I'm old enough to have taken screenshots with a Polaroid film camera (TRS-80 MC10 computer that I software hacked to make Lo-Def TV quality pictures with; it was supposed to be a text-only computer. Sold a few copies of the software, too.)
I paid $100 for my unsubsidized phone (paid cash for it when the old one died), and I can call, take pictures, take movies, send texts, send emails (with the phone's photos and mvies attached), surf the web, I can even watch YouTube videos on it. Plus, it folds up and I can carry it in my pocket (besides the insane price, not fitting in a pocket is the #1 thing that keeps me from getting an iPhone or an Android)
My phone's not a "smartphone" afaik, though, but it does enough that I'm not going to pay a "smart" phone bill. A smartphone would be more than double the cost each and every month. I'm a nerd, but I'm not Bill Gates.
I can send a copy of it to any bluetooth enabled phone nearby if they want a copy (can this camera print multiple copies? That's something the original polaroids lacked). For sharing later, I can put them online.
Huh? My phone isn't even a smartphone, but it will take passable pictures (on a par with the 16mm single-focus disposable cameras everyone used to use), send them to another Bluetooth-enabled phone (bluetooth is great for getting them in your PC, as long as I use the Linux computer, Win7 doesn't seem to like my phone much), or text them or email or post them straight from the phone. And not only still pictures, it takes movies with sound as well (sent movies of the St Patrick Day parade to my daughter, it blew up her smartphone).
The phone was only $100, bill is $45 per month with unlimited talk, text, internet, email, roaming, and 411 (and probably a few other things).
Rather than printing my digital photos I've been scanning my old analog pictures into digital. I really don't see a need for prints unless I want to frame one and put it on the wall.
There is also a large group of slashdotters who don't know the difference between a patent and a copyright (the OP may be one, as he thinks it will be tied up "for decades"). There is also a large group of slashdotters who think 17 years is a long time. For many it is -- 17 years is a lifetime when you're not old enough to vote.
I have yet to see the ones you're pointing to who think innovation is "I get to use everyone's work". Can you link to such a comment?
If you want an elitist snob as your leader then go ahead. You have to know though, that the reason average American people prefer a guy whom they can relate to is because he will understand they wants
Wow, using "whom" and ebonics in the same sentence *head asplodes*
I bet you that a person like Obama before he became a senator and a president would not even let you within 100 feet of him
*head asplodes again* And the high-born Bush would have sat down with you at Felber's bar and bought you a beer?
He can not relate to ordinary people,
You weren't alive when Bush's dad went to Wal Mart and was impressed by the fact that they had bar code scanners? Bush is ordinary people? Boy, he sure fooled you!
...he only pretends to care about the poor.
At least there's a pretense there, and there's no evidence that he is, in fact, pretending. Except for t he fact that he's done much of what Bush did (spending, bailouts, TSA, etc). Bush held no such pretense. Like most Republicans who were born rich, he's of the opinion that poor people are poor because they're stupid and lazy and deserve no help whatever.
He was quite bright (estimates based on SAT scores) and is a voracious book reader (mostly biographies and histories).
That is true, but what's also true is that Bush deliberately cultivated the "Bush is a dummy" meme. "Jes' one o' the boys", as ignorant as the drunken off-duty construction workers he was wooing. An example -- once he was praising some intellectual (I don't remember who) who "Wrote four books when he was in college. I read a book when I was in college," Bush said.
The GP's incorrect vision of Bush lays at Bush's own feet. People think Bush was stupid because he wanted us to think he was stupid.
You may have your complaints about the ISPs, but you can switch to another one if you don't like the one you're on.
I can choose Comcast or AT&T. Not much of a choice. I don't want either one of them regulating the internet -- regulation is government's job. If I don't like the FCC's regulations I can vote against the curent Chief Executive. If I don't like AT&T's or Comcast's "regulations" I have no recourse whaever.
But now, the FCC is trying to usurp the power to regulate the Internet from the ISPs, thus restricting the freedom of the consumer to choose the ISP he likes best
That makes no sense to me whatever. How do FCC regs prevent me from switching to Comcast from AT&T (again, my only two choices)?
