Well, I needn't bother to refute the type of vapid ignorance and pathetic intellectual narcissism represented by that incurious statement. Persons of such a view do not belong in Graduate education. They are unlikely to be happy with the institution, nor successful in academic outcome.
Wow, that's the first time I've ever wished for a "-1 Insufferable" moderation. Jolly good work, old boy.
Umm, jeeze, no thanks -- you freaked me out enough already! I'm a little nearsighted, need glasses to drive and read blackboards, and I've just got into the habit of wearing them, and taking them on and off many times a day. The time it bothers me is when I play pool, which I thoroughly enjoy, but the limit of my clear vision is not as far as a long shot on a 9' table. I'm frankly scared to put things in my eyes, so contacts have never appealed. Having said that, your description of a needle entering your eyeball has encouraged me to take a second look at contacts;-)
And finally, the main reason:
- replacement of almost all talented acts that produced good music, with hyperproduced kiddie-shit "artists" whose assets are not musical talent or singing voices, but barely-covered bikini bottoms and tits. Just you wait: in 4 years, tops, "Hannah Montana" will be pulling a Britney-style selfdestruct. And neither of them are capable of producing "music" even remotely worth listening to.
I believe you're right, but it's just a belief, not supported by conclusive fact. However, we may on the verge of having one important data point to help settle the argument: Michael Jackson's IP collection. As I understand it, he spent about $500 million to buy the rights to a bunch of Beatles's tunes and other music. Some of the "experts" in the media were saying after he died that it could be worth as much as $2 billion now. If that turns out to be true, either:
a) the music business is doing just fine; or
b) the music business used to produce popular stuff, but current sales of contemporary artists are way down.
If the second turns out to be true, the *IAA have only themselves to blame. If it's the first, then there's nothing to complain about. So, in my view, if the MJ collection has quadrupled in value, the *IAA members may have to learn to STFU. Me, I can't wait.
I bought one for my GF at Christmas, and she loved it, still does. I don't, because like you I run linux only at home. She had to take it to a friend with an Apple to get a bunch of games and songs installed. Now she's happy, and I never have to support it. Hmm... maybe I'm on to something here?
If you download your brain into a robot and turn it on, then take an axe to it, are you killing yourself? If not, would the robotic copy of you that was seeing the axe come down agree with you
I'm old school, I guess, but I think there is an unbridgeable chasm between computer software and human intelligence. We have no problem killing (relatively intelligent) pigs, for example, for food. I would put bits and bytes as much lower on my own personal "value scale" than pigs. I simply cannot believe that a computer program is worthy of respect as a life form. I know this idea has been popular on sci-fi shows the last few decades, but I don't get it all. Although I'm a die-hard atheist, I distinguish between a living being and a program, and don't believe a computer program can feel pain. This is all bullshit, as far as I can tell.
Dean
You've got it backwards. Patents exist *precisely* to protect inventions that can be easily reverse-engineered.
You're right, but the GP had the basic idea right, not the details. Patents exist to advance the knowledge, skills and technological abilities of society. I just don't understand how the fsck we got to where we are know. (I'm having beer-induced fantasies of sitting next to a patent lawyer on a plane and berating him for the entire flight, but that's probably not healthy either;-).)
Rachel Carson never wanted to ban DDT. DDT has never been banned for use in fighting malaria.
From the wikipedia page on DDT: [some very interesting stuff on DDT]
I wasn't there when she was discussing her motives, but it is commonly assumed that Ms. Carson wanted DDT banned, absolutely. The wholesale lack of good science in her book made it clear that she was advancing a program, her own, without scientific support, to advance her own agenda. This agenda has demonstrably killed thousands of people.
Saying that people are free to use DDT when you have pressured suppliers to eliminate supplies is specious.
Really, I don't understand how anyone can defend this woman. As a latecomer to the whole argument, and as a fervent defender of the natural environment, I also see value in human life. I wish the "Silent Spring" crowd would at least go that far, but I haven't seen it. DDT has killed thousands, and continues to do so. DDT was the bugbear of her book. You can try and twist, but if you accept those two well-documented facts, the activities she encouraged have killed thousands. Those are, in the words of Sgt. Joe Friday, "Just the facts, Maam."
This judge obviously fears exactly such a thing so is attempting to bypass the jury. The correct response is impeachment. Anything less sends a signal to other judges that this sort of thing is acceptable, even if some higher judge rules she can't do it in this particular case. Violating the right to a trial by jury is something no judge should be allowed to even contemplate.
