Ah - that's what it is. Figures that this is not a real strength program, but merely one that makes you look big. It's well known that bodybuilders, when actually in competition, are so weak that they can barely hold a pose for more than a few seconds. Ever see a bodybuilder start to tremble while posing? That's the muscles failing to stay in contraction.
Besides that, the vast majority of bodybuilder *are* on anabolic steroids. Have fun with your method, kid.
And you know why this is? Because the single most influential factor in elections is the amount of money people spend. The one who spends the most wins a disproportionate amount of elections, at any level. There's two things to note here: one, it means that elections are essentially bought these days. Two, the fault for this rests largely with the people who let themselves be influenced by well placed ads on TV, radio and paper. If you've made up our mind before the marketing blitz starts, money would play far less of a role. Sadly, this won't happen. And the result of that is that the vast majority of the laws are not made for the voters, but for the people who helped the congress critter into office: top 1% income earners, big business and various organizations - and of course the people who make the laws.
Quick question: what makes you or your neighbors so damn special that they have more rights (ha!) to hold down a job than some joe schmuck who just so happens to not live within some completely arbitrary geographical boundaries? And if you seriously believe that you "deserve" a job more than someone else, I suggest you emigrate to France and see how that works. Hint: it's not pretty.
I generally agree with your post, but there's just one thing where I have to add a major "WTF???":
"Well, except for children, and the mentally handicapped. They often are seduced into agreeing to such acts - but because they aren't qualified to make such decisions for themselves. "
Where - THE FUCK - did you get the idea that children and the mentally handicapped are often seduced into agreeing to rape??? I can't vouch for the mentally handicapped, but have you - EVER - talked to anybody who had sex as a child? I'll dare you to find one person who will say that it wasn't straight-up, violent and painful rape.
I'll give you the standard reply I give anyone when someone asks me how a business is supposed to survive if a, b, or c would happen. I tell them that the business has no business (har, har) asking me or anyone else to support their flawed plan. Can't make money when your statistical oversubscription fails? Don't get Congress involved to change the laws in your favor. Go out and fucking compete. It's not like corporations, especially telecoms, don't get enough welfare as it is.
Net Neutrality is the thing that made the Internet into the indispensable tool it is today. Don't fuck with it just so that some lousy ass telecoms don't have to adapt their business to new realities.
The nice thing about Earthlink is that they aren't a real ISP - they don't own any pipes, they just lease them from SBC or somebody similar (I think there are three phone companies left in the US now, all with regional monopolies?). There are hordes of these around. Personally, I'll flog my favorite service in this place: Speakeasy. Their webmail sucks, but their tech support is top notch.
Most of those impossible packages are there to deter theft of small, high value items. Think of how easy it would be to swipe a 4 GB thumb drive if it would come in a perfectly sized cardboard package that opens easily. Granted, it's still stupid that mail-order businesses have to use the same crap.
The title should read "Gamers who became pioneers". "That" refers to objects. "Who" refers to people. Sheesh. For some reason, this has become my #1 grammar pet peeve.
These arguments are DESIGNED to confuse people. MS is very well aware that what it is putting forth has no grounding in reality. However, they are just as aware of the threat that a government sponsored F/OSS project poses to their bottomline. Caught between advancing spurious arguments against a win/win situation for the general population and protecting their bottomline, what do you think these people are going to do?
This is why I'm losing more and more respect for the executive section in companies - I've never seen people lie so blatantly, so happily and then be paid untold millions in bonus and golden parachutes. If they would have been in a schoolyard, they'd have gotten a beating.
Newsflash - companies have NO inherent legal rights. Only people have. As such, only people can have a legitimate beef, not companies. Your post unfortunately shows that corporations have already won one battle: the idea that corporations can have legitimate grievances that go beyond business contracts.
Quite honestly, I think that corporations shouldn't even be allowed in the same room when public policy is being discussed. They can send an employee who can provide some professional insight, but that's it. No "MS disagrees with this", not even a "we at MS think this is a bad idea". The entire concept that something can be bad for people but still good for corporations and should therefore be discussed is completely ludicrous. Without people, corporations are nothing.