It's similar to situation with lightbulbs; pretty soon we're going to have to buy $7 mecury-filled lightbulbs- supposedly to combat global warming. See, this decision could have been made at the state or local level (local= ISPs, see the relation?), but now the government has made the decision FOR YOU.
How in the hell did your comment get modded up? "At the state or local level" means state and local GOVERNMENTS. And the feds do have constitutional authority to ban incandescents under the Commerce Clause. And your inflamatory rhetoric shows either your ignorance or your dishonesty; Far from being "full of mercury", CFLs have less mercury than is released by a coal-fired generator providing the extra power needed for the incandescant.
Net Neutrality, in most cases, is a code-word for 'regulation of the Internet'.
Wrong again, son. Net Neutrality says that ISPs must pass any data you request from any data provider you request it from. It's so Comcast can't restrict you from going to Hulu or CBS.COM or YouTube, which they would gladly do to get you to sign up for cable. Net Neutrality doesn't regulate YOU, it regulates your ISP. It prevents your ISP from fucking you over.
I'll bet you were all for California deregulating the power companies (like them blackouts and brownouts?) and the Feds deregulating the banking industry (how's your 401k? Hows the value of your home?).
Oh, for Christ's sake, dude, this is a nerd site. How can you have a six digit UID and not know what ACTA is?
The first two results were Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The third is American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), then Alliance for California Traditional Arts, Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority... none are anything you would expect to see on slashdot.
Sorry, dude, but you're trolling and should be modded accordingly. The rest of your comment is redundant.
The right reason why capital gains are taxed lower is because they've already received an additional tax before being distributed. Capital gains, are subject to a corporate income tax before they are distributed, so they are taxed both before and after distribution.
That's no different from the roofer's salary. The contractor pays tax on his profits, and pays the roofer from those profits, and the roofer pays tax on the money he earned working for the contractor. It's no different than the company paying corporate tax and the investor paying tax on the dividends.
And others have pointed out that capital gains isn't dividends. Capital gains is the income from your profit when you sell a share.
Many sources; private grants, corporate grants, government grants, in-house corporate research, and I'm sure many more sources. You have chemists and geneticists doing research for Monsanto; geneticists, botanists, and chemists doing research for ADM, chemists, biochemists, etc doing research for Pfizer. Government funding isn't necessarily political.
A very good example of real science was a government-funded study that was expected to show that marijuana caused cancer. Since marijuana smoke contains carcinogens, it was expected to be a slam-dunk; they expected more cancers in potsmokers than cigarette smokers. They were amazed and flabberghasted when the study showed that marijuana smokers got cancer at a slightly lower rate (although statistically insignifigant) than nonsmokers, and those who smoked both pot and cigarettes had half the cancers of those who only smoked cigarettes.
The results were the opposite of what was expected, and the opposite of the results the government wanted. Now the research is to find out why and how pot prevents cancer.
That's how science works. If your results are different than expected, you publish the results and research to find out why you were wrong. To bury your results when they disagree with your theories is unethical and stupid -- and if you get caught doing that, your career is pretty much over.
I wasn't bashing Baptists (just that one church in Florida); the Baptist church is as good as any other Christian church. My grandmother was a Baptist, her sister was a Pentacost who told my grandmother she was going to hell because she wore blue jeans. Grandma taught me a lot.
You're right about the worship of money and corporations, that was exactly what I was talking about. Beware wolves in sheeps' clothing? Beware of wolves in shepherd's clothing!
It's my belief thet Pat Robertson has converted far more Christians to athiesm than Richard Dawkins has. Dawkins is pretty ineffectual, while Robertson is a master at leading Christians away from Jesus. Note the thing around Robertson's neck every time you see him -- that's Satan's leash (also known as a "necktie", the symbol of wealth and power every banker, stockbroker, and politician wears).
They call it a "fee" and charge it at most ATMs. But the government doesn't collect that tax and give it to the banks like they did with the bailouts, the bank collects it directly.
I'd much rather have the government get that fee than for the bank to.
No, I'm not a follower of American "Christianity", I'm a follower of Christ himself. It isn't an easy thing to do. The primary religion in America is the worship of money, which my bible says is a horrible sin.
