It doesn't take much to decide if a business is well run or not when you do business with them a few times. Also, the DoT does a lot more than fund Amtrak.
Sorry, sparky, but only an idiot would post or click a shortened link here, since there's no reason whatever to use one except for trolling or stupidity.
Seems the moderators agree with me. Rather than going into defensive mode, why not sit back, think a second, and learn?
Because I want to be the master of what I watch, not someone else.
Gee, that's just what the content producers are saying about what they produce.
No, he as the customer is right about that, and you and especially Hollywood are wrong. I paid for that DVD, I should have the RIGHT to watch it however I want to watch it, and it burns my balls that I, a non-pirate, must sit through five minutes of FBI piracy warnings when the pirate just clicks and watches the damned movie.
I should put the DVD in and the damnded movie should start. Period. Annoying the paying customer is indeed the best way to turn him into a pirate.
DRM affects me, the paying customer. It doesn't affect the pirate at all. DRM is incredibly counterproductive and just brain-dead stupid.
If cars had progressed as fast as computers, we'd have had flying electric cars in 1950. Today's CPUs are 1000 times as fast as 1994's CPUs. Hard drive and memory speeds have likewise increased.
Here's a journal entry I made a couple of days ago (not its entirety), it was a rerun from 2002:
I was home sick last Friday, and when my wife came home from school she had a new hard drive she picked up at Circuit City, a 40mb Maxtor.
I couldn't get the damned thing to work!
My old 400mz machine still plays all the new games, and with a little more memory would play them in XP (assuming I wanted to throw away another hundred dollars on a new OS I don't need). Plus, Becky's laptop is the first whole computer I've bought since I purchased a used IBM XT in 1987; I've built from spare parts since.
I didn't know that older (in this case "older" means about three years) BIOSs couldn't handle drive sizes larger than 30gb. I had run across the same problem years ago while trying to install a huge (for the time) half gigabyte drive in a 386; then, the limit was 512mb. The Seagate I had bought then had come with software to overcome the limitation, and it had worked flawlessly.
I can't say the same about the new Maxtor!
I fought with that thing all weekend; its workarounds wouldn't work around. This on top of a defective installation floppy!
It made Windows freeze at the desktop; then after a Windows reinstall, it was still hosed. Nowhere in the printed documentation was it mentioned, but I finally found a workaround deep inside one of the installation/test programs that involved lying to the BIOS.
Bingo! It booted into Windows with no problem!
But the drive wouldn't work. So I rebooted into DOS and did a high level format; the software was supposed to have done it but didn't.
It booted into Windows and the drive worked!
I rebooted; it still worked. I copied a half dozen gigabytes of data from the laptop to the new hard drive in the old PC, which it read with no problem. I rebooted again.
All the data were garbage (and all your base are belong to us).
I wrote over the garbaged-up data several times and low level formatted the drive one last time, then boxed it up for Becky to return. The new 30gb Western Digital is supposed to get here from JDR Monday afternoon.
We're still using the same hardware and architecture as 1995. Heck, I can run the same OS on a computer made in 1995, or in 2012.
Yeah? Sure, Windows 95 or DOS 6 will run on a new computer, but lets see you get Windows 7 or kubuntu 11.10 to run on a.386 with a 20 mb hard drive and 32 meg of RAM. Hell, you can't get FoxPro 6 to run under XP. Screamer 2 was fairly new in 1995, it wouldn't run in Windows 98.
Why would you expect a radical change in archetecture? And actully, considering that multi-core CPUs are more common than not these days, I'd say that's a huge difference.
Back in 1995 there were dip switches, because plug n play wasn't around. 16 color CRT monitors (and even monochrome monitors) were the norm. Most PCs weren't networked. You got on the BBS with a 33.6 POTS modem.
Either you're too young to remember computers from then well, or so old you've gotten alzheimer's.
Miserable failure? Considering the condition this country was in when he took over?
His predesessor spent eight years turning this country from a nation at peace with a booming economy, low unemployment and a balanced budget to a nation at war with two countries, a collapsed economy, high unemployment, and staggering defecits.
You expected Obama to undo the damage it took Bush eight years to do in less than half that time? What crazy world does your mind live in, son?
The fact is, as presidents go, he's not great but he's a hell of a lot better than most I've seen (and I'm not a young man). Obama's biggest fault is not being FDR.
Compared to Carter or Bush, he's a great President. Compared to Clinton? Nah. And Clinton wasn't great, just good.
