Actually, I would be willing to bet money that more accidents are caused from blow jobs while driving. I mean seriously... that's something that everybody does, and an orgasm is a hell of a lot more distracting than any text message I could possibly think of. But I agree... it's already covered; we don't need any more ridiculous laws like this. Stuff like this makes me wish that more people would wake up and vote Libertarian.
I know a lot of people probably don't use their PS2's as DVD players, but some do (I do). I think that once the PS3 starts rolling, Blue Ray will pick up some serious steam.
The US is the richest nation in the world. If the government believed that the problems mentioned could be solved by throwing a couple of billion dollars at them then they would.
It's absolutely and completely in the government's interest to keep the masses watching TV. Of course they're gonna subsidize TV. If you don't have the general public watching TV, then what would they do...? Have their own thoughts? Read? Talk to each other? C'mon... if even a quarter of the TV viewing public did that (turned off the idiot box), we'd have a revolution. Keep 'em watching. Keep 'em stupid.
Subsidize TV and religion (no taxes on churches), and you have a nice, gullible consumer base to keep paying taxes, all the while not questioning authority.
No, as opposed to you buying a Linux laptop from a company that sells Linux laptops. I don't see what everybody's obsession is with wanting to buy a Dell. Is it a status symbol to have a computer box that says "Dell" on it?
And so on. Support "Linux", not "Red Hat". Ship the hardware and let the buyer get support from the distribution s/he prefers.
Not gonna happen. Not in a million, billion, trillion years. Dell has to maintain some semblance of quality and reputation. People who don't know what they're getting into, and buy a Dell box with some kind of Linux, are going to be sorely disappointed in Dell once they realize what their support options are. Also, how is Dell going to handle warranty issues? How can they possibly troubleshoot a PC is it has god-knows-what software on it?
Back to the ubiquitous car analogy: Toyota isn't going to sell you a car without tires. It's a hell of a lot more headache than it's worth.
I'm sure that Sony's not worried. Game consoles these days are long lived... much more so than even PC's. There are still tons and tons of great games coming out for the 6 year old PS2. I'm sure that there are lots of people like myself, that will, most definitely buy a PS3, just as soon as some games come out that people want. Price isn't a real consideration.... You get what you pay for, and a "Wii" ain't gonna cut it for me. I want the best graphics, and the best sound, and I want to be able to play all of my old games, and I want to be able to play DVD's, and I have no interest in the silly controller gimmick thing.
I'm surprised when new models of cars show up on the road.
Same here (No TV, no web ads, no commercial radio). It's kinda' nice, huh? It's amazing to realize what kind of crap regular people are exposed to every day that you don't even notice until you stop all of the advertising. The car thing is interesting... I used to know about all of the new cars before they were introduced, and I'm not even that much of a gear head. I didn't even realize that I was being exposed to that much advertising until I turned it off about 6 years ago.
Not only do I not know what to buy, but I simply don't (buy)! I find that just about the only place I "shop" these days is the grocery store. Instead of having all of the new gadgets and whatever crap I used to buy, now I spend my extra money on live music, books, travel, and all other kinds of cool stuff that I couldn't afford before.
That's a pretty disingenuous statement. In reality, it doesn't necessarily let you use your computer any way you want. There's tons and tons of software that simply doesn't exist as OSS, so unless you're a professional programmer, you can't "use your computer any way you want".
You choose free software because it gives you the freedom to use your computer the way you want.
I want to use my computer as a point-of-sale workstation that is robust. Free software can't help me with that. What you're saying is only true if you can find an app that does what you need it to do.
Because almost nobody who pirates is a heavy user most would find OO.o more than adequate for their needs.
I disagree. I know plenty of people with pirated copies, and if push came to shove, they'd just buy it. It's much easier for the vast majority of people I know to fork out $300 than to deal with new/different/pain-in-the-ass software. Life is just too damn hectic to be screwing around with software in order to save a few hundred bucks. Paying for software is like paying the phone bill. Most people aren't agonizing over line items in their phone bills. You get it, if it's too high, you say, "shit", pay the bill, and forget it. It's just not that big of a deal.
They can't just sell software without support. It has to at least be available from somewhere. This is a multi-billion dollar corporation. They're not going to sell do-it-yourself kits. They're still responsible for selling good stuff, else their reputation goes down the tubes.
