Ahh yes...the good ol "make em pay fines!" approach. I fail to see how this does any good, and even more I fail to see why people think it will. So here is the example. I am some giant evil megacorp producing $10 widgets by killing animals, deforestation, and lots of pollution. So those whiney toothless left wingers come in and start chanting, putting up signs, and making a big stink on the media...free PR! woohoo. So now...the government steps in...and decides "Hey, we can cash in on this too!" So they fine me $100 million dollars for being a bastard. Now the government is $100 million richer without raising taxes, I have tons of free PR, and your $10 widget now costs you $15 dollars and I am making more money than before. Oh what?! your minimum wage job didn't change?! The costs of the goods keeps going up because my cost of business goes up, and I'm not going to take a loss over some silly environut. Well doesn't that suck for you, I guess you will have to buy a few less widgets this year... So now the current balance is Megacorp 1, Government 1, People -2 (or maybe just -1 if you really convince yourself that the $100 million will go to public good instead of some lobbyist scum, slush fund, or just be handed over to Halliburton in some fashionable no bid contract).
I have no idea what you are talking about. You say bullshit FUD because "XP has a built in firewall and 2000 didn't" I just explained that you are wrong. 2000 DID have built in firewalling capabilities and XP didn't, Service Pack 2 is what brought the firewall to XP. Sounds like you are very confused about what you are talking about and what I am explaining.
Beyond that I have no idea what you are going on about with the 3rd party stuff, it sounds like you are upset at me for telling you to use a 3rd party product, I'm telling you that ANY protection product that you have to PAY for is bullshit. I don't mind the XP Firewall, I don't use it because I have a better firewall in front of the few windows boxes I deal with. It is about time they put it in there for the consumer. However, I have a huge problem with their malware crap that you have to pay for that they also make deals with scumware vendors to give lower scores. So again it sounds like you are trying to spout some pro MS nonsense with skewed or no facts at all, and then just calling FUD whan anyone disagrees with you. Which is stupid because ultimately I agreed with you that XP firewall was a good thing, but your point was wrong because 2000 had it long before XP did.
XP had no such thing, XP SP2 had a firewall built in. Windows 2000 at release had IP Security Filters, which while not exactly a very robust firewall, it was capable of getting things done. If you are paying protection money to anyone AV/Firewall/Otherwise you are in the trap that MS is trying to exploit with this move. Crappy OS, no choice but to use AV etc, and now you have to use THEIR AV/Malware detection, which they have sold lower scores to Claria and whatever scumware company shells out more money than you shell out for protection.
"Western Culture" has largley sprung up from imperialism. Romans, British, American... Take what you can when you can however you can. The distaste for "Western Culture" tends to come from the nations that suffered under Roman/British rule...you know...like America did...then as the Iranian president that we overthrew to put the Shah in power said "We should be natural allies, we have both thrown off the shackles of British Imperialism". Unfortunately our little experiement in freedom has been rushing back towards the Imperialistic control of outside resources. So now America is exerting its force to bring "Western Culture" aka "Western Control" to other parts of the world. Even if you talk smaller picture about our culture it really is the same thing, take what you can, when you can, however you can. Look at our business practices, look at our trends in love life (72hr celebrity marriages and the like, tons of divorce, single parents all over), look at how we treat eachother as strangers on the street. Our "western culture" is not better in most ways, it has a few points that are nice ideals, such as freedom of speech and the like, but the majority of our "culture" is filth and greed, and we just manage to put alot of nice window dressing on it...the same way British oppressors were civilized and the people they oppressed were savages.
I don't know you, but the typical response I get from the "we're #1" crowd is how arab nations are SOO much more savage and oppressed. When you have been there, and talked to the people, and been in their shops and see how they conduct business and treat perfect strangers you can discuss this with me again. I was there as another face in a sea of uniforms, and I refused to call them "hajis" or "towel heads" or whatever, and I talked to the few that were around the base...they were are terribly polite and educated people, put in a horrible position by insane dictators. Insane dictators that "Western Culture" supported for various political/economic reasons.
Unfortunately it sorta is an example. Not quite in the same way as the current realm of things, but there were LOTS of dollars involved in making prohibition go away. Look how much money is being made via "sin taxes" on alchohol and what not.
