Life must be hard on a poor neocon like you, what, with people refusing to bow down before your obvious superiority, and raptly listening as you expound upon the inerrant wisdom of the Federalist Papers and the work of Leo Strauss. Clearly no reasonable person (50% of even those paragons of infinite virtue The Founding Fathers were on board... how could lesser men be expected to comprehend?) could ever know and understand precisely what you're talking about, yet still consider it a load of horseshit. Also, that must make them an evil socialist, because everyone knows that there are only two real political ideologies: Patriotic Republican Americanism, and Socialist Nazi Sovietism.
Apple has enough money to hire legions of "customer service reps" who have absolutely no authority to do anything aside from escalate your call to their supervisors... who also have no authority to do anything besides escalate to their supervisors, who in turn have no authority to do anything but escalate it further. Repeat ad nauseam. They require each tier of powerlessness to provide a minimum 40 minutes of stalling prior to escalation, do not share any information between tiers (requiring you to repeat everything at each level... that's an easy 5 minutes each right off the bat), and deliberately understaff both to keep down payrolls and to increase hold times. Eventually it sinks in that nothing will be done, and you might even buy into their premise that it "isn't something we are able to help you with, and you'll need to speak to [some other company] about that particular problem, but we're very sorry for the inconvenience. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"
Keep in mind, of course, that these people protect legitimate (or at least legal) revenue streams as well, and you can see why this is a good investment.
Of course you, Joe Developer, don't have a couple million to blow on an Indian call center, so you're pretty much stuck having to deal with problems rather than waiting out the customer's impatience and frustration.
Have you ever noticed that everybody agrees there is too much regulation, and yet *without fail and regardless of who is in power* the amount and complexity of regulation always goes up... even especially when moves are made to limit the number of overt restrictions?
The corporations *love* that business is over-regulated, they *love* that the rules are so Byzantine as to require massive legal departments with high-powered attorneys salary, they *love* that this places the barriers to entry for any newcomers so high that such things essentially don't happen. Business doesn't want to compete, because competition cuts into profits, and even worse it creates the potential to actually *fail*. Banking executives can literally run their companies into the ground, threaten bankruptcy, and pay themselves multi-million dollar bonuses with money the government *gives* them simply because everyone knows that if they went under it wouldn't be possible for a smaller competitor to fill the void; all of them with even the remotest possibility of doing so are purchased or driven out by the cost of compliance with rules that don't make sense.
It's the same in virtually every industry, and it's not changing any time soon, because BUSINESS HATES COMPETITION.
And in your estimation, how is third-party development on Nintendo faring these days?
I'm pretty well convinced that scene has turned to liquid shit as they've taken to abusing the devs harder than MS and Sony combined.
As a confirmed non-Mac user and anti-fan of everything Apple, I am completely unbothered by the idea that Apple is becoming hostile to developers in emulation of Nintendo's rapidly failing business strategy.
Either that or execasm over being able to claim that "Intel has made revolutionary advances in data center operation and efficiency based specifically on using windows".
You may think that qualifier is "bullshit" but it's a well-established and widely accepted one. We have drawn the line where free speech ends at the commission of a crime or threat of harm for a very long time, and doing so is considered appropriate even by the vast majority of card-carrying members of the ACLU.
You're welcome to disagree, but pretending that this is an irrational or unprecedented distinction is just silly.
I strongly suspect that Taco is aware of the Linux vs. GNU naming controversy. In fact, I strongly suspect that almost everyone on Slashdot is aware.
Whether or not "average people" understand the role of a kernel in an OS is entirely irrelevant to whether or not Linus Torvalds is the originator of the Linux kernel.
So here's a radical idea: rather than try to browbeat other geeks to whom few people listen into using your preferred nomenclature, why don't you try putting that nomenclature out into general use? The people who already know what you have to say are not only unlikely to care and likely to find you annoying, but almost completely irrelevant. The bar on promotion to the general populace is extremely low, so it really shouldn't be tough for the GNUbies to clear if they really want to make a meaningful contribution.
