>So what do you think going into a country promising liberation, tearing down a regime and destroying the status quo, >and then running away when it comes time to rebuild because a handful (yes a handful) of American lives are lost is >going to do?
It's not so much the American lives lost that bugs me, because after all, they volunteered to be used as they are. Mostly it is the $340,000,000 spent to date that bugs me. We don't have money for socialized medicine, but we have money for building nations out of savages. We don't have money for social security, but we have money for building nations out of savages. By the time this is said and done, we will have spent TRILLIONS, and we won't be any less likely to have another 9/11. What a huge waste of money. Imagine where we would be if we spent $340,000,000 on developing alternative energy sources?
>Do you think the Islamic fundamentalists who've been preaching war on the West will turn around and say >"oh, let's leave them alone now"? No, all it will accomplish is installing a new, possibly even more >anti-Western regime in Iraq and leave the Iraqi people as a massive reservoir for terrorist recruitment >as they'll (quite rightly) feel betrayed by the Western armies that came in, shot the place up, and then >left them to pick up the peices amidst nationwide strife. Again.
So in other words, nothing will be different than it is right now. Except we'll save another $340,000,000 that we would otherwise spend by hanging out there ANOTHER 5 years. See, the way I see it, THEY ARE GOING TO HATE US NO MATTER WHAT. So fuck it, man, let's pocket the cash and leave. In fact, hanging out the way we are now probably makes them hate us even MORE than if we just left!
You're right, of course, in that yes, the fundamentalists will regroup, and they will hit us again with another 9/11 or worse. But that is going to happen anyway. Why? Because we are doing nothing that alters the will of the enemy to inflict violence against us. And because we WON'T do anything that alters their will, staying there is just a waste of resources. If we aren't going to break their will, let's bring it on home and take the next 9/11 on the chin. Maybe they'll hit us hard enough next time so that we find our testicles and DO do something that alters their will to fight. Assuming we are able to get up off the floor next time.
>It's exactly your kind of thinking that is one of the greatest fuels for the fundamentalist cause. The idea >that the relatively tiny amount of American lives that will be lost stablising Iraq are worth more than the >many many thousands of arabs who will die if coalition forces pull out too soon is nothing short of racist. >Why would you expect some kid growing up under the thumb of an oppressive regime in the Middle East to turn >away from a cause that demands the wanton murder of Westerners when you have no greater respect for the lives >of his people?
Again, it's not really the lives that bother me. Tragic, to be sure, but trivial when you look at any other war in American history. It's the finanical cost. It is a HUGE waste of American resources, and completely unlikely to produce anything for the expenditure.
If I had to chose between spending a trillion dollars on Americans or a trillion dollars on Iraqies, I'll pick Americans every time.
>Punching innocent people in the face for someone else's transgressions is definitely a great way to solve problems.
You are making the assumption that the Iraqies are innocent. I tend to believe that responsible or not for 9/11, the majority of Iraqies, indeed the majority of the Muslim world in the middle east, rejoiced at it. Further, it is a great way to solve problems. It sends a message: "If we even/think/ you have messed with us, we'll punch you in the face".
>You're a fucking genius.
Thank you, I've always thought so myself.
>A world class citizen, and no doubt loved by all who know you.
I don't know about loved, but certainly respected, which is all I really care about.
>And destroying a country is really gonna win over the hearts and minds, and convince fundamentalists >not to fly planes into buildings isn't it?
I am not terribly interested in winning hearts and minds.
Further, all fundamentalists do what they do to support a cause. This is THE KEY to dealing with fundamentalists, or any armed aggressor. They will act so long as they believe that their actions will further their cause. The key is to make them understand that their actions will not further their cause, or, even better, that their actions will destroy their cause.
The threat of having your country destroyed, would go a long way to thwarting the actions of fundamentalists, who's cause involves, among other things, dominating their country with their ideology.
>Blah, blah, blah, if only we'd nuked North Vietnam, we'd have won the war, blah, blah, blah. > >How exactly would flattening a city in Iraq help? You're going to convince the Iraqis to love you by killing them and >their relatives?
