really interested in lots of data, I could get Straight Talk on AT&T's towers for $45 per month (Unlimited talk/text and 10GB unthrottled data). Some of us don't see spending $1,000 per year for a single line phone service or $1,100 for a phone as a good value for our money.
If a single item that couldn't detect the weight of it caused you to have to go to an entirely new line there is only one possible answer out of three options:
(1) you're over 60;
(2) you're a retard; or
(3) warlmart's self checkout software is so bad that a single incorrectly weighted item causes it to delete all progress up to that point with no chance of recovery.
Given you post on slashdot I think that rules out you being over 60. So I'll let readers who are more familiar than me with walmart's self checkouts to determine whether or not you're a retard.
I'm glad Australia has such wonderful effective self checkout lines. But over here, I've had the same problem. And I'm not over 60, not a retard, and yes - the self checkout software is so bad that no more progress is possible without human intervention.
But you see, the problem is that there are no humans available most of the time to intervene. They are busy doing other important things like checking their Instagram or fixing the other five checkouts stalled for "are you over 21" purchases of wine, spray paint, or WD40. It turns out, it is faster (the whole reason to use self checkout) to move to a human operated line than to wait for some dumbass to shuffle over and override your checkout every few items.
So, it frequently isn't faster. It is more work. You receive no discount for doing the work yourself. And it puts a room temperature IQ out of work and on the street. My son bitches every time I pick a human express line instead of the self checkout fiasco. I make sure I tell him that if I wanted to scan and bag groceries, I'd apply for a fucking job and get paid for it.
Tom Baker is who (get it?) I think of when I think Dr. Who. That being said, I never understood the nerd love of that show. The production quality was absolutely amateur. The stories were plain awful. Sound production was so bad it was painful to hear even on tinny, single speaker TVs of the time. The robots and monsters were cringeworthy. It was like watching 1960s Lost in Space level sci-fi episodes made in 1980. Don't believe me? Compare it to contemporaries like Space 1999 or Battlestar Galactica and see which looks like a college film student project. Star Wars was released in 1977 and Alien came out in 1979. Those were the level of sc-fi expectation at the time. I cannot understand how a good premise with piss-poor execution somehow grew into a cult following. I love sci-fi, but that's one that needed to be nuked from orbit.
I have no idea if it's any better now, because I haven't seen an episode in decades.
Consider yourself lucky. My WDTVlive which I bought in mid 2013 hasn't worked reliably with Netflix for over a year. Streaming stuff off my local LAN still works perfectly. I ended up adding a Firestick just for Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Continued support for a moving target like Netflix is hit-or-miss.
Personally the Commodore was too limited to ever be successful. By the time C64 became popular the speed of improvements in personal PC was taking off. I remember struggling with finding any really useful and effective ways to use the C64. Really the advent of Windows a very good graphical interface was the biggest advancement in placing PC's in the home. The Commodore 64 simply ended up a hobbyist sort of PC which never attracted mainstream users.
Commodore 64 and VIC 20 were the Raspberry Pi's of the time. It was a great learning tool and I learned BASIC on it. I remember playing with the sound (ASDR) and Sprites and peeks and pokes. It led to a lifetime of playing with computers.
Slashdot Mirror
Curious.
Does your definition of "liberty" include forcing privately-owned and operated Web sites to carry and publish material that the proprietors may fundamentally disagree with?
Curious... Were you up in arms when Masterpiece Cakeshop Bakery of Colorado was ordered by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission to custom create a wedding cake containing "material that the proprietors may fundamentally disagree with?"
Apparently, tolerance is something that needs to exist only if your politics are on the correct side of the fence.
You lost your own argument. Laws are there to provide a way to force people to take responsibility because there are too many people who won't without society forcing them to.
Sorry, but you lost the argument because you were too stupid to recognize what the argument was even about. Here's a hint:
It's been established for a long time that ANONYMOUS political speech is protected by the First....
The respondent thinks that is an irresponsible "conservative" position. Fascists with a pro-censorship agenda think people are too stupid and vulnerable to be exposed to anything not explicitly approved by the Ministry of Propaganda.
Starting with the 'mag connector' it has been fairly clear to me for some time now that Apple makes their laptops to be set down on a clean desk, plugged in, and left in place most of the time. If you try to move them around, power cords come out etc and it is very annoying.
I always though the mag connector was one of the genius things that Apple did. I have replaced countless power jacks on laptops over the years because people trip over the cords or pick up a plugged-in laptop and try to drag it away without thinking.
Since Windows 10 was such a major turd, I had anticipated moving to a Mac when my current laptop wears out, but Apple is working very hard to lose my business. I would never buy a laptop with only one USB port.
