Hmmmm. Yes. His movies would probably be a lot better with Nazi logos and goose-stepping soldiers. Maybe he could do a 1984 remake. (Or Medal or Honor, the Swastiki Strikes Back.)
I read your provided link, and to be honest it's hard for me to get excited about incorrect vote tallies. Even when the guy I want wins (first Bill Clinton in 1992, then George Bush in 2000), said guy acts completely contrary to what he originally promised. So I wonder why it even matters who I vote for? The guy I liked is the same guy I end-up hating eight years later! At this point I really don't care who the next president is, or whether or not the machine records my vote.
For all I care, let the State Legislatures pick the next president; their choice can't be any worse than the last 16 years.
And then when you finally "turn it on" people complain because they think $100 a month if too high. (But it's what is required for the company to repay all its labor and material costs.)
I think engineers need to spend some more time in business class, so they can get a grasp on how money works, and how risky it is to invest in new technologies. I never took business class, but I have worked in retail management, and it was very eye-opening to see how much money a company can lose. They earn 1 maybe 2 dollars per item, and that's only if they are lucky. If the market turns down and inventory has to be clearanced at wholesale cost, then they can lose 10-20 dollars each sale.
As you said the problem is "surviving long enough to see a return". A lot of companies have gone down in flames because they spent too much, and didn't recover enough dollars from the customer. (Example: TheTube music channel)
My fastest available speed is 50 megabit (DSL). But then I live in the giant megapolis that runs along I-95, so we tend to get the latest technologies. If I lived in Michigan, then I'd get about 0.05 megabit (phone line). 8.7 is an average of the whole continent, from the fastest to the slowest.
As for EU versus US:
It think it's "cheeky" to compare the entire 2500-mile wide continental U.S. to a teeny-tiny state called France. But hey, maybe I'm just weird like that.;-)
>>>"Let me take a wild guess, you're a Republican?"
Bzzz. I'm in the middle (small government; small companies; large social freedoms; pro-environment; pro-individual rights).
My turn: Let me take a wild guess, you like to assign labels to people so you can stereotype their beliefs, rather than judge each person as an individual?
As I stated in my last post, if you're going to break-down a Continental region like Europe into its constituent states, then you should do the same for the Continental region of America. Metropolitan states like New Jersey, Maryland, or Massachusetts are just as fast as metropolitan states like France, Germany, or Italy. (And rural states like Greece are just as slow as rural states like Missouri.)
Vice-versa, if you're going to lump an entire 2500-mile wide continent under the umbrella label "United States" and "Canada", then you should do exactly the same thing with the european continent and treat it as a single whole unit: "European Union".
IMHO a comparison is only valid if it is done on the same scale. Otherwise, your conclusion is distorted by comparing Non-homogeneous units, as was the case with the study you cited.
If everyone in the U.S. lived in cities, then we'd all have blazing fast internet, but the truth is we are a very "spread out" society with lots of miles between homes. (It took me 19 hours to drive from my contract job in Oklahoma City to my home in Pennsylvania. Lots and lots and lots of empty space.) That's why I consider comparisons between continental regions to be much more useful, because that's the kind of scale the United States is dealing with.... not a little island that is like one gigantic megaopolis (Japan).
(Besides: Japan is a technocracy, and is often ahead of the curve. They had laserdisc while we still had VHS. They had Analog HDTV while we still had analog SDTV. That's both good and bad. On one hand, Japan was ahead of the curve. On the other hand, they chose technologies that ultimately failed (goodbye laserdisc; goodbye analog HDTV). I don't really feel the need to copy Japan's lifestyle.)
.
Vice-versa, if you're going to start breaking down continental region like the E.U. into its constituent states, then you should do the same with the continental U.S. Yeah sure the E.U. state of France has some fast connections, but so too does the U.S. state of New Jersey. The american metropolitan states are just as fast as the european metropolitan states. (Likewise, the rural E.U. states are just as slow as rural U.S. states.)
IMHO a comparison is only valid if you use the same scale when making the comparison, otherwise you distort your conclusion.
