Dude- I've looked at dvd side by side with HD. Sure- it's better. But it's not 1080/480 % better.
DVD is good enough and it is a fraction of the price. The mass market is not going for something grossly more expensive.
And comparing the prices $17.99 for an old movie vs $4.99 is a 400% price increase (not including the $790 player vs the $79 player). For first run $60 retail (likely) vs $20 retail is a 300% increase.
Why should I be blowing thousands of dollars for a tv set and dvds (most of which I already own) when I could be going to Europe, taking -two- extra ski trips, buying a brand new state of the art gaming box with the savings?
Do I want an entire season on one blue ray disk for $80 or an entire season on six DVD's for $45?
The DVD's I can rip to DIVX AVI's- put an entire season on one DVD and take that on the road in my portable Toshiba DVD player that plays AVI's.
Seriously- high quality HD format entire season on one DVD.
If my copy gets destroyed (as one disk did during the trip), I just reburn it. If my blue ray disk is destroyed, stolen, or apparently even gets a minor scratch in the wrong place- I LOSE EVERYTHING.
No thanks.
--- Plus it's Sony and I havn't bought anything from them since 2000 due to a poor customer service incident.
In other words, the premium for new movies will be close to the cost of the movie on DVD.
The price seems way too high to make it in the mass market. Anyone that buys one of these things is going to look like a gearhead/idiot when you can get 99% of the quality for a third of the price on DVD.
I would add to this that most animals (and plants) raised by animal husbandry methods have a lot less nutritional value than free range animals.
You produce a lot of animals with lots of meat but they are missing some of the nutrients that we needed in the first place (and sometimes contain more of bad things because of antibiotics and chemical fertilizers). It's like the tomatoes that are flushed with gas so they look red, but really they are not ripe, don't taste right, and are over 80% useless fiber (so they won't bruise in shipping) vs something like 20% for a real tomato.
By corollary- we produce a LOT of music via RIAA methods, but most would agree a lot of it is not very good (no message, no emotion, nothing new). The last club I went to, you could not distinguish one song from another- it was basically a beat to bounce up and down to- how things have changed in the past 30 years. Basically, it's down to the least common denominator.
Right now a lot of people write software to release for the windows market because of the profit/risk ratio. If they add another layer of fees to pay then that ratio shifts in favor of other solutions.
There only needs to be one "killer game" for linux that is not on windows and the jig is up. Linux would probably gain 10% penetration from that one event.
By driving away developers who are creating things- just not "big enough"- they are creating a set of developers for other OS's.
It has slowed IT productivity down by a factor of 8x.
Projects that would take 40 hours in 2001 take 8 weeks today because of accountability issues, paperwork, and required meetings.
We've had the work done and waited 4-5 weeks for the paperwork to reach the right state before we could even check the code in to the production codebase.
It's truly insane.
Recently, it was going to take us about 5 weeks (with maybe 40 hours of actual human time) to make a 5 minute change to an html help file in production (we had to do all ourchange stuff then we had to meet with IBM to do all their change stuff and schedule a day for the change and a 2 week regression test to be sure the bloody html file wouldn't break anything). At about 10 days into it, management came to their senses and said "Do it!"- we still did all the paperwork (SOX don't you know) but it saved us 3 weeks turnaround.
Truly your intellect is phenomenal- based purely on my post and without actually being there you are able to discern truth better than I was. A marvel of insight- I must salute you.
So let's visit those points and then end this.
IF they called themselves socialist is wasn't the socialism you defined. It was the modern US and European style of socialism. They didn't say "man should not make money".
You have no clue what they said. You were not there. You've gone beyond putting words in my mouth- you are not putting words in the mouths of people you never met.
So you confused their belief and interpreted to mean that socialist think nobody should make money. That's not right.
Again- I know the conversations I had with them and have related them clearly. You were not there and you are not listening- no point in discussing this area further.
It seems like you learned absolutely nothing in shcool. Take for example your highly retarded comparison. While the irony is delicious, I'll grant you a typo on shcool- I make enough of them myself. However- the personal attack is really uncalled for, don't you think?