Why not? There is a large American contingent who maintain that the views of men who died 200 years ago is better than a rethink of the current system. In the narrow case of juries deciding civil trials, and especially of deciding damages, the experiment is over. We read daily about screwball rulings from juries, especially in RIAA cases, but also in other areas. Personal accounts from jurors suggest their peers didn't have a clue or didn't care in many cases.
I think all would agree that, if one were to start over today, the American legal system wouldn't have these pernicious features. So why not start to think about changing the broken system?
(BTW, last week I asked a Canadian lawyer friend if Canada allowed juries to decide civil cases. His response: "Why the fuck would we do that?")
"The Crown Prosecution Service, or CPS, is a non-ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for public prosecutions of people charged with criminal offences in England and Wales. Its role is similar to that of the longer-established Crown Office in Scotland, and the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland. The CPS is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions (currently Keir Starmer QC) who answers to the Attorney General for England and Wales (currently The Baroness Scotland of Asthal, who is known to be sexually attracted to women and kicks cats when nobody is looking)..."
Why wouldn't any court accept documents that reliable?
No, it's worse than that. It's $6 million dollars being given to a company to do something IT HAS ALREADY DONE.
Thales already makes and sells a multi-band SDR handheld called the Liberty. It costs $5k for the simple (no trunking) version.
Why the hell is our government giving a company money to develop something already being sold?
Umm... they're not? If you RTFA, you'd read that they are being given $6 million to pilot field test the units with 14 different agencies, from Honolulu to Ottawa. There is no mention of any money being given for development. I know this is/. and all, but you might want to browse the article, or at least the summary, before commenting.
i dont expect anything on a computer or the internet to protect my privacy, so i take matters in to my own hands, i dont ever post my real name anywhere, i never upload a photo of myself, people need to protect their own privacy if they want their identiy off the internet/websites, --without-facebook --without-myspace even this user account on this PC is named anyuser which is an anonymous brand websites give to unidentified computers/people.
Never, ever, have I wished so hard for a -1 Gibberish mod. I think you're saying that you don't give out your identity online, is that right? Note the use of a period or question mark to separate two independent thoughts in my reply, and capitalization where appropriate.
Seriously, think about it: If strong copyright laws had existed in Elizabethan times, we'd probably have a much smaller Shakespearian canon than we do today. The Folios were compiled after his death by a couple of people who just happened to love his work. They collected partial manuscripts, interviewed actors, even worked from memory.
Can you find a citation for this? Seriuosly, among the many people I disagree with in meatspace about IP laws, this would stop most of them in their tracks, if I could document it? TIA
The fair price is 10 cents in both places.
Under real free trade, you couldn't prevent it.
Prices are not relative under real capitalism.
There is no such thing as a fair price. The sooner you accept this, the faster you will understand economics. It is an empirical "science", not a value judgement. In practice, however -- in the real world -- retail margins are around 100% in developed countries (broad generalization) but 10-20% in developing countries, as a result of the low rents and low wages paid to retail employees. With similar differences, but smaller amounts, at the wholesale level, one would expect retail prices on many things to be less than half of their developed country equivalent, just on this one factor.
So right now, I compete with someone who makes 1/10th of what I do-- in part because I'm subsidizing research on his health care and his movies and entertainment.
By your logic, billionaires should pay 2 million bucks for the same shirt that you and I buy for 20 bucks.
Cable TV should cost a billionaire 100k a month.
I don't know if anyone said that, but if he/she did you're both wrong. Prices are based on the idea of maximizing profits, which in cases like drugs and IP is equivalent to maximzing revenue. If there is little transfer between two markets, then this is achieved by charging the price where you would lose total revenue (sales * price) if the price went up or down even a little bit. Millionaires might pay more than the unemployed for, e.g. jewellery, just as you suggest. I suspect they pay less, not more, for cable TV due to an externality: the unemployed watch more TV.
But you're right that is in effect a subsidy, but it's not an explicit or deliberate one, as far as I can see. It's a logical result of maximizing revenue.
Prices are not relative-- it's only because of gross sellouts and artificially protected regions that such *extreme* price differences are maintained.
No, prices are dependent on the particular conditions of each market. That's all. They certainly are not "absolute truths" -- if that makes them "relative" then I'm comfortable with that term.
