The drive-in is great when you have an infant daughter and no nearby relatives who you'd trust to watch her.
Regarding defrosting the windows, this is in the middle of summer when it's a pretty comfortable temperatures. On some occasions it's been hot enough that the reverse is true, and people might be turning the AC on for a short while.
P.S. That pets.com looks pretty exciting -- Should I invest in it?
Speaking of car manuals, too bad more people wouldn't read them. Here in Canada most cars are equipped with daytime running lights which engage a low power high beam when the car is running (it increases visibility, even in bright clear days). The problem is that people tend to be overly paranoid about their car battery at the drive-in, so they incessantly start and then turn off their car. The little tidbit in most manuals, however, is that engaging your parking brake (including in automatics) before turning on the car turns off the daytime running lights. Just a little factoid to be aware of.
Of course I didn't learn this from the manual (though I verified that it was there): I discovered it after running out from the car and returning with the parking brake engaged.
The devices, which record information on a continuous loop that rewrites itself every few seconds, lock the information in place only after an accident that deploys an air-bag.
Anyone know what sort of media they're talking about? The phrasing implies tape, but obviously there isn't a Commodore 64 Tape Drive hiding under your seat.
As an aside about mid-Canada options, here in some parts of the GTA the cable company is a firm called Cogeco. While there is the scary spectre of a merge with Rogers in the distint future, Cogeco and Rogers are night and day -- I had Rogers in London, and as you mentioned uptime is an absolutely travesty with that company (or at least it was). In three separate locations I got similar to your 80% -- watching the little cable light flicker off, or not being able to ping past the first router, was regular. Cogeco, on the other hand, has been down one night during the 3 years that I've lived in this area. The speed is always excellent as well (the download rate caps went from 150Kbyte/s 3 years ago to around 250KB/s a year and a half ago, to 350KB/s now, any time of the day. Speaking of that, whatever happened with the oft repeated myth of cable being shared and with bandwidth that would disappear as it caught on?
which is leading P2P developers to make some advancements in the way of encryption, anonymity, etc.
P2P succeeds because it is public, and with no barriers to access. Without either of these it would be the same sort of fringe element that has existed for years (private warez "BBS'", trading groups, etc). Are the P2Pers going to put a banner proclaiming "N0 R1A4 ALLOWEDZ! LEEV NOW IF U THEM"? Are they going to encrypt songs in a way that every other Joe Schmo can decrypt, but just not the RIAA?
...and haven't gone after Apache, Netscape or MS because there are big players involved with the server architecture who have extensive legal and market battles under their belts (MS especially)...
About 99.9999%* of web servers out there are used for legitimate purposes, and those few rogues that aren't, and are publicly sharing, are pretty easy to individually target and shutdown. P2P, on the other hand, is used by about, oh, 99.9999%* of users to share copyrighted material illegally. There is absolutely no comparison whatsoever.
Napster was an easy target (small and inexperienced) and a great example to publicize the fight against piracy since it was starting to get media attention, much as the web itself did just a short couple of years before.
Napster was a business attempting to profit on illegal sharing (yeah about 1 out of a million sharers were sharing their garage band songs, or total unassociated items, but the overwhelming majority were sharing pop songs), and making a business model on such a venture is begging for the wolves to come howling at your door (claiming ignorance when everyone knows the reality is pretty weak as well).
*-All numbers have the accuracy of Florida election results
"until more processor intensive software catches up"
Let's see...DVD-RWs are now around $130 US...DVD-RW discs are about $2 each...converting two hours of miniDV digital video (yeah the DV is redundant...suck it) to MPEG2, or divx...adding some effects...
Yeah, I'd say that market is here, thanks.
Re:Look at the game industry
on
Does C# Measure Up?
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Very true, and the truth is that a bunch of C#/Java developers write chatter like this to legitimize their choice, attempting to that whatever hammer they have is the perfect choice for any nail, screw, staple, or garden salad dressing out there.
