Actually, I believe you don't pay taxes when you purchase the gift card, but instead when you purchase the final product using the gift card.
And you don't have to pay taxes on gifts that are valued under a certain amount. I don't remember the exact limit, but I believe it's in the tens of thousands.
Why is parent modded up? It's quite off topic, as it is not addressing the real issue. The issue is the FCC's mandate to move to DTV, while it is still encumbered by patents.
And the issue of a limited artificial monopoly granted by the government to whomever is developing said technology is not as black and white as you'd think. It can be argued that this artificial limited monopoly is too long by today's standards, or flat out impedes progress and should be done away with completely. I don't argue for the latter, but there are those who do.
The problem is, newspapers aren't technology companies. They barely have functioning websites. The LA Times once tried to publish their stories online in a wiki so they can solicit comments from readers. Imagine how well that went.
So instead, they pay Amazon and other major technology companies to do the work for them. Except, well, those other technology companies take a major cut.
What they should do is get together with e-book reader manufacturers like Sony et al., and wireless carriers like AT&T et al., and come up with a standard for doing push publications. People buy the e-book devices, they pay for a monthly subscription to the wireless service (or it comes with their data plan on their phone bill), and they pay for a subscription to the content. Or the wireless companies can subsidize the subscriptions, up to n participating periodicals depending on the plan. And the format of the content should be standardized (I'm thinking pdf), so that not only e-book readers, but any smartphone or MID could read the content.
But newspapers make the majority of their revenue on ads. It's not too far-fetched to push advertisements with the content, not in the sense of ads on a webpage, but ads in a newspaper or magazine: whole or half pages of ads that be present, but would disappear with a touch of the "next page" button. That's probably far more effective than banners or flash road blocks.
Exec 1: Let's make the subscription fee $19.95 a month. Lawyer 1: You can't say that, sir. Exec 2: Sounds like a good idea. Lawyer 2: You can't respond to that, sir.
And then later...
Investigator: Did any agreement of a subscription price occur during those discussions? Lawyer 1: We specifically forbade them from collusion, so that could not have happened. Lawyer 2: That is correct. Investigator: So can you explain how both newspapers came up with the same monthly subscription price at the same time? Lawyer 1: Coincidence. Lawyer 2: Great minds think alike.
And that's why even limited monopolies are bad. The government should've promoted competition. Yeah, it maybe infeasible to have 10 different sets of lines running to every house, but I'm sure companies can come to sharing agreements if they each have something the other wants. It'd be like AT&T and T-Mobile reaching a tower-sharing agreement, or Verizon and Sprint for that matter.
This is copy protection at its finest. It's quite good as an anti-copying device, as it really makes attempts at breaking it not worth the time and effort, but not always necessary. Perhaps it should be up to the author what format in which the text appears.
Eh, true, but it's the same as noting that the sky is blue when asking what the weather outside is like: it's completely irrelevant. Sure you can see Russia from parts of Alaska. So what does that have to do with foreign policy experience? And I'm sure Alaska geographically sits between Canada and Russia. But again, where does foreign policy come into play?
She could have, when mentioning Canada, bring up examples of resource disputes and such with the Canadian government. But no, it seems she decided to imply that Alaska's geographical location has some relevance to foreign policy, which is in and of itself, ridiculous.
But the specifics of her statments doesn't really matter overall. That she doesn't realize that she's made a nonsensical remark by failing to further clarify or otherwise specify her comments is even more telling than the fact that she made the comment.
Or why do you think men have to get the biggest, loudest and latest TV sets with hifi sounds
Dick size compensation.
Seriously.
A lot of what men do can be explained with one or both of two explanations: compensation and/or pissing contest.
Don't feel too bad though; it's leftovers from our tribal days and there's no much you can do about it.
Otherwise, there's no reason for men to be more tech savvy than women. It's just that men like to compete to be the best, and so keep themselves up to date or even drive the technology forward, while women are more than satisfied to watch them do so from the sidelines and point and laugh when appropriate.
No, that's probably how a man would think. Women would definitely get offended by it and then bitch. And even if they don't, they'd pretend to and then bitch, just for the sympathy points.
