If you believe actuarial tables, then we as an American society have decided that turning 16 is sufficient "proof" of driving, turning 18 is proof for voting, and 21 for drinking.
And while a full-fledged cell phone may be a "luxury", in the 21st century age of technology, providing your child with an easy and relatively cheap way to contact you seems like it has a lot of benefits at very *little* cost. Especially those Disney Mobile and Firefly phones, they're like $40 for the phone, with cheap prepaid minutes, GPS, and lockdown. Security + a constant stream of trust = a full-fledged cell phone later on.
It's simple, people. Tech is hardly a "luxury" any more.
Actually, MTV solicits all videos, and they play what they want - which of course just happens to be all the hitmakers because that drives the advertising dollars / hype factory.
As a former employee of MTV, I can say unequivocably that nobody at MTV gets paid to show this video over that video. But there is a lot of pressure to, say, "show this new artist video or we won't give you an exclusive interview with Madonna/Ludacris/Green Day." There is a lot of bartering more than outright payola. Influence for influence.
And, yes, MTV will pay any artist $1 for the right to use their music in the background of their shows in perpetuity forever and ever et cetera et cetera. A lot of bands take that deal; bigger names than I would have thought, especially in the metal/indie world. It's not really selling out, but it's definitely a validation of the system.
You know why we have that phrase "I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so?"
It's not about right or wrong. It's about risk and consequence. And IN PARTICULAR you have to differentiate between things you can control and things you cannot.
Raped because you are a woman? That's unacceptable.
Leave your wallet on your front porch and someone steals it? You can't say you didn't know the risks.
Clearly what you did in the latter scenario was a mistake of some kind. Perhaps an accident, perhaps intentionally with another purpose in mind, but a mistake nonetheless. And while you shouldn't be dressed down or, you know, stoned to death for your mistakes, you should still recognize them and avoid them in the future.
And frankly, a lot of people have already made the mistakes you might or might not make tomorrow - enough even to have quite a few actuarial tables derived from the statistics on them.
"Done something wrong" versus "made a mistake." You are treating wrong as a moral quality, instead of a quality of judgment. There are many degrees of wrong:
You can get a math problem wrong.
You can use the wrong fork at a dinner party.
You can go down the wrong road late at night.
You can say the wrong thing to someone.
You can do someone else wrong.
Figure out what degree of wrong "wearing sleazy clothes in a bad king of bar in a bad kind of neighborhood" is. It's more wrong than getting a math problem wrong; it's less wrong than raping someone; it's somewhere in between. But it is a mistake, and again, a mistake made before by other people, with actuarial consequences: why would you care to repeat that mistake?
Also, on a somewhat separate note, while that guy may have had no negative intention, if he knew "what was going on" and still tried to run, that is a reckless and negligent thing to do, which is a punitive offense in this country.
The scenario is akin to someone driving drunk - 0 negative intention, but the police are justified in stopping that person - possibly with violent force.
I think historically you are correct, but you are (very interestingly, I might add) becoming less correct every day.
There are 2 simple reasons for this:
1) Hegelian logic. In essence, we (as mankind) have learned from our mistakes. We have evolved diplomatically and militarily due to events like World Wars I and II and the Cold War. The Nazi party as it was in 1939 could not be reformed on this planet: we "nip them in the bud", more or less. And we are becoming better at dissolving and disarming these types of people sooner and with more decisiveness than before. While this requires violence much like your 24 example, it is a much more contained violence, and certainly less than it took to defeat Hitler.
2) Technology and the new global "oneness" help keep things in check. This is part of our "becoming better" strategy mentioned above.
I do not believe we are currently at a point where nonviolence is a successful strategy. But I do believe that we as a species are getting smarter about violence. In the long run (a place mostly avoided by these kinds of questions), I think that nonviolence can take hold of mankind. It will take a lot of things to go right - I doubt it will happen in my lifetime - but I think it is an inevitability.
I suppose it is convenient for me to say to you, "I agree with you, but one day we'll both be wrong"? But that's how I feel.