IRONY:
(While here in America we discuss private corporations as the main flaw with internet, in the E.U. the main complaint is that there's not enough corporations (too many state-run telco monopolies). The E.U. is trying to break-apart government-run monopolies and become more like us (privatized)... while the U.S. is trying to become more like them with more government-run companies.) (I think that's funny. It's like neither the politicians in Brussels nor Washington have any clue which method is best, and so both are running in opposite directions.)
>>>"And if everyone on your street got the $6000 standard deduction and you didn't, that would be fair because the government can give them discounts on taxes beacuse it wasn't their money anyway, regardless of whether you had to pay more?"
That happens to me every year. My married neighbors get discounts because they have great sex & spawned kids, whereas I have no sex & no kids. Is that fair???;-) One of my neighbors got a $2000 deduction because he bought a 45mpg Prius. I didn't get any deduction when I bought my 70mpg Insight. Mine's the greener car. Is that fair??? Some of my neighbors pay 15% tax while I'm in the 24% tax bracket. Is that fair?
Bottom line: The tax system is deliberately designed to give some people privileges, while others are left out.
Tax deductions are NOT about fairness; it's wrong to try to pretend they are.
Well, let's imagine an alternate reality where companies had decided to lay fiber instead of doing the various other upgrades. In that reality, we would have heard these complaints from the customers:
(circa 2000): "I just upgraded to this 56k modem, and the stupid thing doesn't work. I'm only getting 28k. Congress gave $200 billion in tax cuts and the phone company's not even bothering to upgrade the lines. Still stuck with lousy analog connections."
(now): "My stupid cell phone never works. I can't find any signal. The company needs to build more towers instead of pocketing the money."
(now): "I only live 15 miles from the city, and yet we still do not have access to Cable TV. It's a travesty."
POINT:
No matter what path the corporation had picked, customers would still be complaining about whatever service had Not been upgraded.
>>>"No, since it was a tax break, it was taxpayer money."
REALLY? You mean the $6000 deduction I took on my taxes... that's not MY money? That's taxpayer money??? How strange. I coulda sword that it was *I* who sweated & labored & worked to earn that $6000 using my own body. Surely that makes it my money, and not anyone else's.
My body. My money. My choice how I spend it. (Basically the same argument used by women to support abortion: Her body; her fetus; her choice.) That principle also applies to the corporations.
The $200 billion belongs to the corporation. Neither we nor Congress can tell them how to spend the money.
Now if Congress had *given* the money, then they could attach strings to the handout, but that's not what happened. Congress simply gave the Telcos tax breaks, and therefore they cannot attach strings to how the money is spent (anymore than Congress could order me to spend my $6000 deduction on a new roof, or new on-demand water heater, or whatever). Congress can not attach strings to money they do not own.
And while I'm being honest (which means I'll never get elected to Congress), I also want to debunk the myth that the United States is near-dead-last in terms of internet speeds. You often hear that the USA is somewhere around #20 overall, but that's not true. The U.S. is actually in the Top 5 overall..... the average American has a connection speed approximately equal to the average European:
Megabit/sec 1 93.7 Japan 2 43.3 Korea 3 11.8 Australia 4 9.1 European Union 5 8.7 United States 6 6.9 Canada 7 1.6 Mexico 8 1.4 Turkey
I love to hate on Corporations as much as the next guy, but there is such a thing as "truth" and integrity. The Telcos were not given $200 billion of taxpayer dollars. They were given tax breaks which allowed them to keep more of their money (in the same way I was given a ~$6000 standard deduction, which let me keep more of MY money).
They did not just sit on the money. They reinvested it in upgrades of other services such as:
- Rewiring analog lines with digital lines (cleaner phone calls/faster internet) - Improving cell phone communications by upgrading to a digital network. - Providing upgrades to DSL over standard lines. - Not declaring bankruptcy during the 2000 dot-com collapse, because they had cash reserves to save them.
So the $200 billion was the *corporation's* money, not taxpayer money, and it was spent to upgrade many of the things we take for granted today (clean digital calls, ubiquitous cell availability, and high-speed DSL to the home). In my own area, I've seen my internet increase from 24 kbit/s on dirty analog lines to 53k on clean digital lines. I've seen cellphone costs drop from $60 a month to $5 a month so that even I can afford it, and in just the last few months, I got 3000k internet.
It would be dishonest of me to sit here and say the corporations have not done a damn thing since 1996.
