I would agree with you, if the supermarket staff were friendly and interesting. But like anything worthwhile these days, that would cost extra. I blame this squarely on the huge big-box retailers that ran most of the little guys out of business.
But again, that's the consumer's fault for choosing to save a little on the bill over supporting the local guys. So go figure...
Yeah, I usually punch in my Pink Lady apples as Red Delicious, because they're cheaper. I'm such a scoundrel. Haha, maybe they why they want the cashier doing the lookups.
I try to avoid doing arithmetic at all costs. I rely on a calculator. I am just very bad with it, and I make a lot of errors. I can do high level math fine, assuming I don't get the arithmetic wrong. I think some people are just better wired for doing it in their head.
To be honest, I don't know what those look like either, nor what the taste like. I consider myself an educated person. I'm not sure I can really fault a supermarket cashier for not knowing, considering their wages.
And that's just the issue, I think. In an effort to cut costs and lower prices, they pay their employees less, and offer less training. After all, training costs money, and trained employees cost more than untrained ones.
I would guess if you went to a farmer's market, or a specialty food store, you could get the kind of service you're looking for, but you're going to pay for it in either higher cost of goods, or inconvenience.
You could use something like FAT, where you have clusters. Say, break a file into 4 KiB blocks. You could replace a current block, but if you inserted more than 4 KiB of data, you'd have to add it to the end of the file. Of course, then fragmentation would be an issue. But I guess it would work.
When you "decrypted" the file, it would assemble all the unencrypted blocks in the correct sequence, much like FAT does.
Your host may not consider RBL's to be "filtering". Maybe the hooked up to Spamhaus all the sudden. That'll cause a dramatic decrease in spam, but I can see why they might not call it "filtering" in the sense you're thinking.
Smart sites are doing something to check and see if you're blocking ads. I notice that I have to disable AdBlock on imeem.com or it will only play the first song in a playlist.
I'm sure there is a way around it, but I haven't hacked at it enough. Not really bugging me that much. Every way I can think of to implement such an "ad checker" can be defeated.
On the same token, they probably wouldn't find it profitable to run cabling out to sparsely-populated rural areas. The same is true for all utilities, though.
Yeah, but if I, being 25, can live to 125, what will be the outlook in exactly 100 years? In 2108, I cannot even imagine what medical (or computer) technology will be available.
Consider that antibiotics as we know them were only discovered in 1928, not yet 100 years in the past from now. We are very near on the verge (I think) of having an anti-viral silver bullet. The other leading causes of death are related to the circulatory system (heart failure, stroke), and cancer.
Cancer treatment has come so far in even 30 years that it's gone from being terminal to being inconvenient. As for heart failure, we're in the earliest stages now of synthetic hearts, and I have no doubts that technology will vastly improve.
Stroke is a tough one, but also further down the list of causes of death. The risk factors are definitely in decline. There are less smokers than ever before, and more people concerned about a healthy lifestyle. With the obesity epidemic hitting the limelight, I think we'll only see more of this type of behavior, as well as more treatments for its associated problems, like high blood pressure.
Ultimately, or medical knowledge, and indeed our knowledge in general, is not progressing at a liner rate. There is a very steep curve. I see no reason why this trend won't continue, short of a massive, global catastrophe.
Even if it doesn't happen in my lifetime, we eventually will find a way to cheat death.
Whenever I see an AC respond to an AC, I can't help but wonder if they're not both the same person. Obviously, they're not trying to get Karma or the reply would be under the account.
But consider: a normal troll post would be modded down and off the radar. However, a +5 reply to a troll post shows up, and so everyone clicks up to read the original trolling post. Right?
Am I just paranoid? Should I tighten the straps on my tinfoil hat?
Don't you love the way that everyone in the world gets more respect than the local IT department? Anything a vendor, friend, or the internet says is completely valid and true, but if it comes out of the mouth of the IT department, it must be wrong.
1) Games are expensive for my budget. I don't feel like it's MY fault I don't have gobs of money to spend on games. Either way -- my piracy isn't hurting the developer because I couldn't buy the game anyway. Maybe someday I might be able to by that developer's game, if my personal financial situation improves.
2) Support. What if I buy a game and it doesn't work for some reason? What if my hardware version has some little bug that causes problems that make it unplayable? Most places won't allow you to return opened software, and I can't say that I feel comfortable relying on the developer to either resolve the issue, or refund my money.
3) Investment. I think of a game as an investment. Something I buy once, and can enjoy as much as I like. I DON'T feel like just being able to play the game is worth anything. I want the game to come with a poster, maybe a tshirt. Something value-added that doesn't really add much expense, but gives me a little something extra. Most games these days are just a DVD. Or worse, they're a download.
