Actually, it wasn't the White House that said he wasn't news: it was Fox News that said he wasn't news. Because he isn't.
Right, Fox has always called him something other than news. But it's the White House that refers to Fox (as a channel) as not producing news at all. Then they cite two non-news broadcast hours as their proof. It wouldn't be so embarassing if they said the same thing about, say, MSNBC. But that channel's commentary people slavishly applaud everything this administration says or does, so they're off the hook.
It's nice to see that you're so quick to tackle issues on the merits. Only a putrid slime like Beck would resort to ad hominem attacks, right? And, aren't you supposed to be in school? It's only noon, and I'm certain that junior high school is still in session until at least 2:00PM or so. Or are you posting from the guidance counselor's office, where you're waiting your turn to be comforted because someone challenged the Hope and Change pablum you swallowed, and it's made you upset?
Fine! You've chosen to do business with authors who have decided that they're not worried if you make a million of your anonymous internet friends reproductions of what you've purchased. That's working for you, and the authors involved seem to think, so far, that it's working for them. What's not to like?
In the meantime, other authors have chosen to be more picky about their copyrights. If you find that to be wrong-headed, then don't do business with them. But don't encourage ripping them off, either, as so many people do.
those people's faces are featured prominently on Fox's broadcast advertisements for their quality NEWS
No. Olbermann does commentary/opinion for NBC, and Diane Rehm hosts the same for NPR. And yes, both NBC and NPR also do news, and the venues that carry those news broadcasts also show ads featuring their commentary/talk personalities. Just like Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, etc.
Are you saying that a broadcaster that airs news segments should only be allowed to air news? Should the Cable News Network not be allowed to air Larry King, or are you only suggesting that they should advertise using his likeness? Or are you just a troll? Ah, OK.
The "did he kill a girl" satire isn't as powerful as the satire Beck actually uses (about, say, the Marxist leanings of numerous Obama appointees who... actually cite Marx, or Mao, or Chavez as heros, etc), because he trots out video tape to keep it topical. When satire - a la The Daily Show - is anchored to your target's actual utterances, foibles, gaffes, and poor judgement, it's a lot more potent.
As for the "man, I sure hope I'm wrong on this" rhetorical technique: again, it's more effective when (as Beck has humorously done), he has a yes-the-White-House-Press-Office-knows-the-phone-number hot line, right to his studio, that he begs them to call, so that they can point out how the video taped comments of some of their idiots are wrong, or not meaningful. Obviously, the Whtie House doesn't want to take the bait, because then they'll have to actually talk about those idiots directly. But you know he's getting on their nerves when they refer to his time slot (rather than him, you know, he's "he that shall not be named") as being not actual news. Which is funny, since it's not positioned as such in the first place, any more than are, say, Keith Olbermann or Diane Rehm.
Yes, it's important that we preserve the rights to be satirical snots as needed, and at whomever we think needs to be on the receiving end. So this is a good development, no matter what you think about any of the parties involved or their positions. The only scary development is the resurgent muttering, on the left, about the actually evil "fairness doctrine."
The only people who benefit from DRM are content providers.
Well, then, maybe all of the people who want content, and who are always complaining about the quality of content, should look for a way to get what they want without there being any content creators/providers who do what they do with any prospect of earning a living. If we can just dispense with this whole notion of creative professionals, and just settle for entertainment created by junior high school vampire romance fangurlz, Bon Jovi tribute bar bands, street mimes, and hippes who want everyone to have their vegan curry recipes (for free!) then everything would just settle down nicely. There's absolutely no need for people who work for years on recording or film projects. It's pointless to expect people to work off and on for a decade on a novel. Those people should never be able to sell their works, they should instead focus on t-shirt sales and readings in coffee houses, where they are compensated with a share of the barista's tip jar. After all, it's absurd for anyone to make a single penny the week after they've spent a year doing the actual work of creating something. All entertainment should be paid for in advance by fans. Selling your work, on your own terms, after you invest the time to create it: that's, like, totally fascism.
