I suspect that there would be more war in the short run. There is a lot of money in the Middle East. If the world stopped buying their major export, they would likely go into a major depression. Countries that go from wealthy to extreamly poor in a very small amount of time have a tendency to go to war. Nazi Germany anyone? Heck, they didn't even have the religious ferver to help in organizing the killing.
The long term war situation may or may not be different, but I suspect the short term would be ugly.
"Yes. Those are lifestyle choices. People should pay the costs of their lifestyle choices, not force the rest of us to pay them through artificially low gas prices that don't reflect the costs of maintaining a road network or fixing the environmental damage created by large, fuel-hogging vehicles."
Great, so lets get rid of the school taxes while we are at it, and of course no sidewalks, space program, no funding to collages, and so forth. We are only going to pay for what we directly use right?
Given that the largest and most fuel hungry vehicles on the road are semis, I would suggest buying some pretty powerful firearms if we were to ever stop subsidizing the roadways they use with our much smaller vehicles. Since the price to deliver food will skyrocket and most will quickly stop delivering. Without food delivered to metropolitin areas, you can expect people to start eating their neighbors.
Energy conservation at this point is a red herring. What?!?!?!? Did I say that?!?!?!? I must be insane!!!!! No, actually, given that we are still using non-renewable energy sources, we will eventually run out. We will eventually get to the point of using renewable energy sources, but that simply will not happen until we are seriously hurting due to our current non-renewable sources running low. So, basically, we can all lower our standards of living for the next 20 (30?, 50? 100?) years, and leave the hurting and conversion to our children, or we can keep our standard of living, go through the big hurt ourselves, and get moved to renewable energy sources.
I am thoroughly convinced that our current level of technology would allow us to either move now, or easily within a decade if we started to feel the big hurt of running low on non-renewable energy.
There is a general belief by the poser-environmentalists that living crappy, and being good to the environment are the same thing. Extravagant lifestyles and environmentalism are not inherently seperate. Those that push the idea that they are, have either been conned, or have alterier motives. Whether they realize it or not.
Yes, you are right. I in fact don't believe that GTA causes harm. The comment was semi-tonge in cheek pushing the idea that prostitutes are not prostitutes because GTA exists, but in fact that GTA exists because prostitutes are prostitutes. People that have sex with prostitues because they exists, where as people don't watch Lara Croft types swinging from cave walls, because they don't exist.
So, your right, the statement is self invalidating.
just as the depiction of women as whores in GTA will have a greater impact than the large breasts in Tomb Raider.
That is because women like Lara Croft are fiction, but women like the whores in GTA are fact. You would be suprised at how well children can tell the difference between real and make believe.
I looked it up, and you are wrong. You see the issues are in the symantics. Yes, you must be insured, but since you can insure yourself, you do not have to BUY insurance. Here are the codes concerning self-insurance in Pennsylvania. They tell you both how much money you must have as well as how to get your very own self-insurance card.
At least here in California, you can insure yourself. No, you cannot just show a CHP your bank statement. That would be silly to even start to believe. I believe it is some specific bond that you have to get. When the bond is issued, you get with it what is the equivalent of a 'proof of insurance card'. So, no, not 'show the State Trooper your bank statement'. How about 'show the State Trooper your proof of self insurance'. You see, you are not failing to carry insurance, you are self insuring. I cannot attest to Pennsylvania, but I would be very suprised if every state that required insurance did not have the same provisions as here in California concerning this. It also would not suprise me if Pennsylvania had this provision and you did not know about it. Very few people in California know about it. It was put in for people that would scream about being required to buy from a company. It does not make financial sense, but it is there.
I have had Linux in this state many times. The keyboard/mouse would not respond, but I could ping the system from another computer. I just had to reboot.
I have to wonder though, if microkernels were more common, would it encourage hardware manufactureres to produce more hot swapable parts?