If you total up salary, vacation and pensions of the professors and compare that with ONLY THE SALARY of everybody else then they go into the 10%. If you compare that with the salary, vacations and pensions of everybody else then they stay about the same. Again- is that what I said? NO. I'm pretty sure you are just a troll at this point since you repeatedly ignore what I actually say and then recast it as some different statement. You compare the total benefits of tenured professors at major colleges to the total benefits of everyone else they are in the top 10%. They make what mid-managers make at corporations (north of 90k- some north of 120k). I went to parties at some of their houses and they lived in bloody mansions- easily 3500 square feet plus a pool. On top of that they have excellent insurance, pensions, and vacation time. On top of all that, they have tenure.
Oh and did the professors every say they shouldn't pay taxes? If not then you are lying about their hypocracy. Did they say their salary should be treated different? If not then you are lying once again.
I'll address your point and ignore the cheesy personal attack.
We didn't get into it that deep. I'm outspoken but I learned quickly, some professors you just don't piss off because they can screw you pretty badly. I listened but didn't debate their social policy because I judged they were not safe subjects to debate with them since it a) wasn't class material and b) they were pretty passionate about it.
The comments they did make implied that some "rich" people should pay taxes to cover very generous social benefits and they didn't think they were rich (while driving 40k luxury cars and living in above mentioned very nice houses). It seemed soft-headed to me at the time. You know whe the real hypocrits were? It was your business professors. By not charging you what the market can bear why were betraying their capitalist and republican ideals. It's those people you should be getting mad at.
This is just pure sophistry. It was while reading this comment that I decided you are just a troll and trying to bait me for fun.
"I disagree with any statement that the US is primarily a socialist state. We are much closer to capitalist than socialist."
The vast majority of the US budget is spent on socialist programs. Go look at the budger breakdown some day. Social security, medicare, medicaid, benefits,
Those are socialist. the rest are not. the rest are corporatist or natural buerocracy
salaries for public workers (the size of the govt in general), farm, logging, mining, ranching subsidies and subsidies for every sector in general etc, take up most of the budget. I am not even counting the interest on the debt since debt and interest are
If you lie to protect innocents from harm, you are probably being moral but unethical.
If you tell the truth (because you always tell the truth) and a bunch of innocent people are killed or tortured, then you are probably being ethical but immoral.
Defense Lawyers seem like a pretty good example. They ethically must defend people they may believe are guilty. If they defend poorly on purpose, they are being unethical. I believe (IANAL) that the prosecution must reveal all evidence to the defense but the defense is not required to reveal evidence that would prove guilt if they discover it. I think it would be unethical for them to reveal proof of guilt (and they might be disbarred for doing so) and I also believe it would be immoral for them to do just that.
Since the area of ethics is sometimes called moral philosophy they are pretty entwined.
Morals are often tied with sex. If you have 5 partners who all know about each other, you may be viewed as ethical but immoral.
Both morality and ethics are intimately tied to culture. Some acts which are immoral in one culture are moral in others.
Hmm, I guess they were mistaken when they called themselves socialists. I will add that several seemed to believe the democratic party was too far right for them.
I find it ironic that you call me a republican since you don't like my opinion. I havn't voted for a republican running for national office since Reagan. I completely disagree with their social policies and they have become spendthrifts and hogs at the trough fiscally. So with regard to calling me a republican- Pot- meet kettle.
Likewise on the hate stuff. The only professor I hated was the computer person who gave me a "B" because I embarassed her in class when she said something so idiotic about computers that I had to correct her. (She said that mac software (68000) would run from the disk on an ibm (80286) without modification if not for copy protection on the disk.) She couldn't get me on any of the tests so the one "soft" assignment we had she murdered my grade on and smiled since there wasn't anything I could do about it. Don't hate her any more but boy I did then!
---
As for the rest of my liberal professors, I merely basked in the hypocrisy of professors who felt we should have high taxes on the well off and high benefits for the poor while conveniently excluding themselves from the well off when I know their total compensation (salary, vacation, and pensions) was in the top 10% in the country.
