For what it's worth, I agree that, right or wrong, money often = votes... my problem is the fact that corporations, by your own premise, get to vote.. and the fact there is more money from corps than from ANY individual donor flowing into the system, their votes count for more. Again, I don't disagree with the premise, but I just want to know by what bizzare stretch of the imagination do corporations have more of a right to determine a government of and for the people than the people do themselves??
I seriously doubt the vast majority of customers check their merchant's political donations (or perhaps they do as I do and just assume they support anti-regulation Conservative candidates). Market forces would only work insofar as the candidates supported by mega-corporations allowed the market to work on their supporters. Much like the oil market in the U.S. today. I doubt anyone will suggest the free market is at work in the US Oil Market, and I believe it's laughable to suggest that a lack of free market pressure has in some way been detrimental to it.
As far as forming a corp gives up rights: First, I disagree with the premise. I do not see how investing in a corporation and setting it up with a board of directors somehow infringes upon your rights. Which rights are you referring to? Secondly, you voluntarily gave up those rights, and while the metaphor may be heavy-handed, just like criminals give up their right to vote when they commit a felony.
The Declaration of Independence mentions "inalienable human rights", and inalienable is defined as "incapable of being repudiated or given to another" (emphasis mine). Where exactly they get the idea that Corporations are equal to humans is absolutely foreign to me. And if they do in fact believe this, they what does the ruling discussed in the article mean for personal, individual right to privacy?
Just out of curiosity, what corporation has been held liable for any 'crime' prosecuted in a criminal court. I'm willing to believe it has happened, but I postulate that it is so rare for this to happen that the corporate personhood clause should go away.
How does giving a corporation personal rights and freedoms somehow protect the people within that corporation? Are their personal rights not protected by the same constitutional provisions that protects those of us NOT in a Corporation? By what moral imperative do their rights get 'protected' twice while mine may only be 'protected' once?
For example: Citizens United. Corporations have a right to free speech to support any candidate they so choose. Tell me, before this ruling did the actual human beings within this corporation not actually have those rights? Were they somehow barred from voting or donating their money? I fail to see how granting personhood to any corporation does anything but give members of that corporation extra protections under the constitution the rest of us do not have.
I'm guessing the water tasted better in your day, and the damn bananas could peel easier, but at the same time it snowed up to your elbows every winter and you had to walk everywhere you went, even down to the general store!
Sometimes things change guys.. and if it's a change for the more efficient or more profitable, it's a change that sticks. Management only cares things are back up as soon as possible, and Sys Admins get paid the same no matter what they do So there.
That seems a fair assessment on the face of it, but 80% or more of the total federal budget is military spending. And I agree military spending is WAY out of control. But since no one apparently wants to discuss cuts to military spending, perhaps we could find someplace in the other 20% of the budget that is inefficient. Surely there are actual stats and budget reports which can be referenced to find inefficiency.
My understanding is Government is actually quite efficient at what it does. Really only the military spending has a low return on investment (I would assume because it is difficult to quantify human lives both saved and taken as a per-dollar return). Medicare and Social Security as two examples really seem to out-perform commercial insurance companies when it comes to amount/quality of care per dollar.
I think massive inefficiency of the government is sort of an assumed truth with very little evidence to back it up.
Now I realize there are TONS of anti-fed guys and gals out here on/. So if you have reports of obvious waste that occurs in the public sector that doesn't occur in the private sector I would be happy to see it. I'm open to having my mind changed, so I'd appreciate not being called an idiot before you present your evidence.
Nathan Fillon has been on the record saying if he won the lottery he'd purchase the rights to the show, produce new eps and release it as an internet series.
Yep, Gold Standard is gone the way of the Dodo, or Firefly. It might be a damn shame, but no use trying to get it back, cause like car-keys in a lavaflow, they're gone man, they're gone.
Also, my sentence up there was from The West Wing.