Telling a person to take the bus or walk is not a reasonable solution. That is telling the person to be a serf. While there may be the occasional wealthy person that can walk or ride a bike/bus to work, the only reason that those people can do it is because very few people try. The number of well paying jobs that can be maintained withour a car are very few. This is perticularly true of the middle class jobs. If you are very high skilled, you might be able to demand some unusual perks. If you are unskilled and doing a min. wage job, the employer realizes that they are pulling from the bottom and does not expect that everyone can afford a car. The vast majority which is the middle simply have to have a job to work. Many employers actually list it in their policy manuals as a requirement for employment.
That being said. You are not required to buy insurance to drive. You are requried to prove you can financially cover any losses you cause to others. Most states (all?) allow you to have a secured account that is you self insurance. This can earn interest, and in no way requries you to pay a business. But just like bail bonds, it is WAY cheaper to let someone else keep that account on your behalf for a fee. I don't find it worth it to self insure, so I pay an outside company to insure me. When I bought my Suzuki Swift brand new or $7500 our the door, I did not buy Comp/Coll insurance. This was neigther illegal nor was it a good idea for obviouse reasons. I have purchase liablility insurance for every vehicle I have owned because it was way cheaper for a much higher level of protection than what I could supply myself.
I'n not even convinced that that is happening. When my wife was on maternity leave, we had the 8 movie plan. I telecommute, and leave the TV running in the background the way others use the radio. For a good 6 months, we would send back the movie the morning after we recived it. Heck, there were a few times that we watched the movie, and dropped them back at the post office before the final pick up, so that they went back the same day. When she was not on maternity leave, we were on the 3 at a time, with the same behavior. As I've said in other posts, I have only a few movies take more than 1 day in shipping. If throttling were going on, I should have been affected.
Keep in mind that a lot of these people are calling the 'short wait'/'long wait' throttling. Even though they get a movie sent out the same day Netflix recieves their return.
Uhhh...The business model of supplying music for free and making money via ads has been well established. There is this neat little device called a "radio" that is the client for recieving this free content.
I haven't tried it with BB, but with Netflix, for awhile I would send two movies back in one sleave. This allowed be to get a decent pile of envelopes. I did this in case I lost or damaged an envelope. When I moved from Santa Rosa to Sacramento, I used the Santa Rosa envelopes, and had no problems at all.
have you tried a different DVD player? I've seen both cheap and expensive DVD players that are hyper sensetive to scratches. You may find that a different DVD player will just resolve items 2 through 4. It is highly unlikely to prevent #1 from happening.
I haven't rented from BB in over 10 years, but before I finaly gave up on them, I rented King Pin. The scene where Munts looks in his rear view mirror and halucinates his digusting land lord is doing the tounge between the fingers oral sex sign at him was gone.
Not really. I quit using BB over 10 years ago. After the third time they tried to charge me a late fee that was returned well before it was due, I realized that they were crooks.
I read your link. It specifically says in the settlement that Netflix denies throttling, and that the litigant feels that winning was uncertain. Did you read your own link?
Calling people names implies that you know that you are wrong, so you are resorting to trying to brow beat anyone that disagrees with you.
No, placing a priority on who gets the newest movie first is not 'throttling'. Look up the definition of the word. Throttling means that they are slowing down deliveries of movies. They have always been up front about the fact that if all the copies of a perticular movie are rented, that they will send you the next movie in the list. Calling #2 'throttling' is nothing more than newspeak.
The thing to look at is how many people find that delivery speed improves over time. Postal carrier change. Managers change. Processes get adjusted. I know that when I started with Netflix in early 2003, I was getting 2 day deliveries. Sometime during the first year, the speed increased to 1 day deliveries. I just assumed that they had improved their process, or opened a new delivery center. It is quite possible that my improvements were for the same/opposite reason as others slowdown. While don't for a second believe that Netflix is a holy bastion of morality. They are a business after all, but so far there is nothing to indicate that they are throttling. In fact, about 4 months ago, my fathers deliveries went from 1 day delivers to 2 days. He's been crying "throttling" to me ever since. The problem is, he gets about 2/3s the number of movies that I do. I send mine back the next day. He keeps his for 2 or three days. If Netflix were throttling, I should definitly see it before he did.
It is a whole lot harder to get people to report positive experiences than it is to get them to report bad ones.