Here's an idea: just don't do business with DRM-centric content creators or the distribution networks/agents with whom they've chosen to do business. Give your business to people who want to give away their work for free. If that really is the way to earn a living as a creative person, then truth of that notion will be plain for all to see. Put your money (or the lack of spending it) where your mouth is. If having a say in how your creative work is reproduced strikes you as eeeevil, then you surely wouldn't want to enjoy entertainment or information produced by someone who embraces the idea anyway, right? Right? Because, you know, that would be intellectually dishonest.
It's like when the government promises to create 2 million jobs in 3 years, and then those jobs are CREATED IN TWO MONTHS!!
Which, as you surely know, is complete fiction.
The cash for clunkers program gave certain people a discount off of a new car (most of which were made by foreign companies, as it turns out), and cost the future taxpayers (who will have to pay for it, with interest to the Chinese) roughly $20,000 per car to administer. All of that (including the junking of thousands of useful vehicles that could have gone to people who cannot afford to buy brand new car, even with a discount, and for a very spikey, extremely temporary boost in sales that was more than made up for weeks later by the complete collapse of the same. It was an expensive, wasteful, absurd stunt that achieved nothing except to force a bunch of lower-middle-class tax payers who can't afford to buy new cars hand some fresh debt to their children so that other people could get a fake discount on a nice new vehicle.
Jobs were not saved or created. Money was not saved. The environment wasn't impacted in any meaningful way. All we have is the normalization of more government involvement in dealings between people who make something, and the people who buy it. All at the expense of everyone's grandchildren. No, they can't get anything right. And you know it.
Maybe the US will finally join the rest of the industrialized world... instead of taking the, "find your own care" attitude
It's great, isn't it? I can't wait for Nancy Pelosi to also provide me with all of the food I need to exist, clothing, housing, and of course some politically correct entertainment when I feel the need, too. She's comfortable, this week, only taxing "millionaires" (as she dismissively calls them, which she will also call hundred-thousand-aires, next) and borrowing a crippling load of Chinese money against future generations in order to make sure that I can see a dermatologist because I'm too stupid not to walk through poison ivy, so why not do the same for all of the other services I want other people to provide for me? Obviously the "rest of the industrialized world" is facing no trouble whatsover funding huge Nanny State entitlement societies, and consider personal accountability to be old fashioned, so even more of that must be better, on every front.
The funny thing is that Pelosi's bill requires the continued activity of Old Fashioned, self-sufficient, risk-taking, business-starting/running Eeeeevil millionaires in order for it to work at all. Well, that and the threat of jail time and huge fines if you don't buy such services. To which end she will happily take someone else's money and give it to you so that you can avoid that federal legal jeopardy. Happily for her and her ilk, that will require an enormous, ever larger permanent layer of redistribution bureaucracy, enforcement agents to deal with evil healthy young people who don't buy in, and courts to deal with the consequences for not playing along.
On what planet do you think mandates are a liberal idea?
There is absolutely nothing about this entire thing that isn't under the direct control of the left. Period. They run both houses of congress and the executive branch. There isn't a single element in the 1900+ page monstrosity that Pelosi just thumped down on the table that is in any way bi-partisan. Any nod to mandates anywhere in the discussions is simply a (very weak) ackowledgement that otherwise, the insurance companies are exactly right, that either premiums, or taxes, or debt (and really, all three) will skyrocket - all while not magically insuring everyone, or in any way actually making it cost less in real terms to set a broken leg or treat lymphoma.
We need to bring about a paradigm shift, to think outside the box, and produce a clear synergy between cloud computing and virtualization.
Damn it all, man. Your don't produce synergy! You leverage synergy. Please get it right will you? The sooner you do, the sooner you can return to your core competency and synthesize some maximum value for your investors. M'kay?