My numbers may be a little off, but the point I was making is still relevant. Engineers could put NASCAR engines inside modern cars, and give everyone ~1000 hp, but it would be overkill for the family car.
Likewise I expect computers will also reach a point where they run at ~15,000 megahertz, but that too will be overkill for the family computer.
I don't feel guilty about "scamming" a Scam Artist because I refused to waste $50 to mail back a non-operational camera (which he already KNEW was non-operational). Nor do I feel guilty that I shot & injured a man who threatened my ex-girlfriend with a knife in downtown Philly. There's a certain point where MY rights supercede the jerk's rights, which is why we throw people in jail and deprive them of their freedom. I feel no guilt.
>>>"You yanks are so fucking blinded by your cultural hangups against the government"
Yes true.
But at least we don't have a 60% government tax rate, or four months waiting time at the government-mismanaged hospital. Keeping the idiot U.S. politicians as powerless as possible is generally a better idea than Canada's approach of letting them run amuck.
And that is meant to be a negative thing? Look at all the positives: Three years to read many classic books, three years to enjoy the sun, three years to find other hobbies (like maybe nature watching), three years to find a wife, three years to absorb Teaching Company college lectures, et cetera, et cetera.;-)
Back to topic:
As with most ad-supported things, signing-up only pays PART of the bill. The advertising provides the rest of the money to fund the entertainment. (Example: We each pay about 50 cents to get CNN. But that 50 cents only pays part of CNN's bills; they still need advertising revenue to make-up the balance. Ditto this particular MMORPG.)
What if I flew over their house in a 747, and just happened to snap a photo that I later uploaded onto my "Troy's Vacation" website? Would I be sued for that too??? Ridiculous. No one can reasonably expect a house, out in the clear view of airplanes or satellite, should be off-limits to photography.
That's somewhat akin to women (or men) who complain, "Everybody's staring at me" as they walk across a public beach wearing nothing but three tiny pieces of cloth. Your body/house is in a public area. It's open for all to see. Don't want to be visible? Then pull-down the blinds, because only the *inside* of a house is truly private.
That's my plan. Earn a million, and then slow down and retire (still work, but only part-time).
If the blogger in the original article doesn't enjoy his life, then he needs to step back and re-examine if it's a life worth living. If the answer is "no" then he should limit himself to just once-a-day updates to reduce the stress, or else quit and find a different job.
Personally I'd rather work at a "cushy" job like Walmart than be a Blogger. May not pay much, but it's far less stressful. (Only reason I'm not at walmart now is because my office job is just as easy, but pays five times as much.)
The U.S. went to electronic machines mainly to speed-up the tally. Australians hand-count their ballots, but Americans use scanning machines to "see" the ballot and tally it automatically.
.
As for the computer voting, I see it as the end result of two flaws: (1) Lack of understanding by politicians of how computers work and/or how easily they can be hacked, erased, corrupted. (2) Scientific and technical illiteracy by government school graduates (aka voters) who are not really sure what "computers" are. (3) A belief by both politicians and voters, after seeing too many star trek episodes, that computers are somehow smarter than we are, and therefore "better".
And so American States rushed head-long into computer voting, because they thought it would be a "magic pill" that cured everything, and made sure we didn't have another Al Gore/Florida debacle, but in truth the new method is no better than the old paper ballots.
Perhaps the Chinese will learn English just so they can read the english wikipedia, in the same fashion that I learned German, so I could read the german wikipedia.
>>>"Juvenal here makes reference to the Roman practice of providing free wheat to some poor Romans as well as costly circus games and other forms of entertainment as a means of gaining political power through popularity."
Gee.
That sounds extremely familiar. Of course the American Founders were well-versed with Roman politics, and they had designed the constitution specifically so politicians could NOT give away free food to the poor, in order to buy votes. (Too bad it didn't work.) Now we have a government run by the person who can promise the most free stuff, thereby going ever deeper towards gov't bankruptcy (the same thing that ultimately brought down the Roman government).
Slashdot Mirror
Or just use Spamcop.net email which requires a credit card to use.
So this Uwe Boll guy is German?
Hmmmm. Yes. His movies would probably be a lot better with Nazi logos and goose-stepping soldiers. Maybe he could do a 1984 remake. (Or Medal or Honor, the Swastiki Strikes Back.)
