I'm not entirely certain you understand the concept of a "drug".
Oh gimmie a break. I love you people who want to call everything bad a "drug." Crack is a drug. Heroin is a drug. Is alcohol? Tobacco? Caffeine? Sugar? Carbs? They all tangibly affect your physiology and produce measurable outcomes, so are they all "drugs?"
One does not necessarily imply the other. A finite supply of energy or matter does not imply that the universe itself is finite. Indeed, the model of the universe I subscribe to consists of infinite empty space, with an incredibly massive "bubble" of matter and energy (i.e., the universe that matters) that constantly expands, contracts, and explodes (Big Bang) over and over and over, infinitely. All matter is eventually pulled back into the core of this "bubble", but the overall net energy level remains the same for the entire universe.
We exist within this "bubble." Everything we can see, and of course, everything we can't see exists within this sphere of slowly expanding matter, until eventually it will all turn around and get sucked back in to the center of gravity, repeating the Big Bang.
In this model, the universe itself is infinite. That is, if you could travel beyond this sphere of matter, you'd be in a region with literally nothing in it. Of course, you'd eventually get sucked back into the "Big Crunch" (as there is nothing else outside the sphere for you to cling to gravitationally).
I don't know if this is a popular model or not, but it makes sense to me, and seems perfectly logical. An "infinite" universe does not necessarily mandate that there must exist something in every bit of space, merely that there is nothing preventing matter from existing there. To me, the answer to the question, "What would you find if you traveled in the same direction for a hundred trillion years?" is, "empty space." Literally nothing around you. Off in the distance, you'd see the glowing sphere of our known universe, but everything else around you would be empty.
When you can serve longer for spamming than you can for rape, or causing death by dangerous driving, etc, then there's something wrong with the justice system.
First of all, it wasn't just a cut-and-dried spamming cause. The guy was committing fraud. Think of it as a fraud case, not a spam case.
And second of all, there exists such a thing as "mitigating circumstances." There is not some absolute, gradient scale of crime/punishment proportionality whereby each successively worse crime automatically warrants punishments of correspondingly increasing severity. Genuine repentence, age, prior record, victim impact, motive, intent, and more can and should all be taken into account when determining sentencing. Would you prefer a completely "zero-tolerance" system where a punishment is simply automatically looked up in a book at sentencing time? Where your kid, getting pulled over and caught with 5 grams of weed on the floor in the back seat of your car (that his friend accidentally dropped when he was back there, unbeknownst to your son), gets the same punishment as a lifetime, habitual heroin dealer? Let's use some common sense here, people.
I agree that 9 years is a little extreme for spamming.
The sentence wasn't just for spamming. Think of it as a fraud case, not a spam case. The guy was sending his own fraudulent emails, taking peoples' money, and not delivering.
Why can't we just:
1.) Take all the money paid to him for spamming,
Because much of it may be already spent on things you can't get back (traveling, gambling, fancy hotel rooms, meals, liquor), or hidden away in offshore accounts. You can never conclusively determine exactly how much money he scammed off of people.
2.) Fine the companies that paid him to spam,
Because as I said, he wasn't spamming for anyone but himself. He was spamming his own porno websites, and his own fraudulent "get rich quick" scams.
3.) Give him 50 lashes and tell him he's not allowed to use email for 5 years.
Think of him in the same league as the Enron/Worldcom/Tyco/Bre-X execs that defrauded shareholders out of millions of dollars. He's not some little two-bit spammer, he's a fraudster, seeking to routinely rip-off unsuspecting consumers. 9 years is what he deserves, and I hope he serves every last day of it in some federal, PMITA-prison, with no parole.
Yeah right, and if you get 5% intrest on that its like 40k a year, for doing nothing. That's more then a lot of people I know make. Let me try my hand at 1 million please:)
First of all, you won't get 5% interest on it, you'll get more like 3-4%, unless you're insane and invest it in medium-risk investments. Once you've retired, you'll never want to be forced to un-retire, so you'll invest that money in safe, guaranteed investments, which will only return 3-4%. But what the heck, let's use your crazy estimate of 5%, just to show you that even then, you're still way off the mark.