You are making the assumption that we need to convince the Iraqies to love us, and/or that we yearn for their love.
Love would be nice, but fear works, too. In fact, terror really seems to be a language that the Muslim world appreciates. Ultimately, though, I don't really care if our enemies love, fear, hate, loath, or mildly dislike us. The goal is for them to quit attacking us. I don't really care what motivates them to do this.
Flattening a city in Iraq would help because A) there'd be a lot less Iraqies and B) it would sure-as-shit get the attention of the ones left. Every time someone wrings their hands about how this sort of thing doesn't work I just point to Japan. A whole country full of fanatics ready to fight with bamboo spears to the last person suddently changed it's mind after a couple of mushroom clouds. I'm sure lots of Japanese lost their relatives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I'm sure a lot of Japanese hated us afterwards, too, but you know what, it sure took the wind out of their sails.
>Is it really that hard to see that you can't win a fight against locals with AK-47s, RPGs and remotely-controlled bombs >with F-16s? Ok, maybe you kill a handful of them, but then all their relatives have a blood-feud against you, and you >kill a dozen innocent bystanders with the same bomb, which means that all _their_ relatives now have a blood-feud >against you. The only way to 'win' a war when killing one of the guys on the other side turns a dozen more against >you is to kill everyone in the country.
Nah, you just kill enough of the country until you break the will of those left to carry on. Just like Japan.
But this is all academic. There won't be any such displays of force, because it would be political suicide - people like you would vote the "button-pushers" out of office straight away. So military invasions are pretty much now a proven waste of time, money, and lives. They cost HUGE amounts of money, die daily, and don't project military force to any level likely to bring positive outcomes for our side. And on top of this they simply fuel the fires of resistance wherever they are.
Vietnam and now Iraq are excellent case studies that pretty much demonstrate the futility of invading armed forces in the modern era. Boots on the ground are counter-productive, and extremely expensive.
>The US and their Allies went into Iraq, without any proof. They messed up the country (and profited from it) now they have to sort it out.
Sorry, I don't give two shits about their country, if it dissolves into civil war, or dissolves into thin air. I bet most Americans don't. All we want is for Muslims to not fly airplanes into our buildings anymore. (Spare me the "Iraq wasn't involved with 9/11" speel. I don't care. They were a convenient Muslim target to punch in the nose.)
>The whole problem in Iraq is that America thought they could win a 21st century war with 20th century tactics.
No, the whole problem in Iraq is that America couldn't bring itself to/use/ 20th century tactics.
No one has the political will for Dresdens or Hiroshimas anymore, because it will show up on CNN in 15 minutes.
It's a waste of time to send massive military invading forces into another country if they aren't allowed to actually wage war. They will merely become targets of a war of attrition. And that is just what has happened. They aren't fighting and kicking ass, they're just getting sniped and IEDed while the dollars fly out of our pocketbooks at the rate of millions a day.
If this is how we are going to fight wars in the 21st century, why bother?
>There's something in the American psyche these days that demands they leave every job half done.
America's inability to wage war has nothing to do with the psyche of leaving jobs half-done.
It has everything to do with modern media.
The ability to use military might to break an enemy's will to fight ended during the Vietnam war. It was that war that first brought the harsh, uncensored, non-propaganda images of the reality of war home in reasonable amounts of time. For the first time, the people back at home could see the reality of war very soon after the events actually happened.
And we found that Americans just don't have the stomach for it.
Consequently, there never will be Dresdens or Hiroshimas again. Because it would be on CNN in 15 minutes, and it would be political suicide for those responsible for "pushing the button".
So now we send troops off on expensive "police actions", where they are never really allowed to take the gloves off and use their might to break the will of the enemy to fight. Instead, they are antagonists that bolster the will of the enemy to fight. Eventually, through a war of insurgent attrition, enough dollars get spent and enough images of the reality of the war get back home until the American public gets sick of it and leaves, without having to accomplish anything.
>If I have a local copy, preferably one unencumbered by DRM, I don't have to worry about someone limiting my access to it.
Exactly. This is why I will never sign up for remotely hosted anything, pretty much.