Due to its age, she was able to get a replacement covered, and the new machine is a substantial upgrade... it was just a hassle.
I'm actually using the old one. It still works, but the end of the ac adaptor has a couple inches of electrical tape holding it bent just so and every so often I have to give it a jiggle to make the wires touch. If it weren't for Ubuntu's apparent assumption that unplugging a laptop with a fully charged battery means you want it to drop into sleep mode, it wouldn't be anything but a minor nuisance.
I have my doubts about the miniaturization being a real problem.
My girlfriend recently replaced her laptop, a Toshiba Satellite, not because it was too old to run the software she needs or because any of the actual components wore out... but because her *second* power cable tweaked.
I was under the impression that transmitting electricity across a wire and building plugs that don't break their solder after 6 months were both solved problems. Like, really solved. Decades ago. And I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the only place it isn't is on the permanently connected side of a $40 power brick, rather than the side I could replace for $10.
I think you're substantially downplaying the role of the MPAA. Many state and local governments actually base laws explicitly around their ratings system. Virtually no distributors will carry unrated films. Many professional groups and licensing bodies are heavy-handed in requiring members and applicants (ie. prospective theaters) to carry only rated films, and will pose substantial barriers, sometimes extralegal, to anyone refusing to "get with the program" as it were.
Oh, and good luck promoting such films. Virtually every TV channel will be blocked to you, as will virtually virtually every radio station, newspaper, magazine or other mass-media outlet. Not that it will matter, since you'll never get it onto store-shelves anyway, at least not in any corporate-owned retailer.
This isn't a conspiracy, it's the effect of the MPAA spending decades insinuating itself into the world: they've got their hooks into everyone, and they represent a very substantial bloc of political interest and power. It's a cartel and a monopoly, but they've been abusing the position for so long it's impossible to even go after them.
That said, I am very hopeful that the emergence of the Internet will eventually render them obsolete and that they will disappear as a result... but I am more than a little concerned that their entrenched position might be leveraged to simply insinuate themselves into that vector of distribution as they have all others.
I think the most unforgivable change was removing Dr. Manhattan's private conversation with Ozymandias at the very end.
(SEMI-)SPOILER ALERT
OZY: "Hello, Jon. I was hoping we'd have the chance to talk. Jon... I know people think me callous, but I've made myself feel every death. By day I imagine endless faces. by night... well, I dream about swimming towards a hideous... No. never mind. It isn't significant... What's significant is that I know. I know I've struggled across the backs of murdered innocents to save humanity... But someone had to take the weight of that awful, necessary crime. I'd hoped you'd understand, unlike Rorschach..."
MAN: "You needn't consider Rorschach. I strongly doubt He'll reach civilization... but yes, I understand, without condoning or condemning. Human affairs cannot be my concern. I'm leaving this galaxy for one less complicated."
OZY: "But you'd regained interest in human life..."
MAN: Yes, I have. I think perhaps I'll create some. Goodbye, Adrian."
OZY: "Jon, wait, before you leave... I did the right thing, didn't I? it all worked out in the end."
MAN: "'In the end?' Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
OZY: "Jon? Wait! What do you mean by..."
[Manhattan vanishes, leaving Ozymandias to his doubts]
END (SEMI-)SPOILER
Seriously, it took me about two minutes to write that chunk of the script, including digging out the comic. It would be a 45 second scene. Of all the things they COULD have cut, but decided not to, they chose the most meaningful exchange in the entire thing? That's just asinine.
What about people who feel that a giant blue penis might have artistic, poetic, emotional, psychological, literary and ethical value, but not so much sexual value, and want to see it for those reasons? I see at least one penis every single day that I open my eyes, frankly, the mere sight of a penis lost any meaningful shock value to me around age 15.
Maybe if it were a huge porno-boner ejaculating toxic jism all over the place I could see an objection to it that amounts to more than immature homophobia... but they opted not to include the Dr. Manhattan bukkake scene, so it seems rather a moot point.