Now, assuming you can't predict when you're going to die, you'll need to live the principal alone and survive solely off the interest. Now, unless you want your earning power to decline as you age, you'll need to leave some of that interest in there, to offset inflation. Let's say inflation is a modest 1%, which means you get to live off of 4% of that million when you retire. That's $40,000 per year. However, since that is all capital gains, 50% of it is taxable (in Canada), unless it's from your RRSP (again, a Canadian equivalent of a 401k), in which case, it's *all* taxable. But even if it's just an ATSV, and only 50% of it is taxable, you'll be paying roughly 25% tax on that portion, which is 25% of 50% of $40,000, or $5,000 in taxes, leaving you with $35,000 to enjoy retired life with.
How far do you think $35,000 will go when you're retired? Unless you just plan on sitting around and watching cable all day, not far at all. Retired people tend to do things. Things like traveling, golfing, restoring houses/cars, building furniture. Expensive things.
Don't forget that once you hit your 60's, you should expect to be paying thousands of dollars a year for drugs and medical care.
Now do you see why $1 million isn't enough? Even in our extremely optimistic scenario here, you've only got about $35,000 a year to life off of. That's not very much, even if you retired today. I don't know how old you are, but I don't plan on retiring for another 25 years or so, and by then, that $35,000/year allowance won't buy diddly-squat.
Morale of the story: Start saving now, Bucko, and aim higher than $1 million.
NONE of the local retailers around here will match ANY prices off of websites
Nor should they. Do you know how much it costs stores like BestBuy to have a rack full of memory cards? There's the floor space they take up, the cost of heating/cooling that particular square footage of the store, the capital tied up in depreciating inventory while it's just sitting there waiting to be bought, the cost of the salespeople to answer your questions (don't laugh; yes, they're useless, but they still get paid).
An online retailer, on the other hand, has NONE of those costs. How much does it cost to put a.JPG of a memory card on a website? Nothing. There's no employee waiting at the end of a phone to answer your questions (well, maybe one, but be prepared to wait on hold for 10 minutes). When you order the merchandise, it isn't sent out right away. Rather, they wait until they have 50 orders for the product, then order a shipment from the manufacturer. When the shipment arrives, they just open up the box, slap new labels on all the little boxes inside, and ship them out to the customers. No big warehouse to buy, heat, cool, pay taxes on, anything. Just a tiny room in someone's house for shipping and receiving. Online companies doing this can sell products at razor-thin markups and still turn a small profit, because they don't have all those added expenses of a Big Box retail store.
To expect a big-box retailer to match the price of these tiny, no-overhead operations just plain isn't fair. They're not competing on even footing. The ONLY reason a Best Buy would agree to match such a price would be if they thought that it would result in you returning to Best Buy to buy bigger-ticket items in the future (that is, they think they can make money off you later).
So, for BB to save money, some innocent customers get to suffer a bit, some bad customers get to keep what they rightfully purchased, and some CEO gets a few extra bucks. There seems to be a problem somewhere.
I'm sorry, I don't see a problem. A company is not a charity. A company exists to maximize profits for its shareholders and employees. That's all. If enough "innocent customers" suffer that the loss of their revenue is greater than the savings they'll realize from weeding out the "bad customers", then the company won't do it.
If a company finds it can make more money by being especially knowledgeable, courteous, and accomodating, but needs to charge a little extra for those things, then they'll do it. But only if it brings in more profit than hiring uneducated goons to sell cheap crap. There's nothing wrong with that. That's what a company does, this is a capitalist society, this is exactly how things are supposed to work.
If there's any problem at all in this situation, it's that more customers seem to value cheap price above all else, including being treated with respect, timely service, knowledgeable advice, and courteous staff. People value the "almighty dollar" above all else. That's why Walmart is so successful. Ever shop at Walmart? It sucks. I despise Walmart. Their staff don't know anything, the traffic is terrible, there are never enough cashiers open, the products are crap, the aisles are too narrow, the exploit employees and break laws, the list goes on. Yet they're the biggest retailer in the world. Why do people continue to subject themselves to such a horrible shopping experience? Because they can save $25 on their weekly groceries.
Money talks. Don't fault the companies for following the laws of supply and demand. Fault our current culture that ignores quality, and opts for "throw-away" products if it means they can save a buck. People don't value quality and service any more. THAT is what's wrong with this picture.
What is wrong with the world we live in when "Customers" actaully want to get a fair price and good product for their moeny. Shame on them.