More importantly, if I am making an investment, I want to be able to try out what I'm going to be buying. Most game demos these days are a joke, and shareware seems to be a thing of the past. For example, I'd be interested to try Age of Conan, but I'm not paying $60 for it, only to find I might hate it. And since it's a game I CAN'T pirate a copy of... I'm just not going to fool with it. So they could be losing a sale + many months of subscription.
4) DRM. I refuse to have to have the CD in to play a game. I don't want to authenticate with some servers to activate my copy. I'm going to find a way to crack that if possible. I figure if I'm going to have to crack it anyway, I might as well pirate the software to begin with.
It boils down to: I want to play the game MY way, on MY computer, under MY conditions.
Absolutely! It's only racism when you're directing it at non-whites. It's been that way for a while.
This is why most comedians can make jew jokes, or asian jokes, but never black jokes. Chink and kike are okay, but if you come out and say nigger, you're a horrible racist bastard. But remember, only white people can't say that word. It's okay to say it if you're black.
When you think about it, the fact that there is a double standard is the real racism.
Why don't they even have to travel there? Why can't their just all telecommute, so they can do all their work while not being pulled away from their constituents. It just makes more sense to me that way.
Because most people don't need the muscle mass? It just takes more energy to keep. Not that most people in the U.S. don't consume way more energy than they need...
They're not mutually exclusive. The people without time to sit on WoW all day still want the good gear, so they bot up to get it.
In other words, the more hardcore you are, the more rewards you get. It's actually not even a sound business plan, since everyone pays the same monthly fee. The more people play, the less profitable their subscription is.
We're in a democracy. If the majority of the people say they want the government to step in and do this, then not only does the government have businesses to do it, they have a sworn oath to do it.
The government is supposed to just be a tool to exercise the will of the people. In this case, I think it's doing something right. I'm not trying to claim they, overall, are very competent in that role, but in this case I think they are.
I'm not disregarding your argument, but it's full of fallacies.
For one, how do you know that there will be more people relying on government assistance every generation?
Second, how can the wealthy change the system, either democratically or via revolution, if they are outnumbered by the poor?
Third, you seem to suggest that our "resources" are only cash -- which is generated or owned by the wealthy. Once the cash is used up, it's gone. That's not how an economy works at all.
Consider this simple example: The wealthy own a supermarket. The wealthy are taxed heavily, and their funds given to the poor. The poor then travel to the supermarket and buy food. This returns the money to the wealthy.
What you're overlooking is that the poor, as a class, is generally not constituted of layabouts and leeches. Many fall into the "working poor" category. They fill a critical niche in the economy. The wealthy (who usually employ the working poor) could CHOOSE to pay them more, and settle for less profit. But they don't. Instead, they essentially force a democratic (majority) decision to sanction them with higher taxes which are then reallocated in various ways to the poor.
If you want to look at it in terms of resources: consider the balance of resources consumed vs. resources produced. I think you'll quickly realize the wealthy consume far more resources than they produce. So from a "laws of nature" or "resource use" standpoint, the wealthy are the problem.
It all has to balance out. If 1 unit of resources is a minimum to live, then each person, on average, has to create 1 unit of resources.
We hypothetically might assume that out of 100 people:
80 produce 2 units (poor/middle class: hard work) 10 produce 1 units (upper/middle class: leisurely work) 10 produce 0 units (upper class: no work)
80 use 1 unit (poor/middle class: basic lifestyle) 10 use 2 units (upper/middle class: comfortable lifestyle) 10 use 7 units (upper class: lavish lifetyle)
And that's how it works out EVEN WITH the robin-hooding that goes on by the government.
You don't exist in a vacuum. The wino down the street posting on youtube adds a value to society of no greater or less than your own. It's the "all men are created equal" idea. You figured out or lucked into how to accumulate resources in the system (the Market). Congrats. Not everyone does, nor should they.
Where do you draw the line? Do you think everyone should have food? Shelter? Clothing? What about health care? What about transportation? What about access to knowledge? So you're saying it's okay if the wino goes down to the library to upload his video, but he can't do it from home?
Funds often NEED to be redistributed. Why? Because the economy NEEDS minimum-wage-paying jobs to function, even though it's not enough to really live on. If everyone were squarely in the middle class, I'd agree with you about entitlements, but they're not, and they never will be. As such, the government has to robin-hood a little bit to keep things running. I don't know why people get so turned upside down over it.
It's a little like arguing that they should do away with public transit because you have a car and never use public transit, so everyone else should just get their own car, too.
Of course the people on the train are probably wondering why they get taxed equally to pay for roads which they don't even use.
Slashdot Mirror
I would agree with you, if the supermarket staff were friendly and interesting. But like anything worthwhile these days, that would cost extra. I blame this squarely on the huge big-box retailers that ran most of the little guys out of business.
But again, that's the consumer's fault for choosing to save a little on the bill over supporting the local guys. So go figure...