They would rail against the wealthy ripping off the poor and then turn around and rip us off for $130 a copy for a book they didn't even use in class.
---
The US is a mixed economy that includes capitalism, socialism, and corporatism. Currently the corporatism is winning. I disagree with any statement that the US is primarily a socialist state. We are much closer to capitalist than socialist.
First, and most importantly I guess, my post ended up not having a lot to do with yours. As I started typing, I recalled my college days and kinda went off on a tear. So sorry about that non-sequitor.
With regard to socialism... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism) says: --- Socialism is an ideology with the core belief that society should exist within an environment where not-for-profit popular collectives control the means of power, and therefore the means of production. --- So much for a definition, with regard to my personal belief about socialism- it's about taking people's property to give to other people- not just to support required functions of government.
The socialists I've known felt the government should support poor people and the indigent (a good thing in my opinion too) while personally feeling aggrieved that the government was taking their money to do it with (hypocritical or outright stupid) since they always felt some unknown richer people should foot the entire bill. Some of these were quite successful people probably making 60k+ in the 1980's and early 1990's (so about like making $100k+ today).
The problem is not capitalism but the college monopoly and the copyright monopoly.
The professor says, "Buy my $15 book for $130 or I will fail you and you will not advance into a good life."
The entire point of my socialist tags is that my comments based on my personal experiences in school (except oddly- the political science department who were all rabid conservatives). I had professors who were strong socialists...
(i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism)
Socialism is an ideology with the core belief that society should exist within an environment where not-for-profit popular collectives control the means of power, and therefore the means of production.
... yet they had no problem requiring students to go deeply into debt purchasing obscenely overpriced yet little or unused books to enrich themselves. They hypocrisy of their position stinks.
Capitalism says you grow wheat and I grow wheat- we both sell it for less because we are competing. America is less capitalistic every day. Today we both grow wheat, but I get the government to pass a law saying you have no legal right to sell wheat. They destroy your wheat- and hell maybe even fine you and put you in jail, and then I sell my wheat for monopoly prices.
Or as Wiki puts it...
Capitalism has been defined in various ways.[1] In common usage, it means an economic system in which the means of production are overwhelmingly privately owned and operated for profit, decisions regarding investment of capital are made privately, and where production, distribution, and the prices of goods, services, and labor are affected by the forces of supply and demand in a largely free market.
Capitalism has also been referred to by the terms free market economy, free enterprise system, and economic liberalism.
It goes on to say...
Although they are largely capitalist, most modern economies are often referred to as "mixed economies" because they have varying degrees of government involvement in economic activity and/or some state-owned means of production.
In my opinion, our economy is increasingly "mixed" with multitudes of government monopolies destroying capitalism and locking in monopolies for the elite.
---
Walmart is largely doing it on the back of the taxpayers more than on the backs of the poor. Millions of dollars are spent providing public health care to their employees. So the true cost of Walmart products is partially hidden in your property and sales taxes. States (either vermont or maryland recently) are beginning to get wise to this and passing laws that say if too many of your employees use public assistance then you have to foot part of the bill as a company.
Two things... 1) It's amazing how hard core socialist, leftist professors suddenly turn hard core capitalist and require you to purchase their $85 book. 2) I had one of those classes and the professor -never even referred to the damn book one time all semester-. --- After a couple semesters of this, I started xeroxing the books in the school library (5 cents a copy- 2 pages a copy- about $12 to $15 to copy a $85 book.
--- I think that the professors should create a wiki for each class- let anyone update it- they have editorial control (and the history is available too- plus you have folks log in). Then the cost to students would be free for most books (print out the few pages you actually need hard copy).
I suppose I wouldn't begrudge the hard core capitalist professors insisting on hard books at high profits (tho I'd copy those too)- but it doubly galls me that a socialist type who insists I should give tax money to support everything is such a hypocrite when it comes to their own property and money.
Now that I'm out of school for quite a while, I firmly believe that it is a ripoff of the worst order on a portion of society that is least able to afford the cost. We are ripping off our children and putting them into poverty.