To all people from the future who may come back and read this thread in an archive someday:
This is the breadth of humanity, in all of its glorious detail. Pacificts, fascists, socialists, do-gooders, pragmatists, realists, idealists, altruists, naifs, thinkers, brutes, philosophers, martyrs, believers, infidels, trolls, cynics, existentialists, nihilists, diplomats, warriors.
This is singlehandedly the most fascinatingly revealing thread I've ever read on Slashdot. This gets to the heart of what it means to be human in the 21st century: to really profess an ideology, and argue and defend it, in the new marketplace of ideas. This is great stuff, and I've never been more proud to be part of a site which covers such a vast field of thought and debate.
And I'm glad to see that everyone has such a strong opinion on such an important subject. The costs and benefits of violence in our society - in the world - must be constantly weighed and measured. This is what these conversations are for, and I hope everyone here takes them at least somewhat seriously, and really considers all of the viewpoints being espoused here. Listening to an anonymous set of others can be challenging, but if done well, can also be the most rewarding of experiences.
The whole point of "conflict"/war/fighting, etc, is the idea that there are two beliefs in conflict with each other which must be resolved, either by eliminating one or other of the beliefs or synthesizing them into an acceptable belief for both parties.
Have you ever been in a debate with someone, and they said something you couldn't outright refute, because you believed it yourself? Someone mentioned something, and you go, "You know what, they're right"?
If someone started culturejamming you, and you looked at what they were doing and thought "they're right", would you culture jam them back? Sure, you're justified, but would you want to? I mean, just on principle alone, maybe, but people can see the error of their ways.
That's how Gandhi won. People saw his point of view, saw his tactics, saw his philosophy, and they just said, "You know what? He's right." Maybe it's just a majoritarian approach to rightness (I'm not trying to wax too philosophical here), but just because you're justified doesn't mean you're obligated.
The same does not hold true on a macro level. Doesn't hold true at all, in fact, because most organized violence of any large degree is perpetrated by "lower-level" servants at the behest of the more "elite" thinkers and policymakers.
In short, in your scenario, the man who breaks into your house with the gun to kill you is also the man who thought of breaking into the house with the gun to kill you.
At the macro level, these are two separate people. And because of that, there is a disconnect to the violence being perpetrated: the lower level people do violent things because they are merely given orders. They know there is an agenda to their mission, but not what their agenda is.
So your analogy is poor, if not outright wrong. Because at the macro level, non-violence (such as Gandhi's) is achieved by convincing those elite thinkers and diplomats not to use violence. On the day to day level, there is no separation of the violence and the intent.
And at most large public universities, MS offers a significant discount for a volume license of XP and Office. At Texas A&M, for example, it was $15 for XP and $5 for Office.
$20 gets you all the (legit!) operating system software you need in college. And presumably locks you in to MS for their goodwill and good software.
I won't argue about the last point, but MS already offers their software cheap enough that most kids just tack it on to their $500 book tab and don't think twice about it.
Obviously the flaw here is that "being replaced" is a bad thing. That is where principle and character matter.
When someone says, "Sue the dead guy," you say, "No," you get fired, and you go work somewhere else, and you are happier for it.
THAT is the flaw in the system. Nobody has enough character to stand up and say, "No, I will not own slaves." "No, I will not let people work in sweatshops to save us a buck." Nobody is willing to fail on principle any more.
And the people who are eventually get replaced by people who aren't, and NOBODY (least of all stockholders) hold entire companies accountable for that.
But at the end of the day, I'd rather be someone who has stood by some good decent principles and fell on my sowrd for them. That is a type of honor that is more or less abandoned in the corporate world.
You're seriously comparing a lotto ticket to buying stock in a company? You think that's reasonable?
Consider this then:
If you had invested $100 in any of the following companies *in 1969*, you would be a millionaire today:
Coca-Cola PepsiCo JC Penney IBM AT&T Intel Exxon Phillips Shell Warner Bros. Paramount General Electric Dunkin Donuts Honda Toyota Chevrolet McDonalds Ralston Purina General Mills KFC Denny's RJ Reynolds Marlboro Budweiser 3M Boeing Citigroup Walt Disney Safeway
and certainly several others.
