You missed his point. Colonial America had plentiful natural resources for sustaining human life. Mars has almost none, and even less that are realistically exploitable. The promise of starting a new life and good old fashioned pioneering spirit don't get you jack shit in that kind of environment.
I strongly disagree with the implication that just because some information has "entertainment" value that it is of a lower class or less important than other information.
Hmm, you're the person who goes around Wikipedia tacking on those vapid "Foo in Popular Culture" sections to every article, aren't you? I can't imagine how many people's lives were improved by that kind of information because I have trouble visualizing a null set.
However, if you disagree, please feel free to come over here and follow me around.
Thanks, I think I'll do that. Please give me your address, and your home phone number as well in case I get "lost". Otherwise, you're just bullshitting.
Seriously, someone explain to me what is wrong with a national ID standard... without saying "papers please".
--
It's abuse to mod a comment Overrated, Flamebait or Troll just because you disagree with it. The goal is to share ideas.
Just as it's an abuse of this forum to post deliberate flamebait to increase the chances you'll get a response to your questions. Besides, this and your other questions are all answered here: http://www.realnightmare.org/about/2/
Well, you've deftly managed to completely misinterpret and read a lot of silly things into what I said.
You consider yourself schooled because you read a wikipedia article about the EV1?
I don't consider myself schooled because I've read some Wikipedia article, nor am I suggesting that would be sufficient for you. I pointed you to Wikipedia because on technology subjects it's often a great jumping-off point to real research. I find it amusing that someone with an engineering background doesn't seem to know the appropriate use for a research tool like Wikipedia, or at least automatically assumes that others don't.
My life is devoted to engineering. I have studied with, worked together with (in research environment), and/or had conversations with some of the most distinguished names in the fields of energy conversion and engines. I even have a friend who's a prominent engineer at Saturn for chrisake (EV1 was nominally a Saturn). We talk about things like the EV1 and we are also very conscious/faced daily with the realities of how difficult it is to make more environmentally friendly products attractive to the public.
Irrelevant -- a classic argumentum ad verecundiam fallacy. You and your friend could be the finest engineers to grace the profession, but this doesn't make you any more qualified to analyze the business decisions or market forces which affect your projects than myself or any other layperson in business or economics.
If you want to spend your time reading conspiracy theories about how everyone in world is out to screw up the world then fine and don't listen to me.
Where in my post did I claim conspiracy, or that the world is such a nasty place? My assertion is that GM's public justification is old-fashioned spin -- there's a world of difference there. Like yourself, I believe GM's decision to axe EV1 was a rather pedestrian (no pun intended) business decision. However, I don't believe this decision was made solely on the basis that GM deemed that consumers just weren't ready to pay.
Since R&D of new technologies (especially energy-related) tends towards enormous expense and long terms, the risk this poses to a public corporation's short-term financial health often overshadows the potential for longer-term gains. GM is an old corporation who would rather not stake the bottom line on yet-unproven technologies. The market and industrial base for petroleum-based vehicles has been in place for decades, so discarding it almost entirely for something new without a damn good reason (i.e. emissions laws or compelling potential for profit) is just bad business to them. They couldn't come out and sell that reasoning to the public however, because damage to their public image for not "casting off the old ways" and becoming "environmentally responsible" is also very risky to profits. It's far safer to sell the idea that customers are to blame for not bearing the financial risk.
Is it really completely unbelievable to you that GM is telling the truth when they say that it doesn't make any sense for them to be liable for the dangers of people driving around in cars that they'd have no way of guaranteeing either the ability for repairs or safe operation over the long term?
That assertion is what doesn't make sense. The product is not known to be defective (unless you're hinting that there is a conspiracy and they're hiding something), hence there's no liability basis for what amounted to a recall by GM. Cars made in the 1990's were safer than cars made in the 1980's, but you didn't see companies recalling the 1980's models on the basis of liability concerns. Even the Ford Pinto, a known defective and sometimes deadly product, wasn't completely pulled off the road and reduced to scrap metal like GM did to the EV1. As for repairs, GM could easily have stipulated "no warranty" in their final sales to EV1 lessors, and aftermarket EV1 support would have arisen to fill the niche left by GM.
It's failure, in my opinion and many others', was primarily the result of a huge discrepancy between what the public said it would buy and what the public actually does buy when it comes down to actually opening their wallets -- it's as simple as that.
I call caca del toro on this. The EV1 wasn't even for sale -- GM would only lease it to customers! And when GM finally pulled the plug on the EV1, many of the lessees offered to buy their EV1s but GM flat out refused to sell, choosing instead to repossess every last EV1 and have them crushed (save for a couple that went to museums after being functionally gutted).
Please school yourself before parroting any further GM lies.
Catching on to what? The idea that an individual's "right" to free speech *always* *without-a-doubt* wins over a group of people's safety?
Yes. The U.S. Constitution expresses this notion in both letter and intent, and you know that full well. Yet notice how you put quotation marks around the word "right" to trivialize that fact. You can't bring yourself to accept that over 200 years ago some very prescient champions of liberty committed their posterity to a world where the government's power to regulate the daily affairs of people (including their safety) was restricted, explicitly and in every way conceivable at the time, by the Constitution. The only safety that the Constitution makes provisions for is safety from government tyranny. If you don't like that document, use the political process to replace it. You can't just reinterpret it to fit your modern viewpoint because it's more convenient, lest you find yourself in ideological company with George W. Bush.
The right to be equal can also be expressed as the right to be free from inequality.
There is no right to be equal or be free from inequality, no matter how you put it. That requires that everyone be given the same start in life, and that in turn requires theft and aggression on the part of the government. As an example, you would use force or the threat of force to steal from the rich and give the stolen wealth to the poor. But notice how you are now unequally persecuting some citizens and not others. Oh the irony.