Oddly, the preacher at my church agrees with me. His latest series of sermons was "WIERD -- because normal isn't working" from a book by Craig Groeschel (I probably misspelled the guy's name).
Just because you go to a Baptist church every Sunday doesn't make you a Christian. If you follow that guy from Florida who protests at soldiers' funerals because they repealed "don't ask, don't tell" you're in deep spiritual doo-doo. IMO if your preacher wears a necktie (the symbol of wealth and power), you're probably really worshipng... MONEY!
That doesn't help because the same is true for astrophysics
Astrophysicists don't come up with retarded notions like "gravity is a repulsive force" or "wealth trickles down".
astrology is a science too
Hmmm, afraid not, fellow.
It just so happens that the testable predictions astrology makes tend not to come true.
Exactly. When your hypothesis predicts blue and the result is red, yet you stand by your hypothesis, you're not doing science. When a scientist tests a hypothesis and it fails, he discards that hypothesis. An astrologer or economist does not.
"Trickle down" economics has been disproven over and over (if it had worked, Bush's tax breaks for the rich would have resulted in a robust economy instead of the worst recession since the Great Depression), yet economists still follow that failed theory. A physicist whose theory had been as discredited as cold fusion would discard that theory and try to come up with a more suitable replacement. Economists don't do that. Yes, two physicists may disagree on a subject, but when their pet theories are disproven the hatchet is buried.
Overregulation is as bad as underregulation. True, they never stopped regulating banks, but they changed the regulations in a bad way, allowing banks to do what they were formerly prohibited from doing.
Ken Lay was empowered by deregulation of California's power industry. No, they didn't remove all regulations, but they removed the wrong ones, leading to blackouts, brownouts, and Lay & company's criminal endeavors.
The problem isn't that there is no regulation, or that it has been somehow disabled. The problem is in how it is being implemented. The Stock Market was regulated when it crashed in 1929. It just wasn't regulated well.
My point exactly.
Perhaps we should consider having someone other than industry insiders or Congressional profit takers doing the regulating?
Publically funded elections are the only way I know of to solve the problem. When bribery is legal, the rich man gets what he wants. For ours to truly be a government of, by, and for the people (and not the corporations or 1%ers), we have to outlaw "contributions" to candidates.
How can we, collectively, take action to make them understand that we do not like their mass mailing practice?
Burn down their building and rape their wives and daughters? That might give them a clue. However, even that probably wouldn't work -- sociopaths don't care about ANYBODY, even their wives and daughters.
The same people who have always used mainframes -- governments, big universities, and large corporations. Kind of hard to keep a five million row table and associated related tables on a PC.
And like always, today's mainframe will be on your desktop in 20 years. Who needs THAT kind of power? Uh, you will.
How about that, Microsoft almost catching up with Linux in yet another category. How long has it been ince Lunux ran on mainframes? Quite a while, one of the ten fastest computers in the world runs on Linux (keep working on it, MS). I keep thinking of BSoDs, do you know how damned long it takes to boot a mainframe? Will they have to restart the mainframe on Patch Tuesday every month? Reboot it when its antivirus needs new definitions, or Adobe updates Flash?
Open source gets trashed a lot for its silly names, GIMP being probably the most cited. But lots of non-FOSS products, even non-electronic products, have stupid names.
You would name your car company Killed In Action? No war veteran would drive a KIA! How about a Saab *sob*.
How about Windows? Did they give it that name because it breaks easily?
How about the Dodge Startus; er, Stratus? USA Toady; er, Today?
iPod? Sounds reasonable? Er, not to me. TWAIN scanners? WiFi (to my mind an incredibly stupid name)? Bluetooth?
As to Apache, it got its name because the earliest version was a patchy server. Perfectly reasonable. Far more reasonable than KIA or iPod or Bluetooth.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm old enough to have taken screenshots with a Polaroid film camera (TRS-80 MC10 computer that I software hacked to make Lo-Def TV quality pictures with; it was supposed to be a text-only computer. Sold a few copies of the software, too.)
