Where do you live? If it's near Denver, I'll give you a better machine! If it's in a developed country I guarantee there are businesses paying to dispose of similar machines, and similar machines thrown out by individuals who upgrade. A PIII is nearly 8 years old, lots of people have upgraded 4 times since then. There's no reason to throw out a machine that meets your needs, but I don't see the point in letting better computers go to waste.
I always have a few spare machines to give to friends in need. Right now the "sweet spot" of worthless machines to give out free is PIII-500 or so. I get them from people who upgrade, dumpsters, work, etc. Anything much slower than the sweet spot gets recycled, anything much faster gets sold.
Nobody in the US should have to pay for a shitty computer. There's plenty getting mulched every day.
You know, I share your cynical outlook regarding people in charge. There seems to be something about power that makes even the most honest idealistic person curdle. There is also the issue of such positions attracting or even requiring the wrong type of person in the first place.
I am curious about your feelings about moral absolutes changing over time. That is one of the reasons I left the church - there were obvious cases where church teachings had changed (slavery, holy war, women's rights, minority rights) but there was such blind, seething devotion to doctrine. It didn't make sense to me, to have such strong unquestioning devotion to something that could very well change, and had already changed many times in the past.
Slavery has been good according to these unchanging moral absolutes. So has subjugation of women and other races. Beatings and killings for various reasons were also condoned by religious moral absolutes. Moral absolutes based on religion are far more fluid than you claim. Some religions, to this day, consider all remarried sex to be adulturous.
It seems more rational to devise a moral and ethical framework based on logic, human compassion and understanding, and mankind's experience.
The news is full of religious people committing atrocities, so I don't think "unchanging moral absolutes" are very effective at controlling human behaviour. If we spent a bit of effort educating people to treat others like people I think things would be better.
Our problems aren't because evil athiests decide crimes are morally acceptable. They're usually because religious people aren't used to thinking critically and passing responsibility for their actions to some made-up framework.
I suspect that everyone is an agnostic. Even the pope doesn't know for sure that there is a god. (oddly, disbelief is rampant in clergy) My personal belief is that whether or not there is a god is irrelevant. If there is one, he's insane and completely impotent, plus he doesn't care about earth or anything on it.
Religious based rules are the worst at being twisted. How many killed in Jesus name? Allah's? How many poor are ignored in Christian countries? How many Christians commit murder (of various definitions) adultury etc ad nauseum? We have bible-thumping retards supporting vicious wars, and you're saying that athiests have flexible morals?
It's pretty hard to differentiate between athiest and agnostic. Even the most die-hard athiest would admit there is a remote possibility that a mean-tempered, powerless god who had nothing to do with creation and has no interest or involvement with earthly affairs could exist.
You seriously can't imagine a way to defeat ripping?
It's already been demonstrated that we'll have less functionality under vista and I don't trust our tools to work under vista forever. Why the insistence to lock down video signals if they don't plan to cripple ripping?
You need to take better care of them. I've only had damage to 1 music cd and never to a DVD. They are always in their case and on the shelf if they aren't in the player.
Well, I guess you live a more structured life than I do. I lend discs out a lot or take them to a friend's house. I take them on a trip or to a party. Plus, a lot of my discs are rentals or from the library. Those are scratched like a rented itch.
Porn embraced DVD because DVDs are cheaper to make than VHS. I noticed my local porn store had mostly dvds way before regular video stores did. Most online actual media porn sellers switched over 5 years ago to mostly DVD.
There are way more porn titles on DVD than VHS, and there have been for many years. Plus, you're wrong about debbie does dallas.
Well, my point is that we don't have a very good understanding of asteroids.
Asteroids start out big. If they crash into each other or you shoot them, they turn into some medium ones. Again, and you get small ones. One last time and they're gone. Small ones are 100 points!
I disagree strongly. We've already passed the point in the US where you have to work to survive. Sure, there are.01% of the population that panhandles or lives off foodstamps permanently, but you don't see most people doing the bare minimum to survive. There will always be plenty of people who enjoy what they do, or enjoy the prestige they get from doing something well.
So much of our culture already doesn't do anything productive. I think advertising, politics, spectator sports, most popular TV, movies, music, and investment bankers don't contribute to society. If material wealth was pretty much guaranteed to everyone they'd do things they enjoyed. There are many people who love teaching, but in our culture can make more money doing something else. I think we'd have way better teachers, possibly more teachers if money wasn't an object. Definitely we'd have a wider selection of music and movies. And just imaging the medical and scientific breakthroughs possible if you don't have to focus on what is profitable. We'd have actual cures, not just lifelong treatments. We'd have scientific advancement, not just the next iPod.
Oh well, it'll probably not happen in my lifetime. But it will happen. Scarcity is increasingly becoming an illusion already. All it'll take is truly cheap energy.
I don't mind conversations with people who have different opinions. Sometimes I'll learn something, or see things with a new perspective. Other times it is enlightening to see how other people's thought processes work. I don't really try to "convert" people to my way of thinking anymore.