I suspect the same. Amazon has a pretty sketchy track record as far as patents go, and while IBM isn't perfect, they have been turning loose alot of their projects into the OSS world and generally playing nice with the OSS crowd. I think while they are also serving their own interests, they deserve some credit for their handling of a certain fiaSCO.
It may be my wishful thinking, but fair and honest business practices don't always cause the fastest growth, they do tend to lead to the best long term growth. So IBM just may be swinging the big stick to get Amazon back in line.
Let me lift that rock up for you. If there is a customer revolt, these corporations will NOT change direction, they WILL change legislation. This pretty much applies in all things 'vote with your dollar'.
Oh absolutely, I pretty much refuse to use credit or loans unless absolutely required. I simply won't take out a loan for a vehicle at all. It is infinetly cheaper to buy some used car for a few grand, drive it as long as you can, and then buy a new one when it dies. The people in that top 5% don't really have any wealth so to speak, they have billions of dollars in IOUs basically. For example, it doesn't make any sense to pay off your home, especially in lawsuit happy land that we are these days, its now a liability. If you take out a huge home equity loan and buy your next property you can start using it to make money, just repeating the process until you have millions in debt but thousands of dollars coming in each month. As far as the lower 30% I think your estimates are a bit high, you would be surprised how easy it is to get credit extended to you.
I think the problem there is that we artifically muck with our numbers and you really can't compare our economies in such a simplistic way. We are VERY much a debt driven society these days. Average debt for the average american is supposed to be somewhere around 10-20k. I can make $5,000 and still manage to live a comfortable lifestyle (at least for a while). Debt dodging is VERY common, and a big part of identity theft as well. Rack up thousands in debt, move away when collectors find you, sure you may never get out of the hole, but someone is always willing to give you a payday loan at 350% interest or some other such nonsense.
Remember not whipping out your credit card and spending yourself into oblivion is unamerican. Think of it this way, when you open a bank account you MIGHT get lucky and get as high as 3% interest rate (typically only credit unions), but every time you swipe that card you are giving Visa/Mastercard/etc a 12-27% savings account on the bank of you.
I'm not a programmer, and I don't know the in detail methods of WGA, but off the top of my head I can think of a few methods. Intercept the "call home" and either rewrite what is sent home to be a known good until they block it or redirect the "call home" to a local approval service installed as part of the "fix". I realize when you hit the MS sites for updates and the like the second may not work, but faking a good response to yourself would at least get WGA to pull its nag/disabling claws back out of your system.
Not that I really disagree here, but just to play devil's advocate a bit. In the US here...the "poverty level" or the level of income that you must be below to be consided "poor" is set by people who are frequently in the top end of the owners of the wealth in the US. So our "poverty" is skewed a bit too.
You are absolutely correct, but life span does affect average age of child bearers and average number of offspring.
Look at it this way, when you were lucky to reach 30-40yrs and you had to have 12 kids to make sure at least 1 or 2 of them survived long enough to have kids themselves it has an effect on the evolutionary path. Humans had to breed in larger numbers and more frequently for the population to survive, as the lifespan increases the pressure to breed now and breed often is greatly reduced. Look how many people are waiting till they are older to have children these days, and how few 14 and 15yr olds are having children. Short lived things have to breed much more frequently and in larger numbers to ensure the survival of the population.
I read the article, and it just seems to be a great deal of pointless guessing. "Men will have bigger penises! Women will have pert breasts! Everyone will be beautiful except for those dumb little troll humans!" Whatever...Incidentally as life spans increase the speed of evolution generally decreases.
You are correct about the wealthy having fewer children, as many developed nations are actually slipping into declining populations because of this problem. However, you are absolutely wrong about the US having this problem, the US has an incredibly high population growth rate for a developed nation, in fact I believe the US has the HIGHEST growth rate of all developed nations.
I am forced to wonder how much of a conservative you are because you also equate wealth to intelligence, and if you haven't noticed..Paris Hilton and a GREAT number of the richest folks in the US are a FAR cry from being the most intelligent. You also assume that everyone that is intelligent WANTS to be rich, which is not the case. Greed and Gluttony are not related to intelligence in any meaninful fashion.