None of the big cellphone companies are, but smaller companies (even ones bought out by big ones, like my carrier) do. I pay a flat $45 per month with unlimited text, talk, long distance, roaming, email, internet, and 411 (and there is probably something I left out).
It's cheaper than the talk-only plan I had years ago before I dumped AT&T.
Perhaps, but you're talking far, far into the future, perhaps thousands of years. But who knows, maybe someone will find a way around the lightspeed barrier some day.
Indeed. What set top box to buy? I'm a nerd, I build my own. I already don't have cable; almost everything on cable I'd want to watch is on HULU or the networks' own web sites. I have a perfectly good computer plugged into my TV, why would I want something I couldn't fiddle with? I don't see what any of these boxes do that any nerd couldn't put together himself.
I was disappointed, I thought by "players" it was going to be Winamp vs XMMS vs WiMP vs Aramok vs whatever other software media players there are.
He might want to have one true tow truck for, say, removing vehicles from parking structures, where a long flatbed simply won't fit.
Exactly. He's towed me a few times, and always used one of the flatbeds except once, and that's when he'd just bought his new robot truck and wanted to show off.
The DEA is going after dealers and distributors, not someone carrying a joint
That's what they'd like you to believe, but I was shown a few years ago that it's bullshit. Some lady friends of mine worked for slumlords cleaning houses for a living, and I gave them a ride to collect their pay.
They got in the car and six large, armed men jumped out and surrounded us, frisked us, and searched the car. Two were local cops, two were FBI, and one was DEA -- it was printed on their clothing, just like on TV. The DEA guy wore a ski mask (in July in Illinois).
It turned out that the house they went to was rented by a drug dealer. The FBI, DEA, and local cops were laying in wait to bust people who had just bought dope from the dealer. Note they could have easily busted the dealer himself.
Of course, they let us go since there weren't any drugs, but my lack of 4th amendment protection against my car and person being searched and the fact that they were after users rather than dealers pisses me off to this day.
Adding more layers of bullshit to a flawed system does not fix it. Dismantling the system will.
Before you tear your house down you'd better build a new one, or you'll get wet and cold. You have a system in mind that's better than the present one that doesn't involve matter replicators?
I'm beginning to think people like the IRS more than the TSA.
The IRS has a useful purpose. The TSA does nothing but waste of tax dollars ogling and feeling up innocent Americans to produce the illusion of safety. The IRS, hated though it is, is completely necessary. The TSA is not.
It is to reach all but a handful of stars. And even at half lightspeed you have intractable relativistic problems, such as harmless EMF wavelengths becoming deadly.
I'm not at all convinced humanity will even resemble today's humans in the millions of years it would have taken to occur.
I wonder if I should have any males in my time travel stories? So far I haven't identified the sexes of any of the characters, aside from using the word "he".
Gates was talked into being a philanthropist by his father -- an IBM lawyer. My thought is it's just PR. It isn't like he can't afford it or something.
Me, I have far more respect for the waitress who throws a ten dollar bill in the Salvation Army bucket. That ten bucks actually means something to her, what Gates spends doesn't affect his life or lifestyle at all.
Everybody does it, saying they "invested" in a new car, or "invested" in a video game. Investing is spending money on something you expect to earn more money for you at a later time. Cars depreciate and are not investments. Houses generally don't (unless you have the kind of clucterfuck we had a few years ago as well as in the 1930s) so are investments.
When an auto dealer buys a car, it's an investment. When you buy it it's an expendeture.
Most "tow" trucks these days don't tow, they're flatbeds that have the bed extend so the car can be pulled onto the flatbed for transport.
I have a drinking buddy who owns a towing company, he only has one real tow truck, the rest of his fleet are all flatbeds manufactured for transporting inoperative vehicles.
Yeah? Buy a bottle of aleive and you're paying for pain relief. But you can get the exact same drug in a bottle of generic naproxin sodium for 1/3 the price. You didn't get what you paid for, the drug company got what you paid for.
The 89 cent can of generic green beans tastes identical to the buck fifty Green Giant.
Marketers have shoved this "you get what you pay for" fallacy down people's throats so long they actually believe that paying more always gets you more. It doesn't. You usually pay for what you get, but not always, and you very often don't get what you pay for.
Or, putting $50M into promoting male genital mutilation in Kenya
You do realise that this "mutilation" greatly reduces the risk of STDs and that over half the men who are "mutilated" as adults report a greater satisfaction of sex after the surgery heals?