Having said that, I should clarify my position: I'm a huge C# fan. I think the language itself is tremendous, and the.NET Framework is a great remodeling of the Win32 APIs in a very clean architecture, plus a huge slew of fantastic functionality. However while C# is a very capable hammer for many business programming (which is what 99.9%+ of the programming out there is), I doubt it'll be causing any 3D, AI, speech recognition, etc, to be rewritten anytime soon.
Re:Slashdot contracts viral marketing piece, again
on
Does C# Measure Up?
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· Score: 0
Well the writer is clearly from a magazine called "windows::developer", so obviously a pro-Microsoft bias will be likely.
Having said that, the same argument could be made for any article: Pro-Java? Clearly someone from the Sun\IBM camp. Pro-Pascal? Come on you Borland employees, quit trying to trick us!
How absurd to see the MPAA cast as the "good guy" on here: Wasn't this the same MPAA that was cast as Satan-in-the-flesh when the whole DeCSS fiasco took place? Indeed, the only reason why the MPAA isn't more on the Slashdot hippocrisy-hitlist is due to bandwidth constraints making it a tad onerous to download DVDs (and compressing a 9GB movie down to a CD or two makes for a vast quality difference, quite unlike CD rips where a CD rip that's perceived as the same quality is an easy download). Soon enough, as bandwidth increases, these same jokers will be yipping about how the movie business model is broken, and they should put out movies for free and make money on toys, or some such moral justification.
"or did Canadian officials re-distribute the best information available, given to them by a disinterested authorative source, at the time of a major emergency?"
The irresponsible part was that they didn't attribute their source, leading one to believe that they had independently verified these facts. i.e. If Joe tells you that the sky is blue, and Bob tells you that the sky is blue, there are two sources confirming that the sky is blue, yet what if Bob is merely repeating what Joe told him and isn't indicating this?
To be fair, before Bloomberg made his idiotic statement (which included the words "absolutely certain") various levels of the Canadian government had blamed it on a New York power station, and then a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant fire (information they got from the US Department of Defense, as a sidenote, but nonetheless it was irresponsible to repeat it verbatim so early on). I think a big difference though is that when I hear that it's a New York power plane or a nuclear station in Penn, most Canadians don't think "Those damn Americans!", or any "us versus them" nonsense. Instead it's a power plant going down, and why the hell is this grid so fragile? I suspect for Bloomberg and crew, though, it's nothing of the sort: Not only is it not "Ontario", it's "Canada" (which gives you an idea of the perception right there), but there's a definite slant of "Well that explains it right there!". This is par for the course for the various levels of government in New York state, though: Hillary Clinton has made countless nonsensical statements about how Canada is to blame for every fault in her little fantasy world.
It sounds like a "neat-o" project that would be a good way to nondestructively play around with Linux.
Having said that, I found this statement humorous: "but given the limits of what you can compress onto a single CD, separate projects makes sense to me.". Given the limits??? A CD has, what, 740MB? Yeah, they really had to push to fit into the tiny confines of a CD. I find it intriguing how the same community that endlessly used the term "bloat" to describe Microsoft software now can keep a straight face when describing the space on a CD as "limited".
"...as if anyone who even thought about Toronto would keel over and die that second..."
I guess it's all in how you perceive it. I see a disease that we knew little about, that came out of nowhere, and that was recognized as mutating. A disease that kills even younger, healthy adults. It required a massive quarantine throughout our society and hospital system (likely causing other deaths due to delayed surgery, etc). In a short period, maybe 4 months, it killed some 44 people in Toronto alone. Furthermore, it is something which the average Joe has limited ability to protect themselves from: I personally rode a GO train with a nurse who was infected (note that the nurse in question talked to no one and was not in the sneezing/coughing stage, so the results could have been much worse). I hardly think SARS was overblown whatsoever, and one has to wonder if, much like Y2K, what is now perceived as a "massive overreaction" is seen as such because the "overreaction" was highly successful. BTW: Expect SARS to make a comeback in the fall, as all of its respiratory friends do as well. I take it you'll be sticking your head in the sand, cynically huffing (and then sneezing and coughing) about how foolish those people wearing masks are.