I hope my point is clear: in the long run, the stock market is the surest thing in the world. And frankly, "what things will turn out to be valuable" isn't that hard - every company on the list above is still alive (though some have been acquired by other companies) after 35 years. And will of course still be around 30 years from now, and worth a lot more than they are now.
Now, in terms of useful advice, would you rather buy 100 lotto tickets today, or put some money down on Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and any of the companies listed above?
Seriously. Comparing the two is ridiculous on its face, with or without hindsight.
A pair of Gap Jeans in 1969 was $20. Stock was issued at $7.25 a share in 1969.
So you buy 3 shares ($21.75) instead.
The stock has split 12 times since then, 11 times at 2-for-1, and once at 3-for-1. That's
3 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 3 = 18,342 shares. If you had reinvested all your dividends, you would probably have close to 20,000 shares, give or take.
At the time of that final split, the Limited share value was $47.75. That's $950,000.
Uhh... maybe you didn't hear about my FABULOUS PRIZES?
But on a more serious note, consider that the Big Five also own most of the advertising media - magazines, television stations,and popular Internet portals. So, in a way, you wouldn't just be buying out the lawsuit-happy RIAA - you would also be buying access to the American public's attention.
You know, it's just one of those crazy pipe dreams, like an American president standing up and saying, "You know what? We need to loosen civil liberties in this country." I mean, there's nothing stopping any smart person from doing that - certainly there are plenty of intelligent arguments to be made in that direction - but it'll just never happen.
But the simple fact remains: America spends $5 billion a year on ringtones. I remember reading some stock tip book as a kid and reading that if you instead of buying a pair of Gap Jeans in 1969, you had purchased the equivalent amount of stock in The Limited, you would be a millionaire today.
Americans spend $30 billion a year on lotto tickets.
We could buy a record label every year with that kind of money.
Why do we have to be "informed"? Someone start a website buysony.com and start soliciting donations. Turn donations into stocks held by all donors equally. Make it fun, have polls, but always encourage the continual donating of money to buy stocks, which you hold in a trust. Then you can all act as a single interest in Sony's stake.
Eventually you can probably actually influence Sony. Tell people to stop buying lotto tickets and start buying Sony. Then THEY can pick out the movies they want to make, the artists they want to support, and get FREE CDs, MOVIES, PLAYSTATIONS, DIGITAL CAMERAS, COMPUTERS, PLASMA TELEVISIONS
Buy a company - win fabulous prizes!
Consumer power doesn't need to be informed, it just needs to be manipulated for the power of good, not evil.
The average House campaign costs around $800,000. In general, it's about 40% PACs, 30% large individual donations (over $500), and 30% small individual donations and personal funds of the candidate.
435 seats. 2 candidates a seat, plus some stragglers = 900.
So $720 million will get it done. Less than a billion dollars a year. 3 DOLLARS per citizen. 10 DOLLARS per working citizen. PER YEAR.
So, no, they're not that expensive, especially when you consider, for example, that Americans spend nearly $30 billion a year on lottery tickets, $5 billion on ringtones, and a cool $850 million on dietary aids and supplemenets.
Also, I love the irony of "the entity will make damned sure he doesn't get reelected", even though we're talking about having a much larger group of people on the opposite end: who is that entity going to turn to to vote against him?
The belt and NASA made him famous, but James was doing some crazy stuff with rockets way back when, including the Rockoons, which were rockets launched from high-altitude balloons to gather information, test flight and fuel capacities, etc.
The Coast Guard let him shoot the Rockoons off the coast towards Greenland. When he first tried them, the rockets refused to fire. So Van Allen took some cans of orange juice, heated them, put them in the gondola next to the rocket, and covered them in insulation.
Presto. The rockets fired.
The definition of a great and honorable scientist; inquisitive, intuitive, unpretentious, and brilliant.
You completely misrepresented my point, DESPITE the fact you quoted it in full.
You ask "Aren't you SMART ENOUGH to know better than to search for 'how to kill your wife!?'", but then you answer an entirely unrelated question: "I'm SMART ENOUGH to know a web search doesn't mean I'm going to kill your wife." Which are two different questions altogether.
The first one is related to navigating the new litigious world of the Internet.
The second one is related to the content of searches.