Well of course it is. Without commerce between people, there would be no civilization. Without being able to conduct business, there would be no improvment in standards of living, no prosperity of any kind for anyone. The last thing we want is a government that punishes the willingness and ability of people to do business with each other. And that includes the ability for more than one person to get together and forum a business that can operate even if one of them dies, or goes away (you know, like when a business incorporates).
The government can't do its proper role without some funding. That comes from taxes, which is fine. But you can't tax people into prosperity. That has to come from the commerce between people. And its government's role to stay out of the way.
one need only look at the public option in the healthcare bill to see that... >60% of the US public want it, and yet it's all but dead
You know why? Because 60% of the people sure as hell don't want what it is that the lefties have actually come up with. People want something different, but when they see the actual nuts and bolts (forcing young people to buy health care they're not using in order to pay for other people who use it - and fining kids who don't buy it?... or making completely inadequate safeguards against giving away other people's healthcare dollars to illegal aliens, or cynically trying to set up a scheme that everyone "opt out of" at the state level, but which they'll still have to pay for?) they, of course, are telling their representatives that passing it as-is means their career is over. And they know it. As it should be.
Why? Because they're being more regulated, more taxed, more taken over by the government? Because they're dealing now with banks run by the government? Because the government wants to tell them how they can use their communication networks, or whether their employees are allowed to have an anonymous vote in the presence of labor union thugs? Oh, yeah, they're loving it. Sure.
Now Obama seems to be on the war path to completely destroy our economy
Yup. But remember: it's congress that holds the purse strings. The president can raise money or spend much of any of it without the blessings of congress. That there isn't even a bit of tension between the legislative and executive brances right now, and the breathless cult of personality that put them in power haven't yet come to terms with how much more they (and their grandchildren) are now in debt... that means there won't be any push-back, just yet. At least none that Obama's media cheerleaders will bother to observe/mention.
Nobody is suggesting that equality, in and of itself, ruins lives. We're just more of an equality of opportunity culture, than a forced equality of outcome culture (well, we were, anyway). The issue is the tearing down of one person's assets or income or day's work in order to give it to somebody else. If one person has no desire to personally sustain a certain level of productivity, but you want them to have all of the same materials, services, personal posessions, lifestyle, etc., as someone who does carry on in a much more productive way, then you have only two choices: make the productive person a slave to the non-productive person, or make it impossible for the productive person to ever put their productivity to work in exchange for what they want.
The Danish work ethic and education is far more homogenous than the much larger, diverse population of the U.S. You don't have large subcultures that have spent decades, generations, fostering an entitlement world view... living along side of other people who have spent centuries cultivating the ol' Puritan Work Ethic and whatnot that actually pays the bills. It isn't a have/have-not situation, it's a do/do-not.
the state even gives you money while you're studying
No. The state gives you other people's money. Which is fine, if everyone participating in that exchange is up for it. Perhaps that is close enough to universally true, in Denmark. It is certainly not in the U.S., where we have, for example, tens of millions of people who are in the country illegally, but happy to use the school system, or happy to hatch out a baby on this side of the border, guaranteeing them all sorts of shiny new entitlements. Don't underestimate how much less homogenous the U.S. population is, compared to Scandinavian countries. Though clearly that's changing.
BTW, it was nice to see that your government and ours were able to coordinate the arrest of some idiots planning to violently attack the press in your country for having a non-crazy editorial policy. I hope the Danes don't ever give into any pressure on that front.
I'm being a little sarcastic, here. My point is that human beings do all sorts of stuff that's just as non-productive as owning a pet. Not many people need to own a dog, and thereby consume all of the energy involved in breeding, vetting, and feeding them.
But people also don't have to drive somewhere that's being heated/cooled/lit, where they will drink alcohol and thus waste all of the energy that went into growing that barley (or potato, etc) that was fermented, processing all of the water that's used, smetling the cans or preparing the glass involved, and so on. Just don't drink at all. There! See? Think of the enormous amount of energy being saved. Those people could all be staying home, quietly, with one small light on, reading a book until their solar-charged reading light battery gives out for the night.