They can request anything they want. It is the responsibility of the courts to determine how much of what they ask for they will actually get... a value that ranges from 100% to negative amounts (indicating that they consider the plaintiff to have maliciously abused the legal system).
In the case of the information you mention, the judge, rightly, said no. That's precisely how these things are supposed to work.
You can't simply will millions of boycotters into existence, and you cannot force anyone into it, but you can join for yourself and get the whole one body closer.
When did it become the twenty firth century? Are there going to be 19 clones of Colin Firth also running about making mediocre films and inexplicably moistening ladies' undergarments or something?
Aside from that, your blind prejudice is no better than any other. Sadly, I can't think of any good quips to the effect of "don't be a hypocrite" that aren't derived from some religious text from the top of my head, but I think you get the idea.
I doubt you ever really need to do all of those things simultaneously, and you could almost certainly rent a capable vehicle on those occasions when you would.
Of course, that's not your real point, you just want to make excuses for driving a gas guzzling eyesore while retaining some smug self-righteous superiority over anyone who would dare to call you a fool for it.
Moreover, it would interfere with the real business of private prisons: rent extraction. Of course, the prisoners can't pay rent, so they just charge the government (county, state, federal, it all spends the same) instead. Keeping someone in a maximum security prison for one year is cost comparable to sending them to an elite private college, including room and board, for one year. We could literally send convicted murderers to Harvard for the same price as keeping them in prison.
Every time somebody claims we can save money by further cutting into public education (as opposed to meaningfully reforming it, which I absolutely support), I literally cringe. Penny wise and pound foolish is no way to improve our standing.
Slashdot Mirror
Bitter?
Life must be hard on a poor neocon like you, what, with people refusing to bow down before your obvious superiority, and raptly listening as you expound upon the inerrant wisdom of the Federalist Papers and the work of Leo Strauss. Clearly no reasonable person (50% of even those paragons of infinite virtue The Founding Fathers were on board... how could lesser men be expected to comprehend?) could ever know and understand precisely what you're talking about, yet still consider it a load of horseshit. Also, that must make them an evil socialist, because everyone knows that there are only two real political ideologies: Patriotic Republican Americanism, and Socialist Nazi Sovietism.
Perhaps acting as though news happens in Australia is considered charitable?
Apple has enough money to hire legions of "customer service reps" who have absolutely no authority to do anything aside from escalate your call to their supervisors... who also have no authority to do anything besides escalate to their supervisors, who in turn have no authority to do anything but escalate it further. Repeat ad nauseam. They require each tier of powerlessness to provide a minimum 40 minutes of stalling prior to escalation, do not share any information between tiers (requiring you to repeat everything at each level... that's an easy 5 minutes each right off the bat), and deliberately understaff both to keep down payrolls and to increase hold times. Eventually it sinks in that nothing will be done, and you might even buy into their premise that it "isn't something we are able to help you with, and you'll need to speak to [some other company] about that particular problem, but we're very sorry for the inconvenience. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"
Keep in mind, of course, that these people protect legitimate (or at least legal) revenue streams as well, and you can see why this is a good investment.
Of course you, Joe Developer, don't have a couple million to blow on an Indian call center, so you're pretty much stuck having to deal with problems rather than waiting out the customer's impatience and frustration.
Have you ever noticed that everybody agrees there is too much regulation, and yet *without fail and regardless of who is in power* the amount and complexity of regulation always goes up... even especially when moves are made to limit the number of overt restrictions?
The corporations *love* that business is over-regulated, they *love* that the rules are so Byzantine as to require massive legal departments with high-powered attorneys salary, they *love* that this places the barriers to entry for any newcomers so high that such things essentially don't happen. Business doesn't want to compete, because competition cuts into profits, and even worse it creates the potential to actually *fail*. Banking executives can literally run their companies into the ground, threaten bankruptcy, and pay themselves multi-million dollar bonuses with money the government *gives* them simply because everyone knows that if they went under it wouldn't be possible for a smaller competitor to fill the void; all of them with even the remotest possibility of doing so are purchased or driven out by the cost of compliance with rules that don't make sense.