In today's crazy thoughtcrime/think of the children world, it is a FACT that typing something like "how to kill your wife" in a box on teh Intarweb is ASKING for trouble. Now, you may WELCOME that trouble. You may say, "Yes, I searched for 'how to kill your wife', but my wife is still alive. Explain that to me, officer." And then you can have your day in court and explain all that and walk away a free man. But the point is that you had to have a day in court.
Now you may argue that's a sad state of affairs, and of course, I would agree with that 100%. But that doesn't mean that typing that in is a smart or advisable thing to do, which is exactly what I said.
If I were king, you could search for how to kill your wife to your heart's delight. But I'm not. And neither are you. THAT is the reality. You can't pick and choose which laws to follow - even the stupid ones. To suggest that *in the actual world we live in*, that typing in "how to kill your wife" isn't asking for trouble is ridiculous. Now you want to change that? Change the actual world we live in. But don't just start acting like people are going to wake up and go, "Oh, you know what? I respect the right to privacy." It's not like they've come close to that yet.
Buckley v. Valeo. 1976. Money is free speech. That's all you really need to know. You also have to remember that congressmen rarely explicitly gain money from doing all these favors (all their own money goes into blind trusts anyway, per Ethics Committee rules.) Instead, they gain *influence*, which they can use to pursue their own pet projects, whatever they may be.
It's one of those ironic points people often miss when they talk about cynical politics - Senators and Congressmen really do all these crazy-ass things altruistically - that is, for other people. They just do it for their buddies, instead of their constituents. If you're one of their buddies, you don't complain. In fact, go make nicey-nice with all the ambitious mayors and city councilmen in the cities around you. When they make it to the top, they'll help you out.
I have a keyboard with a 30 foot range, but it cost me $129.99. Just the keyboard. Nothing fancy besides the wireless. Not even encrypted. Meh.
Getting a USB-to-bluetooth adapter and Bluetooth keyboard and mouse (with ~30 foot range) will set you back about $100-$120, too. Check out the Logitch MX 5000 - a bit overkill for me, but maybe for you (I think it comes with a remote control, too.)
Other than that, in that $40-$70 wireless keyboard area, ranges are limited and verily suck. Which is pretty patently ridiculous.
UPDATE: Found the Logetch MX 5000 at TigerDirect for $82 + S/H (with rebate). So we're getting there. Too slowly. Certainly defeats the idea of this article, at least.
I saw a thing on Gizmodo about wireless HDMI. The bandwidth involved in getting that kind of transmission across a plane without major compression is hilarious. DVI is about the same. And the interference alone... !
Once somebody shows me an affordable (less than $500 in this market), interference-free, non-carcinogenic device that can transmit 1080p 50 feet across a room without losing quality, THEN we will have reached a wireless nirvana.
As for the other peripherals, I still can't find a wireless keyboard and mouse that has a range above 12 feet. And even then, they really hardly work past 6. It's wireless, but not truly free.
On the other hand, Awesome, but impractical implementations of wireless technology hold a lot of promise in the whizbang 21st century. So, you know, I can hold my breath.
FYI: Googling "steak and cheese" myself, I see that steakandcheese.com is a site containing gory and disgusting photos and video.
So it suggests that this person, while they may have had an idle curiosity towards the subject, was either well-versed or well-instructed enough about such things to know the name of that site, which I had no idea existed until today.
You know, not only did we do this, but we had just as much fun doing that as we ever did actually running on the thing. Which raises the question of just what exactly constitutes video game fun, anyway?
Why don't developers release more minigame collections? I'm not talking about NES revival, but if they could give me 20 NES-equivalent games with decent (not even state of the art) graphics for $50, I'd do it.
You don't have to wow me, game developers! Just start churning and burning! Let democracy declare the winners! C'mon! Here we are now! Entertain us!
Slashdot Mirror
Did you seriously just cite the Washington Times? Dude, they're a Moonie paper. Consider the source.
If you believe actuarial tables, then we as an American society have decided that turning 16 is sufficient "proof" of driving, turning 18 is proof for voting, and 21 for drinking.