It seems pretty selfish... I'm guessing most of these drivers benefiting from these apps would not be happy if traffic outside their front door massively increased, but are willing to do the same to other people.
And demanding others not inconvenience them by driving on the roads "outside their front door" is not selfish?
Back in the day, I use to live a very short walk to the bus line. It was a twenty minute drive to work but it was a ninety minute bus ride with one transfer downtown. For the two weeks I rode the bus while my car was in the shop for repair, I spent nearly three hours on the bus every day. I lost almost one whole day (20 hours) sitting on the bus over those two weeks compared to driving.
Am I the only one that still uses the original Raspberry Pi?
A follow up question:
Has anyone owned one that broke down . . . ?
I've got three or the original B's, and all of them are going strong. If one breaks, I'll replace it. Otherwise the resources are fine for the things I use it for.
I have a mix of Pi Zero, ZeroW, B+, 2, and 3. I have 9 in total and every one runs perfect. I have only ever replaced one flaky microSD card. I learned to never get the kits with the included microSD card.
Yes, your ideas suck therefore everyone's ideas suck. Got it.
Ideas are not protectable. Only the specific expression of those ideas are. If an idea is all you have, you have nothing. The suckiness value of anyone's particular idea is irrelevant.
Straws have two use cases: (1) If you're walking or driving and holding a drink (2) If you're disabled.
I never understood why US restaurants gave straws with glasses or cups. If it's not clean enough to drink from, you shouldn't be drinking from it. If it's clean, you don't need a straw.
(3) You have teeth that are very sensitive to cold. Some of us experience real pain when ice or cold liquids come in contact with our incisors. When I encounter somewhere that does not offer straws (like the zoo) I have to order drinks sans ice.
How about instead, we break up the content and delivery into two different companies and make Comcast compete with itself. We no longer allow bundling "discounts". If Comcast TV has to pay the same rates to Comcast Commodity Delivery Network as the rest of us Internet subscribers, I'd bet we would see more competitive rates. There are those of us that remember the rape rates charged by long distance carriers back in the 80's and 90's so there are precedents for how well it works. I pay less now for calling around the country on my unlimited cell phone service ($25) than I used to pay for just my (extremely) local phone service in 1988 ($32) and that was in dollars worth about 49% of today's. And my land line costed less than $7 per month before I completely cancelled it, although it did piggyback on my $40 Internet service.
Show me where I said "users should only be responsible for the marginal cost of digital goods" or anything like that. I said:
Take your strawman elsewhere, asshole. Let me explain it to you. I said products with lower marginal costs should be lower than the same product when it is available in another form with higher marginal costs. I did not say it should be the price of marginal costs or free.
That is a true concern. Particularly with complicated products. I deal with software licensing problems every day for my job and although the software itself has zero marginal cost, the licensing and activation schemes can be ridiculously complicated at times and require tech support to resolve. And I am aware of the phenomenon of "firing your customer." Just yesterday, my bank notified me that they were closing my credit card since it had been too long since I had used it. There are other hidden costs that need to be covered too. I know someone who has a habit of a high rate of returning items, often just because she changed her mind afterwards.
You won't get an argument from me on that. It is a gamble. However, when dealing with a zero marginal cost product, it's a much smaller gamble, particularly with media when your leftover demand is being pirated already.
Speed limits are set at retard level in many parts of the US, the goal is obviously to write tickets on demand.
Most drivers in my neck of the woods are retards anyway. So... Are you making the case that speed limits are appropriately set?
Sure... That's why nobody complains when ebooks cost more than their hard bound counterparts.
Wrong again. The "water" market is way different because water is a necessary component for life. SOME amount is necessary to survive and beyond the required amount to fulfill all your needs and, nobody would pay for more at any price. You would pay everything you have for a cup of water if you were dying of thirst, but you wouldn't pay $1.00 for a million gallons extra beyond what your needs are.
But I assume you meant the bottled water market. You assumptions are wrong again. The bottled water market is a convenience market. Most customers buy because it is easier to pick up a bottle at the local gas station or quickie mart than locate a water fountain or carry their own containers from home. You can carry it with you and it's disposable. And once again, unlike media, we require water during our daily lives. We PAY for the convenience, not the product itself. Personally, I am a customer because I am on a well and I have children at home. If I were on treated city water, I would never buy bottled water since the convenience is not worth the cost to me and I buy in bulk.
The point you are trying (and failing) to make is the fungible goods substitution which is wholly separate from the expectations of zero marginal cost.
Most customers understand the difference between fixed and variable costs, but many believe that when the marginal costs are near zero, the product should be priced lower than when the same product has marginal costs that are much higher. Suppliers of course believe that pricing should reflect what the market can bear. Therein lies the dilemma.