There's plenty of close sources. Cellphones, PCs, the wireless adapter in a laptop, CRTs, TVs, etc. A typical car has huge amounts of EMF in the passenger compartment.
I remember the people who have superstitious paranoia about power lines yet ignore these more powerful fields within inches of their skin.
The problem with this approach is the reason most small businesses don't offer insurance. You can only get acceptable rates if you have hundreds or thousands of employees. For an individual, or for a small business, your only affordable option is catastrophic coverage. Catastrophic coverage is extremely difficult to evaluate, since claims are paid so rarely. You don't know if you've got bogus coverage until it's too late. It'd sure be nice if tax incentives were switched so employers could pay employees for the benefits, but it doesn't help until the problem of no affordable coverage is solved.
I've worked at places that had similar retirement policies as Enron. It made me really nervous that they only matched company stock. I like 401k plans where you can pick from several options. Of course, few places offer pensions anymore. It's all employee-funded or the social security gamble. It's depressing to compare my Dad's pension+socsec and health care at 78 and come up with more than I make at 38. Oh well, I probably don't live in the worst demographic.
No, most of it is in the private sector. If your insurance company won't pay for something, find another! How many companies are there? Hundreds? If you have the government take it over, there won't be a choice unless you leave the country.
Most employers offer one insurance plan. Purchasing insurance on the open market is cripplingly expensive, easily over $1000/month. I've changed employers to get on a better plan, only to see the plan get dropped next benefit year. Changing jobs is a really inefficient way to change health care providers.
There isn't very good information on health care plans, and they change all the time. All the insurance providers offer so many different packages you can't say "Aetha? Oh that's a good plan." You also aren't guaranteed to get the same plan you look at when considering what to get.
I'd love it if there were some standards and stability in health care. Instead I get "Oh, this plan went up 40% this year, here's a shitty one for 20% more." Not to mention the countless times something should have been covered, but the insurance company denies it without recourse. If you get too sick, your insurance company will simply drop you from the policy, again without recourse.
Insurance works best when everyone is covered. Otherwise you get companies competing for the healthiest workers and refusing to insure the ones who need insurance.
A perfect example of the problem where I live: The largest insurer and the largest hospital provider couldn't reach agreement on terms, so suddenly the majority of residents couldn't use the main hospitals, and weren't covered at the other hospitals. The situation is still unresolved. People have died because they couldn't get care they paid for and were insured for. It's ridiculous.
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Where do you live? If it's near Denver, I'll give you a better machine! If it's in a developed country I guarantee there are businesses paying to dispose of similar machines, and similar machines thrown out by individuals who upgrade. A PIII is nearly 8 years old, lots of people have upgraded 4 times since then. There's no reason to throw out a machine that meets your needs, but I don't see the point in letting better computers go to waste.
I always have a few spare machines to give to friends in need. Right now the "sweet spot" of worthless machines to give out free is PIII-500 or so. I get them from people who upgrade, dumpsters, work, etc. Anything much slower than the sweet spot gets recycled, anything much faster gets sold.
Nobody in the US should have to pay for a shitty computer. There's plenty getting mulched every day.
You know, I share your cynical outlook regarding people in charge. There seems to be something about power that makes even the most honest idealistic person curdle. There is also the issue of such positions attracting or even requiring the wrong type of person in the first place.
I am curious about your feelings about moral absolutes changing over time. That is one of the reasons I left the church - there were obvious cases where church teachings had changed (slavery, holy war, women's rights, minority rights) but there was such blind, seething devotion to doctrine. It didn't make sense to me, to have such strong unquestioning devotion to something that could very well change, and had already changed many times in the past.
Welcome to beautiful Malibu, California. Perfect for white people! with good jobs!
Right now we are selecting "uneducated." It's a bit sad, but I don't want kids.
If we wanted the "strongest" genetic pool, we could allow the stupidist and weakest to die, but we might lose people like stephen hawking.
That one's easy: It's turtles all the way down.
I guess I'm just not seeing it.
Slavery has been good according to these unchanging moral absolutes. So has subjugation of women and other races. Beatings and killings for various reasons were also condoned by religious moral absolutes. Moral absolutes based on religion are far more fluid than you claim. Some religions, to this day, consider all remarried sex to be adulturous.
It seems more rational to devise a moral and ethical framework based on logic, human compassion and understanding, and mankind's experience.
The news is full of religious people committing atrocities, so I don't think "unchanging moral absolutes" are very effective at controlling human behaviour. If we spent a bit of effort educating people to treat others like people I think things would be better.
Our problems aren't because evil athiests decide crimes are morally acceptable. They're usually because religious people aren't used to thinking critically and passing responsibility for their actions to some made-up framework.
I suspect that everyone is an agnostic. Even the pope doesn't know for sure that there is a god. (oddly, disbelief is rampant in clergy) My personal belief is that whether or not there is a god is irrelevant. If there is one, he's insane and completely impotent, plus he doesn't care about earth or anything on it.
I'm having trouble telling if you're joking.
