I wouldn't mind a solar thermal power station in my back yard, but then I'm exceptional...
It isn't as if a coal or nuclear plant enhances property values either; they have just been around longer. I think people just object to change and would scream "NO!" no matter how positive the change is.
Sounds like things have been tightened up a bit since I left the service 15 years ago.
Back then theft was so common some soldiers were afraid of taking their gear out of their locked lockers even when they needed to use it, and sometimes vehicles wouldn't start in the morning because the starter had been removed.
One NCO in my unit used to leave base in a military vehicle (against regulations, but nobody were willing to stop it) at lunch every day. When he left the back of the truck was full of boxes; when he came back it was empty. The motor pool sergeant used to order extra parts, some for vehicles or equipment the unit didn't even have. When it arrived it just disappeared. Every time we went to a range a truckload of MREs disappeared, and so on.
And that was just in peacetime on a fort in the US. When we went out to play war, equipment disappeared at such a rate I don't think any unit in the battalion was combat ready at any time. We had whole trucks just disappear. Weapons and ammunition were disappearing. Uniforms, battle rattle, NBC suits, gas masks, whatever was in the Army's inventory disappeared all around us. And the quartermasters all had money like the rest of us had sand in our underwear.
A few items off decommissioned fighters sounds pretty innocent by comparison, and those NBC suits may just be the last of those my old supply sergeant had in his basement after leaving the service.
I'm not holding my breath either. The current iTunes model works just fine as far as I'm concerned, though a few upgrades such as better quality files, no DRM, fairer deals for artists and more reasonable pricing would certainly be welcome.
Subscription services, on the other hand, demand that I either pay even if I don't download any music that month, or else go through the process of canceling, and in many cases I can't even browse their selection so I can tell if I they have any music I am even interested in before paying. Apparently most don't.
I don't mind paying for the music I download, but I do mind products I want being bundled with products I don't want, and I do mind paying and not knowing what I get or if I get anything at all for my money.
And I really hate it when somebody assumes that because I own a certain product such as an iPod, then I obviously also engage in certain behaviours, such as illegally downloading music, or buying music from the iTunes store. If Apple thinks that I will want to pay an extra $20 for my iPod and then download 20 songs from iTunes, they are most certainly not "getting it". They are losing it!
Think I was more answering your friend, but he probably wouldn't be convinced by my impeccable logic?
And whether or not the government is doing something wrong or not depends on how we define "wrong". Many people I know just bleat "but it is to make us safe from terrorists!" and that just can't be wrong, cant it?
Me, I'm not so much worried about terrorists. Statistics indicate I'm not very likely to encounter them. Repressive government, on the other hand, seems a much more likely threat to me personally.
They were only going after "the bad guys" in the Soviet Union too. They spied one everybody they could manage to spy on, but only those who were perceived as a threat to those in power, by those in power, were harassed, arrested or "disappeared". So what is the difference, really?
When I'm on the internet at work my IP address is one registered to my company's parent company in a different state, not even close to my actual location. So I see all these ads telling me what great deals I can get on real estate, insurance, and bachelor's degrees in this other little town I have never even been to. I get a certain perverted kind of pleasure from that!
I think ordinary users just don't look at technical specs. Therefore they think that a $500 laptop automatically is a better deal than a $900 laptop, even if the $500 machine is an unmitigated piece of crap and 10 years out of date, and the $900 machine ordinarily would cost $1,200. But at the same time, if a slick salesman claims they are better off with the $1,500 laptop than the identical $800 laptop, they often accept that without questions. Simply because they don't know any better. This is also why they flock to the overpriced mega-stores. They don't know anything about computers, so they just assume this big, slick shop must be the best place and have the best deals. And many don't even know that Windows is a separate product and that something else can be used in it's place.
I observed a similar thing with the angelfishes I had some years ago. If somebody walked in front of the tank they would swim towards the front/top of the tank. If it was me (who fed them), they would then swim to the end where the feeding funnel was, but if it was my ex husband (who did not feed them), they would lose interest and go back to what they were doing previously.
To some degree it is the "victims" who are the problem. Do any of these groups take into account how many kids are actually on the internet looking for various forms of excitement, including sex with adults? In my area there have been several cases of young girls (11-14 year olds) who have been raped by guys they met on the internet. In all cases the kids were on the internet for the purpose of finding older sex partners. This does not make what the guys (all 18 or older) did right by any means, but they were not necessarily the ones doing the initial solicitation. Kids may need as much protection against themselves as against online perverts, and if parents aren't providing that protection, then who should be doing it?