By comparison about 55 people in Toronto are murdered each year, and while it's still something that is very much on people's minds, it is lessened because we all know ways to avoid our risk: Stay out of dark alleys at night, it's probably a good idea to stay out of the drug trade, don't marry homicidally jealous spouses, etc. Immediately your probability of falling victim is dramatically lessened to very close to nil, hence the public concern is lessened. Compare, on the other hand, the TREMENDOUS attention that any "random" killings get, of say a tourist in Florida, or some sniper shootings in the DC area : People pay close attention to anything which they have a limited ability to control specific risks.
"Ignoring the much more likely causes of death life throws at us is, and 9 times out of 10 people put on a mask, figure "I'll live through today", and remain ignorant. "
All apologies, but this is an all-too-common, convoluted, ridiculous statement, and it's of the "doing nothing is better than doing anything at all" variety. This is the same sort of inane logic that appears in letters to the editor after any story about the humane treatment of animals, when selfish armchair cynics proclaim that it's all wasted because there are homeless people, or starving kids in Ethiopia. You see, to these people, doing nothing whatsoever beats out doing anything at all, because there's always something more important not to do or not to react to than to bother with the little stuff. This is how the useless, unprepared, and unhelpful justify their inaction, and it's also how those in denial convince themselves of their choices.
You see that's unreasonable, strawman rationalization. I need my car to get to work, so I drive it, though in doing so I drive safely, keep my car in good maintenance, and choose a car that is safe with all of the safety features. Saying "don't drive" is as unrealistic as saying "move into the wilderness" to many people. By the same token how unreasonable is it to put a little control into your own hands and perhaps stockpile a bit of food and water so if another blackout hits you aren't waiting for the national guard once the water pumps stop working. How crazy is it to keep some basic supplies to exist without curling in a ball and dying? None of these affect your day to day living, and they really aren't a big deal, but it's astounding how many people get personally defensive when someone mentions that they do them.
"...but I wonder how much of it comes from the need to rationalize a total lack of preparation for anything bad"
Right on the money. When I was a teen I worked in a factory during the summer, and my job was putting fiberglass inserts into some automotive part and then pressing some steel parts together using a huge, very loud press. The company, by law, offered air filters and ear plugs but literally no-one used them. Not being a follower, I opted to avoid lung cancer and hearing loss and used both. What I discovered was that taking precautions like these was actually scorned and belittled for taking these precautions, and the natural conclusions is that my self-preservation made real the vulnerabilities of others, and in a classic case of denial, they'd rather pretend that the threat didn't exist than deal with it, and somehow my reminding them of their frailties made it somehow more real.
Very similar to that happened in the recent Toronto SARS scare: The media and the general public actually scorned people who took to wearing masks -- Big bloody deal! So people wore a mask -- how does this make other people less healthy? If anything, the masks could help reduce the transmissions of regular ailments like the flu and the cold, so they're almost doing a public service, but you wouldn't think that hearing the way the media and public belittled those who took to pursuing that precaution.
Absolutely hilarious, however even better check out the "review" from chatchi, as well as their other "reviews". Either that person has a wonderful sense of humor and a tremendous amount of time on their hands, or they're getting paid by some independent crap video producer.
Why should super-mega-freeways cost more to drive on? Given the efficiency of volume, they are likely much less expensive to maintain per km driven than little rural roads.
On days when I don't take the scenic "long way", I take the 407 ETR, an electronic toll road: It takes a picture of your license plate when you get on and when you get off, and automatically sends you a bill for $0.129 cents per kilometer (through an arrangement with the government that also sees the government withhold plate renewals if you don't pay this private company...but that's a whole other rant). If they need to rely on their cameras they tack on an extra $3.30 per trip, though you can rent a transponder for a monthly fee.
OK, you use it you pay for it. Fair enough. But it burns me that approximately 44% of the price of gas here in Canada is taxes, so effectively on my 79 cent per litre gas I'm paying about 35 cents of tax. The idea behind the tax is that it pays for the road infrastructure, so getting 100km / 7L, I'm paying about $2.45 for 100km trip in taxes. Well now if I drive that 100km on the 407, I'm also paying $12.90 to the ETR as well. What a rip off.
I hate to reply to an idiot (especially down here, where noone but the idiot reads) but what is your point? That mass culture desires a common experience (which we normally call pop)? Yes, you are correct.
