I'd also like to point out that these modern 'underpowered' 40mpg compacts that have been flying off the lots have more power on average than the V6s of the 90s that everyone thought were gutsy. YOU DO NOT NEED 300HP TO BE SAFE ON THE ROAD.
Yet another example of libertarian ideologues blinding themselves to reality and stretching to find ANY way to defend their ridiculous and harmful religion.
The fact remains that you are vastly, immensely more likely to survive an accident in a tiny little Smart than you would in a giant 72 buick skylark. Better design and better materials goes a long further than more weight.
I'd also wonder if they accounted for the reduced numbers of deaths from the reduced air pollution that comes with increased CAFE standards and the fact that you would in reality not be significantly more likely to die in a modern compact than you would a V8-powered muscle car weighing 600 extra pounds or some top-heavy roll-happy SUV monstrosity weighing 1000 extra lbs in most accidents. Did they also account for the fact that increased CAFE standards have led to more efficient full-sized vehicles more than they've led to a proliferation of lightweight subcompacts? Because it's pretty clear that the increased sales of subcompacts has had more to do with their low price in this economy than any meaningful gas savings over their larger brethren in the compact class.
At this point MOST car manufacturers offer a 40mpg 'compact' car that's actually larger than your average mid-90s midsize family sedan, with many more amenities and a much nicer interior, to boot.
They are ABSOLUTELY just as fascist and evil as we make them out to be. You can pooh-pooh it all you like, but you're just deluding yourself to excuse your inaction. And besides, we don't hate cops, we just hate the ones that trample our rights, like the ones that serve no-knock warrants for minor drug crimes, and the ones that don't bother with warrants, and the ones that taze you for a 'bad attitude', and the ones that shoot first and ask questions later, and the ones that threaten and harass citizen journalists, and the ones that beat protesters exercising their democratic rights, and the ones that kick people out of their homes when they get a letter from the bank, and the ones that target the poor for harassment, and the ones that dress up like SS officers for fun, and the ones that hate minorities, and the ones that escape corruption charges out of police solidarity, and the ones that tamper with evidence, and the ones that think they should not be held accountable for their actions. Really, it's just the 95% majority of cops that we hate. The rest are awesome, and bravo for standing up to a culture of pure, unmitigated evil.
It seems a WEE bit premature to be worrying about lost revenue because of efficiency gains, such that you need a way to tax all those free-loading enviro-geeks. Maybe wait until electric cars hit 1% of the market at least, before building taxes in such a way that you discourage their use...
I mean really, if we want to have any chance of maintaining our way of life whatsoever, given our critical mis-steps of the past 40 years and the emerging energy crisis popularly known as peak oil, we've got to move to electric and plug-in hybrid cars almost immediately, and we are YEARS behind schedule on that, meaning massive economic suffering in the decades to come.
And that's aside from the sheer stupidity of having a 700 pound motorcycle pay the same per-mile cost as a 3700 pound passenger car and a 37,000 pound truck. Gas taxes are the only fair way to have a use tax for highways, while simultaneously aiding the efficiency improvements so desperately needed if America is to remain economically viable. All the bureaucracy is already in place, we just raise the $.17 a gallon to $.50 a gallon or whatever, and then we can have all the roads and bridges we need. And really, if you begrudge $.17 out of $4 going towards building the roads you're using, you're already an asshole, it wouldn't be any different if the tax were twice as much. High efficiency vehicles, bicycle and public transit use are what we need to be encouraging. Making those who have the basic sense of decency and intelligence to make the right decisions about their personal transportation pay for highways at a level that's fundamentally disproportionate to the actual wear and tear their lightweight vehicles cause is ridiculous.
Why would you want to tax vehicle miles instead of gas used? Taxing gas promotes fuel efficiency AND carpooling, public transit, living closer to work, etc. It amounts to the same thing, yet I get the distinct feeling the ONLY reason this proposal is being floated is because an actual gas tax is seen as politically untenable, despite being more effective, less onerous (would you rather an extra $5 each time you fill up or pay $250 at the end of the year?), and proven to be effective in dozens of other nations with vastly more efficient vehicles than are popular here.
One more example of Democrats crippling themselves for sake of appeasing a 'political reality' that is at odds with doing what is necessary to preserve our nation's economy in the face of perpetually rising oil prices. Of course, that assumes that the Democrats actually cared about anything but securing enough corporate donations to win re-election.
It's called PUBLIC SCHOOL. Helping to make sure disadvantaged children have at least some opportunity to rise above their station in life since 1852. Yet another fine example of socialism's infinite superiority to unchecked capitalism. When run properly, (and it isn't), public education's improvement to the overall workforce's productivity and flexibility improves the general economy far more than it costs, a fact also true of higher education. Paying for your own higher education is a huge drain on the economy, and as a policy it is retained only because of corruption. The same is true of private health insurance.
'What incentive will there be to care for your own children if the state will provide a child's basic needs?' To paraphrase Barney Frank, what planet do you live on? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? Who asks a question like that?
I do not propose equality for all Americans. The liberal socialism implied by social works like public health care, education, and infrastructure does not suggest equality for all. It is not Marxism, it is not communism. It merely reflects the obvious fact that it is only when all members of a society have equal opportunity to achieve wealth in a capitalistic system will that system achieve maximum economic and social growth. In economic terms, free markets' ability to achieve greater results through competition are limited by the barriers to entry for that market. When it is so much easier for the child of a wealthy person to start a business or achieve success than the child of a poor person, the winner in the market is no longer decided on their individual merits. In this sense, a 'free market' economy rapidly becomes anti-competitive, insular, corrupt and ineffective.