And while a full-fledged cell phone may be a "luxury", in the 21st century age of technology, providing your child with an easy and relatively cheap way to contact you seems like it has a lot of benefits at very *little* cost. Especially those Disney Mobile and Firefly phones, they're like $40 for the phone, with cheap prepaid minutes, GPS, and lockdown. Security + a constant stream of trust = a full-fledged cell phone later on.
It's simple, people. Tech is hardly a "luxury" any more.
Trivia: Our good friend David Fincher (of Se7en and Fight Club) fame directed that video.
Actually, MTV solicits all videos, and they play what they want - which of course just happens to be all the hitmakers because that drives the advertising dollars / hype factory.
As a former employee of MTV, I can say unequivocably that nobody at MTV gets paid to show this video over that video. But there is a lot of pressure to, say, "show this new artist video or we won't give you an exclusive interview with Madonna/Ludacris/Green Day." There is a lot of bartering more than outright payola. Influence for influence.
And, yes, MTV will pay any artist $1 for the right to use their music in the background of their shows in perpetuity forever and ever et cetera et cetera. A lot of bands take that deal; bigger names than I would have thought, especially in the metal/indie world. It's not really selling out, but it's definitely a validation of the system.
You know why we have that phrase "I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so?"
It's not about right or wrong. It's about risk and consequence. And IN PARTICULAR you have to differentiate between things you can control and things you cannot.
Raped because you are a woman? That's unacceptable.
Leave your wallet on your front porch and someone steals it? You can't say you didn't know the risks.
Clearly what you did in the latter scenario was a mistake of some kind. Perhaps an accident, perhaps intentionally with another purpose in mind, but a mistake nonetheless. And while you shouldn't be dressed down or, you know, stoned to death for your mistakes, you should still recognize them and avoid them in the future.
And frankly, a lot of people have already made the mistakes you might or might not make tomorrow - enough even to have quite a few actuarial tables derived from the statistics on them.
"Done something wrong" versus "made a mistake." You are treating wrong as a moral quality, instead of a quality of judgment. There are many degrees of wrong:
You can get a math problem wrong.
You can use the wrong fork at a dinner party.
You can go down the wrong road late at night.
You can say the wrong thing to someone.
You can do someone else wrong.
Figure out what degree of wrong "wearing sleazy clothes in a bad king of bar in a bad kind of neighborhood" is. It's more wrong than getting a math problem wrong; it's less wrong than raping someone; it's somewhere in between. But it is a mistake, and again, a mistake made before by other people, with actuarial consequences: why would you care to repeat that mistake?
Also, on a somewhat separate note, while that guy may have had no negative intention, if he knew "what was going on" and still tried to run, that is a reckless and negligent thing to do, which is a punitive offense in this country.
The scenario is akin to someone driving drunk - 0 negative intention, but the police are justified in stopping that person - possibly with violent force.
I think historically you are correct, but you are (very interestingly, I might add) becoming less correct every day.
There are 2 simple reasons for this:
1) Hegelian logic. In essence, we (as mankind) have learned from our mistakes. We have evolved diplomatically and militarily due to events like World Wars I and II and the Cold War. The Nazi party as it was in 1939 could not be reformed on this planet: we "nip them in the bud", more or less. And we are becoming better at dissolving and disarming these types of people sooner and with more decisiveness than before. While this requires violence much like your 24 example, it is a much more contained violence, and certainly less than it took to defeat Hitler.
2) Technology and the new global "oneness" help keep things in check. This is part of our "becoming better" strategy mentioned above.
I do not believe we are currently at a point where nonviolence is a successful strategy. But I do believe that we as a species are getting smarter about violence. In the long run (a place mostly avoided by these kinds of questions), I think that nonviolence can take hold of mankind. It will take a lot of things to go right - I doubt it will happen in my lifetime - but I think it is an inevitability.
I suppose it is convenient for me to say to you, "I agree with you, but one day we'll both be wrong"? But that's how I feel.
To all people from the future who may come back and read this thread in an archive someday:
This is the breadth of humanity, in all of its glorious detail. Pacificts, fascists, socialists, do-gooders, pragmatists, realists, idealists, altruists, naifs, thinkers, brutes, philosophers, martyrs, believers, infidels, trolls, cynics, existentialists, nihilists, diplomats, warriors.