I read your provided link, and to be honest it's hard for me to get excited about incorrect vote tallies. Even when the guy I want wins (first Bill Clinton in 1992, then George Bush in 2000), said guy acts completely contrary to what he originally promised. So I wonder why it even matters who I vote for? The guy I liked is the same guy I end-up hating eight years later! At this point I really don't care who the next president is, or whether or not the machine records my vote.
For all I care, let the State Legislatures pick the next president; their choice can't be any worse than the last 16 years.
And then when you finally "turn it on" people complain because they think $100 a month if too high. (But it's what is required for the company to repay all its labor and material costs.)
I think engineers need to spend some more time in business class, so they can get a grasp on how money works, and how risky it is to invest in new technologies. I never took business class, but I have worked in retail management, and it was very eye-opening to see how much money a company can lose. They earn 1 maybe 2 dollars per item, and that's only if they are lucky. If the market turns down and inventory has to be clearanced at wholesale cost, then they can lose 10-20 dollars each sale.
As you said the problem is "surviving long enough to see a return". A lot of companies have gone down in flames because they spent too much, and didn't recover enough dollars from the customer. (Example: TheTube music channel)
My fastest available speed is 50 megabit (DSL). But then I live in the giant megapolis that runs along I-95, so we tend to get the latest technologies. If I lived in Michigan, then I'd get about 0.05 megabit (phone line). 8.7 is an average of the whole continent, from the fastest to the slowest.
;-)
As for EU versus US:
It think it's "cheeky" to compare the entire 2500-mile wide continental U.S. to a teeny-tiny state called France. But hey, maybe I'm just weird like that.
>>>"Let me take a wild guess, you're a Republican?"
Bzzz. I'm in the middle (small government; small companies; large social freedoms; pro-environment; pro-individual rights).
My turn: Let me take a wild guess, you like to assign labels to people so you can stereotype their beliefs, rather than judge each person as an individual?
(shakes magic 8 ball)
"All signs point to yes."
As I stated in my last post, if you're going to break-down a Continental region like Europe into its constituent states, then you should do the same for the Continental region of America. Metropolitan states like New Jersey, Maryland, or Massachusetts are just as fast as metropolitan states like France, Germany, or Italy. (And rural states like Greece are just as slow as rural states like Missouri.)
Vice-versa, if you're going to lump an entire 2500-mile wide continent under the umbrella label "United States" and "Canada", then you should do exactly the same thing with the european continent and treat it as a single whole unit: "European Union".
IMHO a comparison is only valid if it is done on the same scale.
Otherwise, your conclusion is distorted by comparing Non-homogeneous units, as was the case with the study you cited.
That is true.
If everyone in the U.S. lived in cities, then we'd all have blazing fast internet, but the truth is we are a very "spread out" society with lots of miles between homes. (It took me 19 hours to drive from my contract job in Oklahoma City to my home in Pennsylvania. Lots and lots and lots of empty space.) That's why I consider comparisons between continental regions to be much more useful, because that's the kind of scale the United States is dealing with.... not a little island that is like one gigantic megaopolis (Japan).
(Besides: Japan is a technocracy, and is often ahead of the curve. They had laserdisc while we still had VHS. They had Analog HDTV while we still had analog SDTV. That's both good and bad. On one hand, Japan was ahead of the curve. On the other hand, they chose technologies that ultimately failed (goodbye laserdisc; goodbye analog HDTV). I don't really feel the need to copy Japan's lifestyle.)
.
Vice-versa, if you're going to start breaking down continental region like the E.U. into its constituent states, then you should do the same with the continental U.S. Yeah sure the E.U. state of France has some fast connections, but so too does the U.S. state of New Jersey. The american metropolitan states are just as fast as the european metropolitan states. (Likewise, the rural E.U. states are just as slow as rural U.S. states.)
IMHO a comparison is only valid if you use the same scale when making the comparison, otherwise you distort your conclusion.
IRONY:
(While here in America we discuss private corporations as the main flaw with internet, in the E.U. the main complaint is that there's not enough corporations (too many state-run telco monopolies). The E.U. is trying to break-apart government-run monopolies and become more like us (privatized)... while the U.S. is trying to become more like them with more government-run companies.) (I think that's funny. It's like neither the politicians in Brussels nor Washington have any clue which method is best, and so both are running in opposite directions.)