Does this mean the RIAA is reasonable? Not at all. Does this mean the RIAA are lying thieving bastards, abusing musicians, customers, and the legal system for big piles o' money? Most certainly.
Uh, how did the original point "mean" that the above list of descriptors? People want hot dogs at the park, therefore that means that hot dog vendors are lying thieving bastards, abusing customers and hotdogs and the legal system for big piles o' money? Sorry, I don't quite understand it.
When these sorts of stories come up (RIAA stories) it really betrays the average young age of Slashdot: One where life is a simple black and white divide between poor, innocent consumers, and bad evil big business.
The "low" royalties that artists make, including the big names, has come up quite a few times as a justification for piracy (the old "Well I'll just tip them more in some hypothetical tipping universe where such talk was actually more than just lip service").
As far as the little guys who get screwed: Why do they sign up with the big labels? Who is grabbing their hand and forcing it on the contract? Are all little guys poor defenseless pawns unaware of their rights? No, they're very aware, and they're also aware that at the time it was a beneficial thing for them to do.
Oh boy, slamming the RIAA. You're a real original. To really be a Slashdot rebel you should stick a few jabs against SCO as well. Go get em tiger!
As a sidenote, due to a revised Goodwin's Law you instantly lost the debate: Claiming someone with a contrary opinion is a "troll" is one of the weakest, most juvenile debating techniques. Mind you the rest of your incoherent spittle set the tone pretty well.
I'm waiting for the story "Kmart arrests 11 year old girl shoplifting lipstick" - You do realize this happens, right? Damn that evil Kmart! The girl just wants some lipstick, and doesn't every little 11 year old have a right to free lipstick?
I would say even if 10% of the sites which are blokced are not child porn, then that is acceptable.
Brilliant! As the region's Office of DoubleTruth Information, I would like to thank you for your clever idea. We will now being the campaign to populate the 10% misinformation buffer. "Oh, I'm sorry, we heard that that Democratic Party page was child porn.". Or even better "accept it or imply that you support child porn".
I also think states must work together to track down the providers of child porn and arrest and jail these scumbags. They should be forced to go to jail.
I don't think you'll find much disagreement, and when childporn is found of course people do go to jail, and then they should investigate the perps computer and find the trails leading to his child-porn friends, and the network of childporn traders implodes. That's good investigative work, and is the way it should work. The government running some sort of NetNanny service is wholly unacceptable, though, because we know that the span between the theoretical implementation (eliminating childporn) and the realistic implementation often is a massive one. Instead you have the blocking tonnes of sites that have nothing to do with childporn whatsoever. Indeed, it could just be plain old fashioned, entirely legal, porn being blocked under the moral auspices of blocking child porn...and who's going to call up the state because their Woman-on-Woman site isn't working?
The RIAA effectively takes music from artists and gives them slave wages for their music. When the RIAA takes music from artists, the artists no longer own it.
It's hilarious the paradox of the various arguments that come up in these debates. Now firstly let's observe the fact that many Slashdotters are pseudo-communists: They love the idea of "the man" giving things away for free, and everything being just about goodwill and sharing. Now consider the fact that as an example, Slashdotters berate the RIAA because they find out that Madonna or Britney Spears only made $3 or whatever/CD. The travesty! The outrage!
The paradox is that the _reason_ why big, successful artists make only a small portions of the proceeds is because the consortium of music companies pump a lot of money into "music development": Little bands that'll never go anywhere. That's the vast majority, btw. These little bands often see the label money as the "one chance", and happily sign contracts that say that if they beat all of the odds and make it big, they'll let the music industry keep some of it in an almost communist sharing type arrangement, where it supports the next batch of music development.
Maybe I've just become cynical, but whenever I see one of these RIAA articles all I perceive are a bunch of unreasonably idealistic, have-you-cake-and-eat-it-too unrealists berating big business while standing up for the little guy. Oooh, the poor little girl, who had an internet connection and a computer and was apparently among one of the top file sharers (with a 1000+ songs purportedly) is being bugged by the big bad music industry. Don't they realize that she has a God given right to rip off Justin Timberlake's new CD?