I daresay that is EXACTLY what being slapped in the face with titties is like. Much like being hit in the head with a baseball back is 'like' being beaten to death with a long cylindrical wooden or aluminum club.
Well obviously what Mitnick did was much worse than killing people... he stole money from wealthy people! I think it's pretty obvious by just about every measure of our American society that stealing from the wealthy is a much more dire crime than murder.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I know at least with Satellite DVRs you still are encouraged to let them phone home in order to, I assume, send your viewing habits back to the company. If the box can't phone home it will definitely bug you about it, and I've heard there may even be a charge.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great game and that piece of music is well deserving... but are the grammy's in the habit of regularly handing out awards to music that's four or more years old?
You could make that arguement about any 'high price' on any good or service that is taxed by the gov't. I'm sure those taxes get passed on the consumer in all cases.
Of course, good luck watching the price fall should those taxes be taken away. The people pay 100 bucks a month, they'll always pay 100 bucks a month.
As long as you can afford the initial $624 a year, sounds like you have a pretty good thing going there. A lot of us can't.. or decide there isn't enough value to a smartphone for the purchase and trouble.
I'd wager cost is a MAJOR reason. Who has 300 bucks to spend on a phone, then 50 -70 bucks a month for a data plan when I can keep my 30 a month unlimited text and coast to coast calling, and get a phone for free every year?
I'm sure if I actually got one one day I'd be addicted for life, but until then... no thanks until the price comes down.
Just out of curiosity, what was the game that dragged you into purchasing a PS3? For the life of me I can't find a single must-have game for that system to justify the cost of entry.
Actually heat is the one way pest control companies say you can be certain to be rid of them. They cannot live above a temperature of 100F or so. So in many cases they literally hook giant fans up to the windows and pump your house up to 120 or so for 24 - 48 hours to heat up everything in there, and you can rest assured any bedbugs in the building at that time are dead as doornails.
My understanding is that you can't use reflection of the sun to heat up a point on earth any higher than the temperature of the sun, because then you get a reversal of energy transfer... effectively the hot point on earth starts emanating energy that is reflected back towards the sun.
Well, for what it's worth, you still have the option to buy the games outright. Again, it's on their service, so no disks or anything. But you do not have to subscribe. In fact, the way it stands now, not all games are available under the subscription plans.
So, you can pay retail-ish prices for the games, and play them from now until the service shuts down (however many years that might be), or you can subscribe and get a dozen or more games to play without restriction which may or may not be the newest most popular games on the service.
Of course, we do still live in a thermodynamic universe. Disorder will always outweigh order. And again, my analogy was mainly to show a very fundamentalist superior at my workplace that evolution is understandable (his argument at the time was Evolution was such high-level science that believe scientists about it took as much, if not more, faith as to believe a preacher about creationism). Once I showed him that different pressure exerted on a reproducible item changes that item over time, and he could actually see it in his mind's eye. I think it opened his eyes about a lot of things.
Yes if I was arguing with some book writing, bowtie wearing purveyor of Intelligent Design, I'm sure my analogy could easily be picked apart. As it has been here on/.:).
Now... onto the randomness of mutation. I totally agree with what you wrote above. 100 percent. However, you just didn't take it far enough, the natural selection part. Natural selection is what keeps the system from being random. The random mutations are put through a funnel in the test for fitness in the environment. There is a "direction" involved. Yes, random mutations are ridiculously dangerous to a family, but by only selecting those more fit than the previous generation means as a species, there is an order involved in the system. I'm paraphrasing Richard Dawkins himself when I say this btw. Mutation may be random, evolution is not.
Slashdot Mirror
For what it's worth, I agree that, right or wrong, money often = votes... my problem is the fact that corporations, by your own premise, get to vote.. and the fact there is more money from corps than from ANY individual donor flowing into the system, their votes count for more. Again, I don't disagree with the premise, but I just want to know by what bizzare stretch of the imagination do corporations have more of a right to determine a government of and for the people than the people do themselves??