I spent all my time studying the book and had no social life- I gave all my money away to the preacher (who turned out to be having an 10 year affair with one of his bible study partners). I alienated most of my friends because I told them that they were going to hell. I even split up with a great spouse because they were going to hell since they didn't believe in God.
Please be careful of gambling folks, I used to gamble all the time, it completely consumed me, to the point of losing all my friends, money, job, self-respect. I even won 10 grand one time and lost it all back in the new few weeks on more gambling.
Please be careful of drugs folks, I used to take drugs all the time, they completely consumed me, to the point of losing all my friends, money, job, self-respect. They ruined my skin- looks, caused my teeth to fall out. One time I got a promotion for 9 grand a year more and I went on a 9 day cocaine binge and lost the promotion and my kids.
Please be careful of online gaming, folks...
Perhaps the problem is with the person- and not the activity. -ALL- of the above stories are true- I know each of the persons they happened to- none of them are about me- the closest would have been online gaming- but even that didn't cost me very much except my wrists (carpal tunnel- kept playing even when it got bad).
Probably most of us have some activity or substance we can get addicted to. Should we remove all activities and all substances from the 99% of people who have no problem with them because 1% can't control themselves?
I -worked- in an office where over 50% of the people did cocaine big time in the 80's clubbing scene without any problems- they all had good careers, families, etc. in the 90's.
I have buds who have lots of sex with lots of folks and still have good lives- do charity work, etc.
I get so damn tired of people trying to demonize and forbid activities.
For the record- I've played dnd since 1978- had multiple relationships- reproduced- and while being a geek- I was also skiing down black runs at whistler, BC during the day last week and dancing with two cute blond australian girls at Savage Beagle at night. I was there skiing with people I would have never met if I hadn't played Everquest.
Hmm. But... could you breed trees that could repair the damage and enhance the effect?
That might be an inexpensive form of solar energy.
I mean we breed dogs to all kinds of extremes- couldn't we breed a short-lived (say 20 year generation) tree to enhance this effect and not only survive but thrive on the negatives.
Unless you restore it once in a while to be sure, you are flying without a net.
I've had multiple cases where the disk crashed, and the company found out the tapes would not restore.
After one incident, I finally got the company to spring for 7 sets of tapes (maybe $1500). 7 daily rotating backups. We also bought a new set of tapes each month and kept that monthly backup forever. We also restored one or two files from the tape the day after backup to confirm it really was a good backup.
In a perfect world, our wages would drop 25% but our costs for housing, medicine, food and entertainment would drop 40%.
This -should- be the case now- movies sell legally for 2.45 in china but for 14.95 in the 1st world. The same medicine sells for $4 in the third world that sells for $80 in the 1st world.
These price differences would not exist if the capitalist system was allowed to function. Prices would flatten. Only artificial constraints hold these artificially high prices up.
The cost for some things will be bid up tho. As there are more rich people in all countries, it gets harder to get the truly rare things like beachfront property and lift tickets at the top resorts. Likewise, housing in stable countries would be more expensive.
I trust- that long term- these price differences will be erased by inflation in the 3rd world and by price cuts in the 1st world. But a lot of people who spent 4-8 years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars getting an education (another thing that should be getting way cheaper) are going to get hurt very badly over the next decade.
Yes but sales are up because folks know that DVD is dead and they need to HURRY to get the DVD's they want before they are out of stock and never available... AGAIN!
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with most of what you say.
But you do need to consider inflation.
$7 in 1984 is basically $28 in today's dollars. So if it is $20 today, it's about 30% cheaper than those $7 records back in 1984.
Dude- I've looked at dvd side by side with HD.
Sure- it's better. But it's not 1080/480 % better.
DVD is good enough and it is a fraction of the price. The mass market is not going for something grossly more expensive.
And comparing the prices $17.99 for an old movie vs $4.99 is a 400% price increase (not including the $790 player vs the $79 player). For first run $60 retail (likely) vs $20 retail is a 300% increase.
Why should I be blowing thousands of dollars for a tv set and dvds (most of which I already own) when I could be going to Europe, taking -two- extra ski trips, buying a brand new state of the art gaming box with the savings?
