Whoops. I got all outraged and indignant for nothing, and went off half-cocked. 95% agreed with the statement that corporations should give back to their communities. I hereby rescind my wrath.
The survey suggests that Americans are finally getting upset at their unchecked power and are coming to believe -- with amazing unanimity -- that large corporations need to be more responsible, ethical and regulated.
I think almost anyone would agree that even the best corporations would be better off becoming more responsible and ethical. The fact that "regulated" was slipped in with those two suggests that the survey is slightly leading. Slipping in something that a large portion of the populace will take issue with at the end of a list, preceeded by two things they can't take issue with... That's class. All class.
This isn't to say that I personally disagree that corporations need to be more regulated. But I refuse to believe 19 out of 20 people feel that way. That's too thorny an issue for any fair poll result to be that unbelievably lopsided.
...until someone with more money than sense buys the thing and hacks it to use it as 64 megs of storage for their visor?
Just think of how many years of appointments you could store, then!
In all seriousness, though... Why the heck would you buy one of these? I was discussing this with one of my friends yesterday, actually, but visualization and the other visual goodies you get with Winamp on your PC don't justify spending at least a hundred bucks more than I have to on an MP3 player.
Big, incredibly expensive global projects (assuming you're willing to concede that a 50 KM tower will be monstrously expensive) are usually funded more by American money than anyone else's. The ESA space center is not quite on the same level of scale as this tower would be, let alone the elevator.
Nope. You'd probably have atmosphere inside the hole. Friction would slow you down, and eventually you'd come to a rest at the earth's center of gravity.
This is, of course, assuming that the actual act of falling is safe. I don't know enough about things like terminal velocity to know if you run the risk of dying of asphyxiation or burning up as you fall.
Whoa. Slow down there. "The only good American cartoon is X-Men?"
What about Batman? I mean before they changed the art style to bring it in line with Superman. But I've never thought it was disputable that that was one of, if not the best, American cartoons out there.
I'm also a big fan of ReBoot. But it's not American. And I'll admit that its quality, as well as its status as a cartoon, are questionable.
In case I'm not on-topic enough for some people, I will say that I disagree with the point that "DBZ... show[s] that the fight between good and evil is far beyond some sucker trying to rule the world just because he was born bad..."
Last time I checked, that's almost exactly ever villain in DBZ. One freaking insane, generally ugly guy after another. And the one's that aren't plum loco end up becoming good guys (cf: Picolo, Vegeta). I enjoy Dragonball a lot. (both the one on Cartoon Network and the one in my Handspring Visor) But I'm not fooled for a second into thinking its and writing are good at all, because they're not. And I'm pretty convinced that it's not a dubbing/editing for American TV problem.
Oh, I certainly wasn't trying to be insightful. I don't know where THAT came from. Personally, I'm going into academia, and for completely different reasons.
Actually, I should have tried to be serious. If you want to be a "computer historian," you're not going to go into the industry. You're probably not even going to get a job in CS. You're probably going to work in history.
Yes. Picture it. Spend your days on a college campus, teaching classes on the history of computers. You just come up with some random BS thesis on the ways in which computers have affected and changed society, and run with it.
The advantages? It's tough to get a job as a colleger professor, but once you do, you're good to go. Plus, you spend the rest of your life around college-age women.
I'm not advocating anarchy! I just think the police department needs to be more aware of what they are enforcing. I don't believe I have ever heard a case where the police department stood against a law.
Imagine that. People who have taken oaths to enforce the law aren't standing against it? Mon dieu!
Seriously, though, I think that you're really messing up here. If the cops don't enforce laws, they get fired and replaced with cops who do. Furthermore, if the police began to selectively enforce the law, what if they started enforcing laws that seemed ok to them, but to you, seemed wrong? You'd be demanding their asses in no time.
You can't have it both ways. The "they told me to do it" defense actually holds a lot of water. It's only in very rare cases that it doesn't -- really, only when it is absolutely, incontrovertably immoral to enforce a law. I can think of maybe three or four real world examples, and they're all pretty obvious.
But in this case, you can hardly blame the police for enforcing the laws they did. At least, I hope so.
Ok, I hope whoever moderated me down a) reads this post, and b) suffers the wrath of Taco and co. for their horrible moderation.
Did you even READ the article? Or the post? ReBoot is one of the things that's mentioned. If you'd like to let me know what the heck you were thinking, I'd be really interested in hearing.
