The only person in all of congress that is label-able as a liberal is Denis Kucinish - he is 10 times more liberal than Obama. And he isn't even close to being a Marxist.
Ignoring the fact that liberal/conservative is completely relative and with no objective meaning, there are in fact quite a few members of Congress that are pretty liberal. Senator Bernie Sanders is a self-avowed Democratic Socialist. It's just that the US is a pretty conservative place, generally speaking, and our representatives show that.
But yeah, calling him a Marxist as if that were a slur is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Marx is probably the single most influential intellectual of the modern era, it's ok to be influenced by his ideas. It's not as if Obama is calling for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. We're not going to be setting up Soviets any time soon.
Yes, the Republican party used to be the party of fiscal conservatives and people that put an ultimate emphasis on freedom, but sadly that was a long time ago. Maybe it will happen again, or maybe the Democrats will be smart and use this opportunity to draw those people into their party. But right now the Republicans are a party of big government and low taxes. They want a massive military industrial complex, they want the government involved in eliminating "unwanted" social behaviors, and they want the government to crack down on extremists anywhere in the world at a moment's notice, they just don't want to pay for it. It truly is a sad day for the Republican party.
Well, a minimum wage job isn't really intended to be a LIVING wage job
Yes, it is actually. That's the entire point of a minimum wage, to provide a living wage to low skill workers. Not everyone is smart enough or skilled enough to get a job in engineering. We need janitors, waitresses, cashiers, and bartenders, too. I for one would like my janitor to be able to afford a place to live without having to work 60+ hours a week. If the minimum wage is not enough even for a single, healthy person to make a living, then it is failing its intended purpose.
Wow, that was pretty convoluted. Let me give me posit a simpler theory.
The fact that Amazon sells ebook readers. That is their main product, at least from a moneymaking perspective (following the model from Apple and others). They're selling DRM locked books to lock early adopters into always using a Kindle.
You are right about why they sell DRM-free music. They're competing against Apple, so they need some sort of extra value, and the record labels would like to break away from Apple domination of the online music market.
Wait, you're not honestly claiming that the Thanksgiving story told in elementary schools is accurate history? The same story that was almost entirely made up in the late 19th century?
You're probably one of the people that thinks "In God We Trust" was made the national motto in 1776, rather than 1956.
I understand your points, and they certainly make sense, but looking at it objectively there's no real reason to think DRM prevents piracy in any significant way. Every single DRM protection scheme is broken before the game ships, and it's trivially easy even for non tech-savvy people to pirate games. Gamers (PC gamers especially) aren't 80 year old grandmas who don't know how to run bittorrent. I know very few people my age (early 20's) that don't know how to download games, mount images, the whole thing. Those that don't have a ton of friends that do.
And statistically speaking, there seems to be no correlation between DRM or lack thereof and sales. There seems to be no correlation between DRM and piracy rates. It's a difficult thing to measure since so few AAA titles ship without DRM, but I have yet to see an objective study that even *suggests* that DRM is effective, let alone proves it. It's simply a way for gaming companies to control resale and try to inflate their profits a little bit while depriving gamers of fair use.
Sins has sold over half a million units (that number is six months old, I'm sure it's more now). It was sold in games stores and Wal-Mart just like every other mainstream game. It may not compete with the Halo's of the world, but it is absolutely not a niche product.
People keep doubting non-DRM products, and I don't understand why. Piracy has always been rampant, yet it's only the last couple years that people started thinking a DRM-free business plan wasn't viable. Every single generation the companies try and make it seem like this is a new problem. Meanwhile, DRM-free and minimally invasive DRM products continue to sell well, as they always have. What kind of proof do you need to see before you change your mind?
Nobody is saying that it's outside the realm of possibility, it's just that there's no proof. People mock UFO believers because their "evidence" consists of crazy government conspiracies and small dots of light appearing on film taken on terrible video equipment, all of which is explained simply and logically (with evidence) by other hypotheses.
There are several groups that take an objective, scientific approach to the search for extraterrestrial life (NASA, SETI, etc.). Those institutions are well-regarded by the community. It's just the crazy people that are mocked.