I just checked your link, and could find nothing that indicated throttling exists. There were a lot of feedback posts about people who THINK there is throttling, but they all sound like you or worse. Not one of their complaints indicated actual throttling. There was an article posted debunking the AP stories about throttling though.
"NetFlix throttling is well documented and even admitted to by NetFlix in their TOS."
BS. I just read their terms of service. It says nothing of the sort. It does say that it prioritizes lower volume customers, but that is something entirely different than "throttling".
"1. They lied about what day they received a DVD back from me (adding 1-2 days to the time it takes for the DVD to show up as being returned on their site)"
"3. They lied about what day they shipped a DVD back to me (for example, saying they shipped the DVD on Monday but actually shipped it on Tuesday or Wednesday)."
Speculation. There is no way short of you working at Netflix and doing the recieving yourself that you could know when recieved or shipped your movies. Given the HUGE number of extreamly heavy users of Netflix that report next day shipment to and from Netflix, it seems much more likely that your local post office is the culprit. A perfect example is me and my father. He lives 20 miles from me, and rents fewer movies. He keeps his movies usually about 2 days. I always send mine back the next day. I always have a one day shipping time, and he always has 2 day shipping times. So, what does he do? He whines about throttling. Really, if Netflix were throttling, wouldn't the person that gets MORE movies be the one that gets throttled? Your examples indicate that the throttling is a myth. They don't confirm it.
"2. They lied about the availability of new releases (I would see "Very Long Wait" while a new subscriber would see "Available Now" for the exact same DVD)"
This is in the TOS. They give priority to lower volume members. They have to give priority to SOMEONE. It seems to me that if you are getting 10 movies that you want to watch a month, and another guy just has one, the other guy should get the one he wants. There are other just as fair ways of prioritizing, but the one they chose is perfectly fair. Combine that with IT IS NOT THROTTLING. Throttling means that you are slowing down, in this case, shipments. If they are still sending you movies they are not throttling.
So basically you helped convince me that the throttling is a myth, and that people that live in poor quality postal areas are misdirecting their wrath.
My experience has been that Netflix recieves and ships the same day. Recently I moved down to the one at a time plan, and have still been recieving 7 to 8 movies a month.
The last time I was in a Blockbuster was because my wife got a giftcard. Some of their used movies were actually MORE expensive than the same movie brand new from Target. We ended up leaving and just giving the card to someone that already rents at BB.
After renting everything worth watching, I have moved from the 3 at a time to the 1 at a time rental. My rentals per month have been
April - 7
March - 8
February - 7
January - 6
December - 7
November - 5
When I had the 8 at a time 2 years ago, I had 90 movies in 90 days. I call BS on the throttling.
Does anyone have proof that it is Netflix that is causing the delays? In the three years that I have been a Netflix member, I have not had more than 3 movies take more than one day shipping, and those were 2 days. I even had one that was technically a same day shipment. I sent the movie out on a Saturday, and got the next one on Monday. Since Sunday does not count as a mailing day, I got a same day shipment.
I watch a LOT of movies. In those 3 years, I have only kept a move for more than 2 days maybe 10 times, and then it has only been for 3 or 4 days. Heck, at one point I had the 8 movie plan, and had rented 90 movies in 90 days. If Netflix were actually throttling, I would think that I should be seeing it.
Gamefly on the other hand is definitly throttling. I have had games take 5 days from "shipped" to when I recieved them. It does not take 5 days to ship from LA to Sacramento.
Your friend made a mistake. If he was going through all that trouble anyway, he should have installed conduit in his walls. This way if he needs to replace his cat5 wire with cat6, all he has to do is poke his head into the attic, and start sliding the new wire down the tube. You can buy 6 hole face plates, and plugs for most connector types, including blanks for the holes you are not using.
Honestly, this pissed me off. I don't think for a second that Wendy's owe us a "double the meat" deal offer, but once they made the offer, they damn well should have to live up to it. This is definitly not a printing error. They know that they are falsely advertising their offer.
(And by pissed, I mean annoyed jsut enought to go to a different restaurant.)