Too many people are trying to generate "revenue streams" by luring me with the "convenience" of paying for a "service" to access my data. They do this by making it so you don't own or control the data. Once they have enough of your data under their control, they can call all the shots, because it's too painful for you to leave. They can change the terms of service at any time and you just have to pretty much eat it if you want to access "your" data.
Screw that. Soon I'll have the last 50 years of television and music on my hard drive and I'll never have to buy content ever again in my life. Which is exactly what the content producers are afraid of.
Doesn't anyone find it ironic that YouTube has made billions off of the backs of all the free content basically donated to them to use on their site? What if the content creators/uploaders got a cut of that action? What if you uploaded content to YouTube that was DRM protected and in order to view it you had to pay the content creator?
I just looked up how to make my own DRM WMV files. You know what? You have to pay a third party if you want to make your own DRM content.
These DRM people have you coming and going. You have to pay if you wanto to view content, and, if you want to make your own DRM protected content, you have to pay someone for that, too!
>"Should"? > When someone comes to my house to replace my roof, I "should" be able to make a copy of his/her >"roofing performance," so that in 15 or 20 years I can have some shingles delivered and then just >replay that "roofing performance". > >When I buy a car, I "should" be buying a car design, from which I can extract a new car over and over >again so long as I do not wish to rake up horse muck. > >All kinds of things are possible once you get into "should" vis-a-vis the ways of the world.
Let's not change the subject to things that are 1) improbable and 2) irrelevent.
If I've bought a CD, I should be able to make a copy of it for my own personal use. If I've bought a DVD, I should be able to make a copy of it for my own personal use. If I am paying for XM radio, I should be able to record programs off of that service for my own personal use. If I am paying for cable TV, I should be able to record programs off of that service for my own personal use.
If and when the technology becomes available to duplicate cars and roofs we can discuss those at that time.
>Ummm.... no. It's never was about that. Fair use is certainly about Parody, Commentary, and Quoting
Right. Everyoneone rushed out and bought cassette players and VCRs to brush up on their parody, commentary, and quoting skills.
No, what I meant is that what "fair use" has always been about/for/the/masses/ is about being able to make a copy of whatever TV or radio program you are watching/listening to for personal use.
>Or you are not shopping, in which case any advertisement you see is an intrusion, and takes away from your time.
Just because I'm not presently shopping does not mean that there might be advertisements that I might be interested in for/future/ shopping.
For exmample, I am a new parent. Thus advertisements relevent to babies are of interest to me while I'm watching TV, whereas a year ago they were not. I'm into computers and electronics, and so I/enjoy/ viewing advertisements for those sorts of things, whether I am shopping for them or not.
Conversely, I hate sports, so any advertisement related to that would be a waste of my time.
What I would love to see are advertisements that I can actually SIGN UP FOR that would DYNAMICALLY be assigned to my programming.
For example - let's say you could download an episode of Battlestar Galactica. In that episode are 10 30-second commercial spots. But these commercial spots are dynamically filled in based on demographic/interest information that I CHOOSE at the time of downoad. Let's say I choose to view commercials about baby products, computers, LCD monitors, and camping. When I download, 5 commercials are selected FROM THE TOPICS I chose.
This would seem an ultimate win-win to me (I should patent it! lol). Content sellers get to sell advertising to people who ASKED FOR IT, and I get to see advertisements about things I truly am interested in, rather than what my "demographic" predicts I would be interested in.
Look, I don't mind commercials. I'd/really/ like/targeted/ commercials. They just never seem to be truly targeted to my interests. Very rarely when I do a Google on the things that interest me are the sidebar ads relevent to what I'm actually looking for. It seems 90% of the "targeted" ads are really just totally irrelevent ads someone has paid to associate with the keywords I was actually searching for.
If they could/really/ give me targeted commercials, I wouldn't mind them so much.
And something else - I hate REPETITION in ads. I don't mind sitting through commercials as I watch Battlestar Galactica every Friday night, but PLEASE - do I have to sit through the SAME Geico commercial with that stupid talking lizard every 10 minutes? It was mildly interesting the first time, but the message doesn't get any better the second or twentieth time I see it. Give me variety and entertaining commercials, and I will watch them happily. Repeat the same shit over and over and I'll get up and take a leak or something during commercials.