If demand can be increased by reducing price such that more profit can be made, suppliers would be better off. Unfortunately many suppliers are afraid of upsetting existing markets by changing strategies. And of course some take the alternative tactic and increase price (and profit) per unit [cough] Apple [cough] while reducing overall demand for a product. This, however, makes very little sense in a market with near zero marginal cost unless you have totally inelastic demand.
I think your logic is pretty close to what Aereo used before they got slapped down. "It's over the air, so it's free", right? Google is being generous. They could shut down Amazon's Firestick completely. disclaimer: I own a Firestick and a Chromecast.
Wow. Do they at least buy you dinner first? I spend about $25 for Google Fi each month, taxes included. I use very little data because since most of the time I'm in WiFi areas. My kids cost me $15 per month each for unlimited talk/text with no data on Republic Wireless. We all have recent smartphones (Not Apple) and if I were really interested in lots of data, I could get Straight Talk on AT&T's towers for $45 per month (Unlimited talk/text and 10GB unthrottled data). Some of us don't see spending $1,000 per year for a single line phone service or $1,100 for a phone as a good value for our money.
You mean the tens of millions which were less than the millions that voted for her?
To quote: The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
(guess who said that....)
Works as intended. Bug closed.
If a single item that couldn't detect the weight of it caused you to have to go to an entirely new line there is only one possible answer out of three options: (1) you're over 60; (2) you're a retard; or (3) warlmart's self checkout software is so bad that a single incorrectly weighted item causes it to delete all progress up to that point with no chance of recovery.
Given you post on slashdot I think that rules out you being over 60. So I'll let readers who are more familiar than me with walmart's self checkouts to determine whether or not you're a retard.
I'm glad Australia has such wonderful effective self checkout lines. But over here, I've had the same problem. And I'm not over 60, not a retard, and yes - the self checkout software is so bad that no more progress is possible without human intervention.
But you see, the problem is that there are no humans available most of the time to intervene. They are busy doing other important things like checking their Instagram or fixing the other five checkouts stalled for "are you over 21" purchases of wine, spray paint, or WD40. It turns out, it is faster (the whole reason to use self checkout) to move to a human operated line than to wait for some dumbass to shuffle over and override your checkout every few items.
So, it frequently isn't faster. It is more work. You receive no discount for doing the work yourself. And it puts a room temperature IQ out of work and on the street. My son bitches every time I pick a human express line instead of the self checkout fiasco. I make sure I tell him that if I wanted to scan and bag groceries, I'd apply for a fucking job and get paid for it.
When they are competing against Windows 10, the bar is set very low. It doesn't have to be insanely great anymore, just not insanely awful.
Mine certainly don't.
They HAVE a Facebook account, but they all use Instagram and Snapchat. The Facebook account is just for show for parents.
Tom Baker is who (get it?) I think of when I think Dr. Who. That being said, I never understood the nerd love of that show. The production quality was absolutely amateur. The stories were plain awful. Sound production was so bad it was painful to hear even on tinny, single speaker TVs of the time. The robots and monsters were cringeworthy. It was like watching 1960s Lost in Space level sci-fi episodes made in 1980. Don't believe me? Compare it to contemporaries like Space 1999 or Battlestar Galactica and see which looks like a college film student project. Star Wars was released in 1977 and Alien came out in 1979. Those were the level of sc-fi expectation at the time. I cannot understand how a good premise with piss-poor execution somehow grew into a cult following. I love sci-fi, but that's one that needed to be nuked from orbit.
I have no idea if it's any better now, because I haven't seen an episode in decades.
Consider yourself lucky. My WDTVlive which I bought in mid 2013 hasn't worked reliably with Netflix for over a year. Streaming stuff off my local LAN still works perfectly. I ended up adding a Firestick just for Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Continued support for a moving target like Netflix is hit-or-miss.
Does it not occur to you that you are in agreement on the interpretation of modern liberalism?
moose movements
Moose are a pretty slow source of entropy. Better to use a cat chasing its tail.
He said moose, he meant squirrel.
It's mostly because a moose once bit his sister.
Personally the Commodore was too limited to ever be successful. By the time C64 became popular the speed of improvements in personal PC was taking off. I remember struggling with finding any really useful and effective ways to use the C64. Really the advent of Windows a very good graphical interface was the biggest advancement in placing PC's in the home. The Commodore 64 simply ended up a hobbyist sort of PC which never attracted mainstream users.
Commodore 64 and VIC 20 were the Raspberry Pi's of the time. It was a great learning tool and I learned BASIC on it. I remember playing with the sound (ASDR) and Sprites and peeks and pokes. It led to a lifetime of playing with computers.
sys 64738