Or, we could all acknowledge that you'll always have one group of people lecturing another group, telling them that their activity (say, owning a dog) is the frivalous and energy-expensive thing that should be stopped... even as the complaining group is enjoying their fresh salad in the middle of winter, or having a banana that was transported to them from another freakin' continent.
We'd save a ton of energy if people didn't do anything frivalous at all (like have extra babies, or play video games, etc). The question is: who gets to decide what's frivalous? Ah.
Lo! And it shall come to pass that Nancy Pelosi's face will at last show an expression other than her glib but rictorous death smile. And even on the same day shall it come to pass that it will be the Year Of Linux On The Desktop. Yes, I say unto thee, you shall see these and other impossible things, and you shall know the truth of great mysteries, like the final episode of Lost and where your other sock is.
... when connection speeds were 1,000x or 2,000x slower than is common today
So, it's common that they're slow today, and they were 1 or 2k times more slow back then? Or is it just possible that many users' pipes are actually fast, now, and back then, they were a thousandth the speed? What the hell is it with the recent increase in this absurd way to describe relative behaviors of things? I think it was, like, a hundred times more uncommon, before.
Now, if we were powering our pets of fossil fuels as well then we could easily compare them.
The food the pets eat (including the entire production cycle involving plant and animal ingredients, the transporation to your store, your transporting of it home, the packaging it's in, all of the overhead involved, and so on), the vet care they receive, the products you buy to make them clean, healthy, comfortable - all of those activities burn fuel. Lots of it. Unless your pet eats only stuff that you kill out in the back yard, your servicing of them is a huge resource burner.
Of course, it's not as bad as the combined effects of Soccer, Kayaking, and Rock Climbing. If people would just stop doing those things, we'd avoid all sorts of carbon emissions. Oh, and going to bars to drink. Seriously. What a waste of resources.
Most ppl above me seem to be freaking out like hicks thinking the government is coming to take their guns. Its a joke guys. Its kind of interesting but they can't srsly suggest eating our pets.
Pretty easy talk from a guy that has obviously had the government come and take away many of your vowels.
If you are on salary and wish to keep you job, then yes, one ends up working for free quite a bit
No, you do not. If you are on a salary, and put in extra hours, you're putting yourself on sale in order to retain your customer (who in this case happens to be your employer). The fact that you'd consider some longer hours worked in a professional capacity to be "for free" suggests that you probably also fall for "free with purchase" marketing gimmicks and related language designed to obscure reality for non-crticial thinkers.
If I limited myself to working what I am compensated for, I will be replaced with someone who is willing to work more time than they are paid for.
No. You do work, and you are compensated. Period. If you don't like how much work you do for that compensation, go work somewhere else. I take it that perhaps you're not a professional, but perhaps more of a clock-watching clerk or other drone type worker? Salaries exist because it's how you strike a big-picture bargain between the professional and the customer/employer. It avoids lots of expensive noise in the system, surrounding hairsplitting over mintes on one side of a given hour or not.
If you can't reasonably control the time you're working on projects for your employer, you're not bringing enough to the table. And you're certainly right that someone else will. But don't confuse any of that with working for "free," since that's nonsense.
as the economy gets worse and companies have less money to spend, they are nearly certainly going to do what it takes to spend less for the same amount
Are you saying that you do not do this? You're spending your time in exchange for cash. It sounds like you'd like to minimize what you have to spend to get what you want, but at the same time you're villifying other people for doing the exact same thing. Do you never look at prices when you buy beer/groceries/gas/services? Or do you greedily look for a better deal sometimes, you evil capitalist bastard?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it wasn't the White House that said he wasn't news: it was Fox News that said he wasn't news. Because he isn't.
Right, Fox has always called him something other than news. But it's the White House that refers to Fox (as a channel) as not producing news at all. Then they cite two non-news broadcast hours as their proof. It wouldn't be so embarassing if they said the same thing about, say, MSNBC. But that channel's commentary people slavishly applaud everything this administration says or does, so they're off the hook.