Within the U.S. competition brings down prices rapidly-- but between the U.S. and India, it doesn't.
It does, for consumers in both countries. Google "comparative advantage" for the how and why, if you really want to know.
I'm kinda confused about a few things from this, and other articles, about copyright infringement trials and what I also see elsewhere. I've got a few questions:
Why do I get that warning from the FBI on my DVDs talking about five years in jail, or whatever it is, for illegally copying the contents? Why isn't that a purely civil matter?
Why do you allow damages beyond actual damages? I imagine the answer is probably based on the need to prevent future violations, but this seems the wrong way to do this to me, as well as unfair, especially if the FBI is also after my ass for a criminal conviction. You've expanded civil litigation beyond what it was originally designed for, it seems to me.
Juries for civil trials????? You gotta be kidding me. That's about the dumbest thing anyone's ever done in a legal context. My dad was an expert witness for many years, and I've even worked where I was required to testify in a civil trial, where the judge was simply brilliant, IMO.
Obviously I'm not an American, although I do admire many things about your constitution. (I'm Canadian, but have lived overseas for years, and I don't know if any of my objections also apply to Canadian, or other, civil regimes.)
Trying to adapt our network to support all the devices was quite impossible - it would have cost way too much, sucked up engineering resources we needed elsewhere, and because of the testing needed to ensure there were no incompatibilities, delayed product introduction, giving our competitors an advantage.
I wonder if the problem wasn't in your network? Here in Indonesia I use a Nokia on one network, I have friends with other makes and models of phones (but all GSM) on other networks, plus 3G dongles, and they all just work for data. Fine. Out of the box -- the SIM even configures all the data parameters. The problem isn't in the network -- it was in your network.
I just wish I wasn't required to enter a long-term contract even when I *do* provide my own phone. I know/. is full of apologists who rail about recovering the cost of hardware subsidies, but I have yet to encounter a provider who will sell me standard, post-paid wireless voice and data services on a single line without a 12-24 month contract and the related cancelation fees, even when I provide my own equipment.
I don't understand why you put up with it either, but I guess you have no choice. But I've got a more fundamental question: Where does all their money go? The infrastructure has mostly been paid for, often decades ago. I guess they must maintain it, but that sounds pretty cheap to me. Access to big internet tubes also costs something. Then, what? You North Americans get free phones in exchange for what, committing to paying two or three thousand dollars over three years? Here in Indonesia the big three carriers compete furiously, and there are a couple of smaller players too, keeping the market competitive. All are investing furiously in infrastructure. We pay about 2-3 cents for a text message. It's hard to figure out how much calls cost, but I make a few international calls a month and my bill ranges from $40 to $60 most months. So, where does your money actually go?
(BTW, the cell companies here are also heavily marketing 3G USB dongles for accessing the net from your PC.)
Big surprise. Everything that has come from this industry has been at best broad guesstimates, at worst intentionally spread lies.
If you RTFA, you'll see that the inflated figure came, exaggerated by a factor of 10 due to a typo, from a government agency. It says "The report was commissioned by a government body called Sabip, the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property. On the billions lost it says: 'Estimates as to the overall lost revenues if we include all creative industries whose products can be copied digitally, or counterfeited, reach £10bn (IP rights, 2004), conservatively, as our figure is from 2004, and a loss of 4,000 jobs.'"
And, later, "Sabip refused to answer questions in emails, insisted on a phone call, told me that they had taken steps but wouldn't say what and explained something about how they couldn't be held responsible for lazy journalism, then, bizarrely, after 10 minutes, tried to tell me retrospectively that the call was off the record."
I think that's the true tragedy, that the media companies have been able to get even government think tanks lying for them.
I looked, but I can't find mod parent -1 gibberish. Feel free to interpret as you see fit. (But i you find English out of that last sentence, I'm coming back to call you on it.)
~I'm sure he would definitely like to. But he broke the necessary keyboard~
That brings back a distinctly unhappy memory from my engineering school thesis in 1985-86. I was graduating in mechanical engineering, I was never a programmer, and as part of my thesis I wanted to analyze data from Canadian passenger car accidents. No problem, I had the data because I had spend a summer working as a member of the university's "Multi-disciplinary Accident Research Team" funded by the federal government. All of the accident data 10 teams across Canada collected was entered into some magic program, but there was no program provided to extract said data. It turned out that Transport Canada had contracted the programming out to one of their favoured consultants, who didn't see the use in a conventional database (dBase II would have been contemporary), but programmed the whole thing, including the database, in APL.
We were using an IBM-PC, chock full of expansion cards overflowing into an expansion chassis. It was truly a thing of wonder, and probably cost $25,000 to put together. BUT, it didn't have the special chip it would have needed to show APL characters on the screen. That would have disabled regular characters or something, I recall, and wasn't an option.
So, I, a non-programmer had to learn APL from some manual or book, on a computer without the APL character chip, in order to access an undocumented database, as an ancillary part of my project (although this work was included in the plan, it wasn't critical to the results). What a nightmare. Just thinking about it has convinced me to open a beer.
That was, in a very geeky way, incredibly beautiful. Thanks for posting. Whenever I think artisinal craftsmanship is dead, someone like you comes along and restores my faith.
What a stupid tax for us all to be paying! It doesn't go to anything we particularly want. It lines the pocketbooks of advertising agencies and irritates us when we're trying to browse the web or watch television or listen to the radio or see the countryside from our cars.
I can't believe you thought for even a moment before posting that. How much, exactly, do you think there would be to browse on the web, watch on television or listen to on the radio without advertising? A couple of government web sites and live broadcast of legislative debates, plus millions of mindless blogs. That you're irritated by ads suggests you enjoy the programs and web sites they fund. That's right, the advertisers pay for.
I find them irritating too, and don't watch much TV as a result. While I don't enjoy watching ads, I'm at least dimly aware of the business model which currently supports the media you mention.
Thank you for posting this. Inspirational is not too strong a word for how I found it.
BTW, I'm 46 and my dad just turned 82, and I respect him more and more, the older I get. I kinda feel we'd find a lot in common, if we sat and talked about our dads.
Dean
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, that's the first time I've ever wished for a "-1 Insufferable" moderation. Jolly good work, old boy.
Umm, jeeze, no thanks -- you freaked me out enough already! I'm a little nearsighted, need glasses to drive and read blackboards, and I've just got into the habit of wearing them, and taking them on and off many times a day. The time it bothers me is when I play pool, which I thoroughly enjoy, but the limit of my clear vision is not as far as a long shot on a 9' table. I'm frankly scared to put things in my eyes, so contacts have never appealed. Having said that, your description of a needle entering your eyeball has encouraged me to take a second look at contacts ;-)
I believe you're right, but it's just a belief, not supported by conclusive fact. However, we may on the verge of having one important data point to help settle the argument: Michael Jackson's IP collection. As I understand it, he spent about $500 million to buy the rights to a bunch of Beatles's tunes and other music. Some of the "experts" in the media were saying after he died that it could be worth as much as $2 billion now. If that turns out to be true, either:
a) the music business is doing just fine; or
b) the music business used to produce popular stuff, but current sales of contemporary artists are way down.
If the second turns out to be true, the *IAA have only themselves to blame. If it's the first, then there's nothing to complain about. So, in my view, if the MJ collection has quadrupled in value, the *IAA members may have to learn to STFU. Me, I can't wait.
I bought one for my GF at Christmas, and she loved it, still does. I don't, because like you I run linux only at home. She had to take it to a friend with an Apple to get a bunch of games and songs installed. Now she's happy, and I never have to support it. Hmm... maybe I'm on to something here?
I'm old school, I guess, but I think there is an unbridgeable chasm between computer software and human intelligence. We have no problem killing (relatively intelligent) pigs, for example, for food. I would put bits and bytes as much lower on my own personal "value scale" than pigs. I simply cannot believe that a computer program is worthy of respect as a life form. I know this idea has been popular on sci-fi shows the last few decades, but I don't get it all. Although I'm a die-hard atheist, I distinguish between a living being and a program, and don't believe a computer program can feel pain. This is all bullshit, as far as I can tell. Dean
You're right, but the GP had the basic idea right, not the details. Patents exist to advance the knowledge, skills and technological abilities of society. I just don't understand how the fsck we got to where we are know. (I'm having beer-induced fantasies of sitting next to a patent lawyer on a plane and berating him for the entire flight, but that's probably not healthy either ;-).)
I wasn't there when she was discussing her motives, but it is commonly assumed that Ms. Carson wanted DDT banned, absolutely. The wholesale lack of good science in her book made it clear that she was advancing a program, her own, without scientific support, to advance her own agenda. This agenda has demonstrably killed thousands of people.
Saying that people are free to use DDT when you have pressured suppliers to eliminate supplies is specious.
Really, I don't understand how anyone can defend this woman. As a latecomer to the whole argument, and as a fervent defender of the natural environment, I also see value in human life. I wish the "Silent Spring" crowd would at least go that far, but I haven't seen it. DDT has killed thousands, and continues to do so. DDT was the bugbear of her book. You can try and twist, but if you accept those two well-documented facts, the activities she encouraged have killed thousands. Those are, in the words of Sgt. Joe Friday, "Just the facts, Maam."
Why not? There is a large American contingent who maintain that the views of men who died 200 years ago is better than a rethink of the current system. In the narrow case of juries deciding civil trials, and especially of deciding damages, the experiment is over. We read daily about screwball rulings from juries, especially in RIAA cases, but also in other areas. Personal accounts from jurors suggest their peers didn't have a clue or didn't care in many cases.
I think all would agree that, if one were to start over today, the American legal system wouldn't have these pernicious features. So why not start to think about changing the broken system?
(BTW, last week I asked a Canadian lawyer friend if Canada allowed juries to decide civil cases. His response: "Why the fuck would we do that?")
"The Crown Prosecution Service, or CPS, is a non-ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for public prosecutions of people charged with criminal offences in England and Wales. Its role is similar to that of the longer-established Crown Office in Scotland, and the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland. The CPS is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions (currently Keir Starmer QC) who answers to the Attorney General for England and Wales (currently The Baroness Scotland of Asthal, who is known to be sexually attracted to women and kicks cats when nobody is looking)..."
Why wouldn't any court accept documents that reliable?
Umm... they're not? If you RTFA, you'd read that they are being given $6 million to pilot field test the units with 14 different agencies, from Honolulu to Ottawa. There is no mention of any money being given for development. I know this is /. and all, but you might want to browse the article, or at least the summary, before commenting.
Never, ever, have I wished so hard for a -1 Gibberish mod. I think you're saying that you don't give out your identity online, is that right? Note the use of a period or question mark to separate two independent thoughts in my reply, and capitalization where appropriate.
+5 Insightful????? C'mon mods.
Can you find a citation for this? Seriuosly, among the many people I disagree with in meatspace about IP laws, this would stop most of them in their tracks, if I could document it? TIA
Wow, they made 'em big where you lived. Each house is almost 11,000 square feet? Are you sure you didn't mean the average mansion?
There is no such thing as a fair price. The sooner you accept this, the faster you will understand economics. It is an empirical "science", not a value judgement. In practice, however -- in the real world -- retail margins are around 100% in developed countries (broad generalization) but 10-20% in developing countries, as a result of the low rents and low wages paid to retail employees. With similar differences, but smaller amounts, at the wholesale level, one would expect retail prices on many things to be less than half of their developed country equivalent, just on this one factor.
I don't know if anyone said that, but if he/she did you're both wrong. Prices are based on the idea of maximizing profits, which in cases like drugs and IP is equivalent to maximzing revenue. If there is little transfer between two markets, then this is achieved by charging the price where you would lose total revenue (sales * price) if the price went up or down even a little bit. Millionaires might pay more than the unemployed for, e.g. jewellery, just as you suggest. I suspect they pay less, not more, for cable TV due to an externality: the unemployed watch more TV.
But you're right that is in effect a subsidy, but it's not an explicit or deliberate one, as far as I can see. It's a logical result of maximizing revenue.
No, prices are dependent on the particular conditions of each market. That's all. They certainly are not "absolute truths" -- if that makes them "relative" then I'm comfortable with that term.
It does, for consumers in both countries. Google "comparative advantage" for the how and why, if you really want to know.
Why do I get that warning from the FBI on my DVDs talking about five years in jail, or whatever it is, for illegally copying the contents? Why isn't that a purely civil matter?
Why do you allow damages beyond actual damages? I imagine the answer is probably based on the need to prevent future violations, but this seems the wrong way to do this to me, as well as unfair, especially if the FBI is also after my ass for a criminal conviction. You've expanded civil litigation beyond what it was originally designed for, it seems to me.
Juries for civil trials????? You gotta be kidding me. That's about the dumbest thing anyone's ever done in a legal context. My dad was an expert witness for many years, and I've even worked where I was required to testify in a civil trial, where the judge was simply brilliant, IMO.
Obviously I'm not an American, although I do admire many things about your constitution. (I'm Canadian, but have lived overseas for years, and I don't know if any of my objections also apply to Canadian, or other, civil regimes.)
I wonder if the problem wasn't in your network? Here in Indonesia I use a Nokia on one network, I have friends with other makes and models of phones (but all GSM) on other networks, plus 3G dongles, and they all just work for data. Fine. Out of the box -- the SIM even configures all the data parameters. The problem isn't in the network -- it was in your network.
I don't understand why you put up with it either, but I guess you have no choice. But I've got a more fundamental question: Where does all their money go? The infrastructure has mostly been paid for, often decades ago. I guess they must maintain it, but that sounds pretty cheap to me. Access to big internet tubes also costs something. Then, what? You North Americans get free phones in exchange for what, committing to paying two or three thousand dollars over three years? Here in Indonesia the big three carriers compete furiously, and there are a couple of smaller players too, keeping the market competitive. All are investing furiously in infrastructure. We pay about 2-3 cents for a text message. It's hard to figure out how much calls cost, but I make a few international calls a month and my bill ranges from $40 to $60 most months. So, where does your money actually go?
(BTW, the cell companies here are also heavily marketing 3G USB dongles for accessing the net from your PC.)
If you RTFA, you'll see that the inflated figure came, exaggerated by a factor of 10 due to a typo, from a government agency. It says "The report was commissioned by a government body called Sabip, the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property. On the billions lost it says: 'Estimates as to the overall lost revenues if we include all creative industries whose products can be copied digitally, or counterfeited, reach £10bn (IP rights, 2004), conservatively, as our figure is from 2004, and a loss of 4,000 jobs.'"
And, later, "Sabip refused to answer questions in emails, insisted on a phone call, told me that they had taken steps but wouldn't say what and explained something about how they couldn't be held responsible for lazy journalism, then, bizarrely, after 10 minutes, tried to tell me retrospectively that the call was off the record."
I think that's the true tragedy, that the media companies have been able to get even government think tanks lying for them.
I looked, but I can't find mod parent -1 gibberish. Feel free to interpret as you see fit. (But i you find English out of that last sentence, I'm coming back to call you on it.)
That brings back a distinctly unhappy memory from my engineering school thesis in 1985-86. I was graduating in mechanical engineering, I was never a programmer, and as part of my thesis I wanted to analyze data from Canadian passenger car accidents. No problem, I had the data because I had spend a summer working as a member of the university's "Multi-disciplinary Accident Research Team" funded by the federal government. All of the accident data 10 teams across Canada collected was entered into some magic program, but there was no program provided to extract said data. It turned out that Transport Canada had contracted the programming out to one of their favoured consultants, who didn't see the use in a conventional database (dBase II would have been contemporary), but programmed the whole thing, including the database, in APL.
We were using an IBM-PC, chock full of expansion cards overflowing into an expansion chassis. It was truly a thing of wonder, and probably cost $25,000 to put together. BUT, it didn't have the special chip it would have needed to show APL characters on the screen. That would have disabled regular characters or something, I recall, and wasn't an option.
So, I, a non-programmer had to learn APL from some manual or book, on a computer without the APL character chip, in order to access an undocumented database, as an ancillary part of my project (although this work was included in the plan, it wasn't critical to the results). What a nightmare. Just thinking about it has convinced me to open a beer.
Quark Xpress gets number 2 but AutoCAD didn't make the top 10? I bet they'd like to take that article back when someone points that out to them.
That was, in a very geeky way, incredibly beautiful. Thanks for posting. Whenever I think artisinal craftsmanship is dead, someone like you comes along and restores my faith.
I can't believe you thought for even a moment before posting that. How much, exactly, do you think there would be to browse on the web, watch on television or listen to on the radio without advertising? A couple of government web sites and live broadcast of legislative debates, plus millions of mindless blogs. That you're irritated by ads suggests you enjoy the programs and web sites they fund. That's right, the advertisers pay for.
I find them irritating too, and don't watch much TV as a result. While I don't enjoy watching ads, I'm at least dimly aware of the business model which currently supports the media you mention.
Thank you for posting this. Inspirational is not too strong a word for how I found it. BTW, I'm 46 and my dad just turned 82, and I respect him more and more, the older I get. I kinda feel we'd find a lot in common, if we sat and talked about our dads. Dean
No line in any movie, ever, made me laugh as hard as I did when Bill Murray said that. Thanks for bringing that memory back.