Do I want an entire season on one blue ray disk for $80 or an entire season on six DVD's for $45?
The DVD's I can rip to DIVX AVI's- put an entire season on one DVD and take that on the road in my portable Toshiba DVD player that plays AVI's.
Seriously- high quality HD format entire season on one DVD.
If my copy gets destroyed (as one disk did during the trip), I just reburn it.
If my blue ray disk is destroyed, stolen, or apparently even gets a minor scratch in the wrong place- I LOSE EVERYTHING.
No thanks.
---
Plus it's Sony and I havn't bought anything from them since 2000 due to a poor customer service incident.
In other words, the premium for new movies will be close to the cost of the movie on DVD.
The price seems way too high to make it in the mass market. Anyone that buys one of these things is going to look like a gearhead/idiot when you can get 99% of the quality for a third of the price on DVD.
Back in college a friend of mine tried to run on his bike twice. Was caught twice.
You are right that you have better odds, but the cops have a lot more resources including air support.
Scary when you think how they are getting better technology while still living under limits on their power designed before those improvements.
I would add to this that most animals (and plants) raised by animal husbandry methods have a lot less nutritional value than free range animals.
You produce a lot of animals with lots of meat but they are missing some of the nutrients that we needed in the first place (and sometimes contain more of bad things because of antibiotics and chemical fertilizers). It's like the tomatoes that are flushed with gas so they look red, but really they are not ripe, don't taste right, and are over 80% useless fiber (so they won't bruise in shipping) vs something like 20% for a real tomato.
By corollary- we produce a LOT of music via RIAA methods, but most would agree a lot of it is not very good (no message, no emotion, nothing new). The last club I went to, you could not distinguish one song from another- it was basically a beat to bounce up and down to- how things have changed in the past 30 years. Basically, it's down to the least common denominator.
That's actually kinda cool in a way.
Right now a lot of people write software to release for the windows market because of the profit/risk ratio. If they add another layer of fees to pay then that ratio shifts in favor of other solutions.
There only needs to be one "killer game" for linux that is not on windows and the jig is up. Linux would probably gain 10% penetration from that one event.
By driving away developers who are creating things- just not "big enough"- they are creating a set of developers for other OS's.
Sox is really a lot more
It has slowed IT productivity down by a factor of 8x.
Projects that would take 40 hours in 2001 take 8 weeks today because of accountability issues, paperwork, and required meetings.
We've had the work done and waited 4-5 weeks for the paperwork to reach the right state before we could even check the code in to the production codebase.
It's truly insane.
Recently, it was going to take us about 5 weeks (with maybe 40 hours of actual human time) to make a 5 minute change to an html help file in production (we had to do all ourchange stuff then we had to meet with IBM to do all their change stuff and schedule a day for the change and a 2 week regression test to be sure the bloody html file wouldn't break anything). At about 10 days into it, management came to their senses and said "Do it!"- we still did all the paperwork (SOX don't you know) but it saved us 3 weeks turnaround.
Truly your intellect is phenomenal- based purely on my post and without actually being there you are able to discern truth better than I was. A marvel of insight- I must salute you.
So let's visit those points and then end this.
IF they called themselves socialist is wasn't the socialism you defined. It was the modern US and European style of socialism. They didn't say "man should not make money".
You have no clue what they said. You were not there. You've gone beyond putting words in my mouth- you are not putting words in the mouths of people you never met.
So you confused their belief and interpreted to mean that socialist think nobody should make money. That's not right.
Again- I know the conversations I had with them and have related them clearly. You were not there and you are not listening- no point in discussing this area further.
It seems like you learned absolutely nothing in shcool. Take for example your highly retarded comparison.
While the irony is delicious, I'll grant you a typo on shcool- I make enough of them myself. However- the personal attack is really uncalled for, don't you think?
If you total up salary, vacation and pensions of the professors and compare that with ONLY THE SALARY of everybody else then they go into the 10%. If you compare that with the salary, vacations and pensions of everybody else then they stay about the same.