Look, a lot of OSS software is free, already. Where are the users? Most OSS for projects that are not server-room based haven't gone anywhere at all, even with a price tag of $0. OSS just doesn't cut it for many users (it's missing several critical apps that keeps me from switching to the whole Linux/OSS platform). Even if comparable software exists, it's often unusable non-geeks. It's already illegal to do what people are doing (pirating software), and people know there's a risk to getting caught, but people do it anyway! I don't think that prosecuting more piraters is really going to have an effect. If people haven't come running for Linux and the rest of it already, they're never going to.
There's a big difference between ugly and overweight. It's not necessarily the fault of an "ugly" person for being "ugly". 99.9% of the time, there's exactly one person to blame for overweight-ness... and that's the overweight person.
My point is the fact that there's ANY kind of public discourse of science vs. fairy tales is absolutely absurd. Some of the public discussions coming out of the US sound like they should be coming out of a country like Afghanistan... not from the country that recently used to be the world leader in all kinds of scientific research.
What truth? Embryonic stem cells are just by-products from abortions, from what I understand. What's the big deal about that? It's like when people get upset about pig and beef parts that we sell for dogs. Pigs aren't being raised and slaughtered for their ears... that's absurd... the ears are just the left-overs. Same thing for embryonic stem cells. People aren't getting knocked up to produce embryonic stem cells. These are unwanted pregnancies in the first place. There's no reason that tissue shouldn't be put to scientific use.
Science should NOT be politicized, but unfortunately, in the US, we have Bible-thumping Jesus-freaks who try to legislate away science such as evolution, dinosaurs, stem-cell research, and all other kinds of things that rational people understand as being as close to factual as we're probably going to get any time soon. I see this as a well-deserved backlash from the scientific community demanding that science, which revolves around getting as close to *truth* as possible, not be twisted by politics and those people who talk to invisible fairy-tale beings that live in the sky. I completely understand the absolute maddening insanity that real scientists have to deal with, and I sympathize with them. The only debate about global-warming should be scientific debate WITHIN the scientific community. I wish that scientists could ignore the money-grabbers, the politicians, and the Jesus-freaks, but unfortunately, most pure science has to be funded by the government, so they Do have to deal with such crap.
Don't forget... there's also no good way of web servers to be sure where their clients are located geographically. You couldn't do it on a state-by-state basis. Oh well, I guess this law won't work. That's a real shame...
I think your dog buggery's been taking your mind off your trolling, DogShit. Quality has really been suffering lately. And I won't even go into how weak your shilling has become...
Sorry about that. With your mom's two-for-one sale this past week, I've been kinda' tired.
People like Jim Carrey (for instance) are not making news daily. Just lock the damn article, then when someone proposes something new to add in the discussion page, unlock it and add it.
And again you're back to... who decides when to unlock and/or lock an article? An expert, or any one of the hundreds of sad people who like to play "editor" on Wikipedia who may or may not have any kind of education or credentials whatsoever?
Wikipedia is an idea that is inherently flawed. It simply can't work. A thousand idiots are not going to magically produce any kind of correct information. A million idiots aren't going to magically produce correct information.
Because it requires someone with some kind of credentials to determine if the information is worthwhile or accurate. That's the whole point of requiring credentials. The whole "thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters working for a thousand years" thing isn't really working out for Wikipedia. Those monkeys are still, by and large, producing gibberish, and not any works of Shakespeare, as the naive founders of Wikipedia were hoping would happen.
Well, either Google can fix it, or the shopkeepers can just do what the rest of us have already done already... just add it manually to Google. My point is if a shop keeper can go through the headache of buying a very expensive Yellow Pages ad, there's no reason those same shop keepers can't also add their shop to Google, which takes all of 30 seconds. As people start using Google more and more, eventually, they'll all get added, unless the store owner is completely brain dead and has never heard of Google.
In my opinion, Google Maps has a much more accurate database. Partially because the yellow pages is only updated yearly (actually, even less, in certain instances), I, more often than not, find listings that are long since dead. The Yellow Pages lists everybody who has a "business" number, regardless of whether or not they actually are in business. Google Maps/Local requires a tiny but of effort on the part of the business to get listed. Even with completely non-computer related businesses, you're still going to have better luck with a business that knows what Google is and has made that effort to get listed. Yellow Pages lists everybody and anybody with a telephone, and it doesn't list anybody who has gotten rid of their land line, already.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I would be willing to bet money that more accidents are caused from blow jobs while driving. I mean seriously... that's something that everybody does, and an orgasm is a hell of a lot more distracting than any text message I could possibly think of. But I agree... it's already covered; we don't need any more ridiculous laws like this. Stuff like this makes me wish that more people would wake up and vote Libertarian.