I really recommend Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World. A decent amount of the book is focused on this phenomenon, with several scientific explanations for why people have abduction dreams. There are the obvious ones (a traumatic event that damages your mind, unconsciously covering up abuse, plain old lying) but the mind is capable of some crazy things.
What many abduction believers are conscious of, but don't really take into account, is that normal people hallucinate all the time. Most people do it every day, although not very vividly. It can be triggered by anything, but it is especially common when you are waking or doing something monotonous and repetitive (such as driving while tired). Everything from tiny daydreams to full out trips are possible if your brain is in a certain state.
Some people can have vivid hallucinations quite regularly without drugs or anything unusual in their body. When that happens their mind goes to extraordinary things (no one hallucinates about doing their laundry). Little kids see monsters. If you watch sci-fi movies, maybe you'll see aliens. If you spend your time at a hellfire and brimstone church maybe you'll see demons. How many times have you woken up from a dream and it took you a long time to realize that you were awake?
The scientific method is the only way to examine these things in a neutral way. There's nothing wrong with believing that there might be UFO's. But until there is proof you can't claim that anything extraordinary like that exists. Right now there isn't even crappy evidence, let alone enough to prove something that incredible.
But if each one of those has a full game's worth of content, and the second two are priced like expansions/upgrades, then it would be worth it to most people. I don't understand the indignation when we don't even know the pricing scheme. Blizzard isn't stupid, they're not going to price themselves out of this. They want Starcraft 2 to sell 10 million copies.
No, problem not solved. He specifically said that he wanted his laptop for the flight, so your solution is no help there. And it is much, *much* easier for them to search your stuff if you send it through a private carrier. There's no expectation of privacy so they can inspect it without a warrant, which is effectively the same as physically carrying it through customs. But this way there's no upset traveller yelling at them and wasting an officer's time, and more imporantly, there's no way you would ever know if your laptop was searched.
The only one I can think of are professional sports. Even then it's a series of rules to limit team salary, and not a hard cap on how much an individual can make.
She's not a lawyer by trade...and it's not necessary to be an effective governor since your job is executing the law passed by the legislature.
And how effective can she be at executing the law if she...ummm... doesn't know the law? Supreme Court rulings are pretty important to law, right? Kelo v. City of New London would be an easy one to throw out there. It's simple, understandable, and conservatives hate it. Edwards v. Aguillard? How could she not come up with *any* other Supreme Court decisions? This is stuff you learn in high school civics class. Do we really want someone as VP who has less than a high-schooler's understanding of the Supreme Court?
That reminds me of my friend in high school. He bought a used Suzuki Samurai for a couple hundred dollars. That was a great investment, that car could seriously rally. But it wasn't exactly fast.
One day he was pulled over on a back road near his house doing 47 in a 35 mph zone. He was so happy he almost hugged the officer, because his previous high speed was only around 40 mph.
But it's pretty hard to tell if McCain supports his stated platform, or whether he's actually the "moderate" that we've seen for most of the past 25 years. With his harsh swing to the right over the last 2 years and his selection of Palin as VP, I'm not willing to gamble that he's still sane and is only acting crazy to carry the far-right. It's hard to believe that someone would compromise that many of their previously-held values and still be an honest leader.
She did bad in one interview, but both the Couric and the Gibson interviews were hostile cut, splice, and smear pieces.
I don't disagree that the tone of those interviews was a little hostile, but it's pretty excessive to call them "smear pieces." She made herself look like an idiot, because she has no idea what she's talking about. She couldn't name a single Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade that she disagrees with. If you're a governor and you can't recite a list of Supreme Court cases that you dislike, that makes you uninformed and bad at your job.
It's been shown numerous times that you can be dumb as a goddamned board and win elections, so I'll wait until I see a sign of her intelligence to believe it exists.
In the words of Dave Chappelle, "Nobody fucks monkeys and people, you idiot! You either fuck monkeys, or you fuck people. That's it. There's no in-between.
And there is also only one city in the US that looks like a Japanese city, that's New York. Parts of Chicago, part of San Francisco and even smaller parts of other metro areas are similar, but nowhere near as dense, to what you find in Asia. The suburbs of LA would look like the countryside for most people in Japan or Korea. And the majority of people in the US live in places that are even less dense than that.