Eh, what do I know. I'm not a highly bri.... I mean, supported Senator, Congresscritter or other political weasel. Should I just bend over now, or can I wait until there is a Department of Corporate Wellfare?
Holy fucking batman, batman... don't tell me you still work for that company? How the hell does anything get done there when about half the population cannot interact with the other half? My old department has gone from an all-engineer department to about half male, half female, and everyone gets invited to lunches, dinners and barmeets. If that wouldn't be the case, it would be impossible to get any work done.
It might be true that there are some places that have a work policy as insane as that, but I don't think they'll last very long. Since you're posting already anonymously, would you mind posting the name of the company? I want to stay as far away as possible from it.
I've noticed the same thing. Top sales people and management get top billing, and it's easy to see why. The sales people can point to a big dollar sign with their name on it, and top management gets to assess its own performance. The rest of the workers - the grunts, trench workers, every last one who makes the company go 'round with countless overtime and dedication - are lucky to get $50 gift certificates for good performance. Even though they are just as critical to the well-being of the company as everyone else. Well, almost. There's always some Joe where everyone is wondering exactly what he's doing, and whether he isn't working for the coffee machine repair shop rather than the company,
As someone once said... if you rob Peter to give to Paul, you'll always get support from Paul. Same with taxes and pork. There are specific constituents who benefit overwhelmingly from pork (generally generous campaign donoers) and who will overwhelmingly support future pork. The robbed, however, benefit only little, and, because the robbing is fairly evenly spread out, complain little as well. End result: generous campaign donors win.
You know... this reminds me of something I heard on KQED last night. Someone from Iran was giving doing a QA about Iran. And one of his main observations about Iran was that there is a complete hopelessness in the general population about their ability to affect their lives through political process. Three times, they voted overwhelmingly for a moderate President and Congress, and it has gotten them nowhere. At this point, they're simply blaming everything that happens on external forces, have given up being politically engaged, and just focus on their every day lives. How easy do you think that makes it for the political elite (the one that is not elected and actually runs stuff) to do whatever they want?
I see the seeds for this in the US as well. There are too many comments right and left about "well, s/he is doing it too, so why can't I???", "the election was stolen" and "it doesn't matter anyway who I vote for". This, more than anything, would spell the downfall of the US. I don't know how it was under Reagan or previous administrations, but I know that this is the worst it's been since the elder Bush.
Im generally against the "people won't work harder if they don't get to keep the money" concept that is batted around when it comes to taxing the superwealthy, but your approach would definitely put a crimp into a free-wheeling economy. Quite a few super-rich people have become noted philantropists, with a much better record than the government for using their money effectively. No, this doesn't excuse trust-fund kids, but they are also not a reason to shaft the people who could actually do good with their money.
I'm not saying that the super-rich should get away scot-free, but putting an arbitrary limit on how much someone can make is just as silly. I'm sure there's a happy medium somewhere, and we aren't too far away from it. Besides, can you calculate how long it will take for middle-class people to make $5 million a year, assuming an average inflation of 5% and a current income of $60000? The AMT is a nice story on how ugly hard upper limits can be.
Let's keep the discussion on-topic and the insults out of it, shall we? My post wasn't about DRM, it wasn't about who makes money or how (which what the first paragraph is about, I think), it was about current copyright law. You provided a fine example of finding a specific album that you were interested in. Good for you. But that's not the scenario that I was referring to.
In your example, the album is fairly recent (1985). The company who produced it is still around, and the original rights holder is still available. To boot, you happened to have a media player that ran on the OS of your choice, which allowed you to play the music you bought. Great. Hooray. Now let's consider some other scenarios. Movies from the 20s are still copyrighted, yet a good number of the rights holders are dead, which makes finding the current rights holder a pain in the ass. Was it bought by someone? Inherited? Given away? Who do I talk to about archiving if I find a celluloid of some old movie that I would dearly love to present to the rest of the public? How do I do that legally? Keep in mind that time is running out - a lot of those old movies are pretty much falling apart by now. You might argue that what's worth preserving is already being preserved, but I think there's plenty of reasons not to let a small and highly specific subset of people decide what's worth preserving.