Religious based rules are the worst at being twisted. How many killed in Jesus name? Allah's? How many poor are ignored in Christian countries? How many Christians commit murder (of various definitions) adultury etc ad nauseum? We have bible-thumping retards supporting vicious wars, and you're saying that athiests have flexible morals?
It's pretty hard to differentiate between athiest and agnostic. Even the most die-hard athiest would admit there is a remote possibility that a mean-tempered, powerless god who had nothing to do with creation and has no interest or involvement with earthly affairs could exist.
You seem to be confused.
The Republican party is in power, has been for a while now. Cheer up, you can whine about the Democratic party soon enough.
You seriously can't imagine a way to defeat ripping?
It's already been demonstrated that we'll have less functionality under vista and I don't trust our tools to work under vista forever. Why the insistence to lock down video signals if they don't plan to cripple ripping?
Porn embraced DVD because DVDs are cheaper to make than VHS. I noticed my local porn store had mostly dvds way before regular video stores did. Most online actual media porn sellers switched over 5 years ago to mostly DVD.
There are way more porn titles on DVD than VHS, and there have been for many years. Plus, you're wrong about debbie does dallas.
Hard drives are hermetically sealed.
Optical discs get chewed on by pets and children, and left out on scratchy coffeetables.
I have a whole bag of unreadable otical discs. Still looking for a way to recycle them.
Do yourself a favor and look through these
There are many key combinations that save time and make you look snazzy.
If Vista doesn't approve dvd ripper drivers you can't rip a dvd.
Oh sure, like none of us has ever used a computer to heat up some lunch.
I disagree strongly. We've already passed the point in the US where you have to work to survive. Sure, there are .01% of the population that panhandles or lives off foodstamps permanently, but you don't see most people doing the bare minimum to survive. There will always be plenty of people who enjoy what they do, or enjoy the prestige they get from doing something well.
So much of our culture already doesn't do anything productive. I think advertising, politics, spectator sports, most popular TV, movies, music, and investment bankers don't contribute to society. If material wealth was pretty much guaranteed to everyone they'd do things they enjoyed. There are many people who love teaching, but in our culture can make more money doing something else. I think we'd have way better teachers, possibly more teachers if money wasn't an object. Definitely we'd have a wider selection of music and movies. And just imaging the medical and scientific breakthroughs possible if you don't have to focus on what is profitable. We'd have actual cures, not just lifelong treatments. We'd have scientific advancement, not just the next iPod.
Oh well, it'll probably not happen in my lifetime. But it will happen. Scarcity is increasingly becoming an illusion already. All it'll take is truly cheap energy.
I don't mind conversations with people who have different opinions. Sometimes I'll learn something, or see things with a new perspective. Other times it is enlightening to see how other people's thought processes work. I don't really try to "convert" people to my way of thinking anymore.
Anyway, I like your nick!
There's plenty of close sources. Cellphones, PCs, the wireless adapter in a laptop, CRTs, TVs, etc. A typical car has huge amounts of EMF in the passenger compartment.
I remember the people who have superstitious paranoia about power lines yet ignore these more powerful fields within inches of their skin.
The problem with this approach is the reason most small businesses don't offer insurance. You can only get acceptable rates if you have hundreds or thousands of employees. For an individual, or for a small business, your only affordable option is catastrophic coverage. Catastrophic coverage is extremely difficult to evaluate, since claims are paid so rarely. You don't know if you've got bogus coverage until it's too late. It'd sure be nice if tax incentives were switched so employers could pay employees for the benefits, but it doesn't help until the problem of no affordable coverage is solved.
I've worked at places that had similar retirement policies as Enron. It made me really nervous that they only matched company stock. I like 401k plans where you can pick from several options. Of course, few places offer pensions anymore. It's all employee-funded or the social security gamble. It's depressing to compare my Dad's pension+socsec and health care at 78 and come up with more than I make at 38. Oh well, I probably don't live in the worst demographic.
Most employers offer one insurance plan. Purchasing insurance on the open market is cripplingly expensive, easily over $1000/month. I've changed employers to get on a better plan, only to see the plan get dropped next benefit year. Changing jobs is a really inefficient way to change health care providers.
There isn't very good information on health care plans, and they change all the time. All the insurance providers offer so many different packages you can't say "Aetha? Oh that's a good plan." You also aren't guaranteed to get the same plan you look at when considering what to get.
I'd love it if there were some standards and stability in health care. Instead I get "Oh, this plan went up 40% this year, here's a shitty one for 20% more." Not to mention the countless times something should have been covered, but the insurance company denies it without recourse. If you get too sick, your insurance company will simply drop you from the policy, again without recourse.
Insurance works best when everyone is covered. Otherwise you get companies competing for the healthiest workers and refusing to insure the ones who need insurance.
A perfect example of the problem where I live: The largest insurer and the largest hospital provider couldn't reach agreement on terms, so suddenly the majority of residents couldn't use the main hospitals, and weren't covered at the other hospitals. The situation is still unresolved. People have died because they couldn't get care they paid for and were insured for. It's ridiculous.
Do you have any suggestions?