>That's not going to happen. The most plentiful source of hydrogen on the planet is water. >No one is going to be able to figure out a system that uses less engerdy to split the molecules >than you get in return by burning the hydrogen or using it in fuel cells.
Man, there are a shit-load of things we buy and use every day that consumed more energy in their making than I get out of it in the end product.
My reply to this is a big fat "so what"!
Let's say it takes 100 times as much energy to make a volume of hydrogen than I get when I burn it in my car (I'm pulling this number out of my ass).
If the hydrogen is cheap, compared to, say, gasoline, who cares how efficient it is?
OK, so we need a nuclear reactor or giant solar concentrators to crack the water into hydrogen and oxygen. As long as the economies of scale make the end product (they hydrogen) cheap, I don't really care how inefficient the process is to produce it.
The trick is to find a cost-effective, hopefully renewable way to produce hydrogen. Efficiency is secondary.
I truly believe that the #1 reason why distributed power systems like solar, hydrogen, etc, are not taking off are because the big energy companies don't WANT decentralized energy systems - because they can't control the profits as easily.
Take hydrogen. The day someone figures out how to easily produce hydrogen the days of energy monopolies are over - anyone with access to water (or whatever the raw material turns out to be) can do it.
Same with solar. If they got efficient solar panels so you could be energy self-sufficient there are a lot of people in power with a lot of money who no longer would be in control of the show.
>In addition healthcare is not elastic. If prices rise, people still need care so you can't just raise >prices to drive down demand.
Why is it this? Why is it that most people don't care how much their health care costs? I submit it is because most paying customers have insurance. And to them, they don't even KNOW how much their health care really costs.
For example. I recently had a baby. The actual billed cost was about $15,000, if I recall correctly. My out-of-pocket expense was $100. So for many people they "Had a baby and it only cost $100!"
You want to see price competition in health care? Have insurance companies pay the patients and let the patient shop around and keep any savings.
>Iraq had none of these (as evidenced by the fact that none of it was found after years and years of searching).
I still remain unconvinced, for 2 reasons.
First, who would cook up such an obvious lie when it would be found out immediately? If the administration was going to lie about this, don't you think they would go to the trouble to plant some evidence?
Secondly, it would not surprise me in the slightest to find that the WMD were secretly helped out of the country into Iran or Syria.
The Palestinians fired thousands of rockets into Israel just scant weeks ago. Weapons that we know where secreted to them with help from their buddies in Syria.
>Because if you RTFA, it's about people who don't want to listen to XM radio but have the >signal they are listening to(such as NPR) overridden by someone who is broadcasting XM from >their decoder.....it would have taken you what, 3 seconds to read the summary?
Excuse me, but the summary makes mention of the earth-based repeaters that XM uses to suppliment its satellite coverage. The summary makes no mention of the in-car FM transmitters people use to listen to the XM receiver on their in-car stereo.
>Africa and the Third World aren't just poorer versions of your hometown, they're places in deep >distress with a profound lack of the basic neccessities of life, and sweeping plagues which are >taking an enormous toll.
Why is this? This is a serious question, not a troll. Our country (the USA) has gone from sustinance living to superpower in the last 500 years. Why have parts of the rest of the world stagnated so?
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>So what do you think going into a country promising liberation, tearing down a regime and destroying the status quo,
>and then running away when it comes time to rebuild because a handful (yes a handful) of American lives are lost is
>going to do?
It's not so much the American lives lost that bugs me, because after all, they volunteered to be used as they are. Mostly it is the $340,000,000 spent to date that bugs me. We don't have money for socialized medicine, but we have money for building nations out of savages. We don't have money for social security, but we have money for building nations out of savages. By the time this is said and done, we will have spent TRILLIONS, and we won't be any less likely to have another 9/11. What a huge waste of money. Imagine where we would be if we spent $340,000,000 on developing alternative energy sources?