Then there's another example - what happens if your OS of choice is deemed to not be the proper avenue for releasing music players? The drive towards trusted computing is exactly that - the drive to remove the ability of individuals to control their hardware and software. What good to you are all the Grace Jones files then? They'll be worth exactly the same as the random noise in your/null partition.
The problem with copyright law - and by extension, DRM - is not that it makes things impossible to live with *right now*. It's the consequences of the current trend towards using copyright as some king of license to print money that are truly horrifying - if you are interested in anything that is not currently being flogged by the people in charge of the copyrights. If you are only interested in 20 year old stuff that's still more or less current, good for you. Before insulting dissenting opinions though, remember that there is far more to media and culture than what's being produced in that time frame. And that's what's at risk of being lost forever.
Not only are we paying in terms of money, we are paying in terms of culture that is being locked up and lost forever because there is no legal way of archiving it. That, in my opinion, is the biggest cost of all and the prime reason DRM is Evil.
Actually, the reason I always hate videos that are supposed to be informative as opposed to entertaining is that I can read far faster than people can talk. It drives me batty when I have to watch informational videos instead of a guidebook - in the time it takes the presenter to introduce the topic, I could have finished the entire damn booklet. Also, it's a lot easier to search.
You want to inform me, give me text. If you want to entertain me, give me video. Anybody have the transcript of the video?
When your entire Sales forecast for fiscal 2006 is $70.6 billion, but a single division is responsible for an operating loss of $2.6 in a single quarter, that division has a massive impact on the overall health of your company. Sony staked its future onto Blu-Ray and the PS3, and if these two tank, Sony will go down as well - or will have to get out of the gaming market.
Shit - I now understand how you get to the conclusions you do. You only read half of what people say. I suspect it's the half that reinforces what you already believe. BTW - it's changes in rainfall patterns that change deserts, not temperatures. But I'm sure you'll ignore this little bit of info just like everything else that doesn't match what you already believe.
You do realize that the talking heads on news shows are the news anchors, right? Or did you miss the distinction I made between interviewers and interviewees?
Nice. I ask for the resume of McIntyre and McKitrick, and you offer me Wegman. What's that called? Smoke and Mirrors? Try again. I'm still waiting.
Really? Ross McKitrick is an associate professor of economics at the University of Guelph - he had no financial interest in Kyoto. Steve McIntyre is semi-retired after working in the mining industry - he has no financial interest in Kyoto either. On the other hand, the originators of the Hockey Stick all have huge professional and personal interests in Global Warming and the politics thereof.
Let's see - McKitrick is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, and has a book out on Global Warming. Plenty of money to be made there by being one of the critics of it. McIntyre has worked for a long time in the Mining industry and was a Policy Analyst for the Canadian Government. Again, plenty of money to be made by being a critic of Global Warming. As for Wegman - he seems legit enough. All of this crap is still entirely irrelevant though - everyone can be found to have an axe to grind. Everything can be pretext for something. All that has zero impact on the data and the studies though. I do love though how much you pick and choose your qualifiers. That's impressive work.
Discovering whether the warming is a) significant b) deleterious and c) man-made would be, and nobody's produced anything remotely close to a "smoking gun" that is worth anything.
And yet, you only talk about Mann's papers. Fixate much? Come back once you've read the other studies I gave you.
I didn't claim that no one has talked about M&M's critique - where did you get that from?
Mmh.... you're right. That wasn't you after all. My bad.
I spent much more time considering the relevant papers than you'll spend looking at Wegman's CV. I suspect that I won't be hearing any challenge to that claim.
You're right. I spent about 30 seconds scanning his CV. I sure would hope you spent more time than that on the papers. How is this relevant to the discussion? Oh - right. It isn't. It's merely more distractions.
Man, I've read through all your posts in this thread, and there is not a shred of data, not a shadow of actual discussion in there. Nothing but empty statements and personal attacks on people who disagree with you. Quite sad that this is about as good as people get when they try to argue that Global Warming is a fabrication.
To some extent, I'm ok whith that. There's plenty of money to be made in the future from people who didn't plan for the various climate changes that are about to hit. It just sucks that the world will look a bit more like a desert than it does now.
