We should make RFID highly controlled instead. Once we make RFID ownership illegal then only criminals will have RFID, and they'll be a whole lot easier to find.
That's actually not a problem. Stupid people would blow their stack of money and be right back where they started, except that along the way they've provided a HUGE boost to consumer spending that allows all of the smart people to actually make a ton of money and get way ahead. This is precisely the effect we're looking to get with these bailouts, but this way no corporate execs get to take multi-million dollar personal bonuses without even having to work for them.
And it's not like they were ever in first place... I still don't get what people thought was so scary. Prior to WWII, their technology was way behind that of the US or UK, immediately after it was still way behind that of the US or UK, and all of a sudden people thought they might magically pull sci-fi weapons out of thin air? Maybe at the time it seemed more plausible.
I'd never realized that Paul Allen had anything to do with Charter, let alone ran it. I admit that I did very little homework on them before signing up... just enough to find out they were the only viable broadband option available to me where I live (DSL is too far from a switch and therefore very slow, there are no other cable companies in the municipality because of an exclusivity contract, and there's simply no way I can afford a T# or satellite connection). I also soon found out that they're ridiculously overpriced, have terrible customer support, routinely underserve their customers and can't even manage a channel numbering system that remotely reflects the actual FCC granted channels the networks broadcast over.
It figures that only a company run by a Microsoft exec could actually make my blood boil worse than Comcast.
"If you read your socialist sources, this is the well known Israeli way."
It's also, incidentally, the well known fascist way. I'm still waiting for the general public to catch on to that and stop accepting everything Israel does no matter how obviously wrong or oppressive just because they're afraid of being called anti-Semitic.
The point isn't that people wouldn't understand what you meant... the point is that your statement made an implication best described as "terrifying"; letting it go without comment is, ultimately, passive acceptance of a mode of thought I cannot abide.
Mountains out of mole hills it may be, but these things happen by the smallest of degrees.
My Zen Stone does that as well. I am aware that there are MP3 players on the market which do this. I am not aware, however, of anyone else who can use their iPod in that way (although perhaps the Shuffle could, I admit to simply not caring about that one at all). In fact, last I knew, most iPods required some sort of activation in iTunes before they work at all, though I may have misunderstood that. Is it possible to even acquire iPod drivers without installing iTunes?
"So let me get this straight. You think other states should contribute to your admittedly high tax system because your senators are so benevolent and decide you really could use that money. Like you are getting any. You admit you are not having a high tax rate..."
I pay 3-4 times more federal tax than state. This is true of most people here. While our tax rate is high compared to other states' tax rates, most of the people who are complaining aren't actually paying it.
"Pork spending is just what it is. A spend of money on something not really needed. Though you could make an argument that the spending helps the economy in some ways by loosing it up for other projects. A redistribution of wealth."
Define "not really needed". While I won't deny there is some pork here, the bulk of our money goes to things like road maintenance, public safety, public education, and other projects that actually do have value to the community. And while I know "redistributing wealth" is a dirty word these days, I think it should be pointed out that one of the most appealing aspects of capitalism to its early proponents was that it allowed for wealth to be redistributed from landed aristocrats to whoever was actually best at earning it (and therefore most deserving of it). Nothing kills an economy or a community faster than too great a stratification of wealth, no matter what system it claims to use.
"I know MANY people who moved away from what they called taxachusetts. Or my favorite quote from one of them 'i moved away and am making less money but take home more'. He made 10% less but took home 20-30% MORE money to spend on his family. Also ask all the people who work 'on the border' if they live in massachusetts. You will get some interesting answers. But I would be willing to bet most of the reasons is money..."
So do I. A lot of them move back when they realize that without taxes, you get no public services. One of the more interesting ones I've heard is the different levels of consumer protection one gets here (or in similarly taxed states) compared to elsewhere; effectively, here we have them, and elsewhere you don't. As for people working here and living elsewhere, I assure you it has nothing to do with their tax payments: our state income tax is applied based on where you are employed, not where you live. I work with some guys from New Hampshire, and they are paying Mass income tax anyway (and complain that it is the bulk of their tax burden, even though the numbers plainly show federal withholding FAR outstripping state). That said, our cost of living is pretty high, which is probably at least in part because of taxes, but high property value and high standard of living almost certainly have something to do with it.
"If you enjoy being a slave to the state (which you obviously do) stay there. Just dont think I want to you to enjoy your spending of my money on whatever because I live somewhere else."
I enjoy getting public services for the taxes I pay. You can call that slavery if you wish, but it doesn't make it so. Anyway, if your senators can't get your money is spent on you, well, it's not my problem you can't get decent senators for your state, but maybe you should be directing your anger at states that actually do take in more Federal money than they pay... like Alaska.
"McCain is doing what he said he would do (even though I am not from that state it did interest me). Kerry and Kennedy do what they say they are going to do spend more of everyone elses money. They do not say it in that way they probably say it something like 'we are going to enact/propose programs that will XYZ'. Which means spending money."
And what he said he'd do hurts his state. He's promised not to secure any money for Arizona, and in doing so hasn't caused there to be less spending or less taxation, just less money in his state. Politicians are in the business of spending other people's money in ways that benefit their constituents, that's the game, and criticizing people who are good at doing what
"But would you buy a product from a company that knew about the issue and continued to sell the product anyway?"
Yeah, I'm still looking for a car manufacturer that knows their cars won't break down after years of use too. They all know what how and hy things will break, and they do nothing to fix it. Bastards.
"Senators Kennedy and Kerry haven't helped Massachusetts much at all, if at all."
That's really not true. a good deal of money is funneled into Massachusetts through the Federal government for all sorts of wacky things, and it certainly isn't because this state lacks money to for things itself (we have the second highest per capita income along with a relatively high tax rate... which I love saying just because it frustrates right-wingers trying to justify how that makes sense without blowing their own theories completely out of the water) or we have such an enormous population. It's because they actually do what Senators are supposed to do, and represent the interests of their state. A very valid criticism of Senators who refuse to, for example, use the ear-mark system, is that by doing so they aren't solving any problems but rather harming their state... Arizona is actually suffering for the fact that McