So in other words, you don't believe in the "free market" whatsoever? It's all just a "pipe dream" that can't work, right?
I guess I view things differently than you do. For starters, we've really never had a president who was able to make decisions alone. If we did, we'd call it a dictatorship instead. You can put the most idealistic guy possible in power as president, and I guarantee his beliefs will get whittled away at and watered down/compromised to the point where they're FAR less potent than his original plans. That's one reason I'd welcome a guy like Ron Paul as our next president. It's abundantly clear that Federal govt. is too big and all-encompassing, but reducing its size and scope is a herculean task. Everyone receiving some kind of paycheck to sit in a govt. position, in even the most useless of offices, wants to protect their position in the system. I have yet to meet anyone working for our govt. who openly says "What I do is a useless waste to the taxpayers, and they really should terminate me!" Compounding matters is the fact we've got many special interests (typically big businesses) funneling loads of money INTO the political system to retain portions of the status quo that happen to benefit them. If Ron Paul became president and asked to eliminate 5 big govt. agencies, I'd imagine the end result would wind up a medicore group of cut-backs in perhaps 3 or 4 of those 5, at most. But imagine how much LESS gets accomplished when you start out with a guy who isn't really all that opposed to those 5 agencies to start with?
I'm sorry, but your comment is FAR from insightful, despite the +4 moderation it was currently given.
The federal student loan program is increasingly a BAD deal for those taking advantage of it to get through college. Why? For one thing, the debt owed to the Federal govt. under it is NOT possible to eliminate, even in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy situation. That means if you take out a big loan to get your college degree and then contrary to what was promised or suggested to you, you're not able to actually get a good-paying job that justifies what was spent on said degree -- you're basically screwed. Everyone else you owe from your credit cards to utility bills to a car or even home loan, you can re-negotiate with or have the existing debt forgiven/washed away with a bankruptcy filing, should you find yourself in an otherwise impossible to rectify financial situation. But not that Federal student loan debt! Just like tax money you might owe the IRS, there's no getting out of that one!
Ron Paul, IMHO, is absolutely correct on this one. What we need are regular old private bank loans for higher education, at fair and reasonable interest rates. (And when I say this, I mean Credit Unions too -- because actually, they'd seem to be the more likely lenders to cut you a fair deal.) Perhaps this would even introduce some more sanity to the student loan process, discouraging people from taking out "high risk" loans for degrees unlikely to offer a decent return on one's educational investment. I imagine the usefulness of some degrees varies quite a bit by region too. (EG. If you're interested in marine biology, it's probably more feasible if you live on the coast than in the midwest....) Your *local* bank or C.U. would hopefully be more aware of this than a Federal institution that concentrates on "treating all lenders equally under the law".
Most of the people trying to compare Android apps to Siri have clearly never really used Siri first.
I was experimenting with several of the so called "competitors to Siri" for Android just the other night, and Vlingo was one of them (as well as a free app called Edwin that came highly recommended).
First off, Google Voice Search: Did a good job recognizing my speech but can't even speak back any replies, so NOTHING like Siri in that respect. Additionally, poor integration in some cases. (EG. If I ask it "Where are some Italian restaurants near me?", it fires up a Google search for "some Italian restaurants near me" and many strange results come back - as one might expect from such a query. It has no clue I have a copy of the Urbanspoon app installed on my phone, which woulds have been a FAR better program to pass the Italian restaurant search query to, if it was designed more intelligently.)
Edwin: At least it can speak replies after I ask it things, but its recognition was notably worse than Google Voice Search. Integration was lousy. I could tell it to send an SMS and it would open up the "Messages" apps on my phone, but it wouldn't let me instruct it WHO to send the SMS to or let me dictate its contents. It only knew how to act as a program launcher for the stock app, basically -- which is utterly useless if I was driving and wanted to send an SMS hands-free or what-not.
Vlingo: Somewhere between the above two in voice recognition skills. Again, integration is only half-baked though. Very limited vocabulary it understands too, so you have to study its built-in help to see what you can say to it -- or else constantly get "I didn't understand that." type replies back. Also, has advertising in the free version so really, you have to pay for this to get a fully working and non-annoying edition.
Off-hand, I'd say a big determining factor is going to be whether or not this "testing" has a lot of do with networking.
If part of what you're doing revolves around configuring routers or switches, or even a lot of tinkering related to how workstations interact with a server or servers, I don't think you want to look at the cloud as a viable option. In my opinion, hosted applications/servers in the cloud only make sense for production systems ready for deployment and regular use (which equates to said configuration providing some sort of cost savings or profit generation), *or* scenarios where multiple people need to collaborate on some sort of software project. A team working on coding an app might find hosting it in the cloud very beneficial, as different individuals sign in, contribute their work/changes to the code-base, and let everyone see and test the results.
When a core part of what you're trying to observe or experiment with has to do with the infrastructure (LAN network) and what's being seen on the client/server side as things are manipulated, I think you'd be better off having all of it on-site to work with it physically. I mean, sure, you could virtualize both a server and a workstation on some cloud-hosted system and test them remotely -- but the LAN network between the two would be completely virtual/simulated since they're both really on the same piece of hardware.....
Yeah... I think it probably depends on the age of the kid in question, and raising the bar to "all kids under age 2" seems extreme.
I know when I was 2, I had already learned to read. Yeah, that's kind of a fluke and it shocked everyone I was around at the time -- but the point is, not all kids develop skills at the same pace. Unless you say something like "we advise no TV for kids younger than 9 months old" or something, I think it's simply wrong to make blanket statements that they're incapable of comprehending what they're seeing on the television screen.
I suppose you're technically correct (although I believe Apple was dabbling in voice recognition a bit with newer iPods, before Siri was even on anyone's radar, as a way to control basic music player functions, hands-free). But IMHO, this whole "Siri popularity" thing has as much to do with the implementation as the technology itself.
As is typical for Apple, they've taken an existing technology... perhaps even one that's not clearly "best of breed", but found a way to integrate it so the average user will actually USE it regularly and enjoy it.
The humorous responses Siri gives to many queries and the friendly way it handles others goes a LONG way towards hooking new users on it. I definitely don't recall any voice assistant software on Android that would give playful or creative replies to basic questions about the weather. With Siri, I might ask "How will the weather be in Hawaii on Thursday?" and get back a reply like "Bring your sunglasses! It looks like it will be warm and sunny!" At best, I'd expect a dry, literal response from the likes of Microsoft or Google.
Also, IMO, it's no small detail to note that Apple wound up licensing Nuance and Wolfram technologies. You could do FAR worse than combining those two powerhouses for your voice recognition needs! If I had to bet, I'd put my money on the two of them doing a superior job in the speech recognition arena to Microsoft (who has their hands in as many cookies jars as possible at any given time, vs. specializing in such things).
I wouldn't really disagree with you, except for one item. I'm *really* starting to question how useful a dual redundant power supply is? In all the years I've worked with servers in corporate I.T. -- I have yet to run into a situation where a power supply failed in a server, but it kept running thanks to the secondary backup. Servers tend to have large wattage, well constructed power supplies in the first place, that outlast just about everything else on the system, especially when they spend their life in a clean, climate controlled computer room.
If a P.S. does fail on you, in most cases, it's an item that's not too difficult to swap out and get the system back online. If it's really a mission critical server where ANY small outage can't be tolerated? You better be mirroring it in real time to a second complete system for hot failover, not worrying about it having redundant power supplies!
Sure, you can use a generic PC to do your audio recording, but as many of my musician buddies discovered, you also open a huge can of worms revolving around such issues as latency and stability. If you don't have an expert's known good configuration to copycat when building your own setup, chances are you'll be in for MANY hours of tweaking, messing with configuration settings, and swapping different peripherals around before you get something you can really count on.
There are companies out there specializing in selling you ready-to-go hard disk recording systems on the Windows platform, but you'll typically find they charge a lot for them (at least comparable pricing to a Mac).
For starters, the on-board sound on most PC motherboards isn't going to be adequate. Sure, some of them now have an optical output. But the audio drivers made for most of them aren't exactly rigorously tested in environments doing a lot of recording. If anything, they're optimized for sound output from some of the more popular games, and given brief testing with programs like Skype for input. When you add your PCI "pro audio" card to it, you're immediately entering the realm of potential incompatibilities and driver issues, especially when coupled with potential hard disk issues. (Have one of those popular "green" SATA drives? Good luck... they tend to spin down when idle, causing lag time when you hit that record button and need it to start recording NOW.) Now add in the potential need for a MIDI card so you can record what's being played from a synth or electronic drum set. Everything still keeping up ok when working in tandem?
The Mac can suffer from some of this too, obviously -- but it's just not as common a problem. Unlike Dell or HP, a typical Mac is already designed out of the box for music recording use, at least at an amateur to "pro-sumer" level, with software like GarageBand pre-installed. The pro-audio gear for Macs has a better chance of working properly too, because they only have to test it with a limited selection of machines, and with fewer Macs sold to begin with, they either get it right and become a popular choice, or they quickly disappear.
The Mazda RX8 was released in a slow economy where it had direct competitors such as the Hyundai Genesis Coupe, the Nissan 370Z and even the latest version of the Ford Mustang or Chevy Camaro. Sure, none of them had rotary engines, but very FEW potential buyers would put that first and foremost on their "want list" for a new sports/sporty car purchase.
Price-wise, it was one of the slightly more expensive cars to option out with modern technology like hands-free bluetooth or in-car GPS, compared to the others -- and while the car has excellent styling, it just didn't stack up to the others in horsepower/torque for the dollar, not to mention things like fuel economy and long-term reliability.
Personally, I considered buying one back in 2009 when I was shopping for a sports car in that general price range, but decided Hyundai's Genesis Coupe 3.8 liter V6 was also a great looking car that delivered in all the other notable areas too, like performance and luxury features that came standard or at reasonable additional cost. 2 years later, I haven't regretted my purchase a bit -- even though I think the rotary engine is very cool in concept. It's probably something that needs more R&D money dumped into it to really overcome some of the long-standing issues Mazda's had with them, and not sure Mazda is even the best company to try to tackle it,.
I'd tend to agree, but there's also a case to be made that the Federal student loan program illustrates the disconnect we operate under. What am I talking about?
Well, consider this. Our government SUPPOSEDLY has legislation helping ensure we don't rip each other off or steal from each other, right? Yet we don't have such a thing as a debtor's prison anymore, and if one simply files for bankruptcy, it's possible to wash away pretty much all of your existing debts to other individuals or private businesses. The only debts they won't let you walk away from are the ones owed to the GOVERNMENT itself (such as those Federal student loan debts, or tax debts owed to the IRS).
There's a double-standard, in other words. Break your promise to repay your government, and there's no way out. In fact, refuse to pay what you owe in taxes and risk imprisonment. Break your promise to repay the furniture store you bought all that new furniture from on the "0% interest until 2013!" financing special they offered you, or the debt you ran up on your credit card,or that personal loan you got from Prosper.com from individuals who bid on it? Well... your credit score will take a hit but that's about it. Sucks to be anyone who trusted your promise to repay them.
Furthermore, government is perpetuating the LIE that spending loads of money for a "good education" is the wisest financial move you can make as a young person. Reality is further and further from the truth, as the big colleges and universities prove all the time, burying students in debt while they're unable to get good paying jobs with the diploma they worked so hard to get.
First of all, if Jobs was really the definition of a "greedy businessman", he would have done at least some of the following things:
1. Start selling a generic PC version of OS X, since the cost of licensing an OS is next to nothing, meaning 99% pure profit on each one after the initial costs of development are recouped. 2. Eliminate all the free workshops and classes offered in Apple retail stores, since they don't contribute anything concrete or measurable to the company's bottom line and it costs money in salaries (AND in training people to give such classes). 3. Focus on selling a low-cost machine in high volumes, for sale in major retail channels like WalMart.
Instead, I think Jobs was simply driven by a desire to see his dreams become reality. He was a very opinionated person with constant ideas on what he'd like to see happen in the personal computing world, and unlike most people, he made them into shipping products. He made it clear that he was perfectly ok with the company only having a 10% market-share in computers, too. He wasn't on a mission to outsell Microsoft or Dell, or anyone else. He simply wanted to offer people an alternative, made his way.
The international tax issue is one that needs reviewing, but it's an issue for ALL U.S.A. based companies doing business overseas. Apple themselves recently pushed for a change in U.S. tax law, because currently, you're charged a fairly high tax on all the money you earn overseas and then transfer into a U.S. based bank. For that reason, companies making money outside the U.S. wind up encouraged to SPEND it there (on such things as expanding their overseas operations), rather than take a tax hit for investing it back home in the U.S.
Yep.... and frankly, I think Bernie Madoff just wound up a "fall guy" for the whole thing because he happened to con a lot of Hollywood celebs out of their money, making his bust much more "high profile". Everyone tunes into E! television and finds out they finally "caught the guy who took all of John Malkovich's savings" and it makes a bigger impression....
IMO, the problem is -- it kind of freaks me out too, when I hear people go on and on about how "unsustainable" things are. The next jump in logic from there tends to be ideas about population reduction, including possibly putting something into the drinking water to poison a percentage of people, or maybe spraying chemicals in the air, or ?? (Don't laugh, the current science adviser on Obama's staff wrote a book suggesting some of this back in the 70's.)
Yes, oil is probably a finite resource. There are a few people going on about theories of it slowly seeping up from the center of the earth and re-filling formerly empty oil fields -- but I'm willing to toss that out as incorrect/unsubstantiated.... The thing is though, I'm not sure we're usually just best off, overall, letting nature take its course. If we DO manage to use up most of the oil, we'll simply see its prices increase until financial issues force a change. It becomes cheaper to use alternatives, so the problem self-corrects. If we try to "head the problem off at the pass" without even knowing how much oil is left in the ground, we spend more money than necessarily try to force through solutions that aren't really financially sensible yet -- and that encourages fraud. (Look how many companies take federal grant money for alternative energy plans and then go under.)
This is rather frustrating, but I'm not so sure it's a matter of Apple underestimating the demand. I think by now, they know very well what the demand will be when they launch a product like a new iPhone. The problem I've seen seems to be more a matter of Apple's new products being in such high initial demand, there's no way to adequately prepare for it without building the products for months in advance and stocking up warehouse after warehouse full of inventory. That business model doesn't really work for them, because if the new, unreleased products sat in inventory someplace for even a matter of a week or two, people would get ahold of some of them prematurely and reveal / review them, spoiling any secrets Apple tries to keep until the product is announced.
And yes, if you're an enterprise business customer, you don't care much about corporate secrecy. You'd rather know, in advance, everything about the future release schedule of a product line you're using so you can plan around it accordingly. That's really not something Apple wants to do, since it'd absolutely gut the excitement they generate for their products in the consumer (and even educational) sector.
I don't know if that's an "almost certain" response, but it's definitely a possible one. So what? You don't go in trying to bargain until you've got the other job lined up and ready to go anyway. If you weren't really sure you HAD the new job yet and you tried this, you deserve what you get.
I agree completely though, that the old line about "We'll see what we can do for you after the next performance review comes up." is bogus. I've heard a variation of that in at least 3 different jobs I've worked, and in EACH case, I never saw any of the promised pay raises come to fruition. (One time, it was even part of the initial hiring promise. "We'll start you out at X, but don't worry. Our plan in to get you up to Y in the next year or two by adding on a little bit during the performance reviews." Guess what? They didn't even DO most of those reviews, and had excuses for why they couldn't afford to pay more "at this exact time", any time it was questioned.)
IMO, if a company is serious, they'll give you a raise effectively immediately. Anything else means no, they don't *really* value you enough to come up with whatever they're promising in some round-about way. Let's face it.... Most companies on anything resembling stable footing have the ability to get bank loans, if nothing else. If they really want to keep you, they can take out a loan to cover some other expenditure so the money in the bank is freed up for your payroll, even if they really don't have the funds on-hand to do it. That's what you can BET they'd do for some random asset they decided was important enough to them -- like a replacement company car or new machine to put out in the shop, or ??
Exactly! I work for a small company right now, and despite the place having 2 rounds of layoffs and shutting down 2 of 4 divisions due to the poor economy, I still have a job. Why? In no small part because they know I care enough about the I.T. infrastructure and their financial situation to make the effort to constantly improve things. The network admins who worked here before me clearly took an attitude of, "I don't get paid as well as bigger places would pay me, so screw this... I'm just going to do the bare minimum to keep things running each day." I found stacks and stacks of paperwork in my desk drawers, when I started here, of invoices and printed emails detailing numerous situations where they chose to call in an outside consulting firm to fix issues, rather than fixing things themselves. I still use the outside guys occasionally, but I've literally cut our annuals expenditure on them in half since I've been here and got a handle on all the hardware and software.
It may be a while before things are back to "normal" for this company, but I think we made it through the worst of it and their monthly sales have improved in recent months. It's easy to say, "Always do what's best for YOU (and your family by extension).", but what does that really mean? How do I know what's really "best"? I know a stable paycheck is a GOOD thing and it's less stressful than not being sure if you're going to have the money to pay monthly bills on time that come in on a fixed schedule. I know I'd rather work for a place that appreciates my effort than one that doesn't really notice I exist, except as another "line item" in some of their spreadsheets.
I'm not going to walk around with my eyes closed... so sure, if I run across a job opening someplace that sounds good and they pay is a lot better, I apply. But in this economic situation, that rarely even leads to a callback anyway. It's definitely true that in smaller firms, each employee is counted on more than in bigger places. If you're out sick or on vacation, some major aspect of the business basically stops until you return, or gets handled poorly by someone trying to step in and do a job they're not familiar with.... That has value and means they SHOULD have some level of loyalty to you. It's always a question of how much that's worth though, I guess.
Yeah... Nimoy has had a rather bad attitude about the whole Star Trek thing for MANY years. That's not anything really new. I remember reading how he kept refusing to play roles in the motion pictures because he "hated putting on those damn ears". (Of course, waving enough money at him seemed to rectify that.)
It's a pretty common theme with major sci-fi productions, IMO. Alec Guinness HATED being remembered for his role as Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. Heck, even Joel Hodgson of MST3K fame has been trying to get out from under the curse of not being able to do anything more memorable than playing that janitor's role in the series! (He keeps trying to do stand-up comedy tours, and pretty much the ONLY reason anyone cares enough to go see him is they know him as Joel Robinson's character in MST3K.)
Some of your points are valid, IMO, but on others, I think you're way off-base.
For starters, in today's busy society, taking out the time to protest is a real challenge for most working folks. If you've got a full-time job and a family, making time to protest an issue like this in a rally that drags on for weeks means you're going to wind up on the unemployment line yourself! Who has more time than money AND has the energy to keep up a protest? Yep, usually those "young, foolish (but well-meaning)" college age kids, or those "crazy idealists" who already are largely "off the grid" and living non-traditional lifestyles. If things reach a point where a true cross-section of middle-income America is out in force, protesting our economy in some fashion, we're probably already at the point of no return -- because that would indicate massive unemployment and despair, the likes of which mean a violent revolution and government overthrow is imminent.
Also, while I'm not vouching for the level of knowledge of the individuals you spoke with personally? I don't necessarily see ANY conflict of interest when it comes to using, say, Apple products like the iPhone and attending a protest like this. It's not really a protest about Capitalism! Apple Computer isn't part of the economic problem. If anything, they're one of the last remaining vestiges of the SOLUTION. The protest SHOULD be about government manipulation of Capitalism and the corruption that permeates the whole thing. It's FAR from a free marketplace when federal govt. and the Federal Reserve conspire to prop up institutions that were supposed to fail due to their own gross negligence and mismanagement!
It doesn't really matter what your perception is of the individuals making up a group of protesters. With the possible exception of some of the church-organized abortion protests I've seen before, I've almost never witnessed a protest that didn't have quite a few participants in attendance who had the physical appearance of young, dirty n00bs who just wanted to be part of a scene.
The important part is the message being sent! It doesn't make a difference if the protesters themselves fall into tax brackets too low to find themselves personally affected by having to pay tax money that was used for banker/investor bailouts. It *DOES* matter, in a huge way, because those decisions wind up further polarizing American society into a relatively small group of "haves" and a large group of "have nots".
If this protesting has been going on for two weeks straight and is causing conflicts with the area police, it's *newsworthy*, plain and simple! If I turn on my local nightly TV news channel and I see them spending half the broadcast running down the crime reports of every 7-11 holdup or car theft, I fail to see how THOSE incidents are so worthy (despite them not affecting almost any of the viewers directly), yet a protest involving hundreds on Wall Street about serious economic issues doesn't deserve even a 5 second mention that it's still continuing?
Maybe the publisher feels they stand to profit more by publishing the now controversial book, based on what they've already got?
If they sued over breach of contract, sure - they could try to get their money back, but as we all know, court judgments are FAR from a guarantee of getting repaid. With a character like Assange, perhaps they think it's a FAR better bet to take a chance on making money from his rough draft they possess than by counting on the court system to make him cough up the money?
To be honest? I'm relatively okay with all of this. Just to throw in another viewpoint here.... sometimes I think government becomes so big and so controlling and overbearing, the populace is better off if a "monkey wrench" in thrown into the gears, jamming things up and keeping it relatively dysfunctional.
I basically have a libertarian mindset (though not necessarily a big supporter of the official Libertarian political party). What I see with our current president is a guy who stepped into office with a lot of big plans to revise everything into his vision of what would make the nation better. That would include such general concepts as forcing a switch to alternate forms of energy, increased taxes for the wealthy to improve things for the poor, and of course, the whole idea of revamping the nation's health-care system using his set of solutions. Unfortunately, he tried to accomplish all of this at arguably the WORST possible time in many decades -- right after the housing bubble burst and our nation was sinking into ever-deeper debt fighting the war inherited from the Bush presidency.
Regardless of one's opinion of Obama's planned solutions, he simply picked the wrong battles to fight at the wrong time, and wound up frustrating more people than he could ever please.
Right now, it's all a huge mess, and yes - we've got radical, polarized opinions a-plenty out there. That's why really, it's probably best we let those polar opposites keep butting heads and cancelling each other out right now, to ensure none of those extremely radical ideas become "law of the land". I think a lot of our economic problems will simply take TIME to work themselves back out -- and government intervention and manipulation is kind of like giving pain-killers to an athlete with sprained muscles, instead of taking him off the field and giving him time to heal and recover. Obama is scrambling to apply as many "quick fixes" as he can to make people happy again, long enough so he can implement some of the other things he's had his heart set on changing. Right now, we don't really need any of that.
Well, in a literal sense, sure, you're quite correct. A tax increase on a high income earner is not going to put a serious dent in their status, relative to everyone else around them.
On the other hand, there's another issue worth considering too. Just because someone has earned far more than they need to survive (or to remain relatively wealthy even) doesn't automatically mean their government can better spend some of the excess than they can themselves.
I'm one of those "struggling to hang onto something resembling middle-class" people myself, and honestly, I don't really ever see myself becoming rich in the future, barring some freak lottery or contest winning putting me there. Yet unlike many people, I don't necessarily see the millionaires of the U.S.A. as the enemy, or cause of my problems. It really depends on HOW they attained their wealth.
EG. Many of us have read about Warren Buffet and his proclamations that as one of the wealthiest men in America, he thinks he's not taxed enough and wouldn't mind the laws changing to increase taxes on the very wealthy. At the same time though, if one take a good, long look at how he retains and increases his net worth, one quickly realizes something. Buffet's money is closely tied to Federal govt. sponsored activities including "Green" alternate energy production and military contractors. How do such projects get/stay well funded? By ensuring Federal govt. has enough TAX income to keep supporting them! (Never mind the fact that his own investment fund company apparently OWES millions in unpaid back taxes!)
So IMHO, Buffer is NOT really on my list of super-wealthy folks I greatly admire.
On the other hand, take someone like Steve Jobs? Whether you really like or despise Apple products, there's no denying he earned his wealth through the success of his own business and personal effort marketing his products and services. If anything, the reason Apple Computer has a lot of money tied up overseas is due to the current tax laws. (If a company like Apple opens a facility in another country and starts making money there, they're taxed at a relatively high rate if they bring the money back into the U.S. That results in the smarter business move being to leave that money where it originated and re-invest/spend it there, by way of such things as expanding the overseas operations and employing more foreign labor.) If the U.S. would get smart about things, we'd start allowing that money to be deposited in our banks at a very LOW tax rate to encourage migration of the earnings back here, where the corporate headquarters are for such companies.)
Yeah, this is an old argument that has some valid points on both sides, but I finally realized what really bothers me about this.... It feels too much like Lucas is attempting to redefine the reality of the fans who watched the original movies. By essentially destroying the original negatives and leaving only fragments that someone has to re-assemble, and then by releasing revised editions of Star Wars as though they're the originals (no clear notation that it's a revised version on the cover of the box or anything) - it feel like Lucas believes he can erase people's collective memories of what came before. Younger audiences will typically only see the modified version, and the originals are all in formats doomed to fade away as the underlying player technology dies off (VHS and LaserDisc).
Now ultimately? I don't really think Lucas has that as his goal. He's not sitting up at night laughing about how he's altering people's perception or making the first version of the movie vanish. But his clinging to the idea that a movie is a "fluid" thing, with a theatrical release amounting to nothing more than a frozen look at where the production was at that moment in time winds up with this evil result.
I'm sorry, but producers simply don't spend their lives constantly reworking and revising every movie they make. 99% of the time, it's a one shot deal. You make it, declare it "ready for release" at some point, and THAT defines the film, for better or for worse. In a few (1% for the sake of argument here) cases, the producer has a really legitimate reason to go back, make some changes, and release it again. But that simply means there are two competing works out there now, and both should be respected and preserved with equal vigor.
Yep! I'd mod this comment up if I could. Not that I don't appreciate reading the comments to learn more about various proxy solutions out there -- but this is clearly a situation where the law itself is what's really unacceptable.
It's simply not a good law, any time it's designed to punish someone other than the perpetrator as the responsible party. I don't live in New Zealand, but if I did? I'd definitely question whether I wanted to even provide ANY internet access to my employees, if I ran a business there with this type of legislation in effect.
After all, no matter what barriers I construct, it's potentially possible that a crafty enough person would find a way around them to download copyrighted material and then I could lose my whole business over it. No thanks!
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So in other words, you don't believe in the "free market" whatsoever? It's all just a "pipe dream" that can't work, right?
I guess I view things differently than you do. For starters, we've really never had a president who was able to make decisions alone. If we did, we'd call it a dictatorship instead. You can put the most idealistic guy possible in power as president, and I guarantee his beliefs will get whittled away at and watered down/compromised to the point where they're FAR less potent than his original plans. That's one reason I'd welcome a guy like Ron Paul as our next president. It's abundantly clear that Federal govt. is too big and all-encompassing, but reducing its size and scope is a herculean task. Everyone receiving some kind of paycheck to sit in a govt. position, in even the most useless of offices, wants to protect their position in the system. I have yet to meet anyone working for our govt. who openly says "What I do is a useless waste to the taxpayers, and they really should terminate me!" Compounding matters is the fact we've got many special interests (typically big businesses) funneling loads of money INTO the political system to retain portions of the status quo that happen to benefit them. If Ron Paul became president and asked to eliminate 5 big govt. agencies, I'd imagine the end result would wind up a medicore group of cut-backs in perhaps 3 or 4 of those 5, at most. But imagine how much LESS gets accomplished when you start out with a guy who isn't really all that opposed to those 5 agencies to start with?
I'm sorry, but your comment is FAR from insightful, despite the +4 moderation it was currently given.
The federal student loan program is increasingly a BAD deal for those taking advantage of it to get through college. Why? For one thing, the debt owed to the Federal govt. under it is NOT possible to eliminate, even in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy situation. That means if you take out a big loan to get your college degree and then contrary to what was promised or suggested to you, you're not able to actually get a good-paying job that justifies what was spent on said degree -- you're basically screwed. Everyone else you owe from your credit cards to utility bills to a car or even home loan, you can re-negotiate with or have the existing debt forgiven/washed away with a bankruptcy filing, should you find yourself in an otherwise impossible to rectify financial situation. But not that Federal student loan debt! Just like tax money you might owe the IRS, there's no getting out of that one!
Ron Paul, IMHO, is absolutely correct on this one. What we need are regular old private bank loans for higher education, at fair and reasonable interest rates. (And when I say this, I mean Credit Unions too -- because actually, they'd seem to be the more likely lenders to cut you a fair deal.) Perhaps this would even introduce some more sanity to the student loan process, discouraging people from taking out "high risk" loans for degrees unlikely to offer a decent return on one's educational investment. I imagine the usefulness of some degrees varies quite a bit by region too. (EG. If you're interested in marine biology, it's probably more feasible if you live on the coast than in the midwest....) Your *local* bank or C.U. would hopefully be more aware of this than a Federal institution that concentrates on "treating all lenders equally under the law".
Most of the people trying to compare Android apps to Siri have clearly never really used Siri first.
I was experimenting with several of the so called "competitors to Siri" for Android just the other night, and Vlingo was one of them (as well as a free app called Edwin that came highly recommended).
First off, Google Voice Search: Did a good job recognizing my speech but can't even speak back any replies, so NOTHING like Siri in that respect. Additionally, poor integration in some cases. (EG. If I ask it "Where are some Italian restaurants near me?", it fires up a Google search for "some Italian restaurants near me" and many strange results come back - as one might expect from such a query. It has no clue I have a copy of the Urbanspoon app installed on my phone, which woulds have been a FAR better program to pass the Italian restaurant search query to, if it was designed more intelligently.)
Edwin: At least it can speak replies after I ask it things, but its recognition was notably worse than Google Voice Search. Integration was lousy. I could tell it to send an SMS and it would open up the "Messages" apps on my phone, but it wouldn't let me instruct it WHO to send the SMS to or let me dictate its contents. It only knew how to act as a program launcher for the stock app, basically -- which is utterly useless if I was driving and wanted to send an SMS hands-free or what-not.
Vlingo: Somewhere between the above two in voice recognition skills. Again, integration is only half-baked though. Very limited vocabulary it understands too, so you have to study its built-in help to see what you can say to it -- or else constantly get "I didn't understand that." type replies back. Also, has advertising in the free version so really, you have to pay for this to get a fully working and non-annoying edition.
Yep... exactly. Or at least spread out the production so you have plants all over the globe in strategic areas.
Off-hand, I'd say a big determining factor is going to be whether or not this "testing" has a lot of do with networking.
If part of what you're doing revolves around configuring routers or switches, or even a lot of tinkering related to how workstations interact with a server or servers, I don't think you want to look at the cloud as a viable option. In my opinion, hosted applications/servers in the cloud only make sense for production systems ready for deployment and regular use (which equates to said configuration providing some sort of cost savings or profit generation), *or* scenarios where multiple people need to collaborate on some sort of software project. A team working on coding an app might find hosting it in the cloud very beneficial, as different individuals sign in, contribute their work/changes to the code-base, and let everyone see and test the results.
When a core part of what you're trying to observe or experiment with has to do with the infrastructure (LAN network) and what's being seen on the client/server side as things are manipulated, I think you'd be better off having all of it on-site to work with it physically. I mean, sure, you could virtualize both a server and a workstation on some cloud-hosted system and test them remotely -- but the LAN network between the two would be completely virtual/simulated since they're both really on the same piece of hardware.....
Yeah... I think it probably depends on the age of the kid in question, and raising the bar to "all kids under age 2" seems extreme.
I know when I was 2, I had already learned to read. Yeah, that's kind of a fluke and it shocked everyone I was around at the time -- but the point is, not all kids develop skills at the same pace. Unless you say something like "we advise no TV for kids younger than 9 months old" or something, I think it's simply wrong to make blanket statements that they're incapable of comprehending what they're seeing on the television screen.
I suppose you're technically correct (although I believe Apple was dabbling in voice recognition a bit with newer iPods, before Siri was even on anyone's radar, as a way to control basic music player functions, hands-free). But IMHO, this whole "Siri popularity" thing has as much to do with the implementation as the technology itself.
As is typical for Apple, they've taken an existing technology ... perhaps even one that's not clearly "best of breed", but found a way to integrate it so the average user will actually USE it regularly and enjoy it.
The humorous responses Siri gives to many queries and the friendly way it handles others goes a LONG way towards hooking new users on it. I definitely don't recall any voice assistant software on Android that would give playful or creative replies to basic questions about the weather. With Siri, I might ask "How will the weather be in Hawaii on Thursday?" and get back a reply like "Bring your sunglasses! It looks like it will be warm and sunny!" At best, I'd expect a dry, literal response from the likes of Microsoft or Google.
Also, IMO, it's no small detail to note that Apple wound up licensing Nuance and Wolfram technologies. You could do FAR worse than combining those two powerhouses for your voice recognition needs! If I had to bet, I'd put my money on the two of them doing a superior job in the speech recognition arena to Microsoft (who has their hands in as many cookies jars as possible at any given time, vs. specializing in such things).
I wouldn't really disagree with you, except for one item. I'm *really* starting to question how useful a dual redundant power supply is? In all the years I've worked with servers in corporate I.T. -- I have yet to run into a situation where a power supply failed in a server, but it kept running thanks to the secondary backup. Servers tend to have large wattage, well constructed power supplies in the first place, that outlast just about everything else on the system, especially when they spend their life in a clean, climate controlled computer room.
If a P.S. does fail on you, in most cases, it's an item that's not too difficult to swap out and get the system back online. If it's really a mission critical server where ANY small outage can't be tolerated? You better be mirroring it in real time to a second complete system for hot failover, not worrying about it having redundant power supplies!
Sorry, but I disagree.
Sure, you can use a generic PC to do your audio recording, but as many of my musician buddies discovered, you also open a huge can of worms revolving around such issues as latency and stability. If you don't have an expert's known good configuration to copycat when building your own setup, chances are you'll be in for MANY hours of tweaking, messing with configuration settings, and swapping different peripherals around before you get something you can really count on.
There are companies out there specializing in selling you ready-to-go hard disk recording systems on the Windows platform, but you'll typically find they charge a lot for them (at least comparable pricing to a Mac).
For starters, the on-board sound on most PC motherboards isn't going to be adequate. Sure, some of them now have an optical output. But the audio drivers made for most of them aren't exactly rigorously tested in environments doing a lot of recording. If anything, they're optimized for sound output from some of the more popular games, and given brief testing with programs like Skype for input. When you add your PCI "pro audio" card to it, you're immediately entering the realm of potential incompatibilities and driver issues, especially when coupled with potential hard disk issues. (Have one of those popular "green" SATA drives? Good luck ... they tend to spin down when idle, causing lag time when you hit that record button and need it to start recording NOW.) Now add in the potential need for a MIDI card so you can record what's being played from a synth or electronic drum set. Everything still keeping up ok when working in tandem?
The Mac can suffer from some of this too, obviously -- but it's just not as common a problem. Unlike Dell or HP, a typical Mac is already designed out of the box for music recording use, at least at an amateur to "pro-sumer" level, with software like GarageBand pre-installed. The pro-audio gear for Macs has a better chance of working properly too, because they only have to test it with a limited selection of machines, and with fewer Macs sold to begin with, they either get it right and become a popular choice, or they quickly disappear.
The Mazda RX8 was released in a slow economy where it had direct competitors such as the Hyundai Genesis Coupe, the Nissan 370Z and even the latest version of the Ford Mustang or Chevy Camaro. Sure, none of them had rotary engines, but very FEW potential buyers would put that first and foremost on their "want list" for a new sports/sporty car purchase.
Price-wise, it was one of the slightly more expensive cars to option out with modern technology like hands-free bluetooth or in-car GPS, compared to the others -- and while the car has excellent styling, it just didn't stack up to the others in horsepower/torque for the dollar, not to mention things like fuel economy and long-term reliability.
Personally, I considered buying one back in 2009 when I was shopping for a sports car in that general price range, but decided Hyundai's Genesis Coupe 3.8 liter V6 was also a great looking car that delivered in all the other notable areas too, like performance and luxury features that came standard or at reasonable additional cost. 2 years later, I haven't regretted my purchase a bit -- even though I think the rotary engine is very cool in concept. It's probably something that needs more R&D money dumped into it to really overcome some of the long-standing issues Mazda's had with them, and not sure Mazda is even the best company to try to tackle it,.
I'd tend to agree, but there's also a case to be made that the Federal student loan program illustrates the disconnect we operate under. What am I talking about?
Well, consider this. Our government SUPPOSEDLY has legislation helping ensure we don't rip each other off or steal from each other, right? Yet we don't have such a thing as a debtor's prison anymore, and if one simply files for bankruptcy, it's possible to wash away pretty much all of your existing debts to other individuals or private businesses. The only debts they won't let you walk away from are the ones owed to the GOVERNMENT itself (such as those Federal student loan debts, or tax debts owed to the IRS).
There's a double-standard, in other words. Break your promise to repay your government, and there's no way out. In fact, refuse to pay what you owe in taxes and risk imprisonment. Break your promise to repay the furniture store you bought all that new furniture from on the "0% interest until 2013!" financing special they offered you, or the debt you ran up on your credit card,or that personal loan you got from Prosper.com from individuals who bid on it? Well... your credit score will take a hit but that's about it. Sucks to be anyone who trusted your promise to repay them.
Furthermore, government is perpetuating the LIE that spending loads of money for a "good education" is the wisest financial move you can make as a young person. Reality is further and further from the truth, as the big colleges and universities prove all the time, burying students in debt while they're unable to get good paying jobs with the diploma they worked so hard to get.
First of all, if Jobs was really the definition of a "greedy businessman", he would have done at least some of the following things:
1. Start selling a generic PC version of OS X, since the cost of licensing an OS is next to nothing, meaning 99% pure profit on each one after the initial costs of development are recouped.
2. Eliminate all the free workshops and classes offered in Apple retail stores, since they don't contribute anything concrete or measurable to the company's bottom line and it costs money in salaries (AND in training people to give such classes).
3. Focus on selling a low-cost machine in high volumes, for sale in major retail channels like WalMart.
Instead, I think Jobs was simply driven by a desire to see his dreams become reality. He was a very opinionated person with constant ideas on what he'd like to see happen in the personal computing world, and unlike most people, he made them into shipping products. He made it clear that he was perfectly ok with the company only having a 10% market-share in computers, too. He wasn't on a mission to outsell Microsoft or Dell, or anyone else. He simply wanted to offer people an alternative, made his way.
The international tax issue is one that needs reviewing, but it's an issue for ALL U.S.A. based companies doing business overseas. Apple themselves recently pushed for a change in U.S. tax law, because currently, you're charged a fairly high tax on all the money you earn overseas and then transfer into a U.S. based bank. For that reason, companies making money outside the U.S. wind up encouraged to SPEND it there (on such things as expanding their overseas operations), rather than take a tax hit for investing it back home in the U.S.
Yep.... and frankly, I think Bernie Madoff just wound up a "fall guy" for the whole thing because he happened to con a lot of Hollywood celebs out of their money, making his bust much more "high profile". Everyone tunes into E! television and finds out they finally "caught the guy who took all of John Malkovich's savings" and it makes a bigger impression....
IMO, the problem is -- it kind of freaks me out too, when I hear people go on and on about how "unsustainable" things are. The next jump in logic from there tends to be ideas about population reduction, including possibly putting something into the drinking water to poison a percentage of people, or maybe spraying chemicals in the air, or ?? (Don't laugh, the current science adviser on Obama's staff wrote a book suggesting some of this back in the 70's.)
Yes, oil is probably a finite resource. There are a few people going on about theories of it slowly seeping up from the center of the earth and re-filling formerly empty oil fields -- but I'm willing to toss that out as incorrect/unsubstantiated.... The thing is though, I'm not sure we're usually just best off, overall, letting nature take its course. If we DO manage to use up most of the oil, we'll simply see its prices increase until financial issues force a change. It becomes cheaper to use alternatives, so the problem self-corrects. If we try to "head the problem off at the pass" without even knowing how much oil is left in the ground, we spend more money than necessarily try to force through solutions that aren't really financially sensible yet -- and that encourages fraud. (Look how many companies take federal grant money for alternative energy plans and then go under.)
This is rather frustrating, but I'm not so sure it's a matter of Apple underestimating the demand. I think by now, they know very well what the demand will be when they launch a product like a new iPhone. The problem I've seen seems to be more a matter of Apple's new products being in such high initial demand, there's no way to adequately prepare for it without building the products for months in advance and stocking up warehouse after warehouse full of inventory. That business model doesn't really work for them, because if the new, unreleased products sat in inventory someplace for even a matter of a week or two, people would get ahold of some of them prematurely and reveal / review them, spoiling any secrets Apple tries to keep until the product is announced.
And yes, if you're an enterprise business customer, you don't care much about corporate secrecy. You'd rather know, in advance, everything about the future release schedule of a product line you're using so you can plan around it accordingly. That's really not something Apple wants to do, since it'd absolutely gut the excitement they generate for their products in the consumer (and even educational) sector.
I don't know if that's an "almost certain" response, but it's definitely a possible one. So what? You don't go in trying to bargain until you've got the other job lined up and ready to go anyway. If you weren't really sure you HAD the new job yet and you tried this, you deserve what you get.
I agree completely though, that the old line about "We'll see what we can do for you after the next performance review comes up." is bogus. I've heard a variation of that in at least 3 different jobs I've worked, and in EACH case, I never saw any of the promised pay raises come to fruition. (One time, it was even part of the initial hiring promise. "We'll start you out at X, but don't worry. Our plan in to get you up to Y in the next year or two by adding on a little bit during the performance reviews." Guess what? They didn't even DO most of those reviews, and had excuses for why they couldn't afford to pay more "at this exact time", any time it was questioned.)
IMO, if a company is serious, they'll give you a raise effectively immediately. Anything else means no, they don't *really* value you enough to come up with whatever they're promising in some round-about way. Let's face it.... Most companies on anything resembling stable footing have the ability to get bank loans, if nothing else. If they really want to keep you, they can take out a loan to cover some other expenditure so the money in the bank is freed up for your payroll, even if they really don't have the funds on-hand to do it. That's what you can BET they'd do for some random asset they decided was important enough to them -- like a replacement company car or new machine to put out in the shop, or ??
Exactly! I work for a small company right now, and despite the place having 2 rounds of layoffs and shutting down 2 of 4 divisions due to the poor economy, I still have a job. Why? In no small part because they know I care enough about the I.T. infrastructure and their financial situation to make the effort to constantly improve things. The network admins who worked here before me clearly took an attitude of, "I don't get paid as well as bigger places would pay me, so screw this... I'm just going to do the bare minimum to keep things running each day." I found stacks and stacks of paperwork in my desk drawers, when I started here, of invoices and printed emails detailing numerous situations where they chose to call in an outside consulting firm to fix issues, rather than fixing things themselves. I still use the outside guys occasionally, but I've literally cut our annuals expenditure on them in half since I've been here and got a handle on all the hardware and software.
It may be a while before things are back to "normal" for this company, but I think we made it through the worst of it and their monthly sales have improved in recent months. It's easy to say, "Always do what's best for YOU (and your family by extension).", but what does that really mean? How do I know what's really "best"? I know a stable paycheck is a GOOD thing and it's less stressful than not being sure if you're going to have the money to pay monthly bills on time that come in on a fixed schedule. I know I'd rather work for a place that appreciates my effort than one that doesn't really notice I exist, except as another "line item" in some of their spreadsheets.
I'm not going to walk around with my eyes closed... so sure, if I run across a job opening someplace that sounds good and they pay is a lot better, I apply. But in this economic situation, that rarely even leads to a callback anyway. It's definitely true that in smaller firms, each employee is counted on more than in bigger places. If you're out sick or on vacation, some major aspect of the business basically stops until you return, or gets handled poorly by someone trying to step in and do a job they're not familiar with .... That has value and means they SHOULD have some level of loyalty to you. It's always a question of how much that's worth though, I guess.
Yeah... Nimoy has had a rather bad attitude about the whole Star Trek thing for MANY years. That's not anything really new. I remember reading how he kept refusing to play roles in the motion pictures because he "hated putting on those damn ears". (Of course, waving enough money at him seemed to rectify that.)
It's a pretty common theme with major sci-fi productions, IMO. Alec Guinness HATED being remembered for his role as Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. Heck, even Joel Hodgson of MST3K fame has been trying to get out from under the curse of not being able to do anything more memorable than playing that janitor's role in the series! (He keeps trying to do stand-up comedy tours, and pretty much the ONLY reason anyone cares enough to go see him is they know him as Joel Robinson's character in MST3K.)
Some of your points are valid, IMO, but on others, I think you're way off-base.
For starters, in today's busy society, taking out the time to protest is a real challenge for most working folks. If you've got a full-time job and a family, making time to protest an issue like this in a rally that drags on for weeks means you're going to wind up on the unemployment line yourself! Who has more time than money AND has the energy to keep up a protest? Yep, usually those "young, foolish (but well-meaning)" college age kids, or those "crazy idealists" who already are largely "off the grid" and living non-traditional lifestyles. If things reach a point where a true cross-section of middle-income America is out in force, protesting our economy in some fashion, we're probably already at the point of no return -- because that would indicate massive unemployment and despair, the likes of which mean a violent revolution and government overthrow is imminent.
Also, while I'm not vouching for the level of knowledge of the individuals you spoke with personally? I don't necessarily see ANY conflict of interest when it comes to using, say, Apple products like the iPhone and attending a protest like this. It's not really a protest about Capitalism! Apple Computer isn't part of the economic problem. If anything, they're one of the last remaining vestiges of the SOLUTION. The protest SHOULD be about government manipulation of Capitalism and the corruption that permeates the whole thing. It's FAR from a free marketplace when federal govt. and the Federal Reserve conspire to prop up institutions that were supposed to fail due to their own gross negligence and mismanagement!
It doesn't really matter what your perception is of the individuals making up a group of protesters. With the possible exception of some of the church-organized abortion protests I've seen before, I've almost never witnessed a protest that didn't have quite a few participants in attendance who had the physical appearance of young, dirty n00bs who just wanted to be part of a scene.