>Do you think the Islamic fundamentalists who've been preaching war on the West will turn around and say
>"oh, let's leave them alone now"? No, all it will accomplish is installing a new, possibly even more
>anti-Western regime in Iraq and leave the Iraqi people as a massive reservoir for terrorist recruitment
>as they'll (quite rightly) feel betrayed by the Western armies that came in, shot the place up, and then
>left them to pick up the peices amidst nationwide strife. Again.
So in other words, nothing will be different than it is right now. Except we'll save another $340,000,000 that we would otherwise spend by hanging out there ANOTHER 5 years. See, the way I see it, THEY ARE GOING TO HATE US NO MATTER WHAT. So fuck it, man, let's pocket the cash and leave. In fact, hanging out the way we are now probably makes them hate us even MORE than if we just left!
You're right, of course, in that yes, the fundamentalists will regroup, and they will hit us again with another 9/11 or worse. But that is going to happen anyway. Why? Because we are doing nothing that alters the will of the enemy to inflict violence against us. And because we WON'T do anything that alters their will, staying there is just a waste of resources. If we aren't going to break their will, let's bring it on home and take the next 9/11 on the chin. Maybe they'll hit us hard enough next time so that we find our testicles and DO do something that alters their will to fight. Assuming we are able to get up off the floor next time.
>It's exactly your kind of thinking that is one of the greatest fuels for the fundamentalist cause. The idea
>that the relatively tiny amount of American lives that will be lost stablising Iraq are worth more than the
>many many thousands of arabs who will die if coalition forces pull out too soon is nothing short of racist.
>Why would you expect some kid growing up under the thumb of an oppressive regime in the Middle East to turn
>away from a cause that demands the wanton murder of Westerners when you have no greater respect for the lives
>of his people?
Again, it's not really the lives that bother me. Tragic, to be sure, but trivial when you look at any other war in American history. It's the finanical cost. It is a HUGE waste of American resources, and completely unlikely to produce anything for the expenditure.
If I had to chose between spending a trillion dollars on Americans or a trillion dollars on Iraqies, I'll pick Americans every time.
>Punching innocent people in the face for someone else's transgressions is definitely a great way to solve problems.
/think/ you have messed with us, we'll punch you in the face".
You are making the assumption that the Iraqies are innocent. I tend to believe that responsible or not for 9/11, the majority of Iraqies, indeed the majority of the Muslim world in the middle east, rejoiced at it. Further, it is a great way to solve problems. It sends a message: "If we even
>You're a fucking genius.
Thank you, I've always thought so myself.
>A world class citizen, and no doubt loved by all who know you.
I don't know about loved, but certainly respected, which is all I really care about.
>And destroying a country is really gonna win over the hearts and minds, and convince fundamentalists
>not to fly planes into buildings isn't it?
I am not terribly interested in winning hearts and minds.
Further, all fundamentalists do what they do to support a cause. This is THE KEY to dealing with fundamentalists, or any armed aggressor. They will act so long as they believe that their actions will further their cause. The key is to make them understand that their actions will not further their cause, or, even better, that their actions will destroy their cause.
The threat of having your country destroyed, would go a long way to thwarting the actions of fundamentalists, who's cause involves, among other things, dominating their country with their ideology.
>Blah, blah, blah, if only we'd nuked North Vietnam, we'd have won the war, blah, blah, blah.
>
>How exactly would flattening a city in Iraq help? You're going to convince the Iraqis to love you by killing them and
>their relatives?
You are making the assumption that we need to convince the Iraqies to love us, and/or that we yearn for their love.
Love would be nice, but fear works, too. In fact, terror really seems to be a language that the Muslim world appreciates. Ultimately, though, I don't really care if our enemies love, fear, hate, loath, or mildly dislike us. The goal is for them to quit attacking us. I don't really care what motivates them to do this.
Flattening a city in Iraq would help because A) there'd be a lot less Iraqies and B) it would sure-as-shit get the attention of the ones left. Every time someone wrings their hands about how this sort of thing doesn't work I just point to Japan. A whole country full of fanatics ready to fight with bamboo spears to the last person suddently changed it's mind after a couple of mushroom clouds. I'm sure lots of Japanese lost their relatives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I'm sure a lot of Japanese hated us afterwards, too, but you know what, it sure took the wind out of their sails.