This is basic shit. Wake the fuck up and get your head out of your emotional, fearful, brainwashed ass.
Satellite is completely unacceptable for any real net junkie, especially gamers. The ping is even higher than with dial-up. Man, I played FPS games over dial-up for a few years-- it's not so terrible as all that if you've got a good phone line. And of course, if you're out in the boonies you probably don't have a great phone line. My tip is this: get yourself a nice desktop replacement laptop like a Macbook Pro or some such, and mooch off some free hotspot in town. You'll spend about the same, and have a kickass lappy in the bargain. Might help you to prioritize some things differently. Find some roommates and get an apartment. Unless your parents are letting you stay for free, it's the way to go, even if you wind up spending three times as much on rent.
I had a guy come in to my work yesterday straight out of A Confederacy of Dunces, a huge fat man nearly in his 40s and living with his elderly mother, trying to return the guitar amp he'd bought because he couldn't get a good sound out of it with his inexperienced hands. Man, move out of your parents' house! Don't be that guy. Noone really cares (except any potential girlfriend) if you're living with your parents when you're 25, but something happens when you turn 30 and you won't have much in the way of friends or life. Suicide might become your only option. Get out there, get a job, make some money. If you can't get a job consider the idea that perhaps there's some aspect of your personality or attitude that is poorly suited to the hard realities of the working world, and endeavor to change those aspects. It's not that hard once you get started. I spent the last 7 years of my life not working (fortunately I did not have to live with my parents) and surfing the internet 10-16 hours a day, and I gotta tell you-- it's not that hard to work and make money and live on your own. It might not be the comforts you're adjusted to, but it's totally reasonable, and socially rewarding.
Speaking of which I gotta go to work to pay for my rent. Yes, it is a worthy tradeoff, and it does make your life more enjoyable to make it. Quit making excuses for yourself and go do it. The video games will still be there after work.
Is there anyone left out there who actually believes these assholes deserve to retain any degree of their unprecedented money, power, and political influence? Tell me I'm wrong, please. Maybe there's a whole big contingent of people out there who think listening to music without paying for it is actually stealing. Those are probably the same people who think musicians make more than a few cents per every album sold, and that every song 'stolen' represents lost revenue equal to the retail price of that song. In other words, the sadly ignorant. ASCAP is even worse-- only the top-selling bands make any significant money whatsoever from ASCAP licensing revenues. Meanwhile, they're making money for their legal department by suing the bars and clubs who host DJs and cover bands.
As a musician, I think that's a big crock of shit.
That said, I keep the RIAA off my back the old fashioned way-- I rip my friends' CDs rather than download off the net, and similarly share the wealth off-line. Not like I could've bought the Beatles' albums in the Apple Store anyway. And Sir McCartney certainly doesn't need it, if he even sees royalties from those sales anymore. Perhaps it's time to drop the copyright timelimits, yeah?
Ultimately, it's increasingly clear that these incestuous corporate associations not only don't have the best interests of the emerging world culture at heart, but are an active enemy to both their customers and the future of the very industry they claim to represent. I know the list of evil organizations in the world is getting over-long at this point, but they really do need to be stopped, along with all the other fucks out there wrecking civilization for everyone else.
I wonder if strong leadership and extensive organization could effect the degree of change the world needs before everything really goes to hell...
I was a fat kid, and thus I got bullied. I was a smart kid, and thus I got bullied. I was a poor kid who didn't have the 'right' clothes, and thus I got bullied. And as I became more and more bullied, I turned to food to allieviate my growing depression, which just made me fatter and fatter and more and more bullied. I faked being sick to get out of school whenever possible. I never did my homework (why should I when I could get an A on the test without it?) and so I always got poor grades, and learned a poor work ethic that has contributed to my current financial situation, because I was never challenged. What's worse, my fiercely independent parents taught me to respect only authority that deserved respect. Hence the no-doing-homework thing. I was socialized very early on fairly exclusively through intellectual discussions with intelligent adults, and so I found the stultifying lack of stimulation in school to be unacceptable right from the start of middle school. I was never excluded from 'adult' topics as a child, whether it was sex or politics or watching action movies. I learned from the first ten minutes of Alien that I didn't like horror films, and so I didn't watch them if my parents put one on. I was treated as an intellectual adult according solely to the quality of my argument my entire life.
I consider this to be a mixed blessing. Because while I could never bear to submit myself to any authority who did not clearly earn my unmitigated trust and respect, there are many who believe that one should accord respect according to one's given station in life-- a position I would gladly argue against as being patently unamerican. Nonetheless, that belief is rife within our society, and our society will more than happily enforce its unconscionable rules against you without mercy, and with a strange sort of zeal, a lesson I finally learned the first time I was systematically harrassed by the police as an adult. Unfortunately, our government is a highly effective tyranny of oppression, and that reality infects our society at every level, like a sort of malignant tumor.