Normally, I don't get upset over this sort of thing. But in this case, I'll make an exception. Stupidity is one of the things that really gets to me.
I just feel like we need more love for ReBoot here. Nothing against anime, but I'm infinitely more excited about the ReBoot movies.
ReBoot, for those of you who may not know, is a CGI cartoon by a Canadian company called Mainframe Entertainment. It was supposedly about the "sprites" inside of a computer. I know, it sounds bad.
But it's not. Especially the second and third seasons of the show. It features fairly adult-targeted references and plots, such as the plot where the main character questions his own methods in hunting down his nemesis, or references to Army of Darkness or Bond movies. (completely with a bond-style intro).
Regardless, check it out if you get a chance. The second and third seasons have some incredible episodes in them. My personal favorite is an episode that is influenced by two rather different sources: Star Wars: A New Hope, and spaghetti westerns. It's definitely worth a look.
This is perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever heard. That's equivalent to if someone said, "The real best thing that could happen is for some terrorist to steal a nuclear weapon and blow up a city, and then publicize it and see how long it takes Congress to disband the military."
Can you explain the objections to the Concorde? I'm not familiar with them. How does it degrade the ozone layer? Or is this just a function of its burning fuel?
The radio guy in the tv show Forever Knight was a vampire who just pretended to be all goth and stuff to send messages to other vampires. That's another option: innuendo. But it breaks down when you're trying to send detailed messages.
Oh, maybe I'm misunderstanding something here. I was under the impression that he was not necessarily appearing in 11 consecutive episodes. It was said that the new character won't be Scully's new partner, anyway.
So light, in fact, that I'm almost sure you can't take it over, say, the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan, where the natives inform me that Geo metros are banned, because they have a nasty tendency of being blown off the bridge.
If that's the case, how does a Geo Metro's weight stack up to the weight of the Insight? And where can't you drive it, for similar reasons? Also, what about these hard tires? I wonder how much more likely they make accidents?
I love the idea of 70 MPG, but I'm kind of curious about how safe this little thing is.
People have been saying that for hundreds of years. (since Malthus) In every case, they've been wrong. I see no reason to assume that we should actually attempt zero population growth, just for the peace of mind of a few loonies.
I'm sorry. You just flabbergasted me. Let me try and articulate.
And WHY exactly don't we have that kind of money? Because big business sucked it off us. Think about it a little.
Thanks for clearing that up. So I take it that, if it weren't for big business, I'd have the resources necessary to put together a 747? Shoot. Not even my Philosophy of Karl Marx prof mentioned that one to me.
Furthermore, I should point out that considerably before the advent of business, there was something called feudalism. In that, you or I probably would have had no money or resources of our own. Instead, we'd be hauling stone to build a castle for our lords. So I'm not sure when we got this money that corporations stole from us in the first place.
That's exactly why big business (tm) gives us presidential candidates one can only laugh at; so that people like you and I will prefer to have our society run by big business instead. The pitty though is that big business will own society in order to run it, and that's most often a one-way route, as there are actually laws against taking back our property from the rich.
Believe it or not, we're not in nearly as bad a state of corporate oligarchy as we have been in the past. From about the end of the civil war to, I don't know, at least 1910, it was worse. In the words of one of my teachers back in high school, the change came when "the government realized the Morgan Trust basically owned the whole country."
I think I've gotten a little away from my point, though I'm going to leave that in. However, what I'm trying to say is that big business really isn't as in control as you seem to think. Assuming that you actually believe what you're saying, you just seem to make it more probable.
Actually, I think he's right. Big business is not inherently evil. There are evil businesses, but that does not make big business, in itself, evil. I don't think you're successfully picking up on the distinction.
And the Sherman Antitrust Act isn't really about big business. It's about monopolies. There's a difference. A monopoly is a problem because it harms innovation and favors the status quo in its field. Furthermore, it limits the choices of consumers to one.
Big businesses may not be necessary in developing software. Although I'm not convinced on that. But regardless, the open source model demonstrates that it's at least POSSIBLE for quality software to be developed by a group of people outside of a business.
However, there are advantages to big business. You or I could not build a jet. We could not develop the next wonder drug. We could not construct a skyscraper. You know why? Because we don't have that kind of money, and we can't pool that kind of manpower. It takes a business or a government to pool the resources to accomplish things like this -- and in nine out of ten cases, I'd rather have the businesses doing it.