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect that there would be more war in the short run. There is a lot of money in the Middle East. If the world stopped buying their major export, they would likely go into a major depression. Countries that go from wealthy to extreamly poor in a very small amount of time have a tendency to go to war. Nazi Germany anyone? Heck, they didn't even have the religious ferver to help in organizing the killing.
The long term war situation may or may not be different, but I suspect the short term would be ugly.
"Yes. Those are lifestyle choices. People should pay the costs of their lifestyle choices, not force the rest of us to pay them through artificially low gas prices that don't reflect the costs of maintaining a road network or fixing the environmental damage created by large, fuel-hogging vehicles."
Great, so lets get rid of the school taxes while we are at it, and of course no sidewalks, space program, no funding to collages, and so forth. We are only going to pay for what we directly use right?
Given that the largest and most fuel hungry vehicles on the road are semis, I would suggest buying some pretty powerful firearms if we were to ever stop subsidizing the roadways they use with our much smaller vehicles. Since the price to deliver food will skyrocket and most will quickly stop delivering. Without food delivered to metropolitin areas, you can expect people to start eating their neighbors.
Energy conservation at this point is a red herring. What?!?!?!? Did I say that?!?!?!? I must be insane!!!!! No, actually, given that we are still using non-renewable energy sources, we will eventually run out. We will eventually get to the point of using renewable energy sources, but that simply will not happen until we are seriously hurting due to our current non-renewable sources running low. So, basically, we can all lower our standards of living for the next 20 (30?, 50? 100?) years, and leave the hurting and conversion to our children, or we can keep our standard of living, go through the big hurt ourselves, and get moved to renewable energy sources.
I am thoroughly convinced that our current level of technology would allow us to either move now, or easily within a decade if we started to feel the big hurt of running low on non-renewable energy.
There is a general belief by the poser-environmentalists that living crappy, and being good to the environment are the same thing. Extravagant lifestyles and environmentalism are not inherently seperate. Those that push the idea that they are, have either been conned, or have alterier motives. Whether they realize it or not.
Yes, you are right. I in fact don't believe that GTA causes harm. The comment was semi-tonge in cheek pushing the idea that prostitutes are not prostitutes because GTA exists, but in fact that GTA exists because prostitutes are prostitutes. People that have sex with prostitues because they exists, where as people don't watch Lara Croft types swinging from cave walls, because they don't exist. So, your right, the statement is self invalidating.
just as the depiction of women as whores in GTA will have a greater impact than the large breasts in Tomb Raider.
That is because women like Lara Croft are fiction, but women like the whores in GTA are fact. You would be suprised at how well children can tell the difference between real and make believe.
I looked it up, and you are wrong. You see the issues are in the symantics. Yes, you must be insured, but since you can insure yourself, you do not have to BUY insurance. Here are the codes concerning self-insurance in Pennsylvania. They tell you both how much money you must have as well as how to get your very own self-insurance card.
The Pennsylvania Code website
Only if you call San Francisco and L.A. rural.
At least here in California, you can insure yourself. No, you cannot just show a CHP your bank statement. That would be silly to even start to believe. I believe it is some specific bond that you have to get. When the bond is issued, you get with it what is the equivalent of a 'proof of insurance card'. So, no, not 'show the State Trooper your bank statement'. How about 'show the State Trooper your proof of self insurance'. You see, you are not failing to carry insurance, you are self insuring. I cannot attest to Pennsylvania, but I would be very suprised if every state that required insurance did not have the same provisions as here in California concerning this. It also would not suprise me if Pennsylvania had this provision and you did not know about it. Very few people in California know about it. It was put in for people that would scream about being required to buy from a company. It does not make financial sense, but it is there.
I have had Linux in this state many times. The keyboard/mouse would not respond, but I could ping the system from another computer. I just had to reboot.
I have to wonder though, if microkernels were more common, would it encourage hardware manufactureres to produce more hot swapable parts?