It's the same in virtually every industry, and it's not changing any time soon, because BUSINESS HATES COMPETITION.
And in your estimation, how is third-party development on Nintendo faring these days?
I'm pretty well convinced that scene has turned to liquid shit as they've taken to abusing the devs harder than MS and Sony combined.
As a confirmed non-Mac user and anti-fan of everything Apple, I am completely unbothered by the idea that Apple is becoming hostile to developers in emulation of Nintendo's rapidly failing business strategy.
Now I get to not install this on my not overpriced phone!
Awesome!
Either that or execasm over being able to claim that "Intel has made revolutionary advances in data center operation and efficiency based specifically on using windows".
I'm a big fan of "Thieves' Cant" personally.
They'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.
You may think that qualifier is "bullshit" but it's a well-established and widely accepted one. We have drawn the line where free speech ends at the commission of a crime or threat of harm for a very long time, and doing so is considered appropriate even by the vast majority of card-carrying members of the ACLU.
You're welcome to disagree, but pretending that this is an irrational or unprecedented distinction is just silly.
Which "average person"s are you referring to?
I strongly suspect that Taco is aware of the Linux vs. GNU naming controversy. In fact, I strongly suspect that almost everyone on Slashdot is aware.
Whether or not "average people" understand the role of a kernel in an OS is entirely irrelevant to whether or not Linus Torvalds is the originator of the Linux kernel.
So here's a radical idea: rather than try to browbeat other geeks to whom few people listen into using your preferred nomenclature, why don't you try putting that nomenclature out into general use? The people who already know what you have to say are not only unlikely to care and likely to find you annoying, but almost completely irrelevant. The bar on promotion to the general populace is extremely low, so it really shouldn't be tough for the GNUbies to clear if they really want to make a meaningful contribution.
Due to its age, she was able to get a replacement covered, and the new machine is a substantial upgrade... it was just a hassle.
I'm actually using the old one. It still works, but the end of the ac adaptor has a couple inches of electrical tape holding it bent just so and every so often I have to give it a jiggle to make the wires touch. If it weren't for Ubuntu's apparent assumption that unplugging a laptop with a fully charged battery means you want it to drop into sleep mode, it wouldn't be anything but a minor nuisance.
I have my doubts about the miniaturization being a real problem.
My girlfriend recently replaced her laptop, a Toshiba Satellite, not because it was too old to run the software she needs or because any of the actual components wore out... but because her *second* power cable tweaked.
I was under the impression that transmitting electricity across a wire and building plugs that don't break their solder after 6 months were both solved problems. Like, really solved. Decades ago. And I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the only place it isn't is on the permanently connected side of a $40 power brick, rather than the side I could replace for $10.
Planned obsolescence is a cancer.
The act of Congress (comparable to a parliament) which created the Federal Reserve, our central bank.
I think you're substantially downplaying the role of the MPAA. Many state and local governments actually base laws explicitly around their ratings system. Virtually no distributors will carry unrated films. Many professional groups and licensing bodies are heavy-handed in requiring members and applicants (ie. prospective theaters) to carry only rated films, and will pose substantial barriers, sometimes extralegal, to anyone refusing to "get with the program" as it were.
Oh, and good luck promoting such films. Virtually every TV channel will be blocked to you, as will virtually virtually every radio station, newspaper, magazine or other mass-media outlet. Not that it will matter, since you'll never get it onto store-shelves anyway, at least not in any corporate-owned retailer.
This isn't a conspiracy, it's the effect of the MPAA spending decades insinuating itself into the world: they've got their hooks into everyone, and they represent a very substantial bloc of political interest and power. It's a cartel and a monopoly, but they've been abusing the position for so long it's impossible to even go after them.
That said, I am very hopeful that the emergence of the Internet will eventually render them obsolete and that they will disappear as a result... but I am more than a little concerned that their entrenched position might be leveraged to simply insinuate themselves into that vector of distribution as they have all others.