Yeah, I usually punch in my Pink Lady apples as Red Delicious, because they're cheaper. I'm such a scoundrel. Haha, maybe they why they want the cashier doing the lookups.
I try to avoid doing arithmetic at all costs. I rely on a calculator. I am just very bad with it, and I make a lot of errors. I can do high level math fine, assuming I don't get the arithmetic wrong. I think some people are just better wired for doing it in their head.
To be honest, I don't know what those look like either, nor what the taste like. I consider myself an educated person. I'm not sure I can really fault a supermarket cashier for not knowing, considering their wages.
And that's just the issue, I think. In an effort to cut costs and lower prices, they pay their employees less, and offer less training. After all, training costs money, and trained employees cost more than untrained ones.
I would guess if you went to a farmer's market, or a specialty food store, you could get the kind of service you're looking for, but you're going to pay for it in either higher cost of goods, or inconvenience.
You could use something like FAT, where you have clusters. Say, break a file into 4 KiB blocks. You could replace a current block, but if you inserted more than 4 KiB of data, you'd have to add it to the end of the file. Of course, then fragmentation would be an issue. But I guess it would work.
When you "decrypted" the file, it would assemble all the unencrypted blocks in the correct sequence, much like FAT does.
Your host may not consider RBL's to be "filtering". Maybe the hooked up to Spamhaus all the sudden. That'll cause a dramatic decrease in spam, but I can see why they might not call it "filtering" in the sense you're thinking.
The goal is terrorism is not to kill people, it's to create terror. Dying had nothing to do with it. It's psychological warfare.
I'm going to guess "formal".
Smart sites are doing something to check and see if you're blocking ads. I notice that I have to disable AdBlock on imeem.com or it will only play the first song in a playlist.
I'm sure there is a way around it, but I haven't hacked at it enough. Not really bugging me that much. Every way I can think of to implement such an "ad checker" can be defeated.
If you wanted to blow the extra bandwidth, you could get around that, too. Grab the image onto your server, and let the user get it from there.
Most sites won't do this, because I think it falls way into the tinfoil hat department. :P
On the same token, they probably wouldn't find it profitable to run cabling out to sparsely-populated rural areas. The same is true for all utilities, though.
Yeah, but if I, being 25, can live to 125, what will be the outlook in exactly 100 years? In 2108, I cannot even imagine what medical (or computer) technology will be available.
Consider that antibiotics as we know them were only discovered in 1928, not yet 100 years in the past from now. We are very near on the verge (I think) of having an anti-viral silver bullet. The other leading causes of death are related to the circulatory system (heart failure, stroke), and cancer.
Cancer treatment has come so far in even 30 years that it's gone from being terminal to being inconvenient. As for heart failure, we're in the earliest stages now of synthetic hearts, and I have no doubts that technology will vastly improve.
Stroke is a tough one, but also further down the list of causes of death. The risk factors are definitely in decline. There are less smokers than ever before, and more people concerned about a healthy lifestyle. With the obesity epidemic hitting the limelight, I think we'll only see more of this type of behavior, as well as more treatments for its associated problems, like high blood pressure.
Ultimately, or medical knowledge, and indeed our knowledge in general, is not progressing at a liner rate. There is a very steep curve. I see no reason why this trend won't continue, short of a massive, global catastrophe.
Even if it doesn't happen in my lifetime, we eventually will find a way to cheat death.
And gay bars.
Whenever I see an AC respond to an AC, I can't help but wonder if they're not both the same person. Obviously, they're not trying to get Karma or the reply would be under the account.
But consider: a normal troll post would be modded down and off the radar. However, a +5 reply to a troll post shows up, and so everyone clicks up to read the original trolling post. Right?
Am I just paranoid? Should I tighten the straps on my tinfoil hat?
Don't you love the way that everyone in the world gets more respect than the local IT department? Anything a vendor, friend, or the internet says is completely valid and true, but if it comes out of the mouth of the IT department, it must be wrong.
1) Games are expensive for my budget. I don't feel like it's MY fault I don't have gobs of money to spend on games. Either way -- my piracy isn't hurting the developer because I couldn't buy the game anyway. Maybe someday I might be able to by that developer's game, if my personal financial situation improves.
2) Support. What if I buy a game and it doesn't work for some reason? What if my hardware version has some little bug that causes problems that make it unplayable? Most places won't allow you to return opened software, and I can't say that I feel comfortable relying on the developer to either resolve the issue, or refund my money.
3) Investment. I think of a game as an investment. Something I buy once, and can enjoy as much as I like. I DON'T feel like just being able to play the game is worth anything. I want the game to come with a poster, maybe a tshirt. Something value-added that doesn't really add much expense, but gives me a little something extra. Most games these days are just a DVD. Or worse, they're a download.