It's pretty obvious though that the entire marketing ploy was produced by geeks. Perhaps not computer geeks, but geeks nonetheless, probably those who've never spoken to a girl, much less had a girlfriend. Some women are OK, but most don't like to be condescended, and even get upset when they perceive the remotest hint of condescension. Feminist types are only the most rabid and vocal of those, but they are far from monopolizing those feelings.
Don't get me wrong; I recognize that there are many types of women, and no statement can possibly encompass them all. That there is such a thing as feminist lesbians says quite a bit as it were. But at the end of the day, they tend to be more emotionally driven than men. And so they take things more personally and get offended easier. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just something to be aware of.
I think that is a false dichotomy. The most inexpensive food, and also the healthiest by a wide margin, is the stuff you make and cook yourself. All processed foods are either junk or expensive. That's because you're paying for the processing. There are some things, like bread and milk, that you can't get away from. But the processing on those are minimal, less than, say, a can of soup or even deli meats, and far less than eating out at a restaurant, fast-food or otherwise.
A week's worth of groceries for four that contain minimum or no processed foods (raw meats, fruits and vegetables, milk, juice, break, oatmeal) is between $50 and $100 on average where I live. Compare that to a week's worth of junk meals for one which is also about $50 to $100.
Have you ever sung "Happy Birthday" to anyone? Have you ever sung "Happy Birthday" to someone at a restaurant or a pub or at some social gathering outside of a private residence? Have you ever been the recipient of the song?
Did you know that the song "Happy Birthday" still has a copyright on it? I'll bet the creators didn't receive royalties from you or anyone else for that public performance.
As so often echoed here, having freedom is a responsibility. Having free will is no different. Most people can barely grasp its concept, despite them brandishing it around like some shiny bat with which they can club others.
Free will is absolute power over oneself and one's own actions. It is not only being able to make choices, but to recognize all the choices possible and choose among them. And it is to not only make a choice among the myriad of options, but make a choice without unconscious bias (conscious bias is freely embraced, and thus is a part of free will). It is a task that is recognized as impossible only by the greatest thinkers and probably the most rabid skeptics among them (Decartes being the most famous of such skeptics). Most people would just think that they have free will and move on. But without any amount of introspection, and without thought, only the most natural of choices are even brought to consideration, and the most natural of choices is but a subset of all of the choices possible.
The frightening thing is, the people who exhibit the most degrees of freedom in their thinking are the psychopaths and sociopaths. That is because they lack any restraints, any inhibitions. Every act involves a choice. Every decision is consciously made. To say that free will promotes relative morality is an understatement; the very start of free will is the complete and utter loss of morality. One can build a set of rules for survival on top of that, but it's only for survival. Or perhaps it is the other way around, that those who exhibit free can and likely will become psycopaths and sociopaths.
Either way, you're absolutely correct that it's more likely a curse than a blessing. People like their social restrictions. People like adhering to traditions and rules passed down since the dawn of civilization. They might not like all of them, but there's certainly a large number that they commonly like. It sort of reminds me of the features in MS Office; 80% of the users use 20% of the program, but they all use a different 20%. But I digress.
Considering that some audio books aren't read well, perhaps there is real merit in the publishers fearing the TTS function. I'm not a reader of audio books, but I do have an anecdotal piece to offer as a reference.
The scenario I see happening is that good audiobook readers will ask for more money, and publishers will dump them in favor of poor readers that charge less. And in such a situation where few to none of the audiobooks are read by good readers, I definitely see TTS as rivaling the publishers.
Now I'm not saying this is justification for their actions, but it does explain why they're so threatened by the TTS feature.
Probably because QT was Trolltech's bread and butter, and thus wanted commercial apps to pay for a license, while QT is just a means to an end for Nokia, its end being to increase its smartphone market share and to dominate the portable device space.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I believe you don't pay taxes when you purchase the gift card, but instead when you purchase the final product using the gift card.
And you don't have to pay taxes on gifts that are valued under a certain amount. I don't remember the exact limit, but I believe it's in the tens of thousands.
Why is parent modded up? It's quite off topic, as it is not addressing the real issue. The issue is the FCC's mandate to move to DTV, while it is still encumbered by patents.
And the issue of a limited artificial monopoly granted by the government to whomever is developing said technology is not as black and white as you'd think. It can be argued that this artificial limited monopoly is too long by today's standards, or flat out impedes progress and should be done away with completely. I don't argue for the latter, but there are those who do.