I think the most unforgivable change was removing Dr. Manhattan's private conversation with Ozymandias at the very end.
(SEMI-)SPOILER ALERT
OZY: "Hello, Jon. I was hoping we'd have the chance to talk. Jon... I know people think me callous, but I've made myself feel every death. By day I imagine endless faces. by night... well, I dream about swimming towards a hideous... No. never mind. It isn't significant...
What's significant is that I know. I know I've struggled across the backs of murdered innocents to save humanity... But someone had to take the weight of that awful, necessary crime. I'd hoped you'd understand, unlike Rorschach..."
MAN: "You needn't consider Rorschach. I strongly doubt He'll reach civilization... but yes, I understand, without condoning or condemning. Human affairs cannot be my concern. I'm leaving this galaxy for one less complicated."
OZY: "But you'd regained interest in human life..."
MAN: Yes, I have. I think perhaps I'll create some. Goodbye, Adrian."
OZY: "Jon, wait, before you leave... I did the right thing, didn't I? it all worked out in the end."
MAN: "'In the end?' Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
OZY: "Jon? Wait! What do you mean by..."
[Manhattan vanishes, leaving Ozymandias to his doubts]
END (SEMI-)SPOILER
Seriously, it took me about two minutes to write that chunk of the script, including digging out the comic. It would be a 45 second scene. Of all the things they COULD have cut, but decided not to, they chose the most meaningful exchange in the entire thing? That's just asinine.
I thought Scott Pilgrim was great, and one of very few movies that actually improved on the source material.
To each their own, I suppose.
What about people who feel that a giant blue penis might have artistic, poetic, emotional, psychological, literary and ethical value, but not so much sexual value, and want to see it for those reasons? I see at least one penis every single day that I open my eyes, frankly, the mere sight of a penis lost any meaningful shock value to me around age 15.
Maybe if it were a huge porno-boner ejaculating toxic jism all over the place I could see an objection to it that amounts to more than immature homophobia... but they opted not to include the Dr. Manhattan bukkake scene, so it seems rather a moot point.
So is it unfair because it hasn't hit the market yet (but will in the very near future), or because it has better hardware?
They can request anything they want. It is the responsibility of the courts to determine how much of what they ask for they will actually get... a value that ranges from 100% to negative amounts (indicating that they consider the plaintiff to have maliciously abused the legal system).
In the case of the information you mention, the judge, rightly, said no. That's precisely how these things are supposed to work.
Your logic sucks.
You can't simply will millions of boycotters into existence, and you cannot force anyone into it, but you can join for yourself and get the whole one body closer.
Does that brand have a no-bitch model, though?
When did it become the twenty firth century? Are there going to be 19 clones of Colin Firth also running about making mediocre films and inexplicably moistening ladies' undergarments or something?
Aside from that, your blind prejudice is no better than any other. Sadly, I can't think of any good quips to the effect of "don't be a hypocrite" that aren't derived from some religious text from the top of my head, but I think you get the idea.
They aren't shipping them for free, and stores aren't buying them because they don't sell.
There is a difference between the numbers, sure, but you're saying that shipped and sold aren't very strongly correlated, but they really are.
I doubt you ever really need to do all of those things simultaneously, and you could almost certainly rent a capable vehicle on those occasions when you would.
Of course, that's not your real point, you just want to make excuses for driving a gas guzzling eyesore while retaining some smug self-righteous superiority over anyone who would dare to call you a fool for it.
Moreover, it would interfere with the real business of private prisons: rent extraction. Of course, the prisoners can't pay rent, so they just charge the government (county, state, federal, it all spends the same) instead. Keeping someone in a maximum security prison for one year is cost comparable to sending them to an elite private college, including room and board, for one year. We could literally send convicted murderers to Harvard for the same price as keeping them in prison.
Every time somebody claims we can save money by further cutting into public education (as opposed to meaningfully reforming it, which I absolutely support), I literally cringe. Penny wise and pound foolish is no way to improve our standing.