You are confused. It doesn't make things worse because "it costs money" it makes things better because "it makes money" You are only viewing it from the end of the people getting screwed. Try again, except this time put yourself in the place of the defense contractors and security companies making money off of paranoid governments. This is PERFECT! Can you imagine the cost of a system capable of doing this? This is a big ticket project. Look in the US when 9/11 happened, guess who was the loudest voices for why we need a national ID card system...Oracle was one of em:) The big database folks, the folks that would stand to make a FORTUNE on it...
To be perfectly honest I'm not entirely sure how much of this is driven by paranoid governments wanting to watch their people, so much as greedy politicians knowing they can partner up with these folks and make huge ammounts of cash playing on the fear of terrorism. The being able to watch everyone is kind of a bonus, the cash is the real motivation.
I wouldn't call it innovative or better than the competition. Their products pretty much suck, the few things they DO get right they copied from someone else who did it right first, or bought it from someone who did it right first, or crushed the ones who did it first and then took it as their own. Microsoft has an amazing marketing and legal team to keep their garbage selling when they simply aren't the best option in most situations.
Just make sure you look past their inability to think their product naming through very well. Windows CE for example...wince...as in it makes people wince. Or Microsoft itself...kinda sounds like they are in desparate need of a penis enlargement and some viagra...which I'm not ruling out since their craptastic OS has enabled the spam zombies and the floods of penis enlargement and viagra ads...so maybe that WAS the ultimate goal...to get themselves hooked up with the people they need.
I am a productive member of society, I don't break any important laws. (Given that breathing air without paying your free air tax, and watching movies without having your memory erased are nearly illegal, I am going to discount such frivolous nonsense and unjust laws) I go to work, pay my taxes, and raise my children to behave and I don't let them just run wild in stores and whatnot. My parents raised me well, HOWEVER, I probably would have been executed on the spot by my parents if they were aware of some of the absolutely stupid things I pulled in the years between 15-21 or so.
About the age that your children learn to walk, you start to lose the ability to be constantly aware of their actions, then they learn to ride bikes, drive cars, and are allowed to go out without supervision...and it just gets worse. You can only hope that they usually do the right thing, but you can pretty much count on the fact that they are going to do stupid things...you did, your parents did, your grandparents did...that simple, just part of growing up.
Should they be forced to take the page down, yup, should they be forced to apologize, probably...should they be drug into court, costing thousands of dollars, further angering them and creating even more of a distrust for anyone in authority...probably not such a good plan. So to the principal, fire her stupid ass, she is obviously too much of a whiney freaking child to be responsible for a bunch of kids who are going to do stupid things. Teachers and School administrators don't get paid enough, but they need to have some thick skins to operate in that environment, kids do and say stupid things frequently. I mean seriously I don't remember a single point in school that there wasn't some aweful rumor about some teacher or administrator going around. This lawsuit happy society is just really pissing me off...The only people that win are the lawyers, who write the laws to be intentionaly vague and encourge this kind of bullshit so they get paid more frequently.
Well as a little sketchy as I think the whole thing was I would like to point out a few things about said case. 1. That particular McDonalds had repeat complaints about scalding hot coffee. Yes coffee has to be hot...but not boiling hot does not mean "COLD" it means not so hot that you can DRINK the coffee, given that coffee is meant to be a beverage and not something you cook noodles in, it stands to reason that it shouldn't be scalding hot when served. The second part of this is that the elderly lady involved in the mess only wanted medical covered, nothing else, a very minimal chunk of change. THE COURTS decided that because this store had a aweful track record of burning people and serving coffee at temperatures well above what they are supposed to that they would issue a punative fine. So on the surface as it was reported yes...it paints the lady as some crazy old loon and her idiot son speeding out of the place splashing coffee all over... I find it amusing that the/. crowd will buy the media story hook line and sinker on some issues, and on others cry foul...I think we have established quite well that the media really doesn't do much of anything to protect the little guy, they just serve corporate/government interests, because remember the viewer is not the consumer, the viewer is the product being sold.