The problem is, newspapers aren't technology companies. They barely have functioning websites. The LA Times once tried to publish their stories online in a wiki so they can solicit comments from readers. Imagine how well that went.
So instead, they pay Amazon and other major technology companies to do the work for them. Except, well, those other technology companies take a major cut.
What they should do is get together with e-book reader manufacturers like Sony et al., and wireless carriers like AT&T et al., and come up with a standard for doing push publications. People buy the e-book devices, they pay for a monthly subscription to the wireless service (or it comes with their data plan on their phone bill), and they pay for a subscription to the content. Or the wireless companies can subsidize the subscriptions, up to n participating periodicals depending on the plan. And the format of the content should be standardized (I'm thinking pdf), so that not only e-book readers, but any smartphone or MID could read the content.
But newspapers make the majority of their revenue on ads. It's not too far-fetched to push advertisements with the content, not in the sense of ads on a webpage, but ads in a newspaper or magazine: whole or half pages of ads that be present, but would disappear with a touch of the "next page" button. That's probably far more effective than banners or flash road blocks.
Exec 1: Let's make the subscription fee $19.95 a month.
Lawyer 1: You can't say that, sir.
Exec 2: Sounds like a good idea.
Lawyer 2: You can't respond to that, sir.
And then later...
Investigator: Did any agreement of a subscription price occur during those discussions?
Lawyer 1: We specifically forbade them from collusion, so that could not have happened.
Lawyer 2: That is correct.
Investigator: So can you explain how both newspapers came up with the same monthly subscription price at the same time?
Lawyer 1: Coincidence.
Lawyer 2: Great minds think alike.
And that's why even limited monopolies are bad. The government should've promoted competition. Yeah, it maybe infeasible to have 10 different sets of lines running to every house, but I'm sure companies can come to sharing agreements if they each have something the other wants. It'd be like AT&T and T-Mobile reaching a tower-sharing agreement, or Verizon and Sprint for that matter.
why not dive on a natural reef?
Might as well get used to the artificial ones. Natural reefs recently acquired this terrible habit of dying and disappearing.
Did anyone else read the headling as, "the patents Microsoft are holding are crippling other operating systems," and thought immediately about Novell?
Funny, I thought it was the other way around...
This is copy protection at its finest. It's quite good as an anti-copying device, as it really makes attempts at breaking it not worth the time and effort, but not always necessary. Perhaps it should be up to the author what format in which the text appears.
They could always make the tab bar movable. Or better yet, put it into an extension of some sort.
Eh, true, but it's the same as noting that the sky is blue when asking what the weather outside is like: it's completely irrelevant. Sure you can see Russia from parts of Alaska. So what does that have to do with foreign policy experience? And I'm sure Alaska geographically sits between Canada and Russia. But again, where does foreign policy come into play?
She could have, when mentioning Canada, bring up examples of resource disputes and such with the Canadian government. But no, it seems she decided to imply that Alaska's geographical location has some relevance to foreign policy, which is in and of itself, ridiculous.
But the specifics of her statments doesn't really matter overall. That she doesn't realize that she's made a nonsensical remark by failing to further clarify or otherwise specify her comments is even more telling than the fact that she made the comment.
Or why do you think men have to get the biggest, loudest and latest TV sets with hifi sounds
Dick size compensation.
Seriously.
A lot of what men do can be explained with one or both of two explanations: compensation and/or pissing contest.
Don't feel too bad though; it's leftovers from our tribal days and there's no much you can do about it.
Otherwise, there's no reason for men to be more tech savvy than women. It's just that men like to compete to be the best, and so keep themselves up to date or even drive the technology forward, while women are more than satisfied to watch them do so from the sidelines and point and laugh when appropriate.
telling your spouse that "you look fat in those jeans" is not going to net you any karma points.
You just have to make sure your S.O.'s /. account doesn't have any mod points that day and the comment will be a +5 informative in no time. Oh wait...
No, that's probably how a man would think. Women would definitely get offended by it and then bitch. And even if they don't, they'd pretend to and then bitch, just for the sympathy points.