Again- is that what I said? NO. I'm pretty sure you are just a troll at this point since you repeatedly ignore what I actually say and then recast it as some different statement. You compare the total benefits of tenured professors at major colleges to the total benefits of everyone else they are in the top 10%.
They make what mid-managers make at corporations (north of 90k- some north of 120k). I went to parties at some of their houses and they lived in bloody mansions- easily 3500 square feet plus a pool. On top of that they have excellent insurance, pensions, and vacation time. On top of all that, they have tenure.
Oh and did the professors every say they shouldn't pay taxes? If not then you are lying about their hypocracy. Did they say their salary should be treated different? If not then you are lying once again.
I'll address your point and ignore the cheesy personal attack.
We didn't get into it that deep. I'm outspoken but I learned quickly, some professors you just don't piss off because they can screw you pretty badly. I listened but didn't debate their social policy because I judged they were not safe subjects to debate with them since it a) wasn't class material and b) they were pretty passionate about it.
The comments they did make implied that some "rich" people should pay taxes to cover very generous social benefits and they didn't think they were rich (while driving 40k luxury cars and living in above mentioned very nice houses). It seemed soft-headed to me at the time.
You know whe the real hypocrits were? It was your business professors. By not charging you what the market can bear why were betraying their capitalist and republican ideals. It's those people you should be getting mad at.
This is just pure sophistry. It was while reading this comment that I decided you are just a troll and trying to bait me for fun.
"I disagree with any statement that the US is primarily a socialist state. We are much closer to capitalist than socialist."
The vast majority of the US budget is spent on socialist programs. Go look at the budger breakdown some day. Social security, medicare, medicaid, benefits,
Those are socialist. the rest are not. the rest are corporatist or natural buerocracy
salaries for public workers (the size of the govt in general), farm, logging, mining, ranching subsidies and subsidies for every sector in general etc, take up most of the budget. I am not even counting the interest on the debt since debt and interest are
If you lie to protect innocents from harm, you are probably being moral but unethical.
If you tell the truth (because you always tell the truth) and a bunch of innocent people are killed or tortured, then you are probably being ethical but immoral.
Defense Lawyers seem like a pretty good example. They ethically must defend people they may believe are guilty. If they defend poorly on purpose, they are being unethical. I believe (IANAL) that the prosecution must reveal all evidence to the defense but the defense is not required to reveal evidence that would prove guilt if they discover it. I think it would be unethical for them to reveal proof of guilt (and they might be disbarred for doing so) and I also believe it would be immoral for them to do just that.
Since the area of ethics is sometimes called moral philosophy they are pretty entwined.
Morals are often tied with sex. If you have 5 partners who all know about each other, you may be viewed as ethical but immoral.
Both morality and ethics are intimately tied to culture. Some acts which are immoral in one culture are moral in others.
Hmm, I guess they were mistaken when they called themselves socialists. I will add that several seemed to believe the democratic party was too far right for them.
I find it ironic that you call me a republican since you don't like my opinion. I havn't voted for a republican running for national office since Reagan. I completely disagree with their social policies and they have become spendthrifts and hogs at the trough fiscally.
So with regard to calling me a republican- Pot- meet kettle.
Likewise on the hate stuff. The only professor I hated was the computer person who gave me a "B" because I embarassed her in class when she said something so idiotic about computers that I had to correct her. (She said that mac software (68000) would run from the disk on an ibm (80286) without modification if not for copy protection on the disk.)
She couldn't get me on any of the tests so the one "soft" assignment we had she murdered my grade on and smiled since there wasn't anything I could do about it. Don't hate her any more but boy I did then!
---
As for the rest of my liberal professors, I merely basked in the hypocrisy of professors who felt we should have high taxes on the well off and high benefits for the poor while conveniently excluding themselves from the well off when I know their total compensation (salary, vacation, and pensions) was in the top 10% in the country.
They would rail against the wealthy ripping off the poor and then turn around and rip us off for $130 a copy for a book they didn't even use in class.
---
The US is a mixed economy that includes capitalism, socialism, and corporatism. Currently the corporatism is winning. I disagree with any statement that the US is primarily a socialist state. We are much closer to capitalist than socialist.