I paid $100 for my unsubsidized phone (paid cash for it when the old one died), and I can call, take pictures, take movies, send texts, send emails (with the phone's photos and mvies attached), surf the web, I can even watch YouTube videos on it. Plus, it folds up and I can carry it in my pocket (besides the insane price, not fitting in a pocket is the #1 thing that keeps me from getting an iPhone or an Android)
My phone's not a "smartphone" afaik, though, but it does enough that I'm not going to pay a "smart" phone bill. A smartphone would be more than double the cost each and every month. I'm a nerd, but I'm not Bill Gates.
Who are you calling "nobody"?
I can send a copy of it to any bluetooth enabled phone nearby if they want a copy (can this camera print multiple copies? That's something the original polaroids lacked). For sharing later, I can put them online.
Huh? My phone isn't even a smartphone, but it will take passable pictures (on a par with the 16mm single-focus disposable cameras everyone used to use), send them to another Bluetooth-enabled phone (bluetooth is great for getting them in your PC, as long as I use the Linux computer, Win7 doesn't seem to like my phone much), or text them or email or post them straight from the phone. And not only still pictures, it takes movies with sound as well (sent movies of the St Patrick Day parade to my daughter, it blew up her smartphone).
The phone was only $100, bill is $45 per month with unlimited talk, text, internet, email, roaming, and 411 (and probably a few other things).
Rather than printing my digital photos I've been scanning my old analog pictures into digital. I really don't see a need for prints unless I want to frame one and put it on the wall.
There is also a large group of slashdotters who don't know the difference between a patent and a copyright (the OP may be one, as he thinks it will be tied up "for decades"). There is also a large group of slashdotters who think 17 years is a long time. For many it is -- 17 years is a lifetime when you're not old enough to vote.
I have yet to see the ones you're pointing to who think innovation is "I get to use everyone's work". Can you link to such a comment?
If you want an elitist snob as your leader then go ahead. You have to know though, that the reason average American people prefer a guy whom they can relate to is because he will understand they wants
Wow, using "whom" and ebonics in the same sentence
*head asplodes*
I bet you that a person like Obama before he became a senator and a president would not even let you within 100 feet of him
*head asplodes again*
And the high-born Bush would have sat down with you at Felber's bar and bought you a beer?
He can not relate to ordinary people,
You weren't alive when Bush's dad went to Wal Mart and was impressed by the fact that they had bar code scanners? Bush is ordinary people? Boy, he sure fooled you!
At least there's a pretense there, and there's no evidence that he is, in fact, pretending. Except for t he fact that he's done much of what Bush did (spending, bailouts, TSA, etc). Bush held no such pretense. Like most Republicans who were born rich, he's of the opinion that poor people are poor because they're stupid and lazy and deserve no help whatever.
Sorry, son, but you've let the 1% brainwash you.
He was quite bright (estimates based on SAT scores) and is a voracious book reader (mostly biographies and histories).
That is true, but what's also true is that Bush deliberately cultivated the "Bush is a dummy" meme. "Jes' one o' the boys", as ignorant as the drunken off-duty construction workers he was wooing. An example -- once he was praising some intellectual (I don't remember who) who "Wrote four books when he was in college. I read a book when I was in college," Bush said.
The GP's incorrect vision of Bush lays at Bush's own feet. People think Bush was stupid because he wanted us to think he was stupid.
You may have your complaints about the ISPs, but you can switch to another one if you don't like the one you're on.
I can choose Comcast or AT&T. Not much of a choice. I don't want either one of them regulating the internet -- regulation is government's job. If I don't like the FCC's regulations I can vote against the curent Chief Executive. If I don't like AT&T's or Comcast's "regulations" I have no recourse whaever.
But now, the FCC is trying to usurp the power to regulate the Internet from the ISPs, thus restricting the freedom of the consumer to choose the ISP he likes best
That makes no sense to me whatever. How do FCC regs prevent me from switching to Comcast from AT&T (again, my only two choices)?
It's similar to situation with lightbulbs; pretty soon we're going to have to buy $7 mecury-filled lightbulbs- supposedly to combat global warming. See, this decision could have been made at the state or local level (local= ISPs, see the relation?), but now the government has made the decision FOR YOU.