So, I may have been a weird fat kid, but I also happened to be 6" taller than most of my classmates, and when pushed to the breaking point, I was a spaz. I'd start crying, and with the tears would come pure rage, against which no bully was capable of withstanding. Spazzes get picked on a fair bit, it's true. But honestly, the picking would stop for a while after beating a kid's head off the radiator a dozen times or so, until the bullies would slowly forget the very real consequences of their actions. Fighting back is not always a permanent solution, though. But what is?
As I became larger and stronger and more capable of permanently injuring my tormentors, I began to be called into the principle's office to be punished for my actions. My parents would be called in, and if the principle was unfortunate enough to have my father come, he would receive a vociferous tongue-lashing and I'd walk out shaken but vindicated. If my mother came, despite my claims of self-defense (in that I'd never lose my shit until someone physically assaulted me), it would usually transpire that there would be some sort of compromise where I'd serve a single detention or two and the bully would serve a slightly greater sentence.
Nowadays they expell kids for less. I was in high school in the mid-90s. Ten years later, a enormous amount has changed. Zero-tolerance policies likely would have found me kicked out of school before reaching high school.
Honestly I would have received a better education if I'd been kicked out-- and I went to one of the best public schools in the state.
Parents, don't kid yourselves. Schools both public and private are not appropriate places for children, not because they are in danger of being exposed to harmful influences, but because they encourage some very dangerous mindsets, those of the herd mentality, those of the blind servant of tyranny, those of the hard-working but ultimately unintelligent indentured s
Note OS X's fast user switching. Did you know that Apple already has a patent on fast OS switching as well? After all, Boot Camp is a beta with more user-friendliness promised for even its full release in 10.5. Could we be looking at a future of seamless full-speed emulation ala Rosetta? That would be ideal, of course, but with OS switching potentially taking less than 30 seconds, it's not a far stretch to imagine a whole lot of people switching. Penny Arcade, who created a character specifically to pick on elitist Mac users, has switched and loves it. I do my gaming on a desktop replacement laptop now (had to sell the Alienware system in my cross-country moves), and the MacBook would be perfect for my needs. I'll be switching as soon as I can come up with the cash.
In regards to the extra money spent on Apple hardware, that's less true than it used to be-- Alienware systems are actually MORE expensive than Macs these days. Are homebuilders and 'hardcore gamers' gonna be making the switch? No. But who gives a flying fuck about that 5% of the computing population? Regardless of what many people think, the 'hardcore' are not the ones out buying games-- the more casual gamers make up the vast majority of purchases. Most PC gamers (not the 'hardcore' minority) buy a handful of games a year, and replace their system every 3 years, with a few upgrades in the meantime.
Which brings me to my next point: Apple hardware retains its resale value much much better than other brands (including Alienware). That leads to an interesting cycle that is even cheaper than the homebuilding route, for achieving reasonable performance with excellent polish and style and OS X exclusive software. In short:
Step 1: Buy MacBook Pro for $2500.
Step 2: Use it happily and effectively for 2 years.
Step 3: Sell it for $1200 when you can no longer play with heavy graphical goodies.
Step 4: Buy New MacBook Pro for $2500.
Looking at it that way, you spend $650 a year after an initial $2500 investment to have a fantastic laptop that can play games. Now, before you jump all over me, be sure to look up your numbers. 2yo PowerBooks really do sell for $1200. Even for 12-inch. Additionally, PC laptops are what, $300 or so cheaper AT MOST at purchase. Yet they don't retain the same kind of resale value. You get back every penny you spent on the more expensive Apple product at resale and then some.
So yeah. I'm gonna switch ASAP. And it's the right decision.
It has become apparent to all that there are an enormous number of bogus patents, that patents are frequently used to hinder progress, to create monopoly, stifle competition, and generally impede economic growth. Despite their being bastions of capitalism, it should be noted that it is always in the best interest of the wealthy corporation to interfere with competition-- at the expense of the general public. What's wrong is that we have both laws against anti-competitive behavior (in the form of anti-trust), and then more laws encouraging anti-competitive behavior (in the form of IP law). Worse than that, there are long legal precedents in place stating that if you fail to 'protect' your IP as a CEO, you can be sued by your shareholders. The system is corrupt, and failure to act in a corrupt fashion on the part of a business owner is punishable with civil action, and damn the consequences to society.
At the same time, it seems self-evident that those spending years and/or huge sums of money developing new technology or creating new art MUST have some sort of recompense for their efforts. Hence, we have a need for copyright and patent laws. Certainly noone would suggest that Sony should be able to sell a CD that I made without financially compensating me, the creator of that content, which in any capitalist society is exactly what would happen without IP law. As nice as it is to have every idea in the public domain, it needs to be said that as long as inequity of property exists as the dominant paradigm of commerce, there must be intellectual property, because creative people have as much right to become rich from their ideas as the business people who put those ideas in consumers' hands. The relative merits of capitalism versus communism aren't really pertinent to this discussion, but let it be said that IP is necessary to some degree in this society as it stands.