You're over-simplifying. Define "fair price." How do you know that the current prices are not "fair?" If they are able to produce increased profits year-over-year, instead of just continually breaking-even, does that mean they're "ripping you off?" Should a company be content with simply breaking-even, or holding steady at 5% profit every year?
Now the big question: Should the shareholders be happy? You want to retire someday, don't you? Presumeably, you'll invest in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. You'll demand what you consider a "reasonable" rate of return on those stocks and mutual funds, right? What's "reasonable?" It has to be better than savings bonds or GICs, so we're talking at least 6-8%. How is a privately held company supposed to increase its stock price continually by 8% annually? Answer: By continually increasing profits.
See, people like you fail to see the big picture. You want to have your cake and eat it too. You don't want companies you BUY from to make any profit at all, yet you want companies you will INVEST in to beat the market and allow you to retire in comfort. I'm guessing you're presently not too involved in investing? Perhaps you're unaware that these evil, faceless "shareholders" that everyone is always villainizing are mostly just ordinary folks like you, me, and our parents, trying to make enough money to survive in retirement.
how come the US, supposedly the most technically advanced nation in the world, is always way behind on upholding the law involving cyber crime?
Easy: Because the US is actually way ahead in its laws and enforcement regarding cybercrime, so the scammers always originate in foreign, usually developing nations where the cybercrime laws are extremely lax or non-existent, or the enforcement is so minimal that they have bigger things to concern themselves with than poverty-stricken locals trying to rip off (perceived) fat, lazy, greedy foreigners.
t's nice that you have to be a member of some shitty online Star Wars site (or one of its affiliates) to watch an advertisement for the new Star Wars movie.
Is it really any dumber than paying $40 for a T-Shirt with a big Nike "swoosh" emblazened on the front? Congratulations, you just paid $40 for the privilege of being a walking billboard for Nike.
[George Lucas] refuse to listen to anyone who actually has a rational thought about his movies. he's making them his way no matter what.
Uhm, considering that he's financing them, and it's his vision, why shouldn't he make them however he damn well pleases? Should Tolkien have listened to input when writing LotR, or should he have been free to capture his own vision exactly as he wished? Should Hitchhiker's have been a collaborative effort, or do people enjoy them because the genuinely like Douglas Adams' own original work?
I can't believe you're critisizing a director for making the movie the way he wants. That's what makes him a director, and not just a manager! If you like what he makes, then great. If not, then don't go see the movies.
I personally don't think that Europe or Japan (or Canada for that matter) is more left than the US,
I don't know about Europe or Japan, but as a Canadian, I can say that it is clear that Canada's laws and policies are considerably to the left of the US's. If you were referring to the point of view of the general population, then maybe Canada and the US are not so different (after all, 48% of the US voted for the "left" guy), but the present policies are quite different.
For example, Canada has socialized healthcare, legalized gay marriage (7 provinces down, 3 to go), a lower drinking age, decriminalized marijuana, softer prostitution laws, tighter gun control, and is generally a more open, diverse, tolerant society compared to the US. These are all generally regarded as "leftist" traits (although not as left as some European countries), while the US's policies and laws are considerably to the "right" of Canada's, in general.
Uranium is a finite resource which will run out way before oil.
I'm not sure where you're getting this from, and I could be wrong, but as I understand it, the Earth's core is constantly churning out new radioactive material, including Uranium. That is to say, it is a renewable resource, we just have little control over the supply (unlike trees, where we can simply plant more if we know there will be an upcoming surge in demand). Oil, on the other hand, is not being replaced. Well, I suppose technically it is, but at a much, much slower rate than we're using it.
Nuclear power can't pay it's own way in the world. That's why they stopped building reactors about twenty years ago.
There's not really much to debate here, because you're flat-out, 100% wrong. Canada constructs and exports plenty of nuclear reactors for power plants all over the world.
Not that I disagree entirely with your point, but I must nitpick and point out that Columbia was doing just fine, until reentry. Obviously, if launching nuclear material into the sun, there wouldn't be a terrestrial reentry phase of the mission to worry about at all.
There's no way in heck I'll tell to my son that "being gay is OK"
That's funny... I think your great-grandfather said something similar to your grandfather. I think it was something to the effect of "being black is not OK," or "women voting/working is not OK" or something like that.