Slashdot Mirror
The drive-in is great when you have an infant daughter and no nearby relatives who you'd trust to watch her.
Regarding defrosting the windows, this is in the middle of summer when it's a pretty comfortable temperatures. On some occasions it's been hot enough that the reverse is true, and people might be turning the AC on for a short while.
P.S. That pets.com looks pretty exciting -- Should I invest in it?
Speaking of car manuals, too bad more people wouldn't read them. Here in Canada most cars are equipped with daytime running lights which engage a low power high beam when the car is running (it increases visibility, even in bright clear days). The problem is that people tend to be overly paranoid about their car battery at the drive-in, so they incessantly start and then turn off their car. The little tidbit in most manuals, however, is that engaging your parking brake (including in automatics) before turning on the car turns off the daytime running lights. Just a little factoid to be aware of.
Of course I didn't learn this from the manual (though I verified that it was there): I discovered it after running out from the car and returning with the parking brake engaged.
(from the article)
The devices, which record information on a continuous loop that rewrites itself every few seconds, lock the information in place only after an accident that deploys an air-bag.
Anyone know what sort of media they're talking about? The phrasing implies tape, but obviously there isn't a Commodore 64 Tape Drive hiding under your seat.
As an aside about mid-Canada options, here in some parts of the GTA the cable company is a firm called Cogeco. While there is the scary spectre of a merge with Rogers in the distint future, Cogeco and Rogers are night and day -- I had Rogers in London, and as you mentioned uptime is an absolutely travesty with that company (or at least it was). In three separate locations I got similar to your 80% -- watching the little cable light flicker off, or not being able to ping past the first router, was regular. Cogeco, on the other hand, has been down one night during the 3 years that I've lived in this area. The speed is always excellent as well (the download rate caps went from 150Kbyte/s 3 years ago to around 250KB/s a year and a half ago, to 350KB/s now, any time of the day. Speaking of that, whatever happened with the oft repeated myth of cable being shared and with bandwidth that would disappear as it caught on?
which is leading P2P developers to make some advancements in the way of encryption, anonymity, etc.
P2P succeeds because it is public, and with no barriers to access. Without either of these it would be the same sort of fringe element that has existed for years (private warez "BBS'", trading groups, etc). Are the P2Pers going to put a banner proclaiming "N0 R1A4 ALLOWEDZ! LEEV NOW IF U THEM"? Are they going to encrypt songs in a way that every other Joe Schmo can decrypt, but just not the RIAA?
...and haven't gone after Apache, Netscape or MS because there are big players involved with the server architecture who have extensive legal and market battles under their belts (MS especially)...
About 99.9999%* of web servers out there are used for legitimate purposes, and those few rogues that aren't, and are publicly sharing, are pretty easy to individually target and shutdown. P2P, on the other hand, is used by about, oh, 99.9999%* of users to share copyrighted material illegally. There is absolutely no comparison whatsoever.
Napster was an easy target (small and inexperienced) and a great example to publicize the fight against piracy since it was starting to get media attention, much as the web itself did just a short couple of years before.
Napster was a business attempting to profit on illegal sharing (yeah about 1 out of a million sharers were sharing their garage band songs, or total unassociated items, but the overwhelming majority were sharing pop songs), and making a business model on such a venture is begging for the wolves to come howling at your door (claiming ignorance when everyone knows the reality is pretty weak as well).
*-All numbers have the accuracy of Florida election results
"until more processor intensive software catches up"
Let's see...DVD-RWs are now around $130 US...DVD-RW discs are about $2 each...converting two hours of miniDV digital video (yeah the DV is redundant...suck it) to MPEG2, or divx...adding some effects...
Yeah, I'd say that market is here, thanks.
Very true, and the truth is that a bunch of C#/Java developers write chatter like this to legitimize their choice, attempting to that whatever hammer they have is the perfect choice for any nail, screw, staple, or garden salad dressing out there.
.NET Framework is a great remodeling of the Win32 APIs in a very clean architecture, plus a huge slew of fantastic functionality. However while C# is a very capable hammer for many business programming (which is what 99.9%+ of the programming out there is), I doubt it'll be causing any 3D, AI, speech recognition, etc, to be rewritten anytime soon.