First, and most importantly I guess, my post ended up not having a lot to do with yours. As I started typing, I recalled my college days and kinda went off on a tear. So sorry about that non-sequitor.
With regard to socialism... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism) says:
---
Socialism is an ideology with the core belief that society should exist within an environment where not-for-profit popular collectives control the means of power, and therefore the means of production.
---
So much for a definition, with regard to my personal belief about socialism- it's about taking people's property to give to other people- not just to support required functions of government.
The socialists I've known felt the government should support poor people and the indigent (a good thing in my opinion too) while personally feeling aggrieved that the government was taking their money to do it with (hypocritical or outright stupid) since they always felt some unknown richer people should foot the entire bill. Some of these were quite successful people probably making 60k+ in the 1980's and early 1990's (so about like making $100k+ today).
The problem is not capitalism but the college monopoly and the copyright monopoly. The professor says, "Buy my $15 book for $130 or I will fail you and you will not advance into a good life." The entire point of my socialist tags is that my comments based on my personal experiences in school (except oddly- the political science department who were all rabid conservatives). I had professors who were strong socialists... (i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism) Socialism is an ideology with the core belief that society should exist within an environment where not-for-profit popular collectives control the means of power, and therefore the means of production. ... yet they had no problem requiring students to go deeply into debt purchasing obscenely overpriced yet little or unused books to enrich themselves. They hypocrisy of their position stinks.
Capitalism says you grow wheat and I grow wheat- we both sell it for less because we are competing. America is less capitalistic every day. Today we both grow wheat, but I get the government to pass a law saying you have no legal right to sell wheat. They destroy your wheat- and hell maybe even fine you and put you in jail, and then I sell my wheat for monopoly prices.
Or as Wiki puts it...
Capitalism has been defined in various ways.[1] In common usage, it means an economic system in which the means of production are overwhelmingly privately owned and operated for profit, decisions regarding investment of capital are made privately, and where production, distribution, and the prices of goods, services, and labor are affected by the forces of supply and demand in a largely free market.
Capitalism has also been referred to by the terms free market economy, free enterprise system, and economic liberalism.
It goes on to say...
Although they are largely capitalist, most modern economies are often referred to as "mixed economies" because they have varying degrees of government involvement in economic activity and/or some state-owned means of production.
In my opinion, our economy is increasingly "mixed" with multitudes of government monopolies destroying capitalism and locking in monopolies for the elite.
---
Walmart is largely doing it on the back of the taxpayers more than on the backs of the poor. Millions of dollars are spent providing public health care to their employees. So the true cost of Walmart products is partially hidden in your property and sales taxes. States (either vermont or maryland recently) are beginning to get wise to this and passing laws that say if too many of your employees use public assistance then you have to foot part of the bill as a company.
Two things...
1) It's amazing how hard core socialist, leftist professors suddenly turn hard core capitalist and require you to purchase their $85 book.
2) I had one of those classes and the professor -never even referred to the damn book one time all semester-.
---
After a couple semesters of this, I started xeroxing the books in the school library (5 cents a copy- 2 pages a copy- about $12 to $15 to copy a $85 book.
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I think that the professors should create a wiki for each class- let anyone update it- they have editorial control (and the history is available too- plus you have folks log in). Then the cost to students would be free for most books (print out the few pages you actually need hard copy).
I suppose I wouldn't begrudge the hard core capitalist professors insisting on hard books at high profits (tho I'd copy those too)- but it doubly galls me that a socialist type who insists I should give tax money to support everything is such a hypocrite when it comes to their own property and money.
Now that I'm out of school for quite a while, I firmly believe that it is a ripoff of the worst order on a portion of society that is least able to afford the cost. We are ripping off our children and putting them into poverty.
Please be careful of religion folks,
...
I spent all my time studying the book and had no social life- I gave all my money away to the preacher (who turned out to be having an 10 year affair with one of his bible study partners).
I alienated most of my friends because I told them that they were going to hell. I even split up with a great spouse because they were going to hell since they didn't believe in God.