Ignorant homophobe. I agree with you on one point though: I also hope you never tell your son that being gay is OK, because I hope you never have kids. People like you are the source of the kind of hatred that killed Matthew Shepard.
The CD used to cost less but its per unit cost was much higher. Now that the per unit cost has shrunk we see that the cost has gone up considerably.
I don't know why you keep saying that, it's just plain not true. The basis of your entire argument is false. When CDs first came out, they were $25. Now, they're $15. That's a decrease of $10 over 20 years. Now add in inflation. You see, CDs are much, much cheaper now than when they first came out. So your whole argument falls apart, because it is based on a false premise.
I'm sorry, but that is utter bullsh*t. Maybe you're talking about indie records? For all mainstream music, the hours the artist puts in are a small fraction of the total person-hours involved in getting that album into stores.
the artist is the closest person involved making the music, works more making that particular music,
Where are you getting these crazy ideas? The artist is the voice. Nothing more. What you're saying is like claiming that Elijah Wood should get 25% of all Lord of the Rings profits, since he put in half the work to make the films, and is the closest person involved in making the films. Can you see what utter bollocks that is?
Musical artists are just voices. They are interchangeable. They don't write their own songs or lyrics. Just like actors don't write their lines. They just speak them. Granted, actors actually have a pretty sweet deal, where they actually do get a hugely disproportionate amount of the profits of the movie. But I'm saying that that is the messed up situation, whereas the music one is the sensible one, rather than the other way around.
Around 1-5% of the price of the cds goes to the actual artist
Every time I see someone complaining about this statistic, I ask the same question, and no one can give me a straight answer. Why on Earth should the artist get more than 5%? It takes a lot more than just that one person to produce the CD. How about the people that financed it, produced it, directed it, wrote the music, wrote the lyrics (Oh, you thought they still write their own songs? That's cute), created the cover art, marketed the CD, mixed the sound, delivered the CDs to the stores, and all the other people involved in making a CD? Why should the "artist" be paid disproportionately more than all those other people, who typically have more education, put in longer hours, and in many cases, even have more talent? What makes the artist so special that they should get 20% of the profits, with the other 150 people fighting over the scraps?
I believe he was making a subtle reference to George Bush's comment at the last debates, where he said something to the effect of, "I'm aware of the rumours circulating on the Internets about a backdoor draft..."
Immediately after he said that, my wife and I looked at each other and I exclaimed, "There's more than one????"
Theory - All pigeons are grey. No number of grey pigeons can prove that theory true
You need to take a logic course, as this is not what is being argued here. Your example could be extended to "prove" that gravity is not proven. Although every massive body we've observed exhibits gravity, you claim that this doesn't prove gravity exists, since there could theoretically be a massive body out there without gravity.
yes, they are a health hazard. so is drinking alcohol.
No one ever got cancer from "second-hand alcohol."
so is that vehicle you drive
You don't drive vehicles indoors, where the air can't circulate.
don't wanna smell like smoke? don't go there.
If you'd read my post, you'd know that I agree with that sentiment, as it applies to patrons. However, when you look at it from the employees' point of view, it's a whole new ballgame. Employees have a right to a safe workplace. We have laws that say so. Every other industry has to protect their employees from harmful pollutants, or provide equipment that provides protection. Except the food service industry. Well, that's not fair. I for one and glad that the playing field is finally being leveled, and rights that have long been extended to everyone else are finally being given to waitresses and bartenders.
Did you really think this was just about the patrons?
I know some waitresses and bartenders and *NOT ONE* of them has ever complained about smoke in bars.
Here's one in my own city. Heather Cross, a waitress in Ottawa for 40 years, never smoked a day in her life, was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer due to second-hand smoke from her workplace.
It's 2004, for crying out loud! We know tobacco smoke causes cancer. Why are we still making excuses for it? Why are we still permitting it to be forced on people just trying to do their job? In 1000 years, society will look back on this point in history and ask, "What in the hell were they thinking? They knew it was bad, why did everyone still tolerate it? Why did people still smoke?"
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not entirely certain you understand the concept of a "drug".
Oh gimmie a break. I love you people who want to call everything bad a "drug." Crack is a drug. Heroin is a drug. Is alcohol? Tobacco? Caffeine? Sugar? Carbs? They all tangibly affect your physiology and produce measurable outcomes, so are they all "drugs?"