I seriously doubt the vast majority of customers check their merchant's political donations (or perhaps they do as I do and just assume they support anti-regulation Conservative candidates). Market forces would only work insofar as the candidates supported by mega-corporations allowed the market to work on their supporters. Much like the oil market in the U.S. today. I doubt anyone will suggest the free market is at work in the US Oil Market, and I believe it's laughable to suggest that a lack of free market pressure has in some way been detrimental to it.
As far as forming a corp gives up rights: First, I disagree with the premise. I do not see how investing in a corporation and setting it up with a board of directors somehow infringes upon your rights. Which rights are you referring to? Secondly, you voluntarily gave up those rights, and while the metaphor may be heavy-handed, just like criminals give up their right to vote when they commit a felony.
The Declaration of Independence mentions "inalienable human rights", and inalienable is defined as "incapable of being repudiated or given to another" (emphasis mine). Where exactly they get the idea that Corporations are equal to humans is absolutely foreign to me. And if they do in fact believe this, they what does the ruling discussed in the article mean for personal, individual right to privacy?
Just out of curiosity, what corporation has been held liable for any 'crime' prosecuted in a criminal court. I'm willing to believe it has happened, but I postulate that it is so rare for this to happen that the corporate personhood clause should go away.
How does giving a corporation personal rights and freedoms somehow protect the people within that corporation? Are their personal rights not protected by the same constitutional provisions that protects those of us NOT in a Corporation? By what moral imperative do their rights get 'protected' twice while mine may only be 'protected' once?
For example: Citizens United. Corporations have a right to free speech to support any candidate they so choose. Tell me, before this ruling did the actual human beings within this corporation not actually have those rights? Were they somehow barred from voting or donating their money? I fail to see how granting personhood to any corporation does anything but give members of that corporation extra protections under the constitution the rest of us do not have.
I'm guessing the water tasted better in your day, and the damn bananas could peel easier, but at the same time it snowed up to your elbows every winter and you had to walk everywhere you went, even down to the general store!
Sometimes things change guys.. and if it's a change for the more efficient or more profitable, it's a change that sticks. Management only cares things are back up as soon as possible, and Sys Admins get paid the same no matter what they do So there.
That seems a fair assessment on the face of it, but 80% or more of the total federal budget is military spending. And I agree military spending is WAY out of control. But since no one apparently wants to discuss cuts to military spending, perhaps we could find someplace in the other 20% of the budget that is inefficient. Surely there are actual stats and budget reports which can be referenced to find inefficiency.
My understanding is Government is actually quite efficient at what it does. Really only the military spending has a low return on investment (I would assume because it is difficult to quantify human lives both saved and taken as a per-dollar return). Medicare and Social Security as two examples really seem to out-perform commercial insurance companies when it comes to amount/quality of care per dollar.
/. So if you have reports of obvious waste that occurs in the public sector that doesn't occur in the private sector I would be happy to see it. I'm open to having my mind changed, so I'd appreciate not being called an idiot before you present your evidence.
I think massive inefficiency of the government is sort of an assumed truth with very little evidence to back it up.
Now I realize there are TONS of anti-fed guys and gals out here on
Nathan Fillon has been on the record saying if he won the lottery he'd purchase the rights to the show, produce new eps and release it as an internet series.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/HelpNathanBuyFF
Apparently some people are taking him up on his word.
Yep, Gold Standard is gone the way of the Dodo, or Firefly. It might be a damn shame, but no use trying to get it back, cause like car-keys in a lavaflow, they're gone man, they're gone.
Also, my sentence up there was from The West Wing.
Umm... what? How exactly to you defeat inflation.. wait...
Does the President have a secret plan to fight inflation?
I daresay that is EXACTLY what being slapped in the face with titties is like. Much like being hit in the head with a baseball back is 'like' being beaten to death with a long cylindrical wooden or aluminum club.