In 1928 the American holdings of I. G. Farben (i.e., the Bayer Company, General Aniline Works, Agfa Ansco, and Winthrop Chemical Company) were organized into a Swiss holding company, i. G. Chemic (Inter-nationale Gesellschaft fur Chemisehe Unternehmungen A. G.), controlled by I. G. Farben in Germany. In the following year these American firms merged to become American I. G. Chemical Corporation, later renamed General Aniline & Film. Hermann Schmitz, the organizer of I. G. Farben in 1925, became a prominent early Nazi and supporter of Hitler, as well as chairman of the Swiss I. G. Chemic and president of American I. G. The Farben complex both in Germany and the United States then developed into an integral part of the formation and operation of the Nazi state machine, the Wehrmacht and the S.S.
You are correct..they are primarily a german company...that doesn't erase the fact that they (including their american parts) were found guilty of war crimes. 1928 was not after the war, so I suggest you check your history before telling me to check mine.
Sure it is. Because we cried foul when Germany said they wouldn't fight in Iraq. Germany even offered to backfill security forces positions at the US bases in Germany to free up more US Soldiers to fight, but would not go themselves. I have seen the "Germany gave us the finger" crap waved around and paraded through the media and populace. So...its only fair for them to say the same of us...and lets not forget American companies were selling to both sides. Look up the history of the free drug testing Bayer got from the Nazi docs (We swear! We just thought they just had really big headaches), or the IBM involvement (We swear! We had no idea why they wanted to count all the jews), or the company that was making the gas for the chambers (We swear! we thought they just had a huge rat problem), or the company that made the ovens (We swear! we thought they were just making huge loaves of bread). America really only got concerned involved in either WW after we got slapped ourselves. And this "America won WWX" crap is insane, I hear it so often, it pisses me off to no end that people don't seem to be aware of the history at all, and I'm an American myself. Russia lost something like 80 men to everyone 1 of ours...both wars had been going on for some time before we ever got involved. Its like saying the single grain of sand that tips the scales weighs more than the other side by itself.
Hopefully this whole court shenanagins will shake things up enough so that the control of the net becomes a little less US centric. Just bad business for us to own the whole thing like that...it will only encourage people to build their own and start disconnecting leaving us with nothing but a telco owned mess of overpriced crap (moreso than the net is now!).
Ex con's getting a fair shake in the job market has a whole lot to do with what they went in for, and when. As far as not paying for their "free ride" I should remind you that public education is the same "free ride". As far as going back to crime...well I suggest looking at some hard facts on that...because you are wrong and right depending on the crime. You are talking about cons like the guy that stole the car, the serial rapist, and the guy that got caught in a bad situation are all the same.
So...now for the nice part of the suspended animation. Those wrongly convicted have no chance of proving their innocence now and making the police force look like the incompetent screwups they often are. BONUS! Those nasty political dissidents and protestors can easily vanish because lets face it, up front it looks much more humane! BONUS! This kind of crap would only serve to increase the number of sentences handed out like this because it would be so convenient to enforce. You would have MORE criminals in jail not fewer. And let us never forget, the people who write the laws determine who is a felon and who is not...felons cannot vote, and the law writers must be voted for to get in and stay in.
I agree our prison system is in desparate need of repair, and the drug laws are definetly one of the first things that need to be dealt with. But this is most definetly not the way to do it.
Absolutely, I mean why would we want them to do anything that may be good for them, like get educated and get a job. We want them to be completely out of touch with the last 2,5,10, or even 20 years of the world, so their only option is to go back to crime!. As far as punishment I'm not talking about all the bad failures stuff, I'm talking about the same way you punish a child. You go sit in the corner and think about what you did. Watching them their friends and family age as opposed to just bamf punishment over. Nevermind the whole suspended animation would leave them that nice crime commiting age they went in as. I would rather have that 40yr old criminal come out at 60...a little tougher to do much...but to have him come back out as 40ish...well back to square one.
I'm not sure how this would help. I mean yeah they take less space...but it kinda defeats the purpose of prison. Prison is a PUNISHMENT. So I get in trouble...I sleep a few years, wake up and ready to crime again in a world that went for a few years without me being aware of anything.