So what do we do to fix the problem? The question is one of approaching the ideal situation stated by economic theory, represented in this case by the EFF, wherein all ideas are free and public domain, while maintaining the ability to both recoup expenses in devloping those ideas and prevent companies from stealing the fruits of that labor. First, it is absolutely clear that if no money is being made from the use of an IP, then it should be covered under fair use. Hobbyists and scientists alike should have full access to all material, in order to allow progress to march on unimpeded. It's also obvious that the methods involved in the patent office are outdated, arcane, and ineffective. Thus, we need to establish a world foundation for patent law on the internet, with all patents being processed for peer review, where anyone can view patents, quickly and effectively search for existing patents, and file patents with little hassle or expenditure compared to the current system. Patent issues could be handled democratically, the democratic system being an excellent measure of 'non-obvious' as compared to some overworked patent clerk. This brings me to another important point-- the elimination of patent-based monopolies. Instead, a set of guidelines for royalties should be established according to the widespread appeal of a given patent and the degree of resemblance a product based on that patent has (like a patent covering a type of servo used in a robot finger shouldn't entitle the inventor of that servo to 10% of the cost of the robot, just as Wright's patent on Wing Warping shouldn't have given them the right to a 20% royalty on aileron designs, yet a patent on a home teleporter might deserve a royalty of 30%). Additional royalty adjustments should be put in place for improvements on existing designs, and to make up in part for the loss of monopoly power, additional subsidies should be put in place for R&D operations. Additionally, copyright periods should be decreased to 25 years as patents are increased to 25 years, with hefty penalities for breaking what would at that point be very reasonable IP law, instead of the complicated mess currently
Actually, as a native Vermonter (8 generations, baby!), I'd like to point out that it's New Hampshire that has the motto "Live Free or Die" printed on its license plates by non-violent drug offenders. Vermont has "The Green Mountain State" instead.
We're 2/3 independents in Congress (though technically Bernie Sanders is a Socialist) while Leahy is extremely powerful as far as Democrat Senators go, our largest city has a Progressive Party mayor, we have NO gun laws requiring permits of any type (and consequently the lowest gun crime rate in the nation), we produced the best candidate in the 2004 presidential election, and our elected representatives tend to actually respond to letters. I've managed to talk with both Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean back when he was Governor-- a far cry from the insulated wealthy 'gentlemen' who run things most places. With far less than a million residents, we're small, but that just allows us to demand honesty and thought from our representatives.
Vermont is one of those places where your vote counts more than the average American.
That said, the winters are brutal, many of the towns have blatantly anti-poor yuppie-centric fascist leanings of the sort that have given 'liberals' a bad name, our taxes are high and our state and local governments are inefficient. Schools are decent, but only the upper middle class (largely transplants from out-of-state) can really afford to live here, on account of the ridiculously high property values and lack of good-paying jobs. In addition, Vermont is extremely harsh on new businesses and does little to encourage the sort of businesses that they claim to desire, keeping tourism the biggest industry here.
Independent streak? You're darn right! Vermont has probably one of the highest percentages of people desiring actual freedom and civil rights of anywhere in the nation, and we are fortunate to have at least the most powerful of our elected representatives reflect that desire. Both of our senators voted against the Patriot Act. Why haven't yours?
What if we are constantly doing exactly that? Each and every moment we are shifting from track to track and have never before noticed it because it's seamless. How would such a phenomenon work? There could be a portion of your brain that causes you to dimensionally switch between different universes, so that you'll always physically be in the same track as your true beliefs/expectations. Now, if you were to become aware of the process, you'd probably be able to learn to discern between the different realities, and eventually, control what reality you inhabit. Without the idea in place, you could never become aware of it happening, because you'd never enter a reality that made it a possibility for you to observe the phenomenon. What then, if your brain started to malfunction, and your signal got mixed up with another reality? You'd get schizophrenia, of course.
It's my perspective that Heinlein was expressing some complex ideas about the nature of reality and time in a (more or less) approachable manner. It's well known that he was friends with the likes of Robert Anton Wilson at the time (the late 70s). Incidentally, the book was first published in 1979, not 1986, as stated. In Number of the Beast, he expresses the idea that there are three dimensions of time, a concept not unknown among the leading edge of magickal theorists as a method of explaining the ability to change the future.
According to the Chaos Magician Peter Carroll, the way magic works is thus: at any given point, there are infinite 'alternate dimensions', with the 'present' being the one that we generally experience, necessarily created by the three dimensions of time, resulting an infinite number of alternate universes existing concurrently with this one, but that we can never interact with. However, there is a cone of possibility extending into both the past and the future, of different possible pasts and futures that could conceivably have created this present or conceivably result from this present. The trick to getting magick to work is in judging accurately the cone of possible realities and working towards the potential future that you're after. Most people in this society call that working towards an end. Of course, most people don't know just how wide a range of possible futures there are, and disbelieve in the power of mental effort to effect change by itself, and thus have little to no perception or experience of reality bending to their will.
Heinlein's book expresses the idea of what you might find yourself interacting with if you were able to transfer into those other concurrent realities. His concept of world-as-myth is mostly just a pleasant flight of whimsy for a professional author, based largely on the general concept of magick-- that belief creates reality. Yet also he's expressing the concept that the author is both tapping into a world already in existence AND creating that world simultaneously.
Undoubtedly this sort apparently paradoxical thinking will be found to some degree confusing and wrong-headed, yet sufficient meditation on the subject will invariably reveal its pure logic. Though I don't feel that either Heinlein or Wilson (or Carroll) really effectively described what's going on, it's easy enough to grasp ahold of the same intuitive Truth that they all wrapped their books around.
Is this new idea actually new? Decidedly not. The question is whether it'll garner any greater degree of support in this round, imo.