Well obviously what Mitnick did was much worse than killing people... he stole money from wealthy people! I think it's pretty obvious by just about every measure of our American society that stealing from the wealthy is a much more dire crime than murder.
Stealing from the poor? not so much.
lol right, it takes a spine to bash Microsoft on Slashdot. My mistake.
If I had points I'd mod you up. But since I don't take solace in the fact that I'll be very sad when you modded down into oblivion.
People 'round these parts don't much like being asked to contribute positively where Microsoft is involved.
http://furiousfanboys.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Batman_Alignment.jpg
:)
There is apparently enough evidence to give him any alignment at all
I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I know at least with Satellite DVRs you still are encouraged to let them phone home in order to, I assume, send your viewing habits back to the company. If the box can't phone home it will definitely bug you about it, and I've heard there may even be a charge.
Honestly I thought some of the best music in videogames was in the original Homeworld. That is a game we need to see a sequel to sometime soon.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great game and that piece of music is well deserving... but are the grammy's in the habit of regularly handing out awards to music that's four or more years old?
You could make that arguement about any 'high price' on any good or service that is taxed by the gov't. I'm sure those taxes get passed on the consumer in all cases.
Of course, good luck watching the price fall should those taxes be taken away. The people pay 100 bucks a month, they'll always pay 100 bucks a month.
As long as you can afford the initial $624 a year, sounds like you have a pretty good thing going there. A lot of us can't.. or decide there isn't enough value to a smartphone for the purchase and trouble.
I'd wager cost is a MAJOR reason. Who has 300 bucks to spend on a phone, then 50 -70 bucks a month for a data plan when I can keep my 30 a month unlimited text and coast to coast calling, and get a phone for free every year? I'm sure if I actually got one one day I'd be addicted for life, but until then... no thanks until the price comes down.
Just out of curiosity, what was the game that dragged you into purchasing a PS3? For the life of me I can't find a single must-have game for that system to justify the cost of entry.
Actually heat is the one way pest control companies say you can be certain to be rid of them. They cannot live above a temperature of 100F or so. So in many cases they literally hook giant fans up to the windows and pump your house up to 120 or so for 24 - 48 hours to heat up everything in there, and you can rest assured any bedbugs in the building at that time are dead as doornails.
My understanding is that you can't use reflection of the sun to heat up a point on earth any higher than the temperature of the sun, because then you get a reversal of energy transfer... effectively the hot point on earth starts emanating energy that is reflected back towards the sun.
Well, for what it's worth, you still have the option to buy the games outright. Again, it's on their service, so no disks or anything. But you do not have to subscribe. In fact, the way it stands now, not all games are available under the subscription plans.
So, you can pay retail-ish prices for the games, and play them from now until the service shuts down (however many years that might be), or you can subscribe and get a dozen or more games to play without restriction which may or may not be the newest most popular games on the service.
Of course, we do still live in a thermodynamic universe. Disorder will always outweigh order. And again, my analogy was mainly to show a very fundamentalist superior at my workplace that evolution is understandable (his argument at the time was Evolution was such high-level science that believe scientists about it took as much, if not more, faith as to believe a preacher about creationism). Once I showed him that different pressure exerted on a reproducible item changes that item over time, and he could actually see it in his mind's eye. I think it opened his eyes about a lot of things.
/. :).
Yes if I was arguing with some book writing, bowtie wearing purveyor of Intelligent Design, I'm sure my analogy could easily be picked apart. As it has been here on
Now... onto the randomness of mutation. I totally agree with what you wrote above. 100 percent. However, you just didn't take it far enough, the natural selection part. Natural selection is what keeps the system from being random. The random mutations are put through a funnel in the test for fitness in the environment. There is a "direction" involved. Yes, random mutations are ridiculously dangerous to a family, but by only selecting those more fit than the previous generation means as a species, there is an order involved in the system. I'm paraphrasing Richard Dawkins himself when I say this btw. Mutation may be random, evolution is not.