Something like this happened to a girl from my high school class. Her parents didn't want her to have a vaccination, I think it was rubella. Later she got the disease while pregnant and had a retarded child as a result. The parents were the kind of quasi-religious people who don't believe in science. The daughter was a bit better, but she didn't even know she hadn't had the same vaccinations as other girls so she didn't know about the risk when she got pregnant. And she was the one who had to deal with the result of her parents' paranoia. Too bad for her and the kid, but at least it made people in the community realize the risk was real and other young women who hadn't had the vaccination did make sure they got it. Even if their parents said it was wrong.
Yeah, I factored in the performance drag caused by virus software, so I picked a Mac Pro with 3GHz processors, and a Dell with 3.2GHz processors. That might still not be enough to get the same performance, particularly not if running Vista. But by the time I was done, the Dell was almost $1000 more and I had yet to calculate how much my time to set it up and nanny it would cost, so I think I'll go with the Mac.
Same with the laptops. For over a year now I have been considering replacing my 12" Powerbook. I was hoping for a smaller Macbook Pro, and would probably bought the Air if it had a decent graphics processor. I also considered the Lenovo X-series, but since I can't even get one with Linux I kind of lost interest after thinking of what I would need to do to keep a Windows machine alive, considering my coffee shop wi-fi habit.
It often surprises people, but when comparing computers with the same features, Macs often turns out to cost less. Yes, you can get a Windows or Linux PC for $199, but it does not exactly have the performance of a Mac Pro. I was recently looking for a high performance PC, and found the Mac Pro was actually the cheapest one that met my requirements. What surprised even me is that even if I assumed I would be buying RAM and a display from Apple, it came out to less than a similarly equipped Dell, with Dell RAM and display.
Yeah, but when Microsoft does what Apple and the Linux community has been doing for years, then all of a sudden it is big news and a shitload of people pretend it is something entirely new. Which it is not.
Microsoft has given away software before to secure their market dominance, and it is not unusual for them to sell at a loss to students. I can remember $5 copies of Office in the college bookstore when I was a student, and various other "generous" offers which I could not take advantage of since they wouldn't run on my Linux, Amiga or Apple computers.
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I wouldn't mind a solar thermal power station in my back yard, but then I'm exceptional...
It isn't as if a coal or nuclear plant enhances property values either; they have just been around longer. I think people just object to change and would scream "NO!" no matter how positive the change is.
Why not simply build solar thermal power stations closer to consumers?
For us humble taxpayers, yes, but won't somebody think of the weapons industry?
Maybe all the good rivets were used up on the Olympic?
Sounds like things have been tightened up a bit since I left the service 15 years ago. Back then theft was so common some soldiers were afraid of taking their gear out of their locked lockers even when they needed to use it, and sometimes vehicles wouldn't start in the morning because the starter had been removed. One NCO in my unit used to leave base in a military vehicle (against regulations, but nobody were willing to stop it) at lunch every day. When he left the back of the truck was full of boxes; when he came back it was empty. The motor pool sergeant used to order extra parts, some for vehicles or equipment the unit didn't even have. When it arrived it just disappeared. Every time we went to a range a truckload of MREs disappeared, and so on. And that was just in peacetime on a fort in the US. When we went out to play war, equipment disappeared at such a rate I don't think any unit in the battalion was combat ready at any time. We had whole trucks just disappear. Weapons and ammunition were disappearing. Uniforms, battle rattle, NBC suits, gas masks, whatever was in the Army's inventory disappeared all around us. And the quartermasters all had money like the rest of us had sand in our underwear. A few items off decommissioned fighters sounds pretty innocent by comparison, and those NBC suits may just be the last of those my old supply sergeant had in his basement after leaving the service.
Yeah, but they don't have enough features yet.
Then the woman who hasn't already teamed up with another algorithm is most attractive...
I'm not holding my breath either. The current iTunes model works just fine as far as I'm concerned, though a few upgrades such as better quality files, no DRM, fairer deals for artists and more reasonable pricing would certainly be welcome.
Subscription services, on the other hand, demand that I either pay even if I don't download any music that month, or else go through the process of canceling, and in many cases I can't even browse their selection so I can tell if I they have any music I am even interested in before paying. Apparently most don't.
I don't mind paying for the music I download, but I do mind products I want being bundled with products I don't want, and I do mind paying and not knowing what I get or if I get anything at all for my money.
And I really hate it when somebody assumes that because I own a certain product such as an iPod, then I obviously also engage in certain behaviours, such as illegally downloading music, or buying music from the iTunes store.
If Apple thinks that I will want to pay an extra $20 for my iPod and then download 20 songs from iTunes, they are most certainly not "getting it". They are losing it!
PCs are cheap. Macs are inexpensive.
Subtle, but important difference.
Instead of drugs, can't they just prescribe me a new computer? I'm sure that would take care of all my problems!