When I was stationed in Thailand in the USAF, one of my buddies got jungle rot on his foreskin, and the treatment was "mutilation". Poor guy had to carry around amyl nitrate "poppers" for six weeks until it healed in case he got an erection.
I was glad I'd been "mutilated" at birth when there's no pain and no stitches and little blood so there was no risk of jungle rot on my dick.
Admit it, you hate circumcision because the Jewish and Muslim religions demand it (I am neither), and you hate religion. You probably consider religion itself to be barbaric and uncivilized. I'll tell you what, you make the choices you want for your own children and keep your nose out of everyone else's business.
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It doesn't take much to decide if a business is well run or not when you do business with them a few times. Also, the DoT does a lot more than fund Amtrak.
Sorry, sparky, but only an idiot would post or click a shortened link here, since there's no reason whatever to use one except for trolling or stupidity.
Seems the moderators agree with me. Rather than going into defensive mode, why not sit back, think a second, and learn?
No, he as the customer is right about that, and you and especially Hollywood are wrong. I paid for that DVD, I should have the RIGHT to watch it however I want to watch it, and it burns my balls that I, a non-pirate, must sit through five minutes of FBI piracy warnings when the pirate just clicks and watches the damned movie.
I should put the DVD in and the damnded movie should start. Period. Annoying the paying customer is indeed the best way to turn him into a pirate.
DRM affects me, the paying customer. It doesn't affect the pirate at all. DRM is incredibly counterproductive and just brain-dead stupid.
Jokes can't go over your head if they can't fly, and that one didn't.
I'm a tough room.
If cars had progressed as fast as computers, we'd have had flying electric cars in 1950. Today's CPUs are 1000 times as fast as 1994's CPUs. Hard drive and memory speeds have likewise increased.
Here's a journal entry I made a couple of days ago (not its entirety), it was a rerun from 2002:
Bhuddists don't believe in heaven. They believe in reincarnation.
We're still using the same hardware and architecture as 1995. Heck, I can run the same OS on a computer made in 1995, or in 2012.
Yeah? Sure, Windows 95 or DOS 6 will run on a new computer, but lets see you get Windows 7 or kubuntu 11.10 to run on a .386 with a 20 mb hard drive and 32 meg of RAM. Hell, you can't get FoxPro 6 to run under XP. Screamer 2 was fairly new in 1995, it wouldn't run in Windows 98.
Why would you expect a radical change in archetecture? And actully, considering that multi-core CPUs are more common than not these days, I'd say that's a huge difference.
Back in 1995 there were dip switches, because plug n play wasn't around. 16 color CRT monitors (and even monochrome monitors) were the norm. Most PCs weren't networked. You got on the BBS with a 33.6 POTS modem.
Either you're too young to remember computers from then well, or so old you've gotten alzheimer's.
Miserable failure? Considering the condition this country was in when he took over?
His predesessor spent eight years turning this country from a nation at peace with a booming economy, low unemployment and a balanced budget to a nation at war with two countries, a collapsed economy, high unemployment, and staggering defecits.
You expected Obama to undo the damage it took Bush eight years to do in less than half that time? What crazy world does your mind live in, son?
The fact is, as presidents go, he's not great but he's a hell of a lot better than most I've seen (and I'm not a young man). Obama's biggest fault is not being FDR.
Compared to Carter or Bush, he's a great President. Compared to Clinton? Nah. And Clinton wasn't great, just good.
None of the big cellphone companies are, but smaller companies (even ones bought out by big ones, like my carrier) do. I pay a flat $45 per month with unlimited text, talk, long distance, roaming, email, internet, and 411 (and there is probably something I left out).
It's cheaper than the talk-only plan I had years ago before I dumped AT&T.
Perhaps, but you're talking far, far into the future, perhaps thousands of years. But who knows, maybe someone will find a way around the lightspeed barrier some day.
Indeed. What set top box to buy? I'm a nerd, I build my own. I already don't have cable; almost everything on cable I'd want to watch is on HULU or the networks' own web sites. I have a perfectly good computer plugged into my TV, why would I want something I couldn't fiddle with? I don't see what any of these boxes do that any nerd couldn't put together himself.
I was disappointed, I thought by "players" it was going to be Winamp vs XMMS vs WiMP vs Aramok vs whatever other software media players there are.
That's a lot more accurate, for sure.
He might want to have one true tow truck for, say, removing vehicles from parking structures, where a long flatbed simply won't fit.