This is singlehandedly the most fascinatingly revealing thread I've ever read on Slashdot. This gets to the heart of what it means to be human in the 21st century: to really profess an ideology, and argue and defend it, in the new marketplace of ideas. This is great stuff, and I've never been more proud to be part of a site which covers such a vast field of thought and debate.
And I'm glad to see that everyone has such a strong opinion on such an important subject. The costs and benefits of violence in our society - in the world - must be constantly weighed and measured. This is what these conversations are for, and I hope everyone here takes them at least somewhat seriously, and really considers all of the viewpoints being espoused here. Listening to an anonymous set of others can be challenging, but if done well, can also be the most rewarding of experiences.
The whole point of "conflict"/war/fighting, etc, is the idea that there are two beliefs in conflict with each other which must be resolved, either by eliminating one or other of the beliefs or synthesizing them into an acceptable belief for both parties.
Have you ever been in a debate with someone, and they said something you couldn't outright refute, because you believed it yourself? Someone mentioned something, and you go, "You know what, they're right"?
If someone started culturejamming you, and you looked at what they were doing and thought "they're right", would you culture jam them back? Sure, you're justified, but would you want to? I mean, just on principle alone, maybe, but people can see the error of their ways.
That's how Gandhi won. People saw his point of view, saw his tactics, saw his philosophy, and they just said, "You know what? He's right." Maybe it's just a majoritarian approach to rightness (I'm not trying to wax too philosophical here), but just because you're justified doesn't mean you're obligated.
The same does not hold true on a macro level. Doesn't hold true at all, in fact, because most organized violence of any large degree is perpetrated by "lower-level" servants at the behest of the more "elite" thinkers and policymakers.
In short, in your scenario, the man who breaks into your house with the gun to kill you is also the man who thought of breaking into the house with the gun to kill you.
At the macro level, these are two separate people. And because of that, there is a disconnect to the violence being perpetrated: the lower level people do violent things because they are merely given orders. They know there is an agenda to their mission, but not what their agenda is.
So your analogy is poor, if not outright wrong. Because at the macro level, non-violence (such as Gandhi's) is achieved by convincing those elite thinkers and diplomats not to use violence. On the day to day level, there is no separation of the violence and the intent.
And at most large public universities, MS offers a significant discount for a volume license of XP and Office. At Texas A&M, for example, it was $15 for XP and $5 for Office.
$20 gets you all the (legit!) operating system software you need in college. And presumably locks you in to MS for their goodwill and good software.
I won't argue about the last point, but MS already offers their software cheap enough that most kids just tack it on to their $500 book tab and don't think twice about it.
Obviously the flaw here is that "being replaced" is a bad thing. That is where principle and character matter.
When someone says, "Sue the dead guy," you say, "No," you get fired, and you go work somewhere else, and you are happier for it.
THAT is the flaw in the system. Nobody has enough character to stand up and say, "No, I will not own slaves." "No, I will not let people work in sweatshops to save us a buck." Nobody is willing to fail on principle any more.
And the people who are eventually get replaced by people who aren't, and NOBODY (least of all stockholders) hold entire companies accountable for that.
But at the end of the day, I'd rather be someone who has stood by some good decent principles and fell on my sowrd for them. That is a type of honor that is more or less abandoned in the corporate world.
You're seriously comparing a lotto ticket to buying stock in a company? You think that's reasonable?
Consider this then:
If you had invested $100 in any of the following companies *in 1969*, you would be a millionaire today:
Coca-Cola
PepsiCo
JC Penney
IBM
AT&T
Intel
Exxon
Phillips
Shell
Warner Bros.
Paramount
General Electric
Dunkin Donuts
Honda
Toyota
Chevrolet
McDonalds
Ralston Purina
General Mills
KFC
Denny's
RJ Reynolds
Marlboro
Budweiser
3M
Boeing
Citigroup
Walt Disney
Safeway
and certainly several others.
I hope my point is clear: in the long run, the stock market is the surest thing in the world. And frankly, "what things will turn out to be valuable" isn't that hard - every company on the list above is still alive (though some have been acquired by other companies) after 35 years. And will of course still be around 30 years from now, and worth a lot more than they are now.