Telling a person to take the bus or walk is not a reasonable solution. That is telling the person to be a serf. While there may be the occasional wealthy person that can walk or ride a bike/bus to work, the only reason that those people can do it is because very few people try. The number of well paying jobs that can be maintained withour a car are very few. This is perticularly true of the middle class jobs. If you are very high skilled, you might be able to demand some unusual perks. If you are unskilled and doing a min. wage job, the employer realizes that they are pulling from the bottom and does not expect that everyone can afford a car. The vast majority which is the middle simply have to have a job to work. Many employers actually list it in their policy manuals as a requirement for employment.
That being said. You are not required to buy insurance to drive. You are requried to prove you can financially cover any losses you cause to others. Most states (all?) allow you to have a secured account that is you self insurance. This can earn interest, and in no way requries you to pay a business. But just like bail bonds, it is WAY cheaper to let someone else keep that account on your behalf for a fee. I don't find it worth it to self insure, so I pay an outside company to insure me. When I bought my Suzuki Swift brand new or $7500 our the door, I did not buy Comp/Coll insurance. This was neigther illegal nor was it a good idea for obviouse reasons. I have purchase liablility insurance for every vehicle I have owned because it was way cheaper for a much higher level of protection than what I could supply myself.
I'n not even convinced that that is happening. When my wife was on maternity leave, we had the 8 movie plan. I telecommute, and leave the TV running in the background the way others use the radio. For a good 6 months, we would send back the movie the morning after we recived it. Heck, there were a few times that we watched the movie, and dropped them back at the post office before the final pick up, so that they went back the same day. When she was not on maternity leave, we were on the 3 at a time, with the same behavior. As I've said in other posts, I have only a few movies take more than 1 day in shipping. If throttling were going on, I should have been affected.
Keep in mind that a lot of these people are calling the 'short wait'/'long wait' throttling. Even though they get a movie sent out the same day Netflix recieves their return.
Uhhh...The business model of supplying music for free and making money via ads has been well established. There is this neat little device called a "radio" that is the client for recieving this free content.
I haven't tried it with BB, but with Netflix, for awhile I would send two movies back in one sleave. This allowed be to get a decent pile of envelopes. I did this in case I lost or damaged an envelope. When I moved from Santa Rosa to Sacramento, I used the Santa Rosa envelopes, and had no problems at all.
have you tried a different DVD player? I've seen both cheap and expensive DVD players that are hyper sensetive to scratches. You may find that a different DVD player will just resolve items 2 through 4. It is highly unlikely to prevent #1 from happening.
I haven't rented from BB in over 10 years, but before I finaly gave up on them, I rented King Pin. The scene where Munts looks in his rear view mirror and halucinates his digusting land lord is doing the tounge between the fingers oral sex sign at him was gone.
Not really. I quit using BB over 10 years ago. After the third time they tried to charge me a late fee that was returned well before it was due, I realized that they were crooks.
I read your link. It specifically says in the settlement that Netflix denies throttling, and that the litigant feels that winning was uncertain. Did you read your own link?
Calling people names implies that you know that you are wrong, so you are resorting to trying to brow beat anyone that disagrees with you.
No, placing a priority on who gets the newest movie first is not 'throttling'. Look up the definition of the word. Throttling means that they are slowing down deliveries of movies. They have always been up front about the fact that if all the copies of a perticular movie are rented, that they will send you the next movie in the list. Calling #2 'throttling' is nothing more than newspeak.
The thing to look at is how many people find that delivery speed improves over time. Postal carrier change. Managers change. Processes get adjusted. I know that when I started with Netflix in early 2003, I was getting 2 day deliveries. Sometime during the first year, the speed increased to 1 day deliveries. I just assumed that they had improved their process, or opened a new delivery center. It is quite possible that my improvements were for the same/opposite reason as others slowdown. While don't for a second believe that Netflix is a holy bastion of morality. They are a business after all, but so far there is nothing to indicate that they are throttling. In fact, about 4 months ago, my fathers deliveries went from 1 day delivers to 2 days. He's been crying "throttling" to me ever since. The problem is, he gets about 2/3s the number of movies that I do. I send mine back the next day. He keeps his for 2 or three days. If Netflix were throttling, I should definitly see it before he did.
It is a whole lot harder to get people to report positive experiences than it is to get them to report bad ones.