How in the hell did your comment get modded up? "At the state or local level" means state and local GOVERNMENTS. And the feds do have constitutional authority to ban incandescents under the Commerce Clause. And your inflamatory rhetoric shows either your ignorance or your dishonesty; Far from being "full of mercury", CFLs have less mercury than is released by a coal-fired generator providing the extra power needed for the incandescant.
Net Neutrality, in most cases, is a code-word for 'regulation of the Internet'.
Wrong again, son. Net Neutrality says that ISPs must pass any data you request from any data provider you request it from. It's so Comcast can't restrict you from going to Hulu or CBS.COM or YouTube, which they would gladly do to get you to sign up for cable. Net Neutrality doesn't regulate YOU, it regulates your ISP. It prevents your ISP from fucking you over.
I'll bet you were all for California deregulating the power companies (like them blackouts and brownouts?) and the Feds deregulating the banking industry (how's your 401k? Hows the value of your home?).
New info for me, thanks.
Oh, for Christ's sake, dude, this is a nerd site. How can you have a six digit UID and not know what ACTA is?
The first two results were Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The third is American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), then Alliance for California Traditional Arts, Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority... none are anything you would expect to see on slashdot.
Sorry, dude, but you're trolling and should be modded accordingly. The rest of your comment is redundant.
I don't think charitable contributions should be an exemption. A tax dodge is NOT charity.
The right reason why capital gains are taxed lower is because they've already received an additional tax before being distributed. Capital gains, are subject to a corporate income tax before they are distributed, so they are taxed both before and after distribution.
That's no different from the roofer's salary. The contractor pays tax on his profits, and pays the roofer from those profits, and the roofer pays tax on the money he earned working for the contractor. It's no different than the company paying corporate tax and the investor paying tax on the dividends.
And others have pointed out that capital gains isn't dividends. Capital gains is the income from your profit when you sell a share.
Many sources; private grants, corporate grants, government grants, in-house corporate research, and I'm sure many more sources. You have chemists and geneticists doing research for Monsanto; geneticists, botanists, and chemists doing research for ADM, chemists, biochemists, etc doing research for Pfizer. Government funding isn't necessarily political.
A very good example of real science was a government-funded study that was expected to show that marijuana caused cancer. Since marijuana smoke contains carcinogens, it was expected to be a slam-dunk; they expected more cancers in potsmokers than cigarette smokers. They were amazed and flabberghasted when the study showed that marijuana smokers got cancer at a slightly lower rate (although statistically insignifigant) than nonsmokers, and those who smoked both pot and cigarettes had half the cancers of those who only smoked cigarettes.
The results were the opposite of what was expected, and the opposite of the results the government wanted. Now the research is to find out why and how pot prevents cancer.
That's how science works. If your results are different than expected, you publish the results and research to find out why you were wrong. To bury your results when they disagree with your theories is unethical and stupid -- and if you get caught doing that, your career is pretty much over.
I wasn't bashing Baptists (just that one church in Florida); the Baptist church is as good as any other Christian church. My grandmother was a Baptist, her sister was a Pentacost who told my grandmother she was going to hell because she wore blue jeans. Grandma taught me a lot.
You're right about the worship of money and corporations, that was exactly what I was talking about. Beware wolves in sheeps' clothing? Beware of wolves in shepherd's clothing!
It's my belief thet Pat Robertson has converted far more Christians to athiesm than Richard Dawkins has. Dawkins is pretty ineffectual, while Robertson is a master at leading Christians away from Jesus. Note the thing around Robertson's neck every time you see him -- that's Satan's leash (also known as a "necktie", the symbol of wealth and power every banker, stockbroker, and politician wears).
They call it a "fee" and charge it at most ATMs. But the government doesn't collect that tax and give it to the banks like they did with the bailouts, the bank collects it directly.
I'd much rather have the government get that fee than for the bank to.
Agreed. Economics may some day become a science, just like astrology became astronomy and alchemy became chemistry and physics.
Today's economists are too political. Politics do not enter into science, or it's no longer science.
No, I'm not a follower of American "Christianity", I'm a follower of Christ himself. It isn't an easy thing to do. The primary religion in America is the worship of money, which my bible says is a horrible sin.