More importantly, if I am making an investment, I want to be able to try out what I'm going to be buying. Most game demos these days are a joke, and shareware seems to be a thing of the past. For example, I'd be interested to try Age of Conan, but I'm not paying $60 for it, only to find I might hate it. And since it's a game I CAN'T pirate a copy of... I'm just not going to fool with it. So they could be losing a sale + many months of subscription.
4) DRM. I refuse to have to have the CD in to play a game. I don't want to authenticate with some servers to activate my copy. I'm going to find a way to crack that if possible. I figure if I'm going to have to crack it anyway, I might as well pirate the software to begin with.
It boils down to: I want to play the game MY way, on MY computer, under MY conditions.
Absolutely! It's only racism when you're directing it at non-whites. It's been that way for a while.
This is why most comedians can make jew jokes, or asian jokes, but never black jokes. Chink and kike are okay, but if you come out and say nigger, you're a horrible racist bastard. But remember, only white people can't say that word. It's okay to say it if you're black.
When you think about it, the fact that there is a double standard is the real racism.
I know you're joking -- but a google search for "occult government" turns up a lot of interesting reading.
Why don't they even have to travel there? Why can't their just all telecommute, so they can do all their work while not being pulled away from their constituents. It just makes more sense to me that way.
Because most people don't need the muscle mass? It just takes more energy to keep. Not that most people in the U.S. don't consume way more energy than they need...
They're not mutually exclusive. The people without time to sit on WoW all day still want the good gear, so they bot up to get it.
In other words, the more hardcore you are, the more rewards you get. It's actually not even a sound business plan, since everyone pays the same monthly fee. The more people play, the less profitable their subscription is.
We're in a democracy. If the majority of the people say they want the government to step in and do this, then not only does the government have businesses to do it, they have a sworn oath to do it.
The government is supposed to just be a tool to exercise the will of the people. In this case, I think it's doing something right. I'm not trying to claim they, overall, are very competent in that role, but in this case I think they are.
OMG. I wish I had mod points. That's the funniest thing I've seen in a while! xD
I'm not disregarding your argument, but it's full of fallacies.
For one, how do you know that there will be more people relying on government assistance every generation?
Second, how can the wealthy change the system, either democratically or via revolution, if they are outnumbered by the poor?
Third, you seem to suggest that our "resources" are only cash -- which is generated or owned by the wealthy. Once the cash is used up, it's gone. That's not how an economy works at all.
Consider this simple example: The wealthy own a supermarket. The wealthy are taxed heavily, and their funds given to the poor. The poor then travel to the supermarket and buy food. This returns the money to the wealthy.
What you're overlooking is that the poor, as a class, is generally not constituted of layabouts and leeches. Many fall into the "working poor" category. They fill a critical niche in the economy. The wealthy (who usually employ the working poor) could CHOOSE to pay them more, and settle for less profit. But they don't. Instead, they essentially force a democratic (majority) decision to sanction them with higher taxes which are then reallocated in various ways to the poor.
If you want to look at it in terms of resources: consider the balance of resources consumed vs. resources produced. I think you'll quickly realize the wealthy consume far more resources than they produce. So from a "laws of nature" or "resource use" standpoint, the wealthy are the problem.
It all has to balance out. If 1 unit of resources is a minimum to live, then each person, on average, has to create 1 unit of resources.
We hypothetically might assume that out of 100 people:
80 produce 2 units (poor/middle class: hard work)
10 produce 1 units (upper/middle class: leisurely work)
10 produce 0 units (upper class: no work)
80 use 1 unit (poor/middle class: basic lifestyle)
10 use 2 units (upper/middle class: comfortable lifestyle)
10 use 7 units (upper class: lavish lifetyle)
And that's how it works out EVEN WITH the robin-hooding that goes on by the government.
You don't exist in a vacuum. The wino down the street posting on youtube adds a value to society of no greater or less than your own. It's the "all men are created equal" idea. You figured out or lucked into how to accumulate resources in the system (the Market). Congrats. Not everyone does, nor should they.
Where do you draw the line? Do you think everyone should have food? Shelter? Clothing? What about health care? What about transportation? What about access to knowledge? So you're saying it's okay if the wino goes down to the library to upload his video, but he can't do it from home?
Funds often NEED to be redistributed. Why? Because the economy NEEDS minimum-wage-paying jobs to function, even though it's not enough to really live on. If everyone were squarely in the middle class, I'd agree with you about entitlements, but they're not, and they never will be. As such, the government has to robin-hood a little bit to keep things running. I don't know why people get so turned upside down over it.
It's a little like arguing that they should do away with public transit because you have a car and never use public transit, so everyone else should just get their own car, too.
Of course the people on the train are probably wondering why they get taxed equally to pay for roads which they don't even use.