It's nice to see that you're so quick to tackle issues on the merits. Only a putrid slime like Beck would resort to ad hominem attacks, right? And, aren't you supposed to be in school? It's only noon, and I'm certain that junior high school is still in session until at least 2:00PM or so. Or are you posting from the guidance counselor's office, where you're waiting your turn to be comforted because someone challenged the Hope and Change pablum you swallowed, and it's made you upset?
Fine! You've chosen to do business with authors who have decided that they're not worried if you make a million of your anonymous internet friends reproductions of what you've purchased. That's working for you, and the authors involved seem to think, so far, that it's working for them. What's not to like?
In the meantime, other authors have chosen to be more picky about their copyrights. If you find that to be wrong-headed, then don't do business with them. But don't encourage ripping them off, either, as so many people do.
those people's faces are featured prominently on Fox's broadcast advertisements for their quality NEWS
No. Olbermann does commentary/opinion for NBC, and Diane Rehm hosts the same for NPR. And yes, both NBC and NPR also do news, and the venues that carry those news broadcasts also show ads featuring their commentary/talk personalities. Just like Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, etc.
Are you saying that a broadcaster that airs news segments should only be allowed to air news? Should the Cable News Network not be allowed to air Larry King, or are you only suggesting that they should advertise using his likeness? Or are you just a troll? Ah, OK.
in the case of the BBC, if they add DRM, then citizens of the UK CAN'T NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THEM
Which isn't an argument against DRM, it's an argument against having the British government that involved in broadcasting in the first place.
The "did he kill a girl" satire isn't as powerful as the satire Beck actually uses (about, say, the Marxist leanings of numerous Obama appointees who ... actually cite Marx, or Mao, or Chavez as heros, etc), because he trots out video tape to keep it topical. When satire - a la The Daily Show - is anchored to your target's actual utterances, foibles, gaffes, and poor judgement, it's a lot more potent.
As for the "man, I sure hope I'm wrong on this" rhetorical technique: again, it's more effective when (as Beck has humorously done), he has a yes-the-White-House-Press-Office-knows-the-phone-number hot line, right to his studio, that he begs them to call, so that they can point out how the video taped comments of some of their idiots are wrong, or not meaningful. Obviously, the Whtie House doesn't want to take the bait, because then they'll have to actually talk about those idiots directly. But you know he's getting on their nerves when they refer to his time slot (rather than him, you know, he's "he that shall not be named") as being not actual news. Which is funny, since it's not positioned as such in the first place, any more than are, say, Keith Olbermann or Diane Rehm.
Yes, it's important that we preserve the rights to be satirical snots as needed, and at whomever we think needs to be on the receiving end. So this is a good development, no matter what you think about any of the parties involved or their positions. The only scary development is the resurgent muttering, on the left, about the actually evil "fairness doctrine."
The only people who benefit from DRM are content providers.
Well, then, maybe all of the people who want content, and who are always complaining about the quality of content, should look for a way to get what they want without there being any content creators/providers who do what they do with any prospect of earning a living. If we can just dispense with this whole notion of creative professionals, and just settle for entertainment created by junior high school vampire romance fangurlz, Bon Jovi tribute bar bands, street mimes, and hippes who want everyone to have their vegan curry recipes (for free!) then everything would just settle down nicely. There's absolutely no need for people who work for years on recording or film projects. It's pointless to expect people to work off and on for a decade on a novel. Those people should never be able to sell their works, they should instead focus on t-shirt sales and readings in coffee houses, where they are compensated with a share of the barista's tip jar. After all, it's absurd for anyone to make a single penny the week after they've spent a year doing the actual work of creating something. All entertainment should be paid for in advance by fans. Selling your work, on your own terms, after you invest the time to create it: that's, like, totally fascism.