It's pretty obvious though that the entire marketing ploy was produced by geeks. Perhaps not computer geeks, but geeks nonetheless, probably those who've never spoken to a girl, much less had a girlfriend. Some women are OK, but most don't like to be condescended, and even get upset when they perceive the remotest hint of condescension. Feminist types are only the most rabid and vocal of those, but they are far from monopolizing those feelings.
Don't get me wrong; I recognize that there are many types of women, and no statement can possibly encompass them all. That there is such a thing as feminist lesbians says quite a bit as it were. But at the end of the day, they tend to be more emotionally driven than men. And so they take things more personally and get offended easier. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just something to be aware of.
And yet, you'll probably buy it anyway because of the busty model.
Yeah, I know how things work around here.
Cheap food is made with cheap crap
I think that is a false dichotomy. The most inexpensive food, and also the healthiest by a wide margin, is the stuff you make and cook yourself. All processed foods are either junk or expensive. That's because you're paying for the processing. There are some things, like bread and milk, that you can't get away from. But the processing on those are minimal, less than, say, a can of soup or even deli meats, and far less than eating out at a restaurant, fast-food or otherwise.
A week's worth of groceries for four that contain minimum or no processed foods (raw meats, fruits and vegetables, milk, juice, break, oatmeal) is between $50 and $100 on average where I live. Compare that to a week's worth of junk meals for one which is also about $50 to $100.
Have it read to you by your mom then. She'll come down the stairs if you shout loudly enough.
this doesn't affect user added files yet
There, fixed that for you.
Have you ever sung "Happy Birthday" to anyone? Have you ever sung "Happy Birthday" to someone at a restaurant or a pub or at some social gathering outside of a private residence? Have you ever been the recipient of the song?
Did you know that the song "Happy Birthday" still has a copyright on it? I'll bet the creators didn't receive royalties from you or anyone else for that public performance.
Don't be a hypocrite.
would that be a bugnet?
No, that's just a fancy word for a network of computers running Windows.
That guy bought a product and used it! On stage!
Do you expect him to pop it into the production environment without any testing?
As so often echoed here, having freedom is a responsibility. Having free will is no different. Most people can barely grasp its concept, despite them brandishing it around like some shiny bat with which they can club others.
Free will is absolute power over oneself and one's own actions. It is not only being able to make choices, but to recognize all the choices possible and choose among them. And it is to not only make a choice among the myriad of options, but make a choice without unconscious bias (conscious bias is freely embraced, and thus is a part of free will). It is a task that is recognized as impossible only by the greatest thinkers and probably the most rabid skeptics among them (Decartes being the most famous of such skeptics). Most people would just think that they have free will and move on. But without any amount of introspection, and without thought, only the most natural of choices are even brought to consideration, and the most natural of choices is but a subset of all of the choices possible.
The frightening thing is, the people who exhibit the most degrees of freedom in their thinking are the psychopaths and sociopaths. That is because they lack any restraints, any inhibitions. Every act involves a choice. Every decision is consciously made. To say that free will promotes relative morality is an understatement; the very start of free will is the complete and utter loss of morality. One can build a set of rules for survival on top of that, but it's only for survival. Or perhaps it is the other way around, that those who exhibit free can and likely will become psycopaths and sociopaths.
Either way, you're absolutely correct that it's more likely a curse than a blessing. People like their social restrictions. People like adhering to traditions and rules passed down since the dawn of civilization. They might not like all of them, but there's certainly a large number that they commonly like. It sort of reminds me of the features in MS Office; 80% of the users use 20% of the program, but they all use a different 20%. But I digress.
Considering that some audio books aren't read well, perhaps there is real merit in the publishers fearing the TTS function. I'm not a reader of audio books, but I do have an anecdotal piece to offer as a reference.
The scenario I see happening is that good audiobook readers will ask for more money, and publishers will dump them in favor of poor readers that charge less. And in such a situation where few to none of the audiobooks are read by good readers, I definitely see TTS as rivaling the publishers.
Now I'm not saying this is justification for their actions, but it does explain why they're so threatened by the TTS feature.
I'm not sure why you'd want to own a heavy metal percussionist, but to each his or her own, I guess.
Probably because QT was Trolltech's bread and butter, and thus wanted commercial apps to pay for a license, while QT is just a means to an end for Nokia, its end being to increase its smartphone market share and to dominate the portable device space.