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I'd also like to point out that these modern 'underpowered' 40mpg compacts that have been flying off the lots have more power on average than the V6s of the 90s that everyone thought were gutsy. YOU DO NOT NEED 300HP TO BE SAFE ON THE ROAD. Yet another example of libertarian ideologues blinding themselves to reality and stretching to find ANY way to defend their ridiculous and harmful religion.
The fact remains that you are vastly, immensely more likely to survive an accident in a tiny little Smart than you would in a giant 72 buick skylark. Better design and better materials goes a long further than more weight. I'd also wonder if they accounted for the reduced numbers of deaths from the reduced air pollution that comes with increased CAFE standards and the fact that you would in reality not be significantly more likely to die in a modern compact than you would a V8-powered muscle car weighing 600 extra pounds or some top-heavy roll-happy SUV monstrosity weighing 1000 extra lbs in most accidents. Did they also account for the fact that increased CAFE standards have led to more efficient full-sized vehicles more than they've led to a proliferation of lightweight subcompacts? Because it's pretty clear that the increased sales of subcompacts has had more to do with their low price in this economy than any meaningful gas savings over their larger brethren in the compact class. At this point MOST car manufacturers offer a 40mpg 'compact' car that's actually larger than your average mid-90s midsize family sedan, with many more amenities and a much nicer interior, to boot.
Seriously, that game is exactly the game we all remembered, except better, and with epicly fun co-op.
They are ABSOLUTELY just as fascist and evil as we make them out to be. You can pooh-pooh it all you like, but you're just deluding yourself to excuse your inaction. And besides, we don't hate cops, we just hate the ones that trample our rights, like the ones that serve no-knock warrants for minor drug crimes, and the ones that don't bother with warrants, and the ones that taze you for a 'bad attitude', and the ones that shoot first and ask questions later, and the ones that threaten and harass citizen journalists, and the ones that beat protesters exercising their democratic rights, and the ones that kick people out of their homes when they get a letter from the bank, and the ones that target the poor for harassment, and the ones that dress up like SS officers for fun, and the ones that hate minorities, and the ones that escape corruption charges out of police solidarity, and the ones that tamper with evidence, and the ones that think they should not be held accountable for their actions. Really, it's just the 95% majority of cops that we hate. The rest are awesome, and bravo for standing up to a culture of pure, unmitigated evil.
It seems a WEE bit premature to be worrying about lost revenue because of efficiency gains, such that you need a way to tax all those free-loading enviro-geeks. Maybe wait until electric cars hit 1% of the market at least, before building taxes in such a way that you discourage their use... I mean really, if we want to have any chance of maintaining our way of life whatsoever, given our critical mis-steps of the past 40 years and the emerging energy crisis popularly known as peak oil, we've got to move to electric and plug-in hybrid cars almost immediately, and we are YEARS behind schedule on that, meaning massive economic suffering in the decades to come. And that's aside from the sheer stupidity of having a 700 pound motorcycle pay the same per-mile cost as a 3700 pound passenger car and a 37,000 pound truck. Gas taxes are the only fair way to have a use tax for highways, while simultaneously aiding the efficiency improvements so desperately needed if America is to remain economically viable. All the bureaucracy is already in place, we just raise the $.17 a gallon to $.50 a gallon or whatever, and then we can have all the roads and bridges we need. And really, if you begrudge $.17 out of $4 going towards building the roads you're using, you're already an asshole, it wouldn't be any different if the tax were twice as much. High efficiency vehicles, bicycle and public transit use are what we need to be encouraging. Making those who have the basic sense of decency and intelligence to make the right decisions about their personal transportation pay for highways at a level that's fundamentally disproportionate to the actual wear and tear their lightweight vehicles cause is ridiculous.
Why would you want to tax vehicle miles instead of gas used? Taxing gas promotes fuel efficiency AND carpooling, public transit, living closer to work, etc. It amounts to the same thing, yet I get the distinct feeling the ONLY reason this proposal is being floated is because an actual gas tax is seen as politically untenable, despite being more effective, less onerous (would you rather an extra $5 each time you fill up or pay $250 at the end of the year?), and proven to be effective in dozens of other nations with vastly more efficient vehicles than are popular here. One more example of Democrats crippling themselves for sake of appeasing a 'political reality' that is at odds with doing what is necessary to preserve our nation's economy in the face of perpetually rising oil prices. Of course, that assumes that the Democrats actually cared about anything but securing enough corporate donations to win re-election.
It's called PUBLIC SCHOOL. Helping to make sure disadvantaged children have at least some opportunity to rise above their station in life since 1852. Yet another fine example of socialism's infinite superiority to unchecked capitalism. When run properly, (and it isn't), public education's improvement to the overall workforce's productivity and flexibility improves the general economy far more than it costs, a fact also true of higher education. Paying for your own higher education is a huge drain on the economy, and as a policy it is retained only because of corruption. The same is true of private health insurance.
'What incentive will there be to care for your own children if the state will provide a child's basic needs?' To paraphrase Barney Frank, what planet do you live on? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? Who asks a question like that?
I do not propose equality for all Americans. The liberal socialism implied by social works like public health care, education, and infrastructure does not suggest equality for all. It is not Marxism, it is not communism. It merely reflects the obvious fact that it is only when all members of a society have equal opportunity to achieve wealth in a capitalistic system will that system achieve maximum economic and social growth. In economic terms, free markets' ability to achieve greater results through competition are limited by the barriers to entry for that market. When it is so much easier for the child of a wealthy person to start a business or achieve success than the child of a poor person, the winner in the market is no longer decided on their individual merits. In this sense, a 'free market' economy rapidly becomes anti-competitive, insular, corrupt and ineffective.