Oddly, the preacher at my church agrees with me. His latest series of sermons was "WIERD -- because normal isn't working" from a book by Craig Groeschel (I probably misspelled the guy's name).
Just because you go to a Baptist church every Sunday doesn't make you a Christian. If you follow that guy from Florida who protests at soldiers' funerals because they repealed "don't ask, don't tell" you're in deep spiritual doo-doo. IMO if your preacher wears a necktie (the symbol of wealth and power), you're probably really worshipng... MONEY!
That doesn't help because the same is true for astrophysics
Astrophysicists don't come up with retarded notions like "gravity is a repulsive force" or "wealth trickles down".
astrology is a science too
Hmmm, afraid not, fellow.
It just so happens that the testable predictions astrology makes tend not to come true.
Exactly. When your hypothesis predicts blue and the result is red, yet you stand by your hypothesis, you're not doing science. When a scientist tests a hypothesis and it fails, he discards that hypothesis. An astrologer or economist does not.
"Trickle down" economics has been disproven over and over (if it had worked, Bush's tax breaks for the rich would have resulted in a robust economy instead of the worst recession since the Great Depression), yet economists still follow that failed theory. A physicist whose theory had been as discredited as cold fusion would discard that theory and try to come up with a more suitable replacement. Economists don't do that. Yes, two physicists may disagree on a subject, but when their pet theories are disproven the hatchet is buried.
Good point.
Overregulation is as bad as underregulation. True, they never stopped regulating banks, but they changed the regulations in a bad way, allowing banks to do what they were formerly prohibited from doing.
Ken Lay was empowered by deregulation of California's power industry. No, they didn't remove all regulations, but they removed the wrong ones, leading to blackouts, brownouts, and Lay & company's criminal endeavors.
The problem isn't that there is no regulation, or that it has been somehow disabled. The problem is in how it is being implemented. The Stock Market was regulated when it crashed in 1929. It just wasn't regulated well.
My point exactly.
Perhaps we should consider having someone other than industry insiders or Congressional profit takers doing the regulating?
Publically funded elections are the only way I know of to solve the problem. When bribery is legal, the rich man gets what he wants. For ours to truly be a government of, by, and for the people (and not the corporations or 1%ers), we have to outlaw "contributions" to candidates.
Somehow I just don't see that happening.
How can we, collectively, take action to make them understand that we do not like their mass mailing practice?
Burn down their building and rape their wives and daughters? That might give them a clue. However, even that probably wouldn't work -- sociopaths don't care about ANYBODY, even their wives and daughters.
The same people who have always used mainframes -- governments, big universities, and large corporations. Kind of hard to keep a five million row table and associated related tables on a PC.
And like always, today's mainframe will be on your desktop in 20 years. Who needs THAT kind of power? Uh, you will.
How about that, Microsoft almost catching up with Linux in yet another category. How long has it been ince Lunux ran on mainframes? Quite a while, one of the ten fastest computers in the world runs on Linux (keep working on it, MS). I keep thinking of BSoDs, do you know how damned long it takes to boot a mainframe? Will they have to restart the mainframe on Patch Tuesday every month? Reboot it when its antivirus needs new definitions, or Adobe updates Flash?
Run for your lives, indeed!
...is Google for? Maybe it's so you can find this site? Hint: it's a tiny $25 computer.
Raspberry Pi has been covered numerous times at slashdot. I'm surprised you haven't seen it before.
Open source gets trashed a lot for its silly names, GIMP being probably the most cited. But lots of non-FOSS products, even non-electronic products, have stupid names.
You would name your car company Killed In Action? No war veteran would drive a KIA! How about a Saab *sob*.
How about Windows? Did they give it that name because it breaks easily?
How about the Dodge Startus; er, Stratus? USA Toady; er, Today?
iPod? Sounds reasonable? Er, not to me. TWAIN scanners? WiFi (to my mind an incredibly stupid name)? Bluetooth?
As to Apache, it got its name because the earliest version was a patchy server. Perfectly reasonable. Far more reasonable than KIA or iPod or Bluetooth.