Please be careful of gambling folks,
I used to gamble all the time, it completely consumed me, to the point of losing all my friends, money, job, self-respect. I even won 10 grand one time and lost it all back in the new few weeks on more gambling.
Please be careful of drugs folks,
I used to take drugs all the time, they completely consumed me, to the point of losing all my friends, money, job, self-respect. They ruined my skin- looks, caused my teeth to fall out. One time I got a promotion for 9 grand a year more and I went on a 9 day cocaine binge and lost the promotion and my kids.
Please be careful of online gaming, folks
Perhaps the problem is with the person- and not the activity.
-ALL- of the above stories are true- I know each of the persons they happened to- none of them are about me- the closest would have been online gaming- but even that didn't cost me very much except my wrists (carpal tunnel- kept playing even when it got bad).
Probably most of us have some activity or substance we can get addicted to. Should we remove all activities and all substances from the 99% of people who have no problem with them because 1% can't control themselves?
I -worked- in an office where over 50% of the people did cocaine big time in the 80's clubbing scene without any problems- they all had good careers, families, etc. in the 90's.
I have buds who have lots of sex with lots of folks and still have good lives- do charity work, etc.
I get so damn tired of people trying to demonize and forbid activities.
For the record- I've played dnd since 1978- had multiple relationships- reproduced- and while being a geek- I was also skiing down black runs at whistler, BC during the day last week and dancing with two cute blond australian girls at Savage Beagle at night. I was there skiing with people I would have never met if I hadn't played Everquest.
Have FUN- we all die in the end.
-30-
If you want "protection" from those telecom boys, you going to need to pony up some cash to us in the Congress gang.
Ninja-looting on MMOG's means to take loot you have no right too.
I don't think you are a bigot, just ignorant of MMOG jargon and trying to make a cheap point.
Yea- I don't say MMORG- because none of them are about roleplaying for years. Just glorified level trees of one kind or another for the most part.
Yup. But it is clear to me that the guy was not trolling.
Seems like an insightful comment to me.
Hmm.
But... could you breed trees that could repair the damage and enhance the effect?
That might be an inexpensive form of solar energy.
I mean we breed dogs to all kinds of extremes- couldn't we breed a short-lived (say 20 year generation) tree to enhance this effect and not only survive but thrive on the negatives.
You can buy a variety of region free dvd players for under $100.
.avi files btw- an entire season on one dvd. Usually can't be told from a DVD- occasionally you get a bad encode. But great for travel.
Start looking/read the forums at www.divx.com.
They also read
Unless you restore it once in a while to be sure, you are flying without a net.
I've had multiple cases where the disk crashed, and the company found out the tapes would not restore.
After one incident, I finally got the company to spring for 7 sets of tapes (maybe $1500). 7 daily rotating backups. We also bought a new set of tapes each month and kept that monthly backup forever. We also restored one or two files from the tape the day after backup to confirm it really was a good backup.
In a perfect world, our wages would drop 25% but our costs for housing, medicine, food and entertainment would drop 40%.
This -should- be the case now- movies sell legally for 2.45 in china but for 14.95 in the 1st world. The same medicine sells for $4 in the third world that sells for $80 in the 1st world.
These price differences would not exist if the capitalist system was allowed to function. Prices would flatten. Only artificial constraints hold these artificially high prices up.
The cost for some things will be bid up tho. As there are more rich people in all countries, it gets harder to get the truly rare things like beachfront property and lift tickets at the top resorts. Likewise, housing in stable countries would be more expensive.
I trust- that long term- these price differences will be erased by inflation in the 3rd world and by price cuts in the 1st world. But a lot of people who spent 4-8 years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars getting an education (another thing that should be getting way cheaper) are going to get hurt very badly over the next decade.
Yes but sales are up because folks know that DVD is dead and they need to HURRY to get the DVD's they want before they are out of stock and never available... AGAIN!
If they say a SEASON of TV is $14.99 because it is on one disk, then HD/Blu ray might advance.
I can back up my DVD.
But if they say a SEASON of TV is $45.00, it will lose.
I can't back up my HD/Blu ray and I could easily lose my investment to a scratch.