Having said that, I should clarify my position: I'm a huge C# fan. I think the language itself is tremendous, and the
Well the writer is clearly from a magazine called "windows::developer", so obviously a pro-Microsoft bias will be likely.
Having said that, the same argument could be made for any article: Pro-Java? Clearly someone from the Sun\IBM camp. Pro-Pascal? Come on you Borland employees, quit trying to trick us!
How absurd to see the MPAA cast as the "good guy" on here: Wasn't this the same MPAA that was cast as Satan-in-the-flesh when the whole DeCSS fiasco took place? Indeed, the only reason why the MPAA isn't more on the Slashdot hippocrisy-hitlist is due to bandwidth constraints making it a tad onerous to download DVDs (and compressing a 9GB movie down to a CD or two makes for a vast quality difference, quite unlike CD rips where a CD rip that's perceived as the same quality is an easy download). Soon enough, as bandwidth increases, these same jokers will be yipping about how the movie business model is broken, and they should put out movies for free and make money on toys, or some such moral justification.
"or did Canadian officials re-distribute the best information available, given to them by a disinterested authorative source, at the time of a major emergency?"
The irresponsible part was that they didn't attribute their source, leading one to believe that they had independently verified these facts. i.e. If Joe tells you that the sky is blue, and Bob tells you that the sky is blue, there are two sources confirming that the sky is blue, yet what if Bob is merely repeating what Joe told him and isn't indicating this?
And my link doesn't even include referral attributes.
To be fair, before Bloomberg made his idiotic statement (which included the words "absolutely certain") various levels of the Canadian government had blamed it on a New York power station, and then a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant fire (information they got from the US Department of Defense, as a sidenote, but nonetheless it was irresponsible to repeat it verbatim so early on). I think a big difference though is that when I hear that it's a New York power plane or a nuclear station in Penn, most Canadians don't think "Those damn Americans!", or any "us versus them" nonsense. Instead it's a power plant going down, and why the hell is this grid so fragile? I suspect for Bloomberg and crew, though, it's nothing of the sort: Not only is it not "Ontario", it's "Canada" (which gives you an idea of the perception right there), but there's a definite slant of "Well that explains it right there!". This is par for the course for the various levels of government in New York state, though: Hillary Clinton has made countless nonsensical statements about how Canada is to blame for every fault in her little fantasy world.
It sounds like a "neat-o" project that would be a good way to nondestructively play around with Linux.
Having said that, I found this statement humorous: "but given the limits of what you can compress onto a single CD, separate projects makes sense to me.". Given the limits??? A CD has, what, 740MB? Yeah, they really had to push to fit into the tiny confines of a CD. I find it intriguing how the same community that endlessly used the term "bloat" to describe Microsoft software now can keep a straight face when describing the space on a CD as "limited".
"...as if anyone who even thought about Toronto would keel over and die that second..."
I guess it's all in how you perceive it. I see a disease that we knew little about, that came out of nowhere, and that was recognized as mutating. A disease that kills even younger, healthy adults. It required a massive quarantine throughout our society and hospital system (likely causing other deaths due to delayed surgery, etc). In a short period, maybe 4 months, it killed some 44 people in Toronto alone. Furthermore, it is something which the average Joe has limited ability to protect themselves from: I personally rode a GO train with a nurse who was infected (note that the nurse in question talked to no one and was not in the sneezing/coughing stage, so the results could have been much worse). I hardly think SARS was overblown whatsoever, and one has to wonder if, much like Y2K, what is now perceived as a "massive overreaction" is seen as such because the "overreaction" was highly successful. BTW: Expect SARS to make a comeback in the fall, as all of its respiratory friends do as well. I take it you'll be sticking your head in the sand, cynically huffing (and then sneezing and coughing) about how foolish those people wearing masks are.