Here's an idea: just don't do business with DRM-centric content creators or the distribution networks/agents with whom they've chosen to do business. Give your business to people who want to give away their work for free. If that really is the way to earn a living as a creative person, then truth of that notion will be plain for all to see. Put your money (or the lack of spending it) where your mouth is. If having a say in how your creative work is reproduced strikes you as eeeevil, then you surely wouldn't want to enjoy entertainment or information produced by someone who embraces the idea anyway, right? Right? Because, you know, that would be intellectually dishonest.
It's like when the government promises to create 2 million jobs in 3 years, and then those jobs are CREATED IN TWO MONTHS!!
Which, as you surely know, is complete fiction.
The cash for clunkers program gave certain people a discount off of a new car (most of which were made by foreign companies, as it turns out), and cost the future taxpayers (who will have to pay for it, with interest to the Chinese) roughly $20,000 per car to administer. All of that (including the junking of thousands of useful vehicles that could have gone to people who cannot afford to buy brand new car, even with a discount, and for a very spikey, extremely temporary boost in sales that was more than made up for weeks later by the complete collapse of the same. It was an expensive, wasteful, absurd stunt that achieved nothing except to force a bunch of lower-middle-class tax payers who can't afford to buy new cars hand some fresh debt to their children so that other people could get a fake discount on a nice new vehicle.
Jobs were not saved or created. Money was not saved. The environment wasn't impacted in any meaningful way. All we have is the normalization of more government involvement in dealings between people who make something, and the people who buy it. All at the expense of everyone's grandchildren. No, they can't get anything right. And you know it.
Maybe the US will finally join the rest of the industrialized world ... instead of taking the, "find your own care" attitude
It's great, isn't it? I can't wait for Nancy Pelosi to also provide me with all of the food I need to exist, clothing, housing, and of course some politically correct entertainment when I feel the need, too. She's comfortable, this week, only taxing "millionaires" (as she dismissively calls them, which she will also call hundred-thousand-aires, next) and borrowing a crippling load of Chinese money against future generations in order to make sure that I can see a dermatologist because I'm too stupid not to walk through poison ivy, so why not do the same for all of the other services I want other people to provide for me? Obviously the "rest of the industrialized world" is facing no trouble whatsover funding huge Nanny State entitlement societies, and consider personal accountability to be old fashioned, so even more of that must be better, on every front.
The funny thing is that Pelosi's bill requires the continued activity of Old Fashioned, self-sufficient, risk-taking, business-starting/running Eeeeevil millionaires in order for it to work at all. Well, that and the threat of jail time and huge fines if you don't buy such services. To which end she will happily take someone else's money and give it to you so that you can avoid that federal legal jeopardy. Happily for her and her ilk, that will require an enormous, ever larger permanent layer of redistribution bureaucracy, enforcement agents to deal with evil healthy young people who don't buy in, and courts to deal with the consequences for not playing along.
avoid using the word "subversion"
I can see you've never been to Takoma Park, MD.
Then we'd be talking about single payer, not triggers and mandates
And the left is in charge of both houses of congress and the executive branch.
On what planet do you think mandates are a liberal idea?
There is absolutely nothing about this entire thing that isn't under the direct control of the left. Period. They run both houses of congress and the executive branch. There isn't a single element in the 1900+ page monstrosity that Pelosi just thumped down on the table that is in any way bi-partisan. Any nod to mandates anywhere in the discussions is simply a (very weak) ackowledgement that otherwise, the insurance companies are exactly right, that either premiums, or taxes, or debt (and really, all three) will skyrocket - all while not magically insuring everyone, or in any way actually making it cost less in real terms to set a broken leg or treat lymphoma.
We need to bring about a paradigm shift, to think outside the box, and produce a clear synergy between cloud computing and virtualization.
Damn it all, man. Your don't produce synergy! You leverage synergy. Please get it right will you? The sooner you do, the sooner you can return to your core competency and synthesize some maximum value for your investors. M'kay?
because it works well for business
... or making completely inadequate safeguards against giving away other people's healthcare dollars to illegal aliens, or cynically trying to set up a scheme that everyone "opt out of" at the state level, but which they'll still have to pay for?) they, of course, are telling their representatives that passing it as-is means their career is over. And they know it. As it should be.