>>>"And if everyone on your street got the $6000 standard deduction and you didn't, that would be fair because the government can give them discounts on taxes beacuse it wasn't their money anyway, regardless of whether you had to pay more?"
;-) One of my neighbors got a $2000 deduction because he bought a 45mpg Prius. I didn't get any deduction when I bought my 70mpg Insight. Mine's the greener car. Is that fair??? Some of my neighbors pay 15% tax while I'm in the 24% tax bracket. Is that fair?
That happens to me every year. My married neighbors get discounts because they have great sex & spawned kids, whereas I have no sex & no kids. Is that fair???
Bottom line: The tax system is deliberately designed to give some people privileges, while others are left out.
Tax deductions are NOT about fairness;
it's wrong to try to pretend they are.
Well, let's imagine an alternate reality where companies had decided to lay fiber instead of doing the various other upgrades. In that reality, we would have heard these complaints from the customers:
(circa 2000): "I just upgraded to this 56k modem, and the stupid thing doesn't work. I'm only getting 28k. Congress gave $200 billion in tax cuts and the phone company's not even bothering to upgrade the lines. Still stuck with lousy analog connections."
(now): "My stupid cell phone never works. I can't find any signal. The company needs to build more towers instead of pocketing the money."
(now): "I only live 15 miles from the city, and yet we still do not have access to Cable TV. It's a travesty."
POINT:
No matter what path the corporation had picked, customers would still be complaining about whatever service had Not been upgraded.
>>>"No, since it was a tax break, it was taxpayer money."
REALLY? You mean the $6000 deduction I took on my taxes... that's not MY money? That's taxpayer money??? How strange. I coulda sword that it was *I* who sweated & labored & worked to earn that $6000 using my own body. Surely that makes it my money, and not anyone else's.
My body. My money. My choice how I spend it. (Basically the same argument used by women to support abortion: Her body; her fetus; her choice.) That principle also applies to the corporations.
The $200 billion belongs to the corporation. Neither we nor Congress can tell them how to spend the money.
Now if Congress had *given* the money, then they could attach strings to the handout, but that's not what happened. Congress simply gave the Telcos tax breaks, and therefore they cannot attach strings to how the money is spent (anymore than Congress could order me to spend my $6000 deduction on a new roof, or new on-demand water heater, or whatever). Congress can not attach strings to money they do not own.
And while I'm being honest (which means I'll never get elected to Congress), I also want to debunk the myth that the United States is near-dead-last in terms of internet speeds. You often hear that the USA is somewhere around #20 overall, but that's not true. The U.S. is actually in the Top 5 overall..... the average American has a connection speed approximately equal to the average European:
Megabit/sec
1 93.7 Japan
2 43.3 Korea
3 11.8 Australia
4 9.1 European Union
5 8.7 United States
6 6.9 Canada
7 1.6 Mexico
8 1.4 Turkey
I love to hate on Corporations as much as the next guy, but there is such a thing as "truth" and integrity. The Telcos were not given $200 billion of taxpayer dollars. They were given tax breaks which allowed them to keep more of their money (in the same way I was given a ~$6000 standard deduction, which let me keep more of MY money).
They did not just sit on the money. They reinvested it in upgrades of other services such as:
- Rewiring analog lines with digital lines (cleaner phone calls/faster internet)
- Improving cell phone communications by upgrading to a digital network.
- Providing upgrades to DSL over standard lines.
- Not declaring bankruptcy during the 2000 dot-com collapse, because they had cash reserves to save them.
So the $200 billion was the *corporation's* money, not taxpayer money, and it was spent to upgrade many of the things we take for granted today (clean digital calls, ubiquitous cell availability, and high-speed DSL to the home). In my own area, I've seen my internet increase from 24 kbit/s on dirty analog lines to 53k on clean digital lines. I've seen cellphone costs drop from $60 a month to $5 a month so that even I can afford it, and in just the last few months, I got 3000k internet.
It would be dishonest of me to sit here and say the corporations have not done a damn thing since 1996.
I would be lying.
My numbers may be a little off, but the point I was making is still relevant. Engineers could put NASCAR engines inside modern cars, and give everyone ~1000 hp, but it would be overkill for the family car.