Same here. We used to get actual snow fall in Paris - a good couple of inches, enough for snowball fights and sledding. Now, it's been at least 15 years since we had enough snow for that. Heat waves are getting bad enough that AC is becoming mandatory in stores, and seen more often in cars. Not only that, but they are getting longer as well. I can't say that this is proof of anything, but I know things are changing, and they are pointing to stuff getting warmer.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah - that's what it is. Figures that this is not a real strength program, but merely one that makes you look big. It's well known that bodybuilders, when actually in competition, are so weak that they can barely hold a pose for more than a few seconds. Ever see a bodybuilder start to tremble while posing? That's the muscles failing to stay in contraction.
Besides that, the vast majority of bodybuilder *are* on anabolic steroids. Have fun with your method, kid.
And you know why this is? Because the single most influential factor in elections is the amount of money people spend. The one who spends the most wins a disproportionate amount of elections, at any level. There's two things to note here: one, it means that elections are essentially bought these days. Two, the fault for this rests largely with the people who let themselves be influenced by well placed ads on TV, radio and paper. If you've made up our mind before the marketing blitz starts, money would play far less of a role. Sadly, this won't happen. And the result of that is that the vast majority of the laws are not made for the voters, but for the people who helped the congress critter into office: top 1% income earners, big business and various organizations - and of course the people who make the laws.
Quick question: what makes you or your neighbors so damn special that they have more rights (ha!) to hold down a job than some joe schmuck who just so happens to not live within some completely arbitrary geographical boundaries? And if you seriously believe that you "deserve" a job more than someone else, I suggest you emigrate to France and see how that works. Hint: it's not pretty.
I generally agree with your post, but there's just one thing where I have to add a major "WTF???":
:)
"Well, except for children, and the mentally handicapped. They often are seduced into agreeing to such acts - but because they aren't qualified to make such decisions for themselves. "
Where - THE FUCK - did you get the idea that children and the mentally handicapped are often seduced into agreeing to rape??? I can't vouch for the mentally handicapped, but have you - EVER - talked to anybody who had sex as a child? I'll dare you to find one person who will say that it wasn't straight-up, violent and painful rape.
For the rest though - nice post.
I'll give you the standard reply I give anyone when someone asks me how a business is supposed to survive if a, b, or c would happen. I tell them that the business has no business (har, har) asking me or anyone else to support their flawed plan. Can't make money when your statistical oversubscription fails? Don't get Congress involved to change the laws in your favor. Go out and fucking compete. It's not like corporations, especially telecoms, don't get enough welfare as it is.
Net Neutrality is the thing that made the Internet into the indispensable tool it is today. Don't fuck with it just so that some lousy ass telecoms don't have to adapt their business to new realities.
The nice thing about Earthlink is that they aren't a real ISP - they don't own any pipes, they just lease them from SBC or somebody similar (I think there are three phone companies left in the US now, all with regional monopolies?). There are hordes of these around. Personally, I'll flog my favorite service in this place: Speakeasy. Their webmail sucks, but their tech support is top notch.
Most of those impossible packages are there to deter theft of small, high value items. Think of how easy it would be to swipe a 4 GB thumb drive if it would come in a perfectly sized cardboard package that opens easily. Granted, it's still stupid that mail-order businesses have to use the same crap.
The title should read "Gamers who became pioneers". "That" refers to objects. "Who" refers to people. Sheesh. For some reason, this has become my #1 grammar pet peeve.
These arguments are DESIGNED to confuse people. MS is very well aware that what it is putting forth has no grounding in reality. However, they are just as aware of the threat that a government sponsored F/OSS project poses to their bottomline. Caught between advancing spurious arguments against a win/win situation for the general population and protecting their bottomline, what do you think these people are going to do?
This is why I'm losing more and more respect for the executive section in companies - I've never seen people lie so blatantly, so happily and then be paid untold millions in bonus and golden parachutes. If they would have been in a schoolyard, they'd have gotten a beating.
Newsflash - companies have NO inherent legal rights. Only people have. As such, only people can have a legitimate beef, not companies. Your post unfortunately shows that corporations have already won one battle: the idea that corporations can have legitimate grievances that go beyond business contracts.