Wouldn't it be more important to get Comcast to follow it?
Think I was more answering your friend, but he probably wouldn't be convinced by my impeccable logic?
And whether or not the government is doing something wrong or not depends on how we define "wrong". Many people I know just bleat "but it is to make us safe from terrorists!" and that just can't be wrong, cant it?
Me, I'm not so much worried about terrorists. Statistics indicate I'm not very likely to encounter them. Repressive government, on the other hand, seems a much more likely threat to me personally.
My sex life? Hey, wait... Nothing to see here, just move along...
They were only going after "the bad guys" in the Soviet Union too. They spied one everybody they could manage to spy on, but only those who were perceived as a threat to those in power, by those in power, were harassed, arrested or "disappeared".
So what is the difference, really?
When I'm on the internet at work my IP address is one registered to my company's parent company in a different state, not even close to my actual location. So I see all these ads telling me what great deals I can get on real estate, insurance, and bachelor's degrees in this other little town I have never even been to.
I get a certain perverted kind of pleasure from that!
I think ordinary users just don't look at technical specs. Therefore they think that a $500 laptop automatically is a better deal than a $900 laptop, even if the $500 machine is an unmitigated piece of crap and 10 years out of date, and the $900 machine ordinarily would cost $1,200.
But at the same time, if a slick salesman claims they are better off with the $1,500 laptop than the identical $800 laptop, they often accept that without questions. Simply because they don't know any better. This is also why they flock to the overpriced mega-stores. They don't know anything about computers, so they just assume this big, slick shop must be the best place and have the best deals.
And many don't even know that Windows is a separate product and that something else can be used in it's place.
I observed a similar thing with the angelfishes I had some years ago. If somebody walked in front of the tank they would swim towards the front/top of the tank. If it was me (who fed them), they would then swim to the end where the feeding funnel was, but if it was my ex husband (who did not feed them), they would lose interest and go back to what they were doing previously.
You got that right!
To some degree it is the "victims" who are the problem. Do any of these groups take into account how many kids are actually on the internet looking for various forms of excitement, including sex with adults?
In my area there have been several cases of young girls (11-14 year olds) who have been raped by guys they met on the internet. In all cases the kids were on the internet for the purpose of finding older sex partners. This does not make what the guys (all 18 or older) did right by any means, but they were not necessarily the ones doing the initial solicitation.
Kids may need as much protection against themselves as against online perverts, and if parents aren't providing that protection, then who should be doing it?
Something like this happened to a girl from my high school class. Her parents didn't want her to have a vaccination, I think it was rubella. Later she got the disease while pregnant and had a retarded child as a result.
The parents were the kind of quasi-religious people who don't believe in science. The daughter was a bit better, but she didn't even know she hadn't had the same vaccinations as other girls so she didn't know about the risk when she got pregnant. And she was the one who had to deal with the result of her parents' paranoia.
Too bad for her and the kid, but at least it made people in the community realize the risk was real and other young women who hadn't had the vaccination did make sure they got it. Even if their parents said it was wrong.
Yeah, I factored in the performance drag caused by virus software, so I picked a Mac Pro with 3GHz processors, and a Dell with 3.2GHz processors. That might still not be enough to get the same performance, particularly not if running Vista.
But by the time I was done, the Dell was almost $1000 more and I had yet to calculate how much my time to set it up and nanny it would cost, so I think I'll go with the Mac.
Same with the laptops. For over a year now I have been considering replacing my 12" Powerbook. I was hoping for a smaller Macbook Pro, and would probably bought the Air if it had a decent graphics processor.
I also considered the Lenovo X-series, but since I can't even get one with Linux I kind of lost interest after thinking of what I would need to do to keep a Windows machine alive, considering my coffee shop wi-fi habit.
It often surprises people, but when comparing computers with the same features, Macs often turns out to cost less.
Yes, you can get a Windows or Linux PC for $199, but it does not exactly have the performance of a Mac Pro. I was recently looking for a high performance PC, and found the Mac Pro was actually the cheapest one that met my requirements. What surprised even me is that even if I assumed I would be buying RAM and a display from Apple, it came out to less than a similarly equipped Dell, with Dell RAM and display.
Because they are Microsoft?
Yeah, but when Microsoft does what Apple and the Linux community has been doing for years, then all of a sudden it is big news and a shitload of people pretend it is something entirely new. Which it is not.
Microsoft has given away software before to secure their market dominance, and it is not unusual for them to sell at a loss to students. I can remember $5 copies of Office in the college bookstore when I was a student, and various other "generous" offers which I could not take advantage of since they wouldn't run on my Linux, Amiga or Apple computers.
When we become cool enough to be attractive on the grey market?