Well of course it is. Without commerce between people, there would be no civilization. Without being able to conduct business, there would be no improvment in standards of living, no prosperity of any kind for anyone. The last thing we want is a government that punishes the willingness and ability of people to do business with each other. And that includes the ability for more than one person to get together and forum a business that can operate even if one of them dies, or goes away (you know, like when a business incorporates).
The government can't do its proper role without some funding. That comes from taxes, which is fine. But you can't tax people into prosperity. That has to come from the commerce between people. And its government's role to stay out of the way.
one need only look at the public option in the healthcare bill to see that... >60% of the US public want it, and yet it's all but dead
You know why? Because 60% of the people sure as hell don't want what it is that the lefties have actually come up with. People want something different, but when they see the actual nuts and bolts (forcing young people to buy health care they're not using in order to pay for other people who use it - and fining kids who don't buy it?
OTOH, the corporatists must be *loving* it.
Why? Because they're being more regulated, more taxed, more taken over by the government? Because they're dealing now with banks run by the government? Because the government wants to tell them how they can use their communication networks, or whether their employees are allowed to have an anonymous vote in the presence of labor union thugs? Oh, yeah, they're loving it. Sure.
Now Obama seems to be on the war path to completely destroy our economy
... that means there won't be any push-back, just yet. At least none that Obama's media cheerleaders will bother to observe/mention.
Yup. But remember: it's congress that holds the purse strings. The president can raise money or spend much of any of it without the blessings of congress. That there isn't even a bit of tension between the legislative and executive brances right now, and the breathless cult of personality that put them in power haven't yet come to terms with how much more they (and their grandchildren) are now in debt
Why should the government have to control what kids have access to?
It's Hope and Change, buddy. Get with the program.
it suggests that equality doesn't ruin our lives
Nobody is suggesting that equality, in and of itself, ruins lives. We're just more of an equality of opportunity culture, than a forced equality of outcome culture (well, we were, anyway). The issue is the tearing down of one person's assets or income or day's work in order to give it to somebody else. If one person has no desire to personally sustain a certain level of productivity, but you want them to have all of the same materials, services, personal posessions, lifestyle, etc., as someone who does carry on in a much more productive way, then you have only two choices: make the productive person a slave to the non-productive person, or make it impossible for the productive person to ever put their productivity to work in exchange for what they want.
The Danish work ethic and education is far more homogenous than the much larger, diverse population of the U.S. You don't have large subcultures that have spent decades, generations, fostering an entitlement world view... living along side of other people who have spent centuries cultivating the ol' Puritan Work Ethic and whatnot that actually pays the bills. It isn't a have/have-not situation, it's a do/do-not.
the state even gives you money while you're studying
No. The state gives you other people's money. Which is fine, if everyone participating in that exchange is up for it. Perhaps that is close enough to universally true, in Denmark. It is certainly not in the U.S., where we have, for example, tens of millions of people who are in the country illegally, but happy to use the school system, or happy to hatch out a baby on this side of the border, guaranteeing them all sorts of shiny new entitlements. Don't underestimate how much less homogenous the U.S. population is, compared to Scandinavian countries. Though clearly that's changing.
BTW, it was nice to see that your government and ours were able to coordinate the arrest of some idiots planning to violently attack the press in your country for having a non-crazy editorial policy. I hope the Danes don't ever give into any pressure on that front.
I actually doubt that's true
... even as the complaining group is enjoying their fresh salad in the middle of winter, or having a banana that was transported to them from another freakin' continent.
I'm being a little sarcastic, here. My point is that human beings do all sorts of stuff that's just as non-productive as owning a pet. Not many people need to own a dog, and thereby consume all of the energy involved in breeding, vetting, and feeding them.