Quite honestly, I think that corporations shouldn't even be allowed in the same room when public policy is being discussed. They can send an employee who can provide some professional insight, but that's it. No "MS disagrees with this", not even a "we at MS think this is a bad idea". The entire concept that something can be bad for people but still good for corporations and should therefore be discussed is completely ludicrous. Without people, corporations are nothing.
Eh, what do I know. I'm not a highly bri.... I mean, supported Senator, Congresscritter or other political weasel. Should I just bend over now, or can I wait until there is a Department of Corporate Wellfare?
Errr.... brain fart. "All-male engineering department" was what the line was supposed to read.
Holy fucking batman, batman... don't tell me you still work for that company? How the hell does anything get done there when about half the population cannot interact with the other half? My old department has gone from an all-engineer department to about half male, half female, and everyone gets invited to lunches, dinners and barmeets. If that wouldn't be the case, it would be impossible to get any work done.
It might be true that there are some places that have a work policy as insane as that, but I don't think they'll last very long. Since you're posting already anonymously, would you mind posting the name of the company? I want to stay as far away as possible from it.
I've noticed the same thing. Top sales people and management get top billing, and it's easy to see why. The sales people can point to a big dollar sign with their name on it, and top management gets to assess its own performance. The rest of the workers - the grunts, trench workers, every last one who makes the company go 'round with countless overtime and dedication - are lucky to get $50 gift certificates for good performance. Even though they are just as critical to the well-being of the company as everyone else. Well, almost. There's always some Joe where everyone is wondering exactly what he's doing, and whether he isn't working for the coffee machine repair shop rather than the company,
As someone once said... if you rob Peter to give to Paul, you'll always get support from Paul. Same with taxes and pork. There are specific constituents who benefit overwhelmingly from pork (generally generous campaign donoers) and who will overwhelmingly support future pork. The robbed, however, benefit only little, and, because the robbing is fairly evenly spread out, complain little as well. End result: generous campaign donors win.
You know... this reminds me of something I heard on KQED last night. Someone from Iran was giving doing a QA about Iran. And one of his main observations about Iran was that there is a complete hopelessness in the general population about their ability to affect their lives through political process. Three times, they voted overwhelmingly for a moderate President and Congress, and it has gotten them nowhere. At this point, they're simply blaming everything that happens on external forces, have given up being politically engaged, and just focus on their every day lives. How easy do you think that makes it for the political elite (the one that is not elected and actually runs stuff) to do whatever they want?
I see the seeds for this in the US as well. There are too many comments right and left about "well, s/he is doing it too, so why can't I???", "the election was stolen" and "it doesn't matter anyway who I vote for". This, more than anything, would spell the downfall of the US. I don't know how it was under Reagan or previous administrations, but I know that this is the worst it's been since the elder Bush.
Im generally against the "people won't work harder if they don't get to keep the money" concept that is batted around when it comes to taxing the superwealthy, but your approach would definitely put a crimp into a free-wheeling economy. Quite a few super-rich people have become noted philantropists, with a much better record than the government for using their money effectively. No, this doesn't excuse trust-fund kids, but they are also not a reason to shaft the people who could actually do good with their money.
I'm not saying that the super-rich should get away scot-free, but putting an arbitrary limit on how much someone can make is just as silly. I'm sure there's a happy medium somewhere, and we aren't too far away from it. Besides, can you calculate how long it will take for middle-class people to make $5 million a year, assuming an average inflation of 5% and a current income of $60000? The AMT is a nice story on how ugly hard upper limits can be.
Let's keep the discussion on-topic and the insults out of it, shall we? My post wasn't about DRM, it wasn't about who makes money or how (which what the first paragraph is about, I think), it was about current copyright law. You provided a fine example of finding a specific album that you were interested in. Good for you. But that's not the scenario that I was referring to.
/null partition.
In your example, the album is fairly recent (1985). The company who produced it is still around, and the original rights holder is still available. To boot, you happened to have a media player that ran on the OS of your choice, which allowed you to play the music you bought. Great. Hooray. Now let's consider some other scenarios. Movies from the 20s are still copyrighted, yet a good number of the rights holders are dead, which makes finding the current rights holder a pain in the ass. Was it bought by someone? Inherited? Given away? Who do I talk to about archiving if I find a celluloid of some old movie that I would dearly love to present to the rest of the public? How do I do that legally? Keep in mind that time is running out - a lot of those old movies are pretty much falling apart by now. You might argue that what's worth preserving is already being preserved, but I think there's plenty of reasons not to let a small and highly specific subset of people decide what's worth preserving.