Likewise I expect computers will also reach a point where they run at ~15,000 megahertz, but that too will be overkill for the family computer.
Oh well. Cry me a river.
I don't feel guilty about "scamming" a Scam Artist because I refused to waste $50 to mail back a non-operational camera (which he already KNEW was non-operational). Nor do I feel guilty that I shot & injured a man who threatened my ex-girlfriend with a knife in downtown Philly. There's a certain point where MY rights supercede the jerk's rights, which is why we throw people in jail and deprive them of their freedom. I feel no guilt.
Since I do neither, it's not really an issue.
(I did rent a car back in 2002, but it was using my employer's card. And I prefer the 1444 kbit/s quality of CDs over buying low-quality MP3s.)
>>>"You yanks are so fucking blinded by your cultural hangups against the government"
Yes true.
But at least we don't have a 60% government tax rate, or four months waiting time at the government-mismanaged hospital. Keeping the idiot U.S. politicians as powerless as possible is generally a better idea than Canada's approach of letting them run amuck.
>>>"I wouldn't have played WoW for three years."
;-)
And that is meant to be a negative thing? Look at all the positives: Three years to read many classic books, three years to enjoy the sun, three years to find other hobbies (like maybe nature watching), three years to find a wife, three years to absorb Teaching Company college lectures, et cetera, et cetera.
Back to topic:
As with most ad-supported things, signing-up only pays PART of the bill. The advertising provides the rest of the money to fund the entertainment. (Example: We each pay about 50 cents to get CNN. But that 50 cents only pays part of CNN's bills; they still need advertising revenue to make-up the balance. Ditto this particular MMORPG.)
What if I flew over their house in a 747, and just happened to snap a photo that I later uploaded onto my "Troy's Vacation" website? Would I be sued for that too??? Ridiculous. No one can reasonably expect a house, out in the clear view of airplanes or satellite, should be off-limits to photography.
That's somewhat akin to women (or men) who complain, "Everybody's staring at me" as they walk across a public beach wearing nothing but three tiny pieces of cloth. Your body/house is in a public area. It's open for all to see. Don't want to be visible? Then pull-down the blinds, because only the *inside* of a house is truly private.
That's my plan. Earn a million, and then slow down and retire (still work, but only part-time).
If the blogger in the original article doesn't enjoy his life, then he needs to step back and re-examine if it's a life worth living. If the answer is "no" then he should limit himself to just once-a-day updates to reduce the stress, or else quit and find a different job.
Personally I'd rather work at a "cushy" job like Walmart than be a Blogger. May not pay much, but it's far less stressful. (Only reason I'm not at walmart now is because my office job is just as easy, but pays five times as much.)
The U.S. went to electronic machines mainly to speed-up the tally. Australians hand-count their ballots, but Americans use scanning machines to "see" the ballot and tally it automatically.
.
As for the computer voting, I see it as the end result of two flaws: (1) Lack of understanding by politicians of how computers work and/or how easily they can be hacked, erased, corrupted. (2) Scientific and technical illiteracy by government school graduates (aka voters) who are not really sure what "computers" are. (3) A belief by both politicians and voters, after seeing too many star trek episodes, that computers are somehow smarter than we are, and therefore "better".
And so American States rushed head-long into computer voting, because they thought it would be a "magic pill" that cured everything, and made sure we didn't have another Al Gore/Florida debacle, but in truth the new method is no better than the old paper ballots.
I wonder who the UK banks would blame if the customer (like me) does not use online banking.
Hmmm.
Perhaps the Chinese will learn English just so they can read the english wikipedia, in the same fashion that I learned German, so I could read the german wikipedia.
>>>"Juvenal here makes reference to the Roman practice of providing free wheat to some poor Romans as well as costly circus games and other forms of entertainment as a means of gaining political power through popularity."
Gee.
That sounds extremely familiar. Of course the American Founders were well-versed with Roman politics, and they had designed the constitution specifically so politicians could NOT give away free food to the poor, in order to buy votes. (Too bad it didn't work.) Now we have a government run by the person who can promise the most free stuff, thereby going ever deeper towards gov't bankruptcy (the same thing that ultimately brought down the Roman government).