Nobody has the right to be equal. But everyone has (or should have) the right to the free pursuit of bettering themselves and their situations. That right however stops (or should stop) where it begins to infringe on the right of others to do the same.
You made the decision to hire this person. Why should your employees suffer job insecurity because of your own incompetence? It would be nice to see some personal responsibility on this front instead of just blaming those who work under you.
So you believe that because the employer failed to be omniscient during the hiring process, an employee that later does something that harms the company shouldn't be fired?
This drives me nuts. Too many posters here make this mistake. If you're not going to bother using a spellchecker, then next time before you type that word ask yourself, "Am I going to be rediculed?" That doesn't make sense, does it? That's because you are the subject of ridicule--not "redicule"--and "ridicule" is the root of the word "ridiculous". Please spell it right. Thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
Where did you hear that nonsense? Obama is in the Senate, not the House. The bill won't go before the Senate for a vote until next week.
But still small beans compared to the contribution of Xenu.
In the US it's more like:
if (subject == bro) subject.tase();Upload all you want. The real trick would be people getting the data back out of Freenet, being as it is the least reliable "datastore" ever created.
Isn't that a bit like coming in first place at the Special Olympics? You've "won", but you're still retarded.
You missed his point. Colonial America had plentiful natural resources for sustaining human life. Mars has almost none, and even less that are realistically exploitable. The promise of starting a new life and good old fashioned pioneering spirit don't get you jack shit in that kind of environment.
Uh, Offtopic? *whoosh*! Mod parent Funny: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_forgot_Poland
Attention stratjakt:
You've been laughed off of Slashdot. Please place your hot grits in a proper receptacle and turn in your geek badge at the exit.
Thank you and have a nice day.
Games aren't important. Get some perspective people.
Time for Civil War II: States' Rights Strike Back.
Well, you've deftly managed to completely misinterpret and read a lot of silly things into what I said.
I don't consider myself schooled because I've read some Wikipedia article, nor am I suggesting that would be sufficient for you. I pointed you to Wikipedia because on technology subjects it's often a great jumping-off point to real research. I find it amusing that someone with an engineering background doesn't seem to know the appropriate use for a research tool like Wikipedia, or at least automatically assumes that others don't.
Irrelevant -- a classic argumentum ad verecundiam fallacy. You and your friend could be the finest engineers to grace the profession, but this doesn't make you any more qualified to analyze the business decisions or market forces which affect your projects than myself or any other layperson in business or economics.
Where in my post did I claim conspiracy, or that the world is such a nasty place? My assertion is that GM's public justification is old-fashioned spin -- there's a world of difference there. Like yourself, I believe GM's decision to axe EV1 was a rather pedestrian (no pun intended) business decision. However, I don't believe this decision was made solely on the basis that GM deemed that consumers just weren't ready to pay.
Since R&D of new technologies (especially energy-related) tends towards enormous expense and long terms, the risk this poses to a public corporation's short-term financial health often overshadows the potential for longer-term gains. GM is an old corporation who would rather not stake the bottom line on yet-unproven technologies. The market and industrial base for petroleum-based vehicles has been in place for decades, so discarding it almost entirely for something new without a damn good reason (i.e. emissions laws or compelling potential for profit) is just bad business to them. They couldn't come out and sell that reasoning to the public however, because damage to their public image for not "casting off the old ways" and becoming "environmentally responsible" is also very risky to profits. It's far safer to sell the idea that customers are to blame for not bearing the financial risk.
That assertion is what doesn't make sense. The product is not known to be defective (unless you're hinting that there is a conspiracy and they're hiding something), hence there's no liability basis for what amounted to a recall by GM. Cars made in the 1990's were safer than cars made in the 1980's, but you didn't see companies recalling the 1980's models on the basis of liability concerns. Even the Ford Pinto, a known defective and sometimes deadly product, wasn't completely pulled off the road and reduced to scrap metal like GM did to the EV1. As for repairs, GM could easily have stipulated "no warranty" in their final sales to EV1 lessors, and aftermarket EV1 support would have arisen to fill the niche left by GM.
I call caca del toro on this. The EV1 wasn't even for sale -- GM would only lease it to customers! And when GM finally pulled the plug on the EV1, many of the lessees offered to buy their EV1s but GM flat out refused to sell, choosing instead to repossess every last EV1 and have them crushed (save for a couple that went to museums after being functionally gutted).
Please school yourself before parroting any further GM lies.
The bigger travesty is that Anshe's owner seems to be a citizen of Germany -- not the US -- so she shouldn't even be able invoke the DMCA, a US law.
The deadline is a full year away then, no need to panic.
There is no right to be equal or be free from inequality, no matter how you put it. That requires that everyone be given the same start in life, and that in turn requires theft and aggression on the part of the government. As an example, you would use force or the threat of force to steal from the rich and give the stolen wealth to the poor. But notice how you are now unequally persecuting some citizens and not others. Oh the irony.
Nobody has the right to be equal. But everyone has (or should have) the right to the free pursuit of bettering themselves and their situations. That right however stops (or should stop) where it begins to infringe on the right of others to do the same.
O RLY? How would you explain the obscene wealth of MPAA and RIAA members?
This drives me nuts. Too many posters here make this mistake. If you're not going to bother using a spellchecker, then next time before you type that word ask yourself, "Am I going to be rediculed?" That doesn't make sense, does it? That's because you are the subject of ridicule--not "redicule"--and "ridicule" is the root of the word "ridiculous". Please spell it right. Thanks.
When the Zucker brothers are making fun of it, you know you must be doing something wrong. :)