The important part is the message being sent! It doesn't make a difference if the protesters themselves fall into tax brackets too low to find themselves personally affected by having to pay tax money that was used for banker/investor bailouts. It *DOES* matter, in a huge way, because those decisions wind up further polarizing American society into a relatively small group of "haves" and a large group of "have nots".
If this protesting has been going on for two weeks straight and is causing conflicts with the area police, it's *newsworthy*, plain and simple! If I turn on my local nightly TV news channel and I see them spending half the broadcast running down the crime reports of every 7-11 holdup or car theft, I fail to see how THOSE incidents are so worthy (despite them not affecting almost any of the viewers directly), yet a protest involving hundreds on Wall Street about serious economic issues doesn't deserve even a 5 second mention that it's still continuing?
Clearly, our news is being selected for us.
Maybe the publisher feels they stand to profit more by publishing the now controversial book, based on what they've already got?
If they sued over breach of contract, sure - they could try to get their money back, but as we all know, court judgments are FAR from a guarantee of getting repaid. With a character like Assange, perhaps they think it's a FAR better bet to take a chance on making money from his rough draft they possess than by counting on the court system to make him cough up the money?
To be honest? I'm relatively okay with all of this. Just to throw in another viewpoint here .... sometimes I think government becomes so big and so controlling and overbearing, the populace is better off if a "monkey wrench" in thrown into the gears, jamming things up and keeping it relatively dysfunctional.
I basically have a libertarian mindset (though not necessarily a big supporter of the official Libertarian political party). What I see with our current president is a guy who stepped into office with a lot of big plans to revise everything into his vision of what would make the nation better. That would include such general concepts as forcing a switch to alternate forms of energy, increased taxes for the wealthy to improve things for the poor, and of course, the whole idea of revamping the nation's health-care system using his set of solutions. Unfortunately, he tried to accomplish all of this at arguably the WORST possible time in many decades -- right after the housing bubble burst and our nation was sinking into ever-deeper debt fighting the war inherited from the Bush presidency.
Regardless of one's opinion of Obama's planned solutions, he simply picked the wrong battles to fight at the wrong time, and wound up frustrating more people than he could ever please.
Right now, it's all a huge mess, and yes - we've got radical, polarized opinions a-plenty out there. That's why really, it's probably best we let those polar opposites keep butting heads and cancelling each other out right now, to ensure none of those extremely radical ideas become "law of the land". I think a lot of our economic problems will simply take TIME to work themselves back out -- and government intervention and manipulation is kind of like giving pain-killers to an athlete with sprained muscles, instead of taking him off the field and giving him time to heal and recover. Obama is scrambling to apply as many "quick fixes" as he can to make people happy again, long enough so he can implement some of the other things he's had his heart set on changing. Right now, we don't really need any of that.
Well, in a literal sense, sure, you're quite correct. A tax increase on a high income earner is not going to put a serious dent in their status, relative to everyone else around them.
On the other hand, there's another issue worth considering too. Just because someone has earned far more than they need to survive (or to remain relatively wealthy even) doesn't automatically mean their government can better spend some of the excess than they can themselves.
I'm one of those "struggling to hang onto something resembling middle-class" people myself, and honestly, I don't really ever see myself becoming rich in the future, barring some freak lottery or contest winning putting me there. Yet unlike many people, I don't necessarily see the millionaires of the U.S.A. as the enemy, or cause of my problems. It really depends on HOW they attained their wealth.
EG. Many of us have read about Warren Buffet and his proclamations that as one of the wealthiest men in America, he thinks he's not taxed enough and wouldn't mind the laws changing to increase taxes on the very wealthy. At the same time though, if one take a good, long look at how he retains and increases his net worth, one quickly realizes something. Buffet's money is closely tied to Federal govt. sponsored activities including "Green" alternate energy production and military contractors. How do such projects get/stay well funded? By ensuring Federal govt. has enough TAX income to keep supporting them! (Never mind the fact that his own investment fund company apparently OWES millions in unpaid back taxes!)
So IMHO, Buffer is NOT really on my list of super-wealthy folks I greatly admire.
On the other hand, take someone like Steve Jobs? Whether you really like or despise Apple products, there's no denying he earned his wealth through the success of his own business and personal effort marketing his products and services. If anything, the reason Apple Computer has a lot of money tied up overseas is due to the current tax laws. (If a company like Apple opens a facility in another country and starts making money there, they're taxed at a relatively high rate if they bring the money back into the U.S. That results in the smarter business move being to leave that money where it originated and re-invest/spend it there, by way of such things as expanding the overseas operations and employing more foreign labor.) If the U.S. would get smart about things, we'd start allowing that money to be deposited in our banks at a very LOW tax rate to encourage migration of the earnings back here, where the corporate headquarters are for such companies.)
Yeah, this is an old argument that has some valid points on both sides, but I finally realized what really bothers me about this .... It feels too much like Lucas is attempting to redefine the reality of the fans who watched the original movies. By essentially destroying the original negatives and leaving only fragments that someone has to re-assemble, and then by releasing revised editions of Star Wars as though they're the originals (no clear notation that it's a revised version on the cover of the box or anything) - it feel like Lucas believes he can erase people's collective memories of what came before. Younger audiences will typically only see the modified version, and the originals are all in formats doomed to fade away as the underlying player technology dies off (VHS and LaserDisc).
Now ultimately? I don't really think Lucas has that as his goal. He's not sitting up at night laughing about how he's altering people's perception or making the first version of the movie vanish. But his clinging to the idea that a movie is a "fluid" thing, with a theatrical release amounting to nothing more than a frozen look at where the production was at that moment in time winds up with this evil result.
I'm sorry, but producers simply don't spend their lives constantly reworking and revising every movie they make. 99% of the time, it's a one shot deal. You make it, declare it "ready for release" at some point, and THAT defines the film, for better or for worse. In a few (1% for the sake of argument here) cases, the producer has a really legitimate reason to go back, make some changes, and release it again. But that simply means there are two competing works out there now, and both should be respected and preserved with equal vigor.
Yep! I'd mod this comment up if I could. Not that I don't appreciate reading the comments to learn more about various proxy solutions out there -- but this is clearly a situation where the law itself is what's really unacceptable.
It's simply not a good law, any time it's designed to punish someone other than the perpetrator as the responsible party. I don't live in New Zealand, but if I did? I'd definitely question whether I wanted to even provide ANY internet access to my employees, if I ran a business there with this type of legislation in effect.
After all, no matter what barriers I construct, it's potentially possible that a crafty enough person would find a way around them to download copyrighted material and then I could lose my whole business over it. No thanks!