I hope someone rapes you so I can have a laugh. (Score:2, Funny)
Classy, real classy. Gotta love Slashdot.
There's a finite quantity of it in this universe
How do you know the universe is finite?
One does not necessarily imply the other. A finite supply of energy or matter does not imply that the universe itself is finite. Indeed, the model of the universe I subscribe to consists of infinite empty space, with an incredibly massive "bubble" of matter and energy (i.e., the universe that matters) that constantly expands, contracts, and explodes (Big Bang) over and over and over, infinitely. All matter is eventually pulled back into the core of this "bubble", but the overall net energy level remains the same for the entire universe.
We exist within this "bubble." Everything we can see, and of course, everything we can't see exists within this sphere of slowly expanding matter, until eventually it will all turn around and get sucked back in to the center of gravity, repeating the Big Bang.
In this model, the universe itself is infinite. That is, if you could travel beyond this sphere of matter, you'd be in a region with literally nothing in it. Of course, you'd eventually get sucked back into the "Big Crunch" (as there is nothing else outside the sphere for you to cling to gravitationally).
I don't know if this is a popular model or not, but it makes sense to me, and seems perfectly logical. An "infinite" universe does not necessarily mandate that there must exist something in every bit of space, merely that there is nothing preventing matter from existing there. To me, the answer to the question, "What would you find if you traveled in the same direction for a hundred trillion years?" is, "empty space." Literally nothing around you. Off in the distance, you'd see the glowing sphere of our known universe, but everything else around you would be empty.
When you can serve longer for spamming than you can for rape, or causing death by dangerous driving, etc, then there's something wrong with the justice system.
First of all, it wasn't just a cut-and-dried spamming cause. The guy was committing fraud. Think of it as a fraud case, not a spam case.
And second of all, there exists such a thing as "mitigating circumstances." There is not some absolute, gradient scale of crime/punishment proportionality whereby each successively worse crime automatically warrants punishments of correspondingly increasing severity. Genuine repentence, age, prior record, victim impact, motive, intent, and more can and should all be taken into account when determining sentencing. Would you prefer a completely "zero-tolerance" system where a punishment is simply automatically looked up in a book at sentencing time? Where your kid, getting pulled over and caught with 5 grams of weed on the floor in the back seat of your car (that his friend accidentally dropped when he was back there, unbeknownst to your son), gets the same punishment as a lifetime, habitual heroin dealer? Let's use some common sense here, people.
I agree that 9 years is a little extreme for spamming.
The sentence wasn't just for spamming. Think of it as a fraud case, not a spam case. The guy was sending his own fraudulent emails, taking peoples' money, and not delivering.
Why can't we just:
1.) Take all the money paid to him for spamming,
Because much of it may be already spent on things you can't get back (traveling, gambling, fancy hotel rooms, meals, liquor), or hidden away in offshore accounts. You can never conclusively determine exactly how much money he scammed off of people.
2.) Fine the companies that paid him to spam,
Because as I said, he wasn't spamming for anyone but himself. He was spamming his own porno websites, and his own fraudulent "get rich quick" scams.
3.) Give him 50 lashes and tell him he's not allowed to use email for 5 years.
Think of him in the same league as the Enron/Worldcom/Tyco/Bre-X execs that defrauded shareholders out of millions of dollars. He's not some little two-bit spammer, he's a fraudster, seeking to routinely rip-off unsuspecting consumers. 9 years is what he deserves, and I hope he serves every last day of it in some federal, PMITA-prison, with no parole.
Yeah right, and if you get 5% intrest on that its like 40k a year, for doing nothing. That's more then a lot of people I know make. Let me try my hand at 1 million please :)
First of all, you won't get 5% interest on it, you'll get more like 3-4%, unless you're insane and invest it in medium-risk investments. Once you've retired, you'll never want to be forced to un-retire, so you'll invest that money in safe, guaranteed investments, which will only return 3-4%. But what the heck, let's use your crazy estimate of 5%, just to show you that even then, you're still way off the mark.