This is basic shit. Wake the fuck up and get your head out of your emotional, fearful, brainwashed ass.
Satellite is completely unacceptable for any real net junkie, especially gamers. The ping is even higher than with dial-up. Man, I played FPS games over dial-up for a few years-- it's not so terrible as all that if you've got a good phone line. And of course, if you're out in the boonies you probably don't have a great phone line. My tip is this: get yourself a nice desktop replacement laptop like a Macbook Pro or some such, and mooch off some free hotspot in town. You'll spend about the same, and have a kickass lappy in the bargain. Might help you to prioritize some things differently. Find some roommates and get an apartment. Unless your parents are letting you stay for free, it's the way to go, even if you wind up spending three times as much on rent. I had a guy come in to my work yesterday straight out of A Confederacy of Dunces, a huge fat man nearly in his 40s and living with his elderly mother, trying to return the guitar amp he'd bought because he couldn't get a good sound out of it with his inexperienced hands. Man, move out of your parents' house! Don't be that guy. Noone really cares (except any potential girlfriend) if you're living with your parents when you're 25, but something happens when you turn 30 and you won't have much in the way of friends or life. Suicide might become your only option. Get out there, get a job, make some money. If you can't get a job consider the idea that perhaps there's some aspect of your personality or attitude that is poorly suited to the hard realities of the working world, and endeavor to change those aspects. It's not that hard once you get started. I spent the last 7 years of my life not working (fortunately I did not have to live with my parents) and surfing the internet 10-16 hours a day, and I gotta tell you-- it's not that hard to work and make money and live on your own. It might not be the comforts you're adjusted to, but it's totally reasonable, and socially rewarding. Speaking of which I gotta go to work to pay for my rent. Yes, it is a worthy tradeoff, and it does make your life more enjoyable to make it. Quit making excuses for yourself and go do it. The video games will still be there after work.
Is there anyone left out there who actually believes these assholes deserve to retain any degree of their unprecedented money, power, and political influence? Tell me I'm wrong, please. Maybe there's a whole big contingent of people out there who think listening to music without paying for it is actually stealing. Those are probably the same people who think musicians make more than a few cents per every album sold, and that every song 'stolen' represents lost revenue equal to the retail price of that song. In other words, the sadly ignorant. ASCAP is even worse-- only the top-selling bands make any significant money whatsoever from ASCAP licensing revenues. Meanwhile, they're making money for their legal department by suing the bars and clubs who host DJs and cover bands.
As a musician, I think that's a big crock of shit.
That said, I keep the RIAA off my back the old fashioned way-- I rip my friends' CDs rather than download off the net, and similarly share the wealth off-line. Not like I could've bought the Beatles' albums in the Apple Store anyway. And Sir McCartney certainly doesn't need it, if he even sees royalties from those sales anymore. Perhaps it's time to drop the copyright timelimits, yeah?
Ultimately, it's increasingly clear that these incestuous corporate associations not only don't have the best interests of the emerging world culture at heart, but are an active enemy to both their customers and the future of the very industry they claim to represent. I know the list of evil organizations in the world is getting over-long at this point, but they really do need to be stopped, along with all the other fucks out there wrecking civilization for everyone else.
I wonder if strong leadership and extensive organization could effect the degree of change the world needs before everything really goes to hell...
I was a fat kid, and thus I got bullied. I was a smart kid, and thus I got bullied. I was a poor kid who didn't have the 'right' clothes, and thus I got bullied. And as I became more and more bullied, I turned to food to allieviate my growing depression, which just made me fatter and fatter and more and more bullied. I faked being sick to get out of school whenever possible. I never did my homework (why should I when I could get an A on the test without it?) and so I always got poor grades, and learned a poor work ethic that has contributed to my current financial situation, because I was never challenged. What's worse, my fiercely independent parents taught me to respect only authority that deserved respect. Hence the no-doing-homework thing. I was socialized very early on fairly exclusively through intellectual discussions with intelligent adults, and so I found the stultifying lack of stimulation in school to be unacceptable right from the start of middle school. I was never excluded from 'adult' topics as a child, whether it was sex or politics or watching action movies. I learned from the first ten minutes of Alien that I didn't like horror films, and so I didn't watch them if my parents put one on. I was treated as an intellectual adult according solely to the quality of my argument my entire life.
I consider this to be a mixed blessing. Because while I could never bear to submit myself to any authority who did not clearly earn my unmitigated trust and respect, there are many who believe that one should accord respect according to one's given station in life-- a position I would gladly argue against as being patently unamerican. Nonetheless, that belief is rife within our society, and our society will more than happily enforce its unconscionable rules against you without mercy, and with a strange sort of zeal, a lesson I finally learned the first time I was systematically harrassed by the police as an adult. Unfortunately, our government is a highly effective tyranny of oppression, and that reality infects our society at every level, like a sort of malignant tumor.