Take a long, hard look, and maybe you'll change your mind about big business.
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Whoops. I got all outraged and indignant for nothing, and went off half-cocked. 95% agreed with the statement that corporations should give back to their communities. I hereby rescind my wrath.
I think almost anyone would agree that even the best corporations would be better off becoming more responsible and ethical. The fact that "regulated" was slipped in with those two suggests that the survey is slightly leading. Slipping in something that a large portion of the populace will take issue with at the end of a list, preceeded by two things they can't take issue with... That's class. All class.
This isn't to say that I personally disagree that corporations need to be more regulated. But I refuse to believe 19 out of 20 people feel that way. That's too thorny an issue for any fair poll result to be that unbelievably lopsided.
Just think of how many years of appointments you could store, then!
In all seriousness, though... Why the heck would you buy one of these? I was discussing this with one of my friends yesterday, actually, but visualization and the other visual goodies you get with Winamp on your PC don't justify spending at least a hundred bucks more than I have to on an MP3 player.
Let me try this again.
Big, incredibly expensive global projects (assuming you're willing to concede that a 50 KM tower will be monstrously expensive) are usually funded more by American money than anyone else's. The ESA space center is not quite on the same level of scale as this tower would be, let alone the elevator.
This is, of course, assuming that the actual act of falling is safe. I don't know enough about things like terminal velocity to know if you run the risk of dying of asphyxiation or burning up as you fall.
And now I sit back and watch my karma die.
What about Batman? I mean before they changed the art style to bring it in line with Superman. But I've never thought it was disputable that that was one of, if not the best, American cartoons out there.
I'm also a big fan of ReBoot. But it's not American. And I'll admit that its quality, as well as its status as a cartoon, are questionable.
In case I'm not on-topic enough for some people, I will say that I disagree with the point that "DBZ... show[s] that the fight between good and evil is far beyond some sucker trying to rule the world just because he was born bad..."
Last time I checked, that's almost exactly ever villain in DBZ. One freaking insane, generally ugly guy after another. And the one's that aren't plum loco end up becoming good guys (cf: Picolo, Vegeta). I enjoy Dragonball a lot. (both the one on Cartoon Network and the one in my Handspring Visor) But I'm not fooled for a second into thinking its and writing are good at all, because they're not. And I'm pretty convinced that it's not a dubbing/editing for American TV problem.
Actually, I should have tried to be serious. If you want to be a "computer historian," you're not going to go into the industry. You're probably not even going to get a job in CS. You're probably going to work in history.
Yes. Picture it. Spend your days on a college campus, teaching classes on the history of computers. You just come up with some random BS thesis on the ways in which computers have affected and changed society, and run with it.
The advantages? It's tough to get a job as a colleger professor, but once you do, you're good to go. Plus, you spend the rest of your life around college-age women.
Come over to the dark side, Luke.
Clarification: you can hardly blame the Philly police in this case. Woudln't want to be misconstrued.
Imagine that. People who have taken oaths to enforce the law aren't standing against it? Mon dieu!
Seriously, though, I think that you're really messing up here. If the cops don't enforce laws, they get fired and replaced with cops who do. Furthermore, if the police began to selectively enforce the law, what if they started enforcing laws that seemed ok to them, but to you, seemed wrong? You'd be demanding their asses in no time.
You can't have it both ways. The "they told me to do it" defense actually holds a lot of water. It's only in very rare cases that it doesn't -- really, only when it is absolutely, incontrovertably immoral to enforce a law. I can think of maybe three or four real world examples, and they're all pretty obvious.
But in this case, you can hardly blame the police for enforcing the laws they did. At least, I hope so.
Did you even READ the article? Or the post? ReBoot is one of the things that's mentioned. If you'd like to let me know what the heck you were thinking, I'd be really interested in hearing.
Normally, I don't get upset over this sort of thing. But in this case, I'll make an exception. Stupidity is one of the things that really gets to me.
ReBoot, for those of you who may not know, is a CGI cartoon by a Canadian company called Mainframe Entertainment. It was supposedly about the "sprites" inside of a computer. I know, it sounds bad.
But it's not. Especially the second and third seasons of the show. It features fairly adult-targeted references and plots, such as the plot where the main character questions his own methods in hunting down his nemesis, or references to Army of Darkness or Bond movies. (completely with a bond-style intro).