I just checked your link, and could find nothing that indicated throttling exists. There were a lot of feedback posts about people who THINK there is throttling, but they all sound like you or worse. Not one of their complaints indicated actual throttling. There was an article posted debunking the AP stories about throttling though.
"NetFlix throttling is well documented and even admitted to by NetFlix in their TOS."
BS. I just read their terms of service. It says nothing of the sort. It does say that it prioritizes lower volume customers, but that is something entirely different than "throttling".
"1. They lied about what day they received a DVD back from me (adding 1-2 days to the time it takes for the DVD to show up as being returned on their site)"
"3. They lied about what day they shipped a DVD back to me (for example, saying they shipped the DVD on Monday but actually shipped it on Tuesday or Wednesday)."
Speculation. There is no way short of you working at Netflix and doing the recieving yourself that you could know when recieved or shipped your movies. Given the HUGE number of extreamly heavy users of Netflix that report next day shipment to and from Netflix, it seems much more likely that your local post office is the culprit. A perfect example is me and my father. He lives 20 miles from me, and rents fewer movies. He keeps his movies usually about 2 days. I always send mine back the next day. I always have a one day shipping time, and he always has 2 day shipping times. So, what does he do? He whines about throttling. Really, if Netflix were throttling, wouldn't the person that gets MORE movies be the one that gets throttled? Your examples indicate that the throttling is a myth. They don't confirm it.
"2. They lied about the availability of new releases (I would see "Very Long Wait" while a new subscriber would see "Available Now" for the exact same DVD)"
This is in the TOS. They give priority to lower volume members. They have to give priority to SOMEONE. It seems to me that if you are getting 10 movies that you want to watch a month, and another guy just has one, the other guy should get the one he wants. There are other just as fair ways of prioritizing, but the one they chose is perfectly fair. Combine that with IT IS NOT THROTTLING. Throttling means that you are slowing down, in this case, shipments. If they are still sending you movies they are not throttling.
So basically you helped convince me that the throttling is a myth, and that people that live in poor quality postal areas are misdirecting their wrath.
My experience has been that Netflix recieves and ships the same day. Recently I moved down to the one at a time plan, and have still been recieving 7 to 8 movies a month.
The last time I was in a Blockbuster was because my wife got a giftcard. Some of their used movies were actually MORE expensive than the same movie brand new from Target. We ended up leaving and just giving the card to someone that already rents at BB.
After renting everything worth watching, I have moved from the 3 at a time to the 1 at a time rental. My rentals per month have been April - 7 March - 8 February - 7 January - 6 December - 7 November - 5 When I had the 8 at a time 2 years ago, I had 90 movies in 90 days. I call BS on the throttling.
Does anyone have proof that it is Netflix that is causing the delays? In the three years that I have been a Netflix member, I have not had more than 3 movies take more than one day shipping, and those were 2 days. I even had one that was technically a same day shipment. I sent the movie out on a Saturday, and got the next one on Monday. Since Sunday does not count as a mailing day, I got a same day shipment.
I watch a LOT of movies. In those 3 years, I have only kept a move for more than 2 days maybe 10 times, and then it has only been for 3 or 4 days. Heck, at one point I had the 8 movie plan, and had rented 90 movies in 90 days. If Netflix were actually throttling, I would think that I should be seeing it.
Gamefly on the other hand is definitly throttling. I have had games take 5 days from "shipped" to when I recieved them. It does not take 5 days to ship from LA to Sacramento.
Your friend made a mistake. If he was going through all that trouble anyway, he should have installed conduit in his walls. This way if he needs to replace his cat5 wire with cat6, all he has to do is poke his head into the attic, and start sliding the new wire down the tube. You can buy 6 hole face plates, and plugs for most connector types, including blanks for the holes you are not using.
Or the way an idiot without a cell phone misses the red light and slams into you: inattention to your surroundings.
Honestly, this pissed me off. I don't think for a second that Wendy's owe us a "double the meat" deal offer, but once they made the offer, they damn well should have to live up to it. This is definitly not a printing error. They know that they are falsely advertising their offer. (And by pissed, I mean annoyed jsut enought to go to a different restaurant.)