Now, in terms of useful advice, would you rather buy 100 lotto tickets today, or put some money down on Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and any of the companies listed above?
Seriously. Comparing the two is ridiculous on its face, with or without hindsight.
The Math:
A pair of Gap Jeans in 1969 was $20.
Stock was issued at $7.25 a share in 1969.
So you buy 3 shares ($21.75) instead.
The stock has split 12 times since then, 11 times at 2-for-1, and once at 3-for-1. That's
3 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 3 = 18,342 shares. If you had reinvested all your dividends, you would probably have close to 20,000 shares, give or take.
At the time of that final split, the Limited share value was $47.75. That's $950,000.
Uhh ... maybe you didn't hear about my FABULOUS PRIZES?
But on a more serious note, consider that the Big Five also own most of the advertising media - magazines, television stations,and popular Internet portals. So, in a way, you wouldn't just be buying out the lawsuit-happy RIAA - you would also be buying access to the American public's attention.
You know, it's just one of those crazy pipe dreams, like an American president standing up and saying, "You know what? We need to loosen civil liberties in this country." I mean, there's nothing stopping any smart person from doing that - certainly there are plenty of intelligent arguments to be made in that direction - but it'll just never happen.
But the simple fact remains: America spends $5 billion a year on ringtones. I remember reading some stock tip book as a kid and reading that if you instead of buying a pair of Gap Jeans in 1969, you had purchased the equivalent amount of stock in The Limited, you would be a millionaire today.
Think about that.
I've said it once, I'll say it again:
Americans spend $30 billion a year on lotto tickets.
We could buy a record label every year with that kind of money.
Why do we have to be "informed"? Someone start a website buysony.com and start soliciting donations. Turn donations into stocks held by all donors equally. Make it fun, have polls, but always encourage the continual donating of money to buy stocks, which you hold in a trust. Then you can all act as a single interest in Sony's stake.
Eventually you can probably actually influence Sony. Tell people to stop buying lotto tickets and start buying Sony. Then THEY can pick out the movies they want to make, the artists they want to support, and get FREE CDs, MOVIES, PLAYSTATIONS, DIGITAL CAMERAS, COMPUTERS, PLASMA TELEVISIONS
Buy a company - win fabulous prizes!
Consumer power doesn't need to be informed, it just needs to be manipulated for the power of good, not evil.
The average House campaign costs around $800,000. In general, it's about 40% PACs, 30% large individual donations (over $500), and 30% small individual donations and personal funds of the candidate.
435 seats. 2 candidates a seat, plus some stragglers = 900.
So $720 million will get it done. Less than a billion dollars a year. 3 DOLLARS per citizen. 10 DOLLARS per working citizen. PER YEAR.
So, no, they're not that expensive, especially when you consider, for example, that Americans spend nearly $30 billion a year on lottery tickets, $5 billion on ringtones, and a cool $850 million on dietary aids and supplemenets.
Also, I love the irony of "the entity will make damned sure he doesn't get reelected", even though we're talking about having a much larger group of people on the opposite end: who is that entity going to turn to to vote against him?
The belt and NASA made him famous, but James was doing some crazy stuff with rockets way back when, including the Rockoons, which were rockets launched from high-altitude balloons to gather information, test flight and fuel capacities, etc.
The Coast Guard let him shoot the Rockoons off the coast towards Greenland. When he first tried them, the rockets refused to fire. So Van Allen took some cans of orange juice, heated them, put them in the gondola next to the rocket, and covered them in insulation.
Presto. The rockets fired.
The definition of a great and honorable scientist; inquisitive, intuitive, unpretentious, and brilliant.
You completely misrepresented my point, DESPITE the fact you quoted it in full.
You ask "Aren't you SMART ENOUGH to know better than to search for 'how to kill your wife!?'", but then you answer an entirely unrelated question: "I'm SMART ENOUGH to know a web search doesn't mean I'm going to kill your wife." Which are two different questions altogether.
The first one is related to navigating the new litigious world of the Internet.
The second one is related to the content of searches.