Then there's another example - what happens if your OS of choice is deemed to not be the proper avenue for releasing music players? The drive towards trusted computing is exactly that - the drive to remove the ability of individuals to control their hardware and software. What good to you are all the Grace Jones files then? They'll be worth exactly the same as the random noise in your
The problem with copyright law - and by extension, DRM - is not that it makes things impossible to live with *right now*. It's the consequences of the current trend towards using copyright as some king of license to print money that are truly horrifying - if you are interested in anything that is not currently being flogged by the people in charge of the copyrights. If you are only interested in 20 year old stuff that's still more or less current, good for you. Before insulting dissenting opinions though, remember that there is far more to media and culture than what's being produced in that time frame. And that's what's at risk of being lost forever.
Not only are we paying in terms of money, we are paying in terms of culture that is being locked up and lost forever because there is no legal way of archiving it. That, in my opinion, is the biggest cost of all and the prime reason DRM is Evil.
Actually, the reason I always hate videos that are supposed to be informative as opposed to entertaining is that I can read far faster than people can talk. It drives me batty when I have to watch informational videos instead of a guidebook - in the time it takes the presenter to introduce the topic, I could have finished the entire damn booklet. Also, it's a lot easier to search. You want to inform me, give me text. If you want to entertain me, give me video. Anybody have the transcript of the video?
Dammit - I could have sworn there was a billion in there. And I even hit the preview button. I R idiot.
When your entire Sales forecast for fiscal 2006 is $70.6 billion, but a single division is responsible for an operating loss of $2.6 in a single quarter, that division has a massive impact on the overall health of your company. Sony staked its future onto Blu-Ray and the PS3, and if these two tank, Sony will go down as well - or will have to get out of the gaming market.
Shit - I now understand how you get to the conclusions you do. You only read half of what people say. I suspect it's the half that reinforces what you already believe. BTW - it's changes in rainfall patterns that change deserts, not temperatures. But I'm sure you'll ignore this little bit of info just like everything else that doesn't match what you already believe.
You do realize that the talking heads on news shows are the news anchors, right? Or did you miss the distinction I made between interviewers and interviewees?
Let's see - McKitrick is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, and has a book out on Global Warming. Plenty of money to be made there by being one of the critics of it. McIntyre has worked for a long time in the Mining industry and was a Policy Analyst for the Canadian Government. Again, plenty of money to be made by being a critic of Global Warming. As for Wegman - he seems legit enough. All of this crap is still entirely irrelevant though - everyone can be found to have an axe to grind. Everything can be pretext for something. All that has zero impact on the data and the studies though. I do love though how much you pick and choose your qualifiers. That's impressive work.
And yet, you only talk about Mann's papers. Fixate much? Come back once you've read the other studies I gave you.
Mmh.... you're right. That wasn't you after all. My bad.
You're right. I spent about 30 seconds scanning his CV. I sure would hope you spent more time than that on the papers. How is this relevant to the discussion? Oh - right. It isn't. It's merely more distractions.
Man, I've read through all your posts in this thread, and there is not a shred of data, not a shadow of actual discussion in there. Nothing but empty statements and personal attacks on people who disagree with you. Quite sad that this is about as good as people get when they try to argue that Global Warming is a fabrication.
To some extent, I'm ok whith that. There's plenty of money to be made in the future from people who didn't plan for the various climate changes that are about to hit. It just sucks that the world will look a bit more like a desert than it does now.
Same here. We used to get actual snow fall in Paris - a good couple of inches, enough for snowball fights and sledding. Now, it's been at least 15 years since we had enough snow for that. Heat waves are getting bad enough that AC is becoming mandatory in stores, and seen more often in cars. Not only that, but they are getting longer as well. I can't say that this is proof of anything, but I know things are changing, and they are pointing to stuff getting warmer.