>Is it really that hard to see that you can't win a fight against locals with AK-47s, RPGs and remotely-controlled bombs
>with F-16s? Ok, maybe you kill a handful of them, but then all their relatives have a blood-feud against you, and you
>kill a dozen innocent bystanders with the same bomb, which means that all _their_ relatives now have a blood-feud
>against you. The only way to 'win' a war when killing one of the guys on the other side turns a dozen more against
>you is to kill everyone in the country.
Nah, you just kill enough of the country until you break the will of those left to carry on. Just like Japan.
But this is all academic. There won't be any such displays of force, because it would be political suicide - people like you would vote the "button-pushers" out of office straight away. So military invasions are pretty much now a proven waste of time, money, and lives. They cost HUGE amounts of money, die daily, and don't project military force to any level likely to bring positive outcomes for our side. And on top of this they simply fuel the fires of resistance wherever they are.
Vietnam and now Iraq are excellent case studies that pretty much demonstrate the futility of invading armed forces in the modern era. Boots on the ground are counter-productive, and extremely expensive.
>The US and their Allies went into Iraq, without any proof. They messed up the country (and profited from it) now they have to sort it out.
Sorry, I don't give two shits about their country, if it dissolves into civil war, or dissolves into thin air. I bet most Americans don't. All we want is for Muslims to not fly airplanes into our buildings anymore. (Spare me the "Iraq wasn't involved with 9/11" speel. I don't care. They were a convenient Muslim target to punch in the nose.)
>The whole problem in Iraq is that America thought they could win a 21st century war with 20th century tactics.
/use/ 20th century tactics.
No, the whole problem in Iraq is that America couldn't bring itself to
No one has the political will for Dresdens or Hiroshimas anymore, because it will show up on CNN in 15 minutes.
It's a waste of time to send massive military invading forces into another country if they aren't allowed to actually wage war. They will merely become targets of a war of attrition. And that is just what has happened. They aren't fighting and kicking ass, they're just getting sniped and IEDed while the dollars fly out of our pocketbooks at the rate of millions a day.
If this is how we are going to fight wars in the 21st century, why bother?
>There's something in the American psyche these days that demands they leave every job half done.
America's inability to wage war has nothing to do with the psyche of leaving jobs half-done.
It has everything to do with modern media.
The ability to use military might to break an enemy's will to fight ended during the Vietnam war. It was that war that first brought the harsh, uncensored, non-propaganda images of the reality of war home in reasonable amounts of time. For the first time, the people back at home could see the reality of war very soon after the events actually happened.
And we found that Americans just don't have the stomach for it.
Consequently, there never will be Dresdens or Hiroshimas again. Because it would be on CNN in 15 minutes, and it would be political suicide for those responsible for "pushing the button".
So now we send troops off on expensive "police actions", where they are never really allowed to take the gloves off and use their might to break the will of the enemy to fight. Instead, they are antagonists that bolster the will of the enemy to fight. Eventually, through a war of insurgent attrition, enough dollars get spent and enough images of the reality of the war get back home until the American public gets sick of it and leaves, without having to accomplish anything.
>If I have a local copy, preferably one unencumbered by DRM, I don't have to worry about someone limiting my access to it.
Exactly. This is why I will never sign up for remotely hosted anything, pretty much.
Too many people are trying to generate "revenue streams" by luring me with the "convenience" of paying for a "service" to access my data. They do this by making it so you don't own or control the data. Once they have enough of your data under their control, they can call all the shots, because it's too painful for you to leave. They can change the terms of service at any time and you just have to pretty much eat it if you want to access "your" data.
Screw that. Soon I'll have the last 50 years of television and music on my hard drive and I'll never have to buy content ever again in my life. Which is exactly what the content producers are afraid of.
Doesn't anyone find it ironic that YouTube has made billions off of the backs of all the free content basically donated to them to use on their site? What if the content creators/uploaders got a cut of that action? What if you uploaded content to YouTube that was DRM protected and in order to view it you had to pay the content creator?
I just looked up how to make my own DRM WMV files. You know what? You have to pay a third party if you want to make your own DRM content.