By comparison about 55 people in Toronto are murdered each year, and while it's still something that is very much on people's minds, it is lessened because we all know ways to avoid our risk: Stay out of dark alleys at night, it's probably a good idea to stay out of the drug trade, don't marry homicidally jealous spouses, etc. Immediately your probability of falling victim is dramatically lessened to very close to nil, hence the public concern is lessened. Compare, on the other hand, the TREMENDOUS attention that any "random" killings get, of say a tourist in Florida, or some sniper shootings in the DC area : People pay close attention to anything which they have a limited ability to control specific risks.
"Ignoring the much more likely causes of death life throws at us is, and 9 times out of 10 people put on a mask, figure "I'll live through today", and remain ignorant. "
All apologies, but this is an all-too-common, convoluted, ridiculous statement, and it's of the "doing nothing is better than doing anything at all" variety. This is the same sort of inane logic that appears in letters to the editor after any story about the humane treatment of animals, when selfish armchair cynics proclaim that it's all wasted because there are homeless people, or starving kids in Ethiopia. You see, to these people, doing nothing whatsoever beats out doing anything at all, because there's always something more important not to do or not to react to than to bother with the little stuff. This is how the useless, unprepared, and unhelpful justify their inaction, and it's also how those in denial convince themselves of their choices.
You see that's unreasonable, strawman rationalization. I need my car to get to work, so I drive it, though in doing so I drive safely, keep my car in good maintenance, and choose a car that is safe with all of the safety features. Saying "don't drive" is as unrealistic as saying "move into the wilderness" to many people. By the same token how unreasonable is it to put a little control into your own hands and perhaps stockpile a bit of food and water so if another blackout hits you aren't waiting for the national guard once the water pumps stop working. How crazy is it to keep some basic supplies to exist without curling in a ball and dying? None of these affect your day to day living, and they really aren't a big deal, but it's astounding how many people get personally defensive when someone mentions that they do them.
"...but I wonder how much of it comes from the need to rationalize a total lack of preparation for anything bad"
Right on the money. When I was a teen I worked in a factory during the summer, and my job was putting fiberglass inserts into some automotive part and then pressing some steel parts together using a huge, very loud press. The company, by law, offered air filters and ear plugs but literally no-one used them. Not being a follower, I opted to avoid lung cancer and hearing loss and used both. What I discovered was that taking precautions like these was actually scorned and belittled for taking these precautions, and the natural conclusions is that my self-preservation made real the vulnerabilities of others, and in a classic case of denial, they'd rather pretend that the threat didn't exist than deal with it, and somehow my reminding them of their frailties made it somehow more real.
Very similar to that happened in the recent Toronto SARS scare: The media and the general public actually scorned people who took to wearing masks -- Big bloody deal! So people wore a mask -- how does this make other people less healthy? If anything, the masks could help reduce the transmissions of regular ailments like the flu and the cold, so they're almost doing a public service, but you wouldn't think that hearing the way the media and public belittled those who took to pursuing that precaution.
Absolutely hilarious, however even better check out the "review" from chatchi, as well as their other "reviews". Either that person has a wonderful sense of humor and a tremendous amount of time on their hands, or they're getting paid by some independent crap video producer.
Why should super-mega-freeways cost more to drive on? Given the efficiency of volume, they are likely much less expensive to maintain per km driven than little rural roads.
On days when I don't take the scenic "long way", I take the 407 ETR, an electronic toll road: It takes a picture of your license plate when you get on and when you get off, and automatically sends you a bill for $0.129 cents per kilometer (through an arrangement with the government that also sees the government withhold plate renewals if you don't pay this private company...but that's a whole other rant). If they need to rely on their cameras they tack on an extra $3.30 per trip, though you can rent a transponder for a monthly fee.
OK, you use it you pay for it. Fair enough. But it burns me that approximately 44% of the price of gas here in Canada is taxes, so effectively on my 79 cent per litre gas I'm paying about 35 cents of tax. The idea behind the tax is that it pays for the road infrastructure, so getting 100km / 7L, I'm paying about $2.45 for 100km trip in taxes. Well now if I drive that 100km on the 407, I'm also paying $12.90 to the ETR as well. What a rip off.
I hate to reply to an idiot (especially down here, where noone but the idiot reads) but what is your point? That mass culture desires a common experience (which we normally call pop)? Yes, you are correct.