Now, assuming you can't predict when you're going to die, you'll need to live the principal alone and survive solely off the interest. Now, unless you want your earning power to decline as you age, you'll need to leave some of that interest in there, to offset inflation. Let's say inflation is a modest 1%, which means you get to live off of 4% of that million when you retire. That's $40,000 per year. However, since that is all capital gains, 50% of it is taxable (in Canada), unless it's from your RRSP (again, a Canadian equivalent of a 401k), in which case, it's *all* taxable. But even if it's just an ATSV, and only 50% of it is taxable, you'll be paying roughly 25% tax on that portion, which is 25% of 50% of $40,000, or $5,000 in taxes, leaving you with $35,000 to enjoy retired life with.
How far do you think $35,000 will go when you're retired? Unless you just plan on sitting around and watching cable all day, not far at all. Retired people tend to do things. Things like traveling, golfing, restoring houses/cars, building furniture. Expensive things.
Don't forget that once you hit your 60's, you should expect to be paying thousands of dollars a year for drugs and medical care.
Now do you see why $1 million isn't enough? Even in our extremely optimistic scenario here, you've only got about $35,000 a year to life off of. That's not very much, even if you retired today. I don't know how old you are, but I don't plan on retiring for another 25 years or so, and by then, that $35,000/year allowance won't buy diddly-squat.
Morale of the story: Start saving now, Bucko, and aim higher than $1 million.
NONE of the local retailers around here will match ANY prices off of websites
.JPG of a memory card on a website? Nothing. There's no employee waiting at the end of a phone to answer your questions (well, maybe one, but be prepared to wait on hold for 10 minutes). When you order the merchandise, it isn't sent out right away. Rather, they wait until they have 50 orders for the product, then order a shipment from the manufacturer. When the shipment arrives, they just open up the box, slap new labels on all the little boxes inside, and ship them out to the customers. No big warehouse to buy, heat, cool, pay taxes on, anything. Just a tiny room in someone's house for shipping and receiving. Online companies doing this can sell products at razor-thin markups and still turn a small profit, because they don't have all those added expenses of a Big Box retail store.
Nor should they. Do you know how much it costs stores like BestBuy to have a rack full of memory cards? There's the floor space they take up, the cost of heating/cooling that particular square footage of the store, the capital tied up in depreciating inventory while it's just sitting there waiting to be bought, the cost of the salespeople to answer your questions (don't laugh; yes, they're useless, but they still get paid).
An online retailer, on the other hand, has NONE of those costs. How much does it cost to put a
To expect a big-box retailer to match the price of these tiny, no-overhead operations just plain isn't fair. They're not competing on even footing. The ONLY reason a Best Buy would agree to match such a price would be if they thought that it would result in you returning to Best Buy to buy bigger-ticket items in the future (that is, they think they can make money off you later).
So, for BB to save money, some innocent customers get to suffer a bit, some bad customers get to keep what they rightfully purchased, and some CEO gets a few extra bucks. There seems to be a problem somewhere.
I'm sorry, I don't see a problem. A company is not a charity. A company exists to maximize profits for its shareholders and employees. That's all. If enough "innocent customers" suffer that the loss of their revenue is greater than the savings they'll realize from weeding out the "bad customers", then the company won't do it.
If a company finds it can make more money by being especially knowledgeable, courteous, and accomodating, but needs to charge a little extra for those things, then they'll do it. But only if it brings in more profit than hiring uneducated goons to sell cheap crap. There's nothing wrong with that. That's what a company does, this is a capitalist society, this is exactly how things are supposed to work.
If there's any problem at all in this situation, it's that more customers seem to value cheap price above all else, including being treated with respect, timely service, knowledgeable advice, and courteous staff. People value the "almighty dollar" above all else. That's why Walmart is so successful. Ever shop at Walmart? It sucks. I despise Walmart. Their staff don't know anything, the traffic is terrible, there are never enough cashiers open, the products are crap, the aisles are too narrow, the exploit employees and break laws, the list goes on. Yet they're the biggest retailer in the world. Why do people continue to subject themselves to such a horrible shopping experience? Because they can save $25 on their weekly groceries.
Money talks. Don't fault the companies for following the laws of supply and demand. Fault our current culture that ignores quality, and opts for "throw-away" products if it means they can save a buck. People don't value quality and service any more. THAT is what's wrong with this picture.
What is wrong with the world we live in when "Customers" actaully want to get a fair price and good product for their moeny. Shame on them.