Exactly. He's towed me a few times, and always used one of the flatbeds except once, and that's when he'd just bought his new robot truck and wanted to show off.
you need some entry level classes. Not only on chemistry but on physics too.
You're the one who seems to not have heard of Newton's laws of motion or that you can burn stuff underwater or in a vaccuum with the right chemicals.
The DEA is going after dealers and distributors, not someone carrying a joint
That's what they'd like you to believe, but I was shown a few years ago that it's bullshit. Some lady friends of mine worked for slumlords cleaning houses for a living, and I gave them a ride to collect their pay.
They got in the car and six large, armed men jumped out and surrounded us, frisked us, and searched the car. Two were local cops, two were FBI, and one was DEA -- it was printed on their clothing, just like on TV. The DEA guy wore a ski mask (in July in Illinois).
It turned out that the house they went to was rented by a drug dealer. The FBI, DEA, and local cops were laying in wait to bust people who had just bought dope from the dealer. Note they could have easily busted the dealer himself.
Of course, they let us go since there weren't any drugs, but my lack of 4th amendment protection against my car and person being searched and the fact that they were after users rather than dealers pisses me off to this day.
Adding more layers of bullshit to a flawed system does not fix it. Dismantling the system will.
Before you tear your house down you'd better build a new one, or you'll get wet and cold. You have a system in mind that's better than the present one that doesn't involve matter replicators?
I'm beginning to think people like the IRS more than the TSA.
The IRS has a useful purpose. The TSA does nothing but waste of tax dollars ogling and feeling up innocent Americans to produce the illusion of safety. The IRS, hated though it is, is completely necessary. The TSA is not.
It is to reach all but a handful of stars. And even at half lightspeed you have intractable relativistic problems, such as harmless EMF wavelengths becoming deadly.
I'm not at all convinced humanity will even resemble today's humans in the millions of years it would have taken to occur.
I wonder if I should have any males in my time travel stories? So far I haven't identified the sexes of any of the characters, aside from using the word "he".
Gates was talked into being a philanthropist by his father -- an IBM lawyer. My thought is it's just PR. It isn't like he can't afford it or something.
Me, I have far more respect for the waitress who throws a ten dollar bill in the Salvation Army bucket. That ten bucks actually means something to her, what Gates spends doesn't affect his life or lifestyle at all.
Everybody does it, saying they "invested" in a new car, or "invested" in a video game. Investing is spending money on something you expect to earn more money for you at a later time. Cars depreciate and are not investments. Houses generally don't (unless you have the kind of clucterfuck we had a few years ago as well as in the 1930s) so are investments.
When an auto dealer buys a car, it's an investment. When you buy it it's an expendeture.
However, that aside, you did make a good comment.
Most "tow" trucks these days don't tow, they're flatbeds that have the bed extend so the car can be pulled onto the flatbed for transport.
I have a drinking buddy who owns a towing company, he only has one real tow truck, the rest of his fleet are all flatbeds manufactured for transporting inoperative vehicles.
You get what you pay for
Yeah? Buy a bottle of aleive and you're paying for pain relief. But you can get the exact same drug in a bottle of generic naproxin sodium for 1/3 the price. You didn't get what you paid for, the drug company got what you paid for.
The 89 cent can of generic green beans tastes identical to the buck fifty Green Giant.
Marketers have shoved this "you get what you pay for" fallacy down people's throats so long they actually believe that paying more always gets you more. It doesn't. You usually pay for what you get, but not always, and you very often don't get what you pay for.
Well, that's pretty darned cheap considering how hard it is to get a good supply of thiotimoline.
Or, putting $50M into promoting male genital mutilation in Kenya
You do realise that this "mutilation" greatly reduces the risk of STDs and that over half the men who are "mutilated" as adults report a greater satisfaction of sex after the surgery heals?
When I was stationed in Thailand in the USAF, one of my buddies got jungle rot on his foreskin, and the treatment was "mutilation". Poor guy had to carry around amyl nitrate "poppers" for six weeks until it healed in case he got an erection.
I was glad I'd been "mutilated" at birth when there's no pain and no stitches and little blood so there was no risk of jungle rot on my dick.
Admit it, you hate circumcision because the Jewish and Muslim religions demand it (I am neither), and you hate religion. You probably consider religion itself to be barbaric and uncivilized. I'll tell you what, you make the choices you want for your own children and keep your nose out of everyone else's business.