These DRM people have you coming and going. You have to pay if you wanto to view content, and, if you want to make your own DRM protected content, you have to pay someone for that, too!
>"Should"?
>
When someone comes to my house to replace my roof, I "should" be able to make a copy of his/her
>"roofing performance," so that in 15 or 20 years I can have some shingles delivered and then just
>replay that "roofing performance".
>
>When I buy a car, I "should" be buying a car design, from which I can extract a new car over and over
>again so long as I do not wish to rake up horse muck.
>
>All kinds of things are possible once you get into "should" vis-a-vis the ways of the world.
Let's not change the subject to things that are 1) improbable and 2) irrelevent.
If I've bought a CD, I should be able to make a copy of it for my own personal use. If I've bought a DVD, I should be able to make a copy of it for my own personal use. If I am paying for XM radio, I should be able to record programs off of that service for my own personal use. If I am paying for cable TV, I should be able to record programs off of that service for my own personal use.
If and when the technology becomes available to duplicate cars and roofs we can discuss those at that time.
>Ummm.... no. It's never was about that. Fair use is certainly about Parody, Commentary, and Quoting
/for/the/masses/ is about being able to make a copy of whatever TV or radio program you are watching/listening to for personal use.
Right. Everyoneone rushed out and bought cassette players and VCRs to brush up on their parody, commentary, and quoting skills.
No, what I meant is that what "fair use" has always been about
The bottom line for fair use is this:
I should be able to make a copy, for personal use, of any content that I can receive, whether it is broadcast for free or (especially) if paid for.
This is what Fair Use has always been understood to mean, in addition to being able to use small excerpts for review or educational purposes.
It was about us popping a tape in our VCR or radio and making a recording.
Now that the recordings are equal quality to the original, the RIAA and company want to renig on the deal. It's as simple as that.
If you've paid to receive the content, or it is freely given away, you should be able to make a copy for personal use. Period.
>Or you are not shopping, in which case any advertisement you see is an intrusion, and takes away from your time.
/future/ shopping.
/enjoy/ viewing advertisements for those sorts of things, whether I am shopping for them or not.
Just because I'm not presently shopping does not mean that there might be advertisements that I might be interested in for
For exmample, I am a new parent. Thus advertisements relevent to babies are of interest to me while I'm watching TV, whereas a year ago they were not. I'm into computers and electronics, and so I
Conversely, I hate sports, so any advertisement related to that would be a waste of my time.
What I would love to see are advertisements that I can actually SIGN UP FOR that would DYNAMICALLY be assigned to my programming.
For example - let's say you could download an episode of Battlestar Galactica. In that episode are 10 30-second commercial spots. But these commercial spots are dynamically filled in based on demographic/interest information that I CHOOSE at the time of downoad. Let's say I choose to view commercials about baby products, computers, LCD monitors, and camping. When I download, 5 commercials are selected FROM THE TOPICS I chose.
This would seem an ultimate win-win to me (I should patent it! lol). Content sellers get to sell advertising to people who ASKED FOR IT, and I get to see advertisements about things I truly am interested in, rather than what my "demographic" predicts I would be interested in.
>We can get hydrogen from fossil fuels, but that still does not mean that energy monopolies are over.
Yeah, until someone delivers electricity to my home so cheap that in-home or in-neighborhood electrolysis is cheap.
Or until someone invents an enzyme you can buy at WalMart next to the Rid-X for your septic tank that converts your lawn clippings into ethanol.
Look, I don't mind commercials. I'd /really/ like /targeted/ commercials. They just never seem to be truly targeted to my interests. Very rarely when I do a Google on the things that interest me are the sidebar ads relevent to what I'm actually looking for. It seems 90% of the "targeted" ads are really just totally irrelevent ads someone has paid to associate with the keywords I was actually searching for.
/really/ give me targeted commercials, I wouldn't mind them so much.
If they could
And something else - I hate REPETITION in ads. I don't mind sitting through commercials as I watch Battlestar Galactica every Friday night, but PLEASE - do I have to sit through the SAME Geico commercial with that stupid talking lizard every 10 minutes? It was mildly interesting the first time, but the message doesn't get any better the second or twentieth time I see it. Give me variety and entertaining commercials, and I will watch them happily. Repeat the same shit over and over and I'll get up and take a leak or something during commercials.