You're over-simplifying. Define "fair price." How do you know that the current prices are not "fair?" If they are able to produce increased profits year-over-year, instead of just continually breaking-even, does that mean they're "ripping you off?" Should a company be content with simply breaking-even, or holding steady at 5% profit every year?
Now the big question: Should the shareholders be happy? You want to retire someday, don't you? Presumeably, you'll invest in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. You'll demand what you consider a "reasonable" rate of return on those stocks and mutual funds, right? What's "reasonable?" It has to be better than savings bonds or GICs, so we're talking at least 6-8%. How is a privately held company supposed to increase its stock price continually by 8% annually? Answer: By continually increasing profits.
See, people like you fail to see the big picture. You want to have your cake and eat it too. You don't want companies you BUY from to make any profit at all, yet you want companies you will INVEST in to beat the market and allow you to retire in comfort. I'm guessing you're presently not too involved in investing? Perhaps you're unaware that these evil, faceless "shareholders" that everyone is always villainizing are mostly just ordinary folks like you, me, and our parents, trying to make enough money to survive in retirement.
how come the US, supposedly the most technically advanced nation in the world, is always way behind on upholding the law involving cyber crime?
Easy: Because the US is actually way ahead in its laws and enforcement regarding cybercrime, so the scammers always originate in foreign, usually developing nations where the cybercrime laws are extremely lax or non-existent, or the enforcement is so minimal that they have bigger things to concern themselves with than poverty-stricken locals trying to rip off (perceived) fat, lazy, greedy foreigners.
Does that answer your questions?
t's nice that you have to be a member of some shitty online Star Wars site (or one of its affiliates) to watch an advertisement for the new Star Wars movie.
Is it really any dumber than paying $40 for a T-Shirt with a big Nike "swoosh" emblazened on the front? Congratulations, you just paid $40 for the privilege of being a walking billboard for Nike.
Consumers are brainwashed.
[George Lucas] refuse to listen to anyone who actually has a rational thought about his movies. he's making them his way no matter what.
Uhm, considering that he's financing them, and it's his vision, why shouldn't he make them however he damn well pleases? Should Tolkien have listened to input when writing LotR, or should he have been free to capture his own vision exactly as he wished? Should Hitchhiker's have been a collaborative effort, or do people enjoy them because the genuinely like Douglas Adams' own original work?
I can't believe you're critisizing a director for making the movie the way he wants. That's what makes him a director, and not just a manager! If you like what he makes, then great. If not, then don't go see the movies.
I personally don't think that Europe or Japan (or Canada for that matter) is more left than the US,
I don't know about Europe or Japan, but as a Canadian, I can say that it is clear that Canada's laws and policies are considerably to the left of the US's. If you were referring to the point of view of the general population, then maybe Canada and the US are not so different (after all, 48% of the US voted for the "left" guy), but the present policies are quite different.
For example, Canada has socialized healthcare, legalized gay marriage (7 provinces down, 3 to go), a lower drinking age, decriminalized marijuana, softer prostitution laws, tighter gun control, and is generally a more open, diverse, tolerant society compared to the US. These are all generally regarded as "leftist" traits (although not as left as some European countries), while the US's policies and laws are considerably to the "right" of Canada's, in general.
They're hideously expensive to build, which is why they for the most part aren't built anymore.
Canada has a thriving industry in building and exporting nuclear reactors. Ever hear of CANDU?
Uranium is a finite resource which will run out way before oil.
I'm not sure where you're getting this from, and I could be wrong, but as I understand it, the Earth's core is constantly churning out new radioactive material, including Uranium. That is to say, it is a renewable resource, we just have little control over the supply (unlike trees, where we can simply plant more if we know there will be an upcoming surge in demand). Oil, on the other hand, is not being replaced. Well, I suppose technically it is, but at a much, much slower rate than we're using it.
Nuclear power can't pay it's own way in the world. That's why they stopped building reactors about twenty years ago.
There's not really much to debate here, because you're flat-out, 100% wrong. Canada constructs and exports plenty of nuclear reactors for power plants all over the world.
Link.
[Launching nuclear waste into the sun is safe]
Yea, Columbia and challenger proved that.
Not that I disagree entirely with your point, but I must nitpick and point out that Columbia was doing just fine, until reentry. Obviously, if launching nuclear material into the sun, there wouldn't be a terrestrial reentry phase of the mission to worry about at all.