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Ahh yes...the good ol "make em pay fines!" approach. I fail to see how this does any good, and even more I fail to see why people think it will. So here is the example. I am some giant evil megacorp producing $10 widgets by killing animals, deforestation, and lots of pollution. So those whiney toothless left wingers come in and start chanting, putting up signs, and making a big stink on the media...free PR! woohoo. So now...the government steps in...and decides "Hey, we can cash in on this too!" So they fine me $100 million dollars for being a bastard. Now the government is $100 million richer without raising taxes, I have tons of free PR, and your $10 widget now costs you $15 dollars and I am making more money than before. Oh what?! your minimum wage job didn't change?! The costs of the goods keeps going up because my cost of business goes up, and I'm not going to take a loss over some silly environut. Well doesn't that suck for you, I guess you will have to buy a few less widgets this year... So now the current balance is Megacorp 1, Government 1, People -2 (or maybe just -1 if you really convince yourself that the $100 million will go to public good instead of some lobbyist scum, slush fund, or just be handed over to Halliburton in some fashionable no bid contract).
I have no idea what you are talking about. You say bullshit FUD because "XP has a built in firewall and 2000 didn't" I just explained that you are wrong. 2000 DID have built in firewalling capabilities and XP didn't, Service Pack 2 is what brought the firewall to XP. Sounds like you are very confused about what you are talking about and what I am explaining.
Beyond that I have no idea what you are going on about with the 3rd party stuff, it sounds like you are upset at me for telling you to use a 3rd party product, I'm telling you that ANY protection product that you have to PAY for is bullshit. I don't mind the XP Firewall, I don't use it because I have a better firewall in front of the few windows boxes I deal with. It is about time they put it in there for the consumer. However, I have a huge problem with their malware crap that you have to pay for that they also make deals with scumware vendors to give lower scores. So again it sounds like you are trying to spout some pro MS nonsense with skewed or no facts at all, and then just calling FUD whan anyone disagrees with you. Which is stupid because ultimately I agreed with you that XP firewall was a good thing, but your point was wrong because 2000 had it long before XP did.
XP had no such thing, XP SP2 had a firewall built in. Windows 2000 at release had IP Security Filters, which while not exactly a very robust firewall, it was capable of getting things done. If you are paying protection money to anyone AV/Firewall/Otherwise you are in the trap that MS is trying to exploit with this move. Crappy OS, no choice but to use AV etc, and now you have to use THEIR AV/Malware detection, which they have sold lower scores to Claria and whatever scumware company shells out more money than you shell out for protection.
Does that mean by not looking at it it will cease to exist?
"Western Culture" has largley sprung up from imperialism. Romans, British, American... Take what you can when you can however you can. The distaste for "Western Culture" tends to come from the nations that suffered under Roman/British rule...you know...like America did...then as the Iranian president that we overthrew to put the Shah in power said "We should be natural allies, we have both thrown off the shackles of British Imperialism". Unfortunately our little experiement in freedom has been rushing back towards the Imperialistic control of outside resources. So now America is exerting its force to bring "Western Culture" aka "Western Control" to other parts of the world. Even if you talk smaller picture about our culture it really is the same thing, take what you can, when you can, however you can. Look at our business practices, look at our trends in love life (72hr celebrity marriages and the like, tons of divorce, single parents all over), look at how we treat eachother as strangers on the street. Our "western culture" is not better in most ways, it has a few points that are nice ideals, such as freedom of speech and the like, but the majority of our "culture" is filth and greed, and we just manage to put alot of nice window dressing on it...the same way British oppressors were civilized and the people they oppressed were savages.
I don't know you, but the typical response I get from the "we're #1" crowd is how arab nations are SOO much more savage and oppressed. When you have been there, and talked to the people, and been in their shops and see how they conduct business and treat perfect strangers you can discuss this with me again. I was there as another face in a sea of uniforms, and I refused to call them "hajis" or "towel heads" or whatever, and I talked to the few that were around the base...they were are terribly polite and educated people, put in a horrible position by insane dictators. Insane dictators that "Western Culture" supported for various political/economic reasons.
Unfortunately it sorta is an example. Not quite in the same way as the current realm of things, but there were LOTS of dollars involved in making prohibition go away. Look how much money is being made via "sin taxes" on alchohol and what not.