That's not what we're talking about. The Netherlands has a lot of land that should be underwater, and a lot more that should be natural marsh or delta. They are mostly focused on keeping the natural landscape habitable by humans and able to withstand the occasional flood or storm surge. A 1 in 100 year event in the Netherlands is nowhere near as powerful as elsewhere in the world. If the Netherlands got hit by something like Katrina or the Sumatra tsunami tomorrow most of the country would be underwater. Storms and floods are not on the same scale everywhere in the world.
Except it's not what I wish my money covered. It's what they told me my money covered. Now that things are finally shaking out and they're telling me how much I can actually use my "unlimited" connection for, you might have a point. But it's legitimate to complain about the ISP cutting off your connection for excessive use when they won't actually tell you what constitutes excessive.
What they say they are doing and what they will actually do are two entirely different things. They wanted the Justice Department to act as their own personal copyright lawyers, for Christ's sake! I can't believe people still fall for this shit.
It's not like after the modifications it is a ridiculous law. As it is, it's a boondoggle. But why was it necessary? Were existing penalties not enough? Do we really need someone monitoring copyright infringement and reporting directly to the president? Is there an IP-based industry that is collapsing due to infringement? Last time I checked the movie, video game, and software industry were making more money than they ever have.
And if you think this will help you directly, think again. Even as content producer, this law is not for you. This law is for the RIAA/MPAA and no one else. Who do you think all those new foreign ataches and redirected police are going to work for? Indy companies or the big, multinational conglomerates? They bought and paid for it, they'll receive the benefits.
Thankfully this isn't that terrible of a bill with that ridiculous idea stripped out, but it was completely unnecessary. Our country is falling down around us, and they're worried about copyright infringement.
The only thing Democrats and Republicans can come together on is selling their constituents' rights for a few pennies.
You didn't actually contradict what he said, his is just more generalized. The smaller population states wanted greater influence, with the major policy point being the southern states' support of slavery. They knew if the North had the authority to ban slavery, they would, so they joined on the condition that the other states couldn't tell them what to do. Unfortunately for them it wasn't written very strongly, so eventually the North did gain that ability.
It allows for two states with differing interests to share a common goal, that's how this is better. And if you think Montana rules NY you're completely insane. They have a *slightly* higher influence *per person* in *federal affairs*. I think it's safe to say that New Yorkers have much more influence over US policy than Montana.
Slashdot Mirror
Ignoring the fact that liberal/conservative is completely relative and with no objective meaning, there are in fact quite a few members of Congress that are pretty liberal. Senator Bernie Sanders is a self-avowed Democratic Socialist. It's just that the US is a pretty conservative place, generally speaking, and our representatives show that.
But yeah, calling him a Marxist as if that were a slur is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Marx is probably the single most influential intellectual of the modern era, it's ok to be influenced by his ideas. It's not as if Obama is calling for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. We're not going to be setting up Soviets any time soon.
Yes, the Republican party used to be the party of fiscal conservatives and people that put an ultimate emphasis on freedom, but sadly that was a long time ago. Maybe it will happen again, or maybe the Democrats will be smart and use this opportunity to draw those people into their party. But right now the Republicans are a party of big government and low taxes. They want a massive military industrial complex, they want the government involved in eliminating "unwanted" social behaviors, and they want the government to crack down on extremists anywhere in the world at a moment's notice, they just don't want to pay for it. It truly is a sad day for the Republican party.
Yes, it is actually. That's the entire point of a minimum wage, to provide a living wage to low skill workers. Not everyone is smart enough or skilled enough to get a job in engineering. We need janitors, waitresses, cashiers, and bartenders, too. I for one would like my janitor to be able to afford a place to live without having to work 60+ hours a week. If the minimum wage is not enough even for a single, healthy person to make a living, then it is failing its intended purpose.
Wow, that was pretty convoluted. Let me give me posit a simpler theory.
The fact that Amazon sells ebook readers. That is their main product, at least from a moneymaking perspective (following the model from Apple and others). They're selling DRM locked books to lock early adopters into always using a Kindle.
You are right about why they sell DRM-free music. They're competing against Apple, so they need some sort of extra value, and the record labels would like to break away from Apple domination of the online music market.
Wait, you're not honestly claiming that the Thanksgiving story told in elementary schools is accurate history? The same story that was almost entirely made up in the late 19th century?