In today's crazy thoughtcrime/think of the children world, it is a FACT that typing something like "how to kill your wife" in a box on teh Intarweb is ASKING for trouble. Now, you may WELCOME that trouble. You may say, "Yes, I searched for 'how to kill your wife', but my wife is still alive. Explain that to me, officer." And then you can have your day in court and explain all that and walk away a free man. But the point is that you had to have a day in court.
Now you may argue that's a sad state of affairs, and of course, I would agree with that 100%. But that doesn't mean that typing that in is a smart or advisable thing to do, which is exactly what I said.
If I were king, you could search for how to kill your wife to your heart's delight. But I'm not. And neither are you. THAT is the reality. You can't pick and choose which laws to follow - even the stupid ones. To suggest that *in the actual world we live in*, that typing in "how to kill your wife" isn't asking for trouble is ridiculous. Now you want to change that? Change the actual world we live in. But don't just start acting like people are going to wake up and go, "Oh, you know what? I respect the right to privacy." It's not like they've come close to that yet.
Buckley v. Valeo. 1976. Money is free speech. That's all you really need to know. You also have to remember that congressmen rarely explicitly gain money from doing all these favors (all their own money goes into blind trusts anyway, per Ethics Committee rules.) Instead, they gain *influence*, which they can use to pursue their own pet projects, whatever they may be.
It's one of those ironic points people often miss when they talk about cynical politics - Senators and Congressmen really do all these crazy-ass things altruistically - that is, for other people. They just do it for their buddies, instead of their constituents. If you're one of their buddies, you don't complain. In fact, go make nicey-nice with all the ambitious mayors and city councilmen in the cities around you. When they make it to the top, they'll help you out.
Well, let me clarify: For a reasonable price.
I have a keyboard with a 30 foot range, but it cost me $129.99. Just the keyboard. Nothing fancy besides the wireless. Not even encrypted. Meh.
Getting a USB-to-bluetooth adapter and Bluetooth keyboard and mouse (with ~30 foot range) will set you back about $100-$120, too. Check out the Logitch MX 5000 - a bit overkill for me, but maybe for you (I think it comes with a remote control, too.)
Other than that, in that $40-$70 wireless keyboard area, ranges are limited and verily suck. Which is pretty patently ridiculous.
UPDATE: Found the Logetch MX 5000 at TigerDirect for $82 + S/H (with rebate). So we're getting there. Too slowly. Certainly defeats the idea of this article, at least.
Maybe he forgot if it had dashes in it or not? Or whether it was .com or .org?
...
You never go to google, type in a site name and hit I'm Feeling Lucky? There are explanations. But yeah, a watermark, that sounds good
But savvy enough to understand a watermark but not savvy enough to avoid typing "how to kill your wife" in a search box? I LOVE this guy!
I saw a thing on Gizmodo about wireless HDMI. The bandwidth involved in getting that kind of transmission across a plane without major compression is hilarious. DVI is about the same. And the interference alone ... !
Once somebody shows me an affordable (less than $500 in this market), interference-free, non-carcinogenic device that can transmit 1080p 50 feet across a room without losing quality, THEN we will have reached a wireless nirvana.
As for the other peripherals, I still can't find a wireless keyboard and mouse that has a range above 12 feet. And even then, they really hardly work past 6. It's wireless, but not truly free.
On the other hand, Awesome, but impractical implementations of wireless technology hold a lot of promise in the whizbang 21st century. So, you know, I can hold my breath.
FYI: Googling "steak and cheese" myself, I see that steakandcheese.com is a site containing gory and disgusting photos and video.
So it suggests that this person, while they may have had an idle curiosity towards the subject, was either well-versed or well-instructed enough about such things to know the name of that site, which I had no idea existed until today.
You know, not only did we do this, but we had just as much fun doing that as we ever did actually running on the thing. Which raises the question of just what exactly constitutes video game fun, anyway?
Why don't developers release more minigame collections? I'm not talking about NES revival, but if they could give me 20 NES-equivalent games with decent (not even state of the art) graphics for $50, I'd do it.
You don't have to wow me, game developers! Just start churning and burning! Let democracy declare the winners! C'mon! Here we are now! Entertain us!