I suspect the same. Amazon has a pretty sketchy track record as far as patents go, and while IBM isn't perfect, they have been turning loose alot of their projects into the OSS world and generally playing nice with the OSS crowd. I think while they are also serving their own interests, they deserve some credit for their handling of a certain fiaSCO.
It may be my wishful thinking, but fair and honest business practices don't always cause the fastest growth, they do tend to lead to the best long term growth. So IBM just may be swinging the big stick to get Amazon back in line.
Let me lift that rock up for you. If there is a customer revolt, these corporations will NOT change direction, they WILL change legislation. This pretty much applies in all things 'vote with your dollar'.
Oh absolutely, I pretty much refuse to use credit or loans unless absolutely required. I simply won't take out a loan for a vehicle at all. It is infinetly cheaper to buy some used car for a few grand, drive it as long as you can, and then buy a new one when it dies. The people in that top 5% don't really have any wealth so to speak, they have billions of dollars in IOUs basically. For example, it doesn't make any sense to pay off your home, especially in lawsuit happy land that we are these days, its now a liability. If you take out a huge home equity loan and buy your next property you can start using it to make money, just repeating the process until you have millions in debt but thousands of dollars coming in each month. As far as the lower 30% I think your estimates are a bit high, you would be surprised how easy it is to get credit extended to you.
I think the problem there is that we artifically muck with our numbers and you really can't compare our economies in such a simplistic way. We are VERY much a debt driven society these days. Average debt for the average american is supposed to be somewhere around 10-20k. I can make $5,000 and still manage to live a comfortable lifestyle (at least for a while). Debt dodging is VERY common, and a big part of identity theft as well. Rack up thousands in debt, move away when collectors find you, sure you may never get out of the hole, but someone is always willing to give you a payday loan at 350% interest or some other such nonsense.
Remember not whipping out your credit card and spending yourself into oblivion is unamerican. Think of it this way, when you open a bank account you MIGHT get lucky and get as high as 3% interest rate (typically only credit unions), but every time you swipe that card you are giving Visa/Mastercard/etc a 12-27% savings account on the bank of you.
I'm not a programmer, and I don't know the in detail methods of WGA, but off the top of my head I can think of a few methods. Intercept the "call home" and either rewrite what is sent home to be a known good until they block it or redirect the "call home" to a local approval service installed as part of the "fix". I realize when you hit the MS sites for updates and the like the second may not work, but faking a good response to yourself would at least get WGA to pull its nag/disabling claws back out of your system.
Not that I really disagree here, but just to play devil's advocate a bit. In the US here...the "poverty level" or the level of income that you must be below to be consided "poor" is set by people who are frequently in the top end of the owners of the wealth in the US. So our "poverty" is skewed a bit too.
You are absolutely correct, but life span does affect average age of child bearers and average number of offspring.
Look at it this way, when you were lucky to reach 30-40yrs and you had to have 12 kids to make sure at least 1 or 2 of them survived long enough to have kids themselves it has an effect on the evolutionary path. Humans had to breed in larger numbers and more frequently for the population to survive, as the lifespan increases the pressure to breed now and breed often is greatly reduced. Look how many people are waiting till they are older to have children these days, and how few 14 and 15yr olds are having children. Short lived things have to breed much more frequently and in larger numbers to ensure the survival of the population.
I read the article, and it just seems to be a great deal of pointless guessing. "Men will have bigger penises! Women will have pert breasts! Everyone will be beautiful except for those dumb little troll humans!" Whatever...Incidentally as life spans increase the speed of evolution generally decreases.
You are correct about the wealthy having fewer children, as many developed nations are actually slipping into declining populations because of this problem. However, you are absolutely wrong about the US having this problem, the US has an incredibly high population growth rate for a developed nation, in fact I believe the US has the HIGHEST growth rate of all developed nations.
I am forced to wonder how much of a conservative you are because you also equate wealth to intelligence, and if you haven't noticed..Paris Hilton and a GREAT number of the richest folks in the US are a FAR cry from being the most intelligent. You also assume that everyone that is intelligent WANTS to be rich, which is not the case. Greed and Gluttony are not related to intelligence in any meaninful fashion.