You're probably one of the people that thinks "In God We Trust" was made the national motto in 1776, rather than 1956.
I understand your points, and they certainly make sense, but looking at it objectively there's no real reason to think DRM prevents piracy in any significant way. Every single DRM protection scheme is broken before the game ships, and it's trivially easy even for non tech-savvy people to pirate games. Gamers (PC gamers especially) aren't 80 year old grandmas who don't know how to run bittorrent. I know very few people my age (early 20's) that don't know how to download games, mount images, the whole thing. Those that don't have a ton of friends that do.
And statistically speaking, there seems to be no correlation between DRM or lack thereof and sales. There seems to be no correlation between DRM and piracy rates. It's a difficult thing to measure since so few AAA titles ship without DRM, but I have yet to see an objective study that even *suggests* that DRM is effective, let alone proves it. It's simply a way for gaming companies to control resale and try to inflate their profits a little bit while depriving gamers of fair use.
Sins has sold over half a million units (that number is six months old, I'm sure it's more now). It was sold in games stores and Wal-Mart just like every other mainstream game. It may not compete with the Halo's of the world, but it is absolutely not a niche product.
People keep doubting non-DRM products, and I don't understand why. Piracy has always been rampant, yet it's only the last couple years that people started thinking a DRM-free business plan wasn't viable. Every single generation the companies try and make it seem like this is a new problem. Meanwhile, DRM-free and minimally invasive DRM products continue to sell well, as they always have. What kind of proof do you need to see before you change your mind?
Nobody is saying that it's outside the realm of possibility, it's just that there's no proof. People mock UFO believers because their "evidence" consists of crazy government conspiracies and small dots of light appearing on film taken on terrible video equipment, all of which is explained simply and logically (with evidence) by other hypotheses.
There are several groups that take an objective, scientific approach to the search for extraterrestrial life (NASA, SETI, etc.). Those institutions are well-regarded by the community. It's just the crazy people that are mocked.
I really recommend Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World. A decent amount of the book is focused on this phenomenon, with several scientific explanations for why people have abduction dreams. There are the obvious ones (a traumatic event that damages your mind, unconsciously covering up abuse, plain old lying) but the mind is capable of some crazy things.
What many abduction believers are conscious of, but don't really take into account, is that normal people hallucinate all the time. Most people do it every day, although not very vividly. It can be triggered by anything, but it is especially common when you are waking or doing something monotonous and repetitive (such as driving while tired). Everything from tiny daydreams to full out trips are possible if your brain is in a certain state.
Some people can have vivid hallucinations quite regularly without drugs or anything unusual in their body. When that happens their mind goes to extraordinary things (no one hallucinates about doing their laundry). Little kids see monsters. If you watch sci-fi movies, maybe you'll see aliens. If you spend your time at a hellfire and brimstone church maybe you'll see demons. How many times have you woken up from a dream and it took you a long time to realize that you were awake?
The scientific method is the only way to examine these things in a neutral way. There's nothing wrong with believing that there might be UFO's. But until there is proof you can't claim that anything extraordinary like that exists. Right now there isn't even crappy evidence, let alone enough to prove something that incredible.
But if each one of those has a full game's worth of content, and the second two are priced like expansions/upgrades, then it would be worth it to most people. I don't understand the indignation when we don't even know the pricing scheme. Blizzard isn't stupid, they're not going to price themselves out of this. They want Starcraft 2 to sell 10 million copies.
No, problem not solved. He specifically said that he wanted his laptop for the flight, so your solution is no help there. And it is much, *much* easier for them to search your stuff if you send it through a private carrier. There's no expectation of privacy so they can inspect it without a warrant, which is effectively the same as physically carrying it through customs. But this way there's no upset traveller yelling at them and wasting an officer's time, and more imporantly, there's no way you would ever know if your laptop was searched.
The only one I can think of are professional sports. Even then it's a series of rules to limit team salary, and not a hard cap on how much an individual can make.
And how effective can she be at executing the law if she...ummm... doesn't know the law? Supreme Court rulings are pretty important to law, right? Kelo v. City of New London would be an easy one to throw out there. It's simple, understandable, and conservatives hate it. Edwards v. Aguillard? How could she not come up with *any* other Supreme Court decisions? This is stuff you learn in high school civics class. Do we really want someone as VP who has less than a high-schooler's understanding of the Supreme Court?