So, I may have been a weird fat kid, but I also happened to be 6" taller than most of my classmates, and when pushed to the breaking point, I was a spaz. I'd start crying, and with the tears would come pure rage, against which no bully was capable of withstanding. Spazzes get picked on a fair bit, it's true. But honestly, the picking would stop for a while after beating a kid's head off the radiator a dozen times or so, until the bullies would slowly forget the very real consequences of their actions. Fighting back is not always a permanent solution, though. But what is?
As I became larger and stronger and more capable of permanently injuring my tormentors, I began to be called into the principle's office to be punished for my actions. My parents would be called in, and if the principle was unfortunate enough to have my father come, he would receive a vociferous tongue-lashing and I'd walk out shaken but vindicated. If my mother came, despite my claims of self-defense (in that I'd never lose my shit until someone physically assaulted me), it would usually transpire that there would be some sort of compromise where I'd serve a single detention or two and the bully would serve a slightly greater sentence.
Nowadays they expell kids for less. I was in high school in the mid-90s. Ten years later, a enormous amount has changed. Zero-tolerance policies likely would have found me kicked out of school before reaching high school.
Honestly I would have received a better education if I'd been kicked out-- and I went to one of the best public schools in the state.
Parents, don't kid yourselves. Schools both public and private are not appropriate places for children, not because they are in danger of being exposed to harmful influences, but because they encourage some very dangerous mindsets, those of the herd mentality, those of the blind servant of tyranny, those of the hard-working but ultimately unintelligent indentured s
Note OS X's fast user switching. Did you know that Apple already has a patent on fast OS switching as well? After all, Boot Camp is a beta with more user-friendliness promised for even its full release in 10.5. Could we be looking at a future of seamless full-speed emulation ala Rosetta? That would be ideal, of course, but with OS switching potentially taking less than 30 seconds, it's not a far stretch to imagine a whole lot of people switching. Penny Arcade, who created a character specifically to pick on elitist Mac users, has switched and loves it. I do my gaming on a desktop replacement laptop now (had to sell the Alienware system in my cross-country moves), and the MacBook would be perfect for my needs. I'll be switching as soon as I can come up with the cash.
In regards to the extra money spent on Apple hardware, that's less true than it used to be-- Alienware systems are actually MORE expensive than Macs these days. Are homebuilders and 'hardcore gamers' gonna be making the switch? No. But who gives a flying fuck about that 5% of the computing population? Regardless of what many people think, the 'hardcore' are not the ones out buying games-- the more casual gamers make up the vast majority of purchases. Most PC gamers (not the 'hardcore' minority) buy a handful of games a year, and replace their system every 3 years, with a few upgrades in the meantime.
Which brings me to my next point: Apple hardware retains its resale value much much better than other brands (including Alienware). That leads to an interesting cycle that is even cheaper than the homebuilding route, for achieving reasonable performance with excellent polish and style and OS X exclusive software. In short:
Step 1:
Buy MacBook Pro for $2500.
Step 2:
Use it happily and effectively for 2 years.
Step 3:
Sell it for $1200 when you can no longer play with heavy graphical goodies.
Step 4:
Buy New MacBook Pro for $2500.
Looking at it that way, you spend $650 a year after an initial $2500 investment to have a fantastic laptop that can play games. Now, before you jump all over me, be sure to look up your numbers. 2yo PowerBooks really do sell for $1200. Even for 12-inch. Additionally, PC laptops are what, $300 or so cheaper AT MOST at purchase. Yet they don't retain the same kind of resale value. You get back every penny you spent on the more expensive Apple product at resale and then some.
So yeah. I'm gonna switch ASAP. And it's the right decision.
Peace out.
It has become apparent to all that there are an enormous number of bogus patents, that patents are frequently used to hinder progress, to create monopoly, stifle competition, and generally impede economic growth. Despite their being bastions of capitalism, it should be noted that it is always in the best interest of the wealthy corporation to interfere with competition-- at the expense of the general public. What's wrong is that we have both laws against anti-competitive behavior (in the form of anti-trust), and then more laws encouraging anti-competitive behavior (in the form of IP law). Worse than that, there are long legal precedents in place stating that if you fail to 'protect' your IP as a CEO, you can be sued by your shareholders. The system is corrupt, and failure to act in a corrupt fashion on the part of a business owner is punishable with civil action, and damn the consequences to society.
At the same time, it seems self-evident that those spending years and/or huge sums of money developing new technology or creating new art MUST have some sort of recompense for their efforts. Hence, we have a need for copyright and patent laws. Certainly noone would suggest that Sony should be able to sell a CD that I made without financially compensating me, the creator of that content, which in any capitalist society is exactly what would happen without IP law. As nice as it is to have every idea in the public domain, it needs to be said that as long as inequity of property exists as the dominant paradigm of commerce, there must be intellectual property, because creative people have as much right to become rich from their ideas as the business people who put those ideas in consumers' hands. The relative merits of capitalism versus communism aren't really pertinent to this discussion, but let it be said that IP is necessary to some degree in this society as it stands.