I know a lot of people probably don't use their PS2's as DVD players, but some do (I do). I think that once the PS3 starts rolling, Blue Ray will pick up some serious steam.
The US is the richest nation in the world. If the government believed that the problems mentioned could be solved by throwing a couple of billion dollars at them then they would.
You're kidding, right?
It's absolutely and completely in the government's interest to keep the masses watching TV. Of course they're gonna subsidize TV. If you don't have the general public watching TV, then what would they do...? Have their own thoughts? Read? Talk to each other? C'mon... if even a quarter of the TV viewing public did that (turned off the idiot box), we'd have a revolution. Keep 'em watching. Keep 'em stupid.
Subsidize TV and religion (no taxes on churches), and you have a nice, gullible consumer base to keep paying taxes, all the while not questioning authority.
No, as opposed to you buying a Linux laptop from a company that sells Linux laptops. I don't see what everybody's obsession is with wanting to buy a Dell. Is it a status symbol to have a computer box that says "Dell" on it?
And so on. Support "Linux", not "Red Hat". Ship the hardware and let the buyer get support from the distribution s/he prefers.
Not gonna happen. Not in a million, billion, trillion years. Dell has to maintain some semblance of quality and reputation. People who don't know what they're getting into, and buy a Dell box with some kind of Linux, are going to be sorely disappointed in Dell once they realize what their support options are. Also, how is Dell going to handle warranty issues? How can they possibly troubleshoot a PC is it has god-knows-what software on it?
Back to the ubiquitous car analogy: Toyota isn't going to sell you a car without tires. It's a hell of a lot more headache than it's worth.
I'm sure that Sony's not worried. Game consoles these days are long lived... much more so than even PC's. There are still tons and tons of great games coming out for the 6 year old PS2. I'm sure that there are lots of people like myself, that will, most definitely buy a PS3, just as soon as some games come out that people want. Price isn't a real consideration.... You get what you pay for, and a "Wii" ain't gonna cut it for me. I want the best graphics, and the best sound, and I want to be able to play all of my old games, and I want to be able to play DVD's, and I have no interest in the silly controller gimmick thing.
I'm surprised when new models of cars show up on the road.
Same here (No TV, no web ads, no commercial radio). It's kinda' nice, huh? It's amazing to realize what kind of crap regular people are exposed to every day that you don't even notice until you stop all of the advertising. The car thing is interesting... I used to know about all of the new cars before they were introduced, and I'm not even that much of a gear head. I didn't even realize that I was being exposed to that much advertising until I turned it off about 6 years ago.
Not only do I not know what to buy, but I simply don't (buy)! I find that just about the only place I "shop" these days is the grocery store. Instead of having all of the new gadgets and whatever crap I used to buy, now I spend my extra money on live music, books, travel, and all other kinds of cool stuff that I couldn't afford before.
That's a pretty disingenuous statement. In reality, it doesn't necessarily let you use your computer any way you want. There's tons and tons of software that simply doesn't exist as OSS, so unless you're a professional programmer, you can't "use your computer any way you want".
You choose free software because it gives you the freedom to use your computer the way you want.
I want to use my computer as a point-of-sale workstation that is robust. Free software can't help me with that. What you're saying is only true if you can find an app that does what you need it to do.
Because almost nobody who pirates is a heavy user most would find OO.o more than adequate for their needs.
I disagree. I know plenty of people with pirated copies, and if push came to shove, they'd just buy it. It's much easier for the vast majority of people I know to fork out $300 than to deal with new/different/pain-in-the-ass software. Life is just too damn hectic to be screwing around with software in order to save a few hundred bucks. Paying for software is like paying the phone bill. Most people aren't agonizing over line items in their phone bills. You get it, if it's too high, you say, "shit", pay the bill, and forget it. It's just not that big of a deal.
They can't just sell software without support. It has to at least be available from somewhere. This is a multi-billion dollar corporation. They're not going to sell do-it-yourself kits. They're still responsible for selling good stuff, else their reputation goes down the tubes.