Does this mean the RIAA is reasonable? Not at all. Does this mean the RIAA are lying thieving bastards, abusing musicians, customers, and the legal system for big piles o' money? Most certainly.
Uh, how did the original point "mean" that the above list of descriptors? People want hot dogs at the park, therefore that means that hot dog vendors are lying thieving bastards, abusing customers and hotdogs and the legal system for big piles o' money? Sorry, I don't quite understand it.
When these sorts of stories come up (RIAA stories) it really betrays the average young age of Slashdot: One where life is a simple black and white divide between poor, innocent consumers, and bad evil big business.
The "low" royalties that artists make, including the big names, has come up quite a few times as a justification for piracy (the old "Well I'll just tip them more in some hypothetical tipping universe where such talk was actually more than just lip service").
As far as the little guys who get screwed: Why do they sign up with the big labels? Who is grabbing their hand and forcing it on the contract? Are all little guys poor defenseless pawns unaware of their rights? No, they're very aware, and they're also aware that at the time it was a beneficial thing for them to do.
Oh boy, slamming the RIAA. You're a real original. To really be a Slashdot rebel you should stick a few jabs against SCO as well. Go get em tiger!
As a sidenote, due to a revised Goodwin's Law you instantly lost the debate: Claiming someone with a contrary opinion is a "troll" is one of the weakest, most juvenile debating techniques. Mind you the rest of your incoherent spittle set the tone pretty well.
I'm waiting for the story "Kmart arrests 11 year old girl shoplifting lipstick" - You do realize this happens, right? Damn that evil Kmart! The girl just wants some lipstick, and doesn't every little 11 year old have a right to free lipstick?
I would say even if 10% of the sites which are blokced are not child porn, then that is acceptable.
Brilliant! As the region's Office of DoubleTruth Information, I would like to thank you for your clever idea. We will now being the campaign to populate the 10% misinformation buffer. "Oh, I'm sorry, we heard that that Democratic Party page was child porn.". Or even better "accept it or imply that you support child porn".
I also think states must work together to track down the providers of child porn and arrest and jail these scumbags. They should be forced to go to jail.
I don't think you'll find much disagreement, and when childporn is found of course people do go to jail, and then they should investigate the perps computer and find the trails leading to his child-porn friends, and the network of childporn traders implodes. That's good investigative work, and is the way it should work. The government running some sort of NetNanny service is wholly unacceptable, though, because we know that the span between the theoretical implementation (eliminating childporn) and the realistic implementation often is a massive one. Instead you have the blocking tonnes of sites that have nothing to do with childporn whatsoever. Indeed, it could just be plain old fashioned, entirely legal, porn being blocked under the moral auspices of blocking child porn...and who's going to call up the state because their Woman-on-Woman site isn't working?
The RIAA effectively takes music from artists and gives them slave wages for their music. When the RIAA takes music from artists, the artists no longer own it.
It's hilarious the paradox of the various arguments that come up in these debates. Now firstly let's observe the fact that many Slashdotters are pseudo-communists: They love the idea of "the man" giving things away for free, and everything being just about goodwill and sharing. Now consider the fact that as an example, Slashdotters berate the RIAA because they find out that Madonna or Britney Spears only made $3 or whatever/CD. The travesty! The outrage!
The paradox is that the _reason_ why big, successful artists make only a small portions of the proceeds is because the consortium of music companies pump a lot of money into "music development": Little bands that'll never go anywhere. That's the vast majority, btw. These little bands often see the label money as the "one chance", and happily sign contracts that say that if they beat all of the odds and make it big, they'll let the music industry keep some of it in an almost communist sharing type arrangement, where it supports the next batch of music development.
Maybe I've just become cynical, but whenever I see one of these RIAA articles all I perceive are a bunch of unreasonably idealistic, have-you-cake-and-eat-it-too unrealists berating big business while standing up for the little guy. Oooh, the poor little girl, who had an internet connection and a computer and was apparently among one of the top file sharers (with a 1000+ songs purportedly) is being bugged by the big bad music industry. Don't they realize that she has a God given right to rip off Justin Timberlake's new CD?