But people also don't have to drive somewhere that's being heated/cooled/lit, where they will drink alcohol and thus waste all of the energy that went into growing that barley (or potato, etc) that was fermented, processing all of the water that's used, smetling the cans or preparing the glass involved, and so on. Just don't drink at all. There! See? Think of the enormous amount of energy being saved. Those people could all be staying home, quietly, with one small light on, reading a book until their solar-charged reading light battery gives out for the night.
Or, we could all acknowledge that you'll always have one group of people lecturing another group, telling them that their activity (say, owning a dog) is the frivalous and energy-expensive thing that should be stopped
We'd save a ton of energy if people didn't do anything frivalous at all (like have extra babies, or play video games, etc). The question is: who gets to decide what's frivalous? Ah.
in a way completely unlike any prophesied before
Lo! And it shall come to pass that Nancy Pelosi's face will at last show an expression other than her glib but rictorous death smile. And even on the same day shall it come to pass that it will be the Year Of Linux On The Desktop. Yes, I say unto thee, you shall see these and other impossible things, and you shall know the truth of great mysteries, like the final episode of Lost and where your other sock is.
... when connection speeds were 1,000x or 2,000x slower than is common today
So, it's common that they're slow today, and they were 1 or 2k times more slow back then? Or is it just possible that many users' pipes are actually fast, now, and back then, they were a thousandth the speed? What the hell is it with the recent increase in this absurd way to describe relative behaviors of things? I think it was, like, a hundred times more uncommon, before.
Now, if we were powering our pets of fossil fuels as well then we could easily compare them.
The food the pets eat (including the entire production cycle involving plant and animal ingredients, the transporation to your store, your transporting of it home, the packaging it's in, all of the overhead involved, and so on), the vet care they receive, the products you buy to make them clean, healthy, comfortable - all of those activities burn fuel. Lots of it. Unless your pet eats only stuff that you kill out in the back yard, your servicing of them is a huge resource burner.
Of course, it's not as bad as the combined effects of Soccer, Kayaking, and Rock Climbing. If people would just stop doing those things, we'd avoid all sorts of carbon emissions. Oh, and going to bars to drink. Seriously. What a waste of resources.
Most ppl above me seem to be freaking out like hicks thinking the government is coming to take their guns. Its a joke guys. Its kind of interesting but they can't srsly suggest eating our pets.
Pretty easy talk from a guy that has obviously had the government come and take away many of your vowels.
Silly me, I was actually reading the words you used. Regardless of whether or not it's a complaint, it's incorrect.
If you are on salary and wish to keep you job, then yes, one ends up working for free quite a bit
No, you do not. If you are on a salary, and put in extra hours, you're putting yourself on sale in order to retain your customer (who in this case happens to be your employer). The fact that you'd consider some longer hours worked in a professional capacity to be "for free" suggests that you probably also fall for "free with purchase" marketing gimmicks and related language designed to obscure reality for non-crticial thinkers.
If I limited myself to working what I am compensated for, I will be replaced with someone who is willing to work more time than they are paid for.
No. You do work, and you are compensated. Period. If you don't like how much work you do for that compensation, go work somewhere else. I take it that perhaps you're not a professional, but perhaps more of a clock-watching clerk or other drone type worker? Salaries exist because it's how you strike a big-picture bargain between the professional and the customer/employer. It avoids lots of expensive noise in the system, surrounding hairsplitting over mintes on one side of a given hour or not.
If you can't reasonably control the time you're working on projects for your employer, you're not bringing enough to the table. And you're certainly right that someone else will. But don't confuse any of that with working for "free," since that's nonsense.
as the economy gets worse and companies have less money to spend, they are nearly certainly going to do what it takes to spend less for the same amount
Are you saying that you do not do this? You're spending your time in exchange for cash. It sounds like you'd like to minimize what you have to spend to get what you want, but at the same time you're villifying other people for doing the exact same thing. Do you never look at prices when you buy beer/groceries/gas/services? Or do you greedily look for a better deal sometimes, you evil capitalist bastard?