Look, a lot of OSS software is free, already. Where are the users? Most OSS for projects that are not server-room based haven't gone anywhere at all, even with a price tag of $0. OSS just doesn't cut it for many users (it's missing several critical apps that keeps me from switching to the whole Linux/OSS platform). Even if comparable software exists, it's often unusable non-geeks. It's already illegal to do what people are doing (pirating software), and people know there's a risk to getting caught, but people do it anyway! I don't think that prosecuting more piraters is really going to have an effect. If people haven't come running for Linux and the rest of it already, they're never going to.
There's a big difference between ugly and overweight. It's not necessarily the fault of an "ugly" person for being "ugly". 99.9% of the time, there's exactly one person to blame for overweight-ness... and that's the overweight person.
Very fat dwarves, at that.
My point is the fact that there's ANY kind of public discourse of science vs. fairy tales is absolutely absurd. Some of the public discussions coming out of the US sound like they should be coming out of a country like Afghanistan... not from the country that recently used to be the world leader in all kinds of scientific research.
What truth? Embryonic stem cells are just by-products from abortions, from what I understand. What's the big deal about that? It's like when people get upset about pig and beef parts that we sell for dogs. Pigs aren't being raised and slaughtered for their ears... that's absurd... the ears are just the left-overs. Same thing for embryonic stem cells. People aren't getting knocked up to produce embryonic stem cells. These are unwanted pregnancies in the first place. There's no reason that tissue shouldn't be put to scientific use.
Science should NOT be politicized, but unfortunately, in the US, we have Bible-thumping Jesus-freaks who try to legislate away science such as evolution, dinosaurs, stem-cell research, and all other kinds of things that rational people understand as being as close to factual as we're probably going to get any time soon. I see this as a well-deserved backlash from the scientific community demanding that science, which revolves around getting as close to *truth* as possible, not be twisted by politics and those people who talk to invisible fairy-tale beings that live in the sky. I completely understand the absolute maddening insanity that real scientists have to deal with, and I sympathize with them. The only debate about global-warming should be scientific debate WITHIN the scientific community. I wish that scientists could ignore the money-grabbers, the politicians, and the Jesus-freaks, but unfortunately, most pure science has to be funded by the government, so they Do have to deal with such crap.
Its a shame Dell doesn't latch onto this idea.
Why? Just buy the damn Acer, and be done with it! Do you really want a computer case that has the word "Dell" printed on it?
Don't forget... there's also no good way of web servers to be sure where their clients are located geographically. You couldn't do it on a state-by-state basis. Oh well, I guess this law won't work. That's a real shame...
I think your dog buggery's been taking your mind off your trolling, DogShit. Quality has really been suffering lately. And I won't even go into how weak your shilling has become...
Sorry about that. With your mom's two-for-one sale this past week, I've been kinda' tired.
People like Jim Carrey (for instance) are not making news daily. Just lock the damn article, then when someone proposes something new to add in the discussion page, unlock it and add it.
And again you're back to... who decides when to unlock and/or lock an article? An expert, or any one of the hundreds of sad people who like to play "editor" on Wikipedia who may or may not have any kind of education or credentials whatsoever?
Wikipedia is an idea that is inherently flawed. It simply can't work. A thousand idiots are not going to magically produce any kind of correct information. A million idiots aren't going to magically produce correct information.
Because it requires someone with some kind of credentials to determine if the information is worthwhile or accurate. That's the whole point of requiring credentials. The whole "thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters working for a thousand years" thing isn't really working out for Wikipedia. Those monkeys are still, by and large, producing gibberish, and not any works of Shakespeare, as the naive founders of Wikipedia were hoping would happen.
Well, either Google can fix it, or the shopkeepers can just do what the rest of us have already done already... just add it manually to Google. My point is if a shop keeper can go through the headache of buying a very expensive Yellow Pages ad, there's no reason those same shop keepers can't also add their shop to Google, which takes all of 30 seconds. As people start using Google more and more, eventually, they'll all get added, unless the store owner is completely brain dead and has never heard of Google.
In my opinion, Google Maps has a much more accurate database. Partially because the yellow pages is only updated yearly (actually, even less, in certain instances), I, more often than not, find listings that are long since dead. The Yellow Pages lists everybody who has a "business" number, regardless of whether or not they actually are in business. Google Maps/Local requires a tiny but of effort on the part of the business to get listed. Even with completely non-computer related businesses, you're still going to have better luck with a business that knows what Google is and has made that effort to get listed. Yellow Pages lists everybody and anybody with a telephone, and it doesn't list anybody who has gotten rid of their land line, already.