>That's not going to happen. The most plentiful source of hydrogen on the planet is water.
>No one is going to be able to figure out a system that uses less engerdy to split the molecules
>than you get in return by burning the hydrogen or using it in fuel cells.
Man, there are a shit-load of things we buy and use every day that consumed more energy in their making than I get out of it in the end product.
My reply to this is a big fat "so what"!
Let's say it takes 100 times as much energy to make a volume of hydrogen than I get when I burn it in my car (I'm pulling this number out of my ass).
If the hydrogen is cheap, compared to, say, gasoline, who cares how efficient it is?
OK, so we need a nuclear reactor or giant solar concentrators to crack the water into hydrogen and oxygen. As long as the economies of scale make the end product (they hydrogen) cheap, I don't really care how inefficient the process is to produce it.
The trick is to find a cost-effective, hopefully renewable way to produce hydrogen. Efficiency is secondary.
>One of the big problems with mirrors as lenses is that they have to be cleaned. Just think
>of the labor costs that would involve.
I would think someone would invent little robot cleaners (solar Roombas) that could periodically go out and clean the mirrors and solar cells.
Steve
I truly believe that the #1 reason why distributed power systems like solar, hydrogen, etc, are not taking off are because the big energy companies don't WANT decentralized energy systems - because they can't control the profits as easily.
Take hydrogen. The day someone figures out how to easily produce hydrogen the days of energy monopolies are over - anyone with access to water (or whatever the raw material turns out to be) can do it.
Same with solar. If they got efficient solar panels so you could be energy self-sufficient there are a lot of people in power with a lot of money who no longer would be in control of the show.
Steve
>In addition healthcare is not elastic. If prices rise, people still need care so you can't just raise
>prices to drive down demand.
Why is it this? Why is it that most people don't care how much their health care costs? I submit it is because most paying customers have insurance. And to them, they don't even KNOW how much their health care really costs.
For example. I recently had a baby. The actual billed cost was about $15,000, if I recall correctly. My out-of-pocket expense was $100. So for many people they "Had a baby and it only cost $100!"
You want to see price competition in health care? Have insurance companies pay the patients and let the patient shop around and keep any savings.
I'm sure the original colonists' children had it just as tough.
>Iraq had none of these (as evidenced by the fact that none of it was found after years and years of searching).
I still remain unconvinced, for 2 reasons.
First, who would cook up such an obvious lie when it would be found out immediately? If the administration was going to lie about this, don't you think they would go to the trouble to plant some evidence?
Secondly, it would not surprise me in the slightest to find that the WMD were secretly helped out of the country into Iran or Syria.
The Palestinians fired thousands of rockets into Israel just scant weeks ago. Weapons that we know where secreted to them with help from their buddies in Syria.
If the weapons can be snuck in, why not out?
>Because if you RTFA, it's about people who don't want to listen to XM radio but have the
>signal they are listening to(such as NPR) overridden by someone who is broadcasting XM from
>their decoder.....it would have taken you what, 3 seconds to read the summary?
Excuse me, but the summary makes mention of the earth-based repeaters that XM uses to suppliment its satellite coverage. The summary makes no mention of the in-car FM transmitters people use to listen to the XM receiver on their in-car stereo.
What was that about reading the summary again?
>Because America did not go from sustinance living to superpower in 500 years. It was born out of the European empires.
And yet the population threw off the empires, did it's own thing, and made a great nation.
>No American that's been born in this country and lived entirely within it can have a proper appreciation of true starvation.
I do not believe this. I suspect the original colonists had it just as hard as any moderen third world population.
>Africa and the Third World aren't just poorer versions of your hometown, they're places in deep
>distress with a profound lack of the basic neccessities of life, and sweeping plagues which are
>taking an enormous toll.
Why is this? This is a serious question, not a troll. Our country (the USA) has gone from sustinance living to superpower in the last 500 years. Why have parts of the rest of the world stagnated so?