You are confused. It doesn't make things worse because "it costs money" it makes things better because "it makes money" You are only viewing it from the end of the people getting screwed. Try again, except this time put yourself in the place of the defense contractors and security companies making money off of paranoid governments. This is PERFECT! Can you imagine the cost of a system capable of doing this? This is a big ticket project. Look in the US when 9/11 happened, guess who was the loudest voices for why we need a national ID card system...Oracle was one of em :) The big database folks, the folks that would stand to make a FORTUNE on it...
To be perfectly honest I'm not entirely sure how much of this is driven by paranoid governments wanting to watch their people, so much as greedy politicians knowing they can partner up with these folks and make huge ammounts of cash playing on the fear of terrorism. The being able to watch everyone is kind of a bonus, the cash is the real motivation.
I wouldn't call it innovative or better than the competition. Their products pretty much suck, the few things they DO get right they copied from someone else who did it right first, or bought it from someone who did it right first, or crushed the ones who did it first and then took it as their own. Microsoft has an amazing marketing and legal team to keep their garbage selling when they simply aren't the best option in most situations.
Just make sure you look past their inability to think their product naming through very well. Windows CE for example...wince...as in it makes people wince. Or Microsoft itself...kinda sounds like they are in desparate need of a penis enlargement and some viagra...which I'm not ruling out since their craptastic OS has enabled the spam zombies and the floods of penis enlargement and viagra ads...so maybe that WAS the ultimate goal...to get themselves hooked up with the people they need.
I am a productive member of society, I don't break any important laws. (Given that breathing air without paying your free air tax, and watching movies without having your memory erased are nearly illegal, I am going to discount such frivolous nonsense and unjust laws) I go to work, pay my taxes, and raise my children to behave and I don't let them just run wild in stores and whatnot. My parents raised me well, HOWEVER, I probably would have been executed on the spot by my parents if they were aware of some of the absolutely stupid things I pulled in the years between 15-21 or so.
About the age that your children learn to walk, you start to lose the ability to be constantly aware of their actions, then they learn to ride bikes, drive cars, and are allowed to go out without supervision...and it just gets worse. You can only hope that they usually do the right thing, but you can pretty much count on the fact that they are going to do stupid things...you did, your parents did, your grandparents did...that simple, just part of growing up.
Should they be forced to take the page down, yup, should they be forced to apologize, probably...should they be drug into court, costing thousands of dollars, further angering them and creating even more of a distrust for anyone in authority...probably not such a good plan. So to the principal, fire her stupid ass, she is obviously too much of a whiney freaking child to be responsible for a bunch of kids who are going to do stupid things. Teachers and School administrators don't get paid enough, but they need to have some thick skins to operate in that environment, kids do and say stupid things frequently. I mean seriously I don't remember a single point in school that there wasn't some aweful rumor about some teacher or administrator going around. This lawsuit happy society is just really pissing me off...The only people that win are the lawyers, who write the laws to be intentionaly vague and encourge this kind of bullshit so they get paid more frequently.
Well as a little sketchy as I think the whole thing was I would like to point out a few things about said case. 1. That particular McDonalds had repeat complaints about scalding hot coffee. Yes coffee has to be hot...but not boiling hot does not mean "COLD" it means not so hot that you can DRINK the coffee, given that coffee is meant to be a beverage and not something you cook noodles in, it stands to reason that it shouldn't be scalding hot when served. The second part of this is that the elderly lady involved in the mess only wanted medical covered, nothing else, a very minimal chunk of change. THE COURTS decided that because this store had a aweful track record of burning people and serving coffee at temperatures well above what they are supposed to that they would issue a punative fine. So on the surface as it was reported yes...it paints the lady as some crazy old loon and her idiot son speeding out of the place splashing coffee all over... I find it amusing that the /. crowd will buy the media story hook line and sinker on some issues, and on others cry foul...I think we have established quite well that the media really doesn't do much of anything to protect the little guy, they just serve corporate/government interests, because remember the viewer is not the consumer, the viewer is the product being sold.