There's no way in heck I'll tell to my son that "being gay is OK"
That's funny... I think your great-grandfather said something similar to your grandfather. I think it was something to the effect of "being black is not OK," or "women voting/working is not OK" or something like that.
Ignorant homophobe. I agree with you on one point though: I also hope you never tell your son that being gay is OK, because I hope you never have kids. People like you are the source of the kind of hatred that killed Matthew Shepard.
The CD used to cost less but its per unit cost was much higher. Now that the per unit cost has shrunk we see that the cost has gone up considerably.
I don't know why you keep saying that, it's just plain not true. The basis of your entire argument is false. When CDs first came out, they were $25. Now, they're $15. That's a decrease of $10 over 20 years. Now add in inflation. You see, CDs are much, much cheaper now than when they first came out. So your whole argument falls apart, because it is based on a false premise.
at least half of the work is done by the artist,
I'm sorry, but that is utter bullsh*t. Maybe you're talking about indie records? For all mainstream music, the hours the artist puts in are a small fraction of the total person-hours involved in getting that album into stores.
the artist is the closest person involved making the music, works more making that particular music,
Where are you getting these crazy ideas? The artist is the voice. Nothing more. What you're saying is like claiming that Elijah Wood should get 25% of all Lord of the Rings profits, since he put in half the work to make the films, and is the closest person involved in making the films. Can you see what utter bollocks that is?
Musical artists are just voices. They are interchangeable. They don't write their own songs or lyrics. Just like actors don't write their lines. They just speak them. Granted, actors actually have a pretty sweet deal, where they actually do get a hugely disproportionate amount of the profits of the movie. But I'm saying that that is the messed up situation, whereas the music one is the sensible one, rather than the other way around.
Around 1-5% of the price of the cds goes to the actual artist
Every time I see someone complaining about this statistic, I ask the same question, and no one can give me a straight answer. Why on Earth should the artist get more than 5%? It takes a lot more than just that one person to produce the CD. How about the people that financed it, produced it, directed it, wrote the music, wrote the lyrics (Oh, you thought they still write their own songs? That's cute), created the cover art, marketed the CD, mixed the sound, delivered the CDs to the stores, and all the other people involved in making a CD? Why should the "artist" be paid disproportionately more than all those other people, who typically have more education, put in longer hours, and in many cases, even have more talent? What makes the artist so special that they should get 20% of the profits, with the other 150 people fighting over the scraps?
I believe he was making a subtle reference to George Bush's comment at the last debates, where he said something to the effect of, "I'm aware of the rumours circulating on the Internets about a backdoor draft ..."
Immediately after he said that, my wife and I looked at each other and I exclaimed, "There's more than one????"
Theory - All pigeons are grey.
No number of grey pigeons can prove that theory true
You need to take a logic course, as this is not what is being argued here. Your example could be extended to "prove" that gravity is not proven. Although every massive body we've observed exhibits gravity, you claim that this doesn't prove gravity exists, since there could theoretically be a massive body out there without gravity.
So what, we should question gravity now?
yes, they are a health hazard. so is drinking alcohol.
No one ever got cancer from "second-hand alcohol."
so is that vehicle you drive
You don't drive vehicles indoors, where the air can't circulate.
don't wanna smell like smoke? don't go there.
If you'd read my post, you'd know that I agree with that sentiment, as it applies to patrons. However, when you look at it from the employees' point of view, it's a whole new ballgame. Employees have a right to a safe workplace. We have laws that say so. Every other industry has to protect their employees from harmful pollutants, or provide equipment that provides protection. Except the food service industry. Well, that's not fair. I for one and glad that the playing field is finally being leveled, and rights that have long been extended to everyone else are finally being given to waitresses and bartenders.
Did you really think this was just about the patrons?
I know some waitresses and bartenders and *NOT ONE* of them has ever complained about smoke in bars.
Here's one in my own city. Heather Cross, a waitress in Ottawa for 40 years, never smoked a day in her life, was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer due to second-hand smoke from her workplace.
It's 2004, for crying out loud! We know tobacco smoke causes cancer. Why are we still making excuses for it? Why are we still permitting it to be forced on people just trying to do their job? In 1000 years, society will look back on this point in history and ask, "What in the hell were they thinking? They knew it was bad, why did everyone still tolerate it? Why did people still smoke?"