So what do we do to fix the problem? The question is one of approaching the ideal situation stated by economic theory, represented in this case by the EFF, wherein all ideas are free and public domain, while maintaining the ability to both recoup expenses in devloping those ideas and prevent companies from stealing the fruits of that labor. First, it is absolutely clear that if no money is being made from the use of an IP, then it should be covered under fair use. Hobbyists and scientists alike should have full access to all material, in order to allow progress to march on unimpeded. It's also obvious that the methods involved in the patent office are outdated, arcane, and ineffective. Thus, we need to establish a world foundation for patent law on the internet, with all patents being processed for peer review, where anyone can view patents, quickly and effectively search for existing patents, and file patents with little hassle or expenditure compared to the current system. Patent issues could be handled democratically, the democratic system being an excellent measure of 'non-obvious' as compared to some overworked patent clerk. This brings me to another important point-- the elimination of patent-based monopolies. Instead, a set of guidelines for royalties should be established according to the widespread appeal of a given patent and the degree of resemblance a product based on that patent has (like a patent covering a type of servo used in a robot finger shouldn't entitle the inventor of that servo to 10% of the cost of the robot, just as Wright's patent on Wing Warping shouldn't have given them the right to a 20% royalty on aileron designs, yet a patent on a home teleporter might deserve a royalty of 30%). Additional royalty adjustments should be put in place for improvements on existing designs, and to make up in part for the loss of monopoly power, additional subsidies should be put in place for R&D operations. Additionally, copyright periods should be decreased to 25 years as patents are increased to 25 years, with hefty penalities for breaking what would at that point be very reasonable IP law, instead of the complicated mess currently
Actually, as a native Vermonter (8 generations, baby!), I'd like to point out that it's New Hampshire that has the motto "Live Free or Die" printed on its license plates by non-violent drug offenders. Vermont has "The Green Mountain State" instead.
We're 2/3 independents in Congress (though technically Bernie Sanders is a Socialist) while Leahy is extremely powerful as far as Democrat Senators go, our largest city has a Progressive Party mayor, we have NO gun laws requiring permits of any type (and consequently the lowest gun crime rate in the nation), we produced the best candidate in the 2004 presidential election, and our elected representatives tend to actually respond to letters. I've managed to talk with both Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean back when he was Governor-- a far cry from the insulated wealthy 'gentlemen' who run things most places. With far less than a million residents, we're small, but that just allows us to demand honesty and thought from our representatives.
Vermont is one of those places where your vote counts more than the average American.
That said, the winters are brutal, many of the towns have blatantly anti-poor yuppie-centric fascist leanings of the sort that have given 'liberals' a bad name, our taxes are high and our state and local governments are inefficient. Schools are decent, but only the upper middle class (largely transplants from out-of-state) can really afford to live here, on account of the ridiculously high property values and lack of good-paying jobs. In addition, Vermont is extremely harsh on new businesses and does little to encourage the sort of businesses that they claim to desire, keeping tourism the biggest industry here.
Independent streak? You're darn right! Vermont has probably one of the highest percentages of people desiring actual freedom and civil rights of anywhere in the nation, and we are fortunate to have at least the most powerful of our elected representatives reflect that desire. Both of our senators voted against the Patriot Act. Why haven't yours?
What if we are constantly doing exactly that? Each and every moment we are shifting from track to track and have never before noticed it because it's seamless. How would such a phenomenon work? There could be a portion of your brain that causes you to dimensionally switch between different universes, so that you'll always physically be in the same track as your true beliefs/expectations. Now, if you were to become aware of the process, you'd probably be able to learn to discern between the different realities, and eventually, control what reality you inhabit. Without the idea in place, you could never become aware of it happening, because you'd never enter a reality that made it a possibility for you to observe the phenomenon. What then, if your brain started to malfunction, and your signal got mixed up with another reality? You'd get schizophrenia, of course.
Welcome to the new reality, bub.
It's my perspective that Heinlein was expressing some complex ideas about the nature of reality and time in a (more or less) approachable manner. It's well known that he was friends with the likes of Robert Anton Wilson at the time (the late 70s). Incidentally, the book was first published in 1979, not 1986, as stated. In Number of the Beast, he expresses the idea that there are three dimensions of time, a concept not unknown among the leading edge of magickal theorists as a method of explaining the ability to change the future.
According to the Chaos Magician Peter Carroll, the way magic works is thus: at any given point, there are infinite 'alternate dimensions', with the 'present' being the one that we generally experience, necessarily created by the three dimensions of time, resulting an infinite number of alternate universes existing concurrently with this one, but that we can never interact with. However, there is a cone of possibility extending into both the past and the future, of different possible pasts and futures that could conceivably have created this present or conceivably result from this present. The trick to getting magick to work is in judging accurately the cone of possible realities and working towards the potential future that you're after. Most people in this society call that working towards an end. Of course, most people don't know just how wide a range of possible futures there are, and disbelieve in the power of mental effort to effect change by itself, and thus have little to no perception or experience of reality bending to their will.
Heinlein's book expresses the idea of what you might find yourself interacting with if you were able to transfer into those other concurrent realities. His concept of world-as-myth is mostly just a pleasant flight of whimsy for a professional author, based largely on the general concept of magick-- that belief creates reality. Yet also he's expressing the concept that the author is both tapping into a world already in existence AND creating that world simultaneously.
Undoubtedly this sort apparently paradoxical thinking will be found to some degree confusing and wrong-headed, yet sufficient meditation on the subject will invariably reveal its pure logic. Though I don't feel that either Heinlein or Wilson (or Carroll) really effectively described what's going on, it's easy enough to grasp ahold of the same intuitive Truth that they all wrapped their books around.
Is this new idea actually new? Decidedly not. The question is whether it'll garner any greater degree of support in this round, imo.