That reminds me of my friend in high school. He bought a used Suzuki Samurai for a couple hundred dollars. That was a great investment, that car could seriously rally. But it wasn't exactly fast.
One day he was pulled over on a back road near his house doing 47 in a 35 mph zone. He was so happy he almost hugged the officer, because his previous high speed was only around 40 mph.
But it's pretty hard to tell if McCain supports his stated platform, or whether he's actually the "moderate" that we've seen for most of the past 25 years. With his harsh swing to the right over the last 2 years and his selection of Palin as VP, I'm not willing to gamble that he's still sane and is only acting crazy to carry the far-right. It's hard to believe that someone would compromise that many of their previously-held values and still be an honest leader.
I don't disagree that the tone of those interviews was a little hostile, but it's pretty excessive to call them "smear pieces." She made herself look like an idiot, because she has no idea what she's talking about. She couldn't name a single Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade that she disagrees with. If you're a governor and you can't recite a list of Supreme Court cases that you dislike, that makes you uninformed and bad at your job.
It's been shown numerous times that you can be dumb as a goddamned board and win elections, so I'll wait until I see a sign of her intelligence to believe it exists.
In the words of Dave Chappelle, "Nobody fucks monkeys and people, you idiot! You either fuck monkeys, or you fuck people. That's it. There's no in-between.
And there is also only one city in the US that looks like a Japanese city, that's New York. Parts of Chicago, part of San Francisco and even smaller parts of other metro areas are similar, but nowhere near as dense, to what you find in Asia. The suburbs of LA would look like the countryside for most people in Japan or Korea. And the majority of people in the US live in places that are even less dense than that.
That's not what we're talking about. The Netherlands has a lot of land that should be underwater, and a lot more that should be natural marsh or delta. They are mostly focused on keeping the natural landscape habitable by humans and able to withstand the occasional flood or storm surge. A 1 in 100 year event in the Netherlands is nowhere near as powerful as elsewhere in the world. If the Netherlands got hit by something like Katrina or the Sumatra tsunami tomorrow most of the country would be underwater. Storms and floods are not on the same scale everywhere in the world.
Unfortunately Johnny Law disagrees with you. Things you do to yourself can be crimes, whether they *should* be or not is the question.
Except it's not what I wish my money covered. It's what they told me my money covered. Now that things are finally shaking out and they're telling me how much I can actually use my "unlimited" connection for, you might have a point. But it's legitimate to complain about the ISP cutting off your connection for excessive use when they won't actually tell you what constitutes excessive.
What they say they are doing and what they will actually do are two entirely different things. They wanted the Justice Department to act as their own personal copyright lawyers, for Christ's sake! I can't believe people still fall for this shit.
It's not like after the modifications it is a ridiculous law. As it is, it's a boondoggle. But why was it necessary? Were existing penalties not enough? Do we really need someone monitoring copyright infringement and reporting directly to the president? Is there an IP-based industry that is collapsing due to infringement? Last time I checked the movie, video game, and software industry were making more money than they ever have.
And if you think this will help you directly, think again. Even as content producer, this law is not for you. This law is for the RIAA/MPAA and no one else. Who do you think all those new foreign ataches and redirected police are going to work for? Indy companies or the big, multinational conglomerates? They bought and paid for it, they'll receive the benefits.
Thankfully this isn't that terrible of a bill with that ridiculous idea stripped out, but it was completely unnecessary. Our country is falling down around us, and they're worried about copyright infringement.
The only thing Democrats and Republicans can come together on is selling their constituents' rights for a few pennies.
You didn't actually contradict what he said, his is just more generalized. The smaller population states wanted greater influence, with the major policy point being the southern states' support of slavery. They knew if the North had the authority to ban slavery, they would, so they joined on the condition that the other states couldn't tell them what to do. Unfortunately for them it wasn't written very strongly, so eventually the North did gain that ability.
It allows for two states with differing interests to share a common goal, that's how this is better. And if you think Montana rules NY you're completely insane. They have a *slightly* higher influence *per person* in *federal affairs*. I think it's safe to say that New Yorkers have much more influence over US policy than Montana.