Regardless, check it out if you get a chance. The second and third seasons have some incredible episodes in them. My personal favorite is an episode that is influenced by two rather different sources: Star Wars: A New Hope, and spaghetti westerns. It's definitely worth a look.
This is perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever heard. That's equivalent to if someone said, "The real best thing that could happen is for some terrorist to steal a nuclear weapon and blow up a city, and then publicize it and see how long it takes Congress to disband the military."
Can you explain the objections to the Concorde? I'm not familiar with them. How does it degrade the ozone layer? Or is this just a function of its burning fuel?
The radio guy in the tv show Forever Knight was a vampire who just pretended to be all goth and stuff to send messages to other vampires. That's another option: innuendo. But it breaks down when you're trying to send detailed messages.
Oh, maybe I'm misunderstanding something here. I was under the impression that he was not necessarily appearing in 11 consecutive episodes. It was said that the new character won't be Scully's new partner, anyway.
Mulder will still be in 11 episodes next season. So I'm inclined to say that he's not going to be killed off.
So light, in fact, that I'm almost sure you can't take it over, say, the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan, where the natives inform me that Geo metros are banned, because they have a nasty tendency of being blown off the bridge.
If that's the case, how does a Geo Metro's weight stack up to the weight of the Insight? And where can't you drive it, for similar reasons? Also, what about these hard tires? I wonder how much more likely they make accidents?
I love the idea of 70 MPG, but I'm kind of curious about how safe this little thing is.
People have been saying that for hundreds of years. (since Malthus) In every case, they've been wrong. I see no reason to assume that we should actually attempt zero population growth, just for the peace of mind of a few loonies.
Yes, but do you think his rocket will have enough room in it to store all the crackers he might need?
I believe that the Game Boy is the most widely-owned and used video game format in the world, if memory serves me correctly.
Marge, I agree with you -- in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory.
--Homer J. Simpson
Really, it's almost eerily appropriate.
But really, in a way, communism comes down to giving one body a benevolent monopoly on anything, so the quote does apply.
And I agree with you that, in theory, a monopoly COULD use its leverage for good, it certainly hasn't happened in the U.S. to this point.
I'm sorry. You just flabbergasted me. Let me try and articulate.
And WHY exactly don't we have that kind of money? Because big business sucked it off us. Think about it a little.
Thanks for clearing that up. So I take it that, if it weren't for big business, I'd have the resources necessary to put together a 747? Shoot. Not even my Philosophy of Karl Marx prof mentioned that one to me.
Furthermore, I should point out that considerably before the advent of business, there was something called feudalism. In that, you or I probably would have had no money or resources of our own. Instead, we'd be hauling stone to build a castle for our lords. So I'm not sure when we got this money that corporations stole from us in the first place.
That's exactly why big business (tm) gives us presidential candidates one can only laugh at; so that people like you and I will prefer to have our society run by big business instead. The pitty though is that big business will own society in order to run it, and that's most often a one-way route, as there are actually laws against taking back our property from the rich.
Believe it or not, we're not in nearly as bad a state of corporate oligarchy as we have been in the past. From about the end of the civil war to, I don't know, at least 1910, it was worse. In the words of one of my teachers back in high school, the change came when "the government realized the Morgan Trust basically owned the whole country."
I think I've gotten a little away from my point, though I'm going to leave that in. However, what I'm trying to say is that big business really isn't as in control as you seem to think. Assuming that you actually believe what you're saying, you just seem to make it more probable.
And the Sherman Antitrust Act isn't really about big business. It's about monopolies. There's a difference. A monopoly is a problem because it harms innovation and favors the status quo in its field. Furthermore, it limits the choices of consumers to one.
Big businesses may not be necessary in developing software. Although I'm not convinced on that. But regardless, the open source model demonstrates that it's at least POSSIBLE for quality software to be developed by a group of people outside of a business.
However, there are advantages to big business. You or I could not build a jet. We could not develop the next wonder drug. We could not construct a skyscraper. You know why? Because we don't have that kind of money, and we can't pool that kind of manpower. It takes a business or a government to pool the resources to accomplish things like this -- and in nine out of ten cases, I'd rather have the businesses doing it.
Take a long, hard look, and maybe you'll change your mind about big business.