In 1928 the American holdings of I. G. Farben (i.e., the Bayer Company, General Aniline Works, Agfa Ansco, and Winthrop Chemical Company) were organized into a Swiss holding company, i. G. Chemic (Inter-nationale Gesellschaft fur Chemisehe Unternehmungen A. G.), controlled by I. G. Farben in Germany. In the following year these American firms merged to become American I. G. Chemical Corporation, later renamed General Aniline & Film. Hermann Schmitz, the organizer of I. G. Farben in 1925, became a prominent early Nazi and supporter of Hitler, as well as chairman of the Swiss I. G. Chemic and president of American I. G. The Farben complex both in Germany and the United States then developed into an integral part of the formation and operation of the Nazi state machine, the Wehrmacht and the S.S.
You are correct..they are primarily a german company...that doesn't erase the fact that they (including their american parts) were found guilty of war crimes. 1928 was not after the war, so I suggest you check your history before telling me to check mine.
Showing this to the wrong crowd. You should send that link to the Judge.
Sure it is. Because we cried foul when Germany said they wouldn't fight in Iraq. Germany even offered to backfill security forces positions at the US bases in Germany to free up more US Soldiers to fight, but would not go themselves. I have seen the "Germany gave us the finger" crap waved around and paraded through the media and populace. So...its only fair for them to say the same of us...and lets not forget American companies were selling to both sides. Look up the history of the free drug testing Bayer got from the Nazi docs (We swear! We just thought they just had really big headaches), or the IBM involvement (We swear! We had no idea why they wanted to count all the jews), or the company that was making the gas for the chambers (We swear! we thought they just had a huge rat problem), or the company that made the ovens (We swear! we thought they were just making huge loaves of bread). America really only got concerned involved in either WW after we got slapped ourselves. And this "America won WWX" crap is insane, I hear it so often, it pisses me off to no end that people don't seem to be aware of the history at all, and I'm an American myself. Russia lost something like 80 men to everyone 1 of ours...both wars had been going on for some time before we ever got involved. Its like saying the single grain of sand that tips the scales weighs more than the other side by itself.
Hopefully this whole court shenanagins will shake things up enough so that the control of the net becomes a little less US centric. Just bad business for us to own the whole thing like that...it will only encourage people to build their own and start disconnecting leaving us with nothing but a telco owned mess of overpriced crap (moreso than the net is now!).
Ex con's getting a fair shake in the job market has a whole lot to do with what they went in for, and when. As far as not paying for their "free ride" I should remind you that public education is the same "free ride". As far as going back to crime...well I suggest looking at some hard facts on that...because you are wrong and right depending on the crime. You are talking about cons like the guy that stole the car, the serial rapist, and the guy that got caught in a bad situation are all the same.
So...now for the nice part of the suspended animation. Those wrongly convicted have no chance of proving their innocence now and making the police force look like the incompetent screwups they often are. BONUS! Those nasty political dissidents and protestors can easily vanish because lets face it, up front it looks much more humane! BONUS! This kind of crap would only serve to increase the number of sentences handed out like this because it would be so convenient to enforce. You would have MORE criminals in jail not fewer. And let us never forget, the people who write the laws determine who is a felon and who is not...felons cannot vote, and the law writers must be voted for to get in and stay in.
I agree our prison system is in desparate need of repair, and the drug laws are definetly one of the first things that need to be dealt with. But this is most definetly not the way to do it.
Absolutely, I mean why would we want them to do anything that may be good for them, like get educated and get a job. We want them to be completely out of touch with the last 2,5,10, or even 20 years of the world, so their only option is to go back to crime!. As far as punishment I'm not talking about all the bad failures stuff, I'm talking about the same way you punish a child. You go sit in the corner and think about what you did. Watching them their friends and family age as opposed to just bamf punishment over. Nevermind the whole suspended animation would leave them that nice crime commiting age they went in as. I would rather have that 40yr old criminal come out at 60...a little tougher to do much...but to have him come back out as 40ish...well back to square one.
I'm not sure how this would help. I mean yeah they take less space...but it kinda defeats the purpose of prison. Prison is a PUNISHMENT. So I get in trouble...I sleep a few years, wake up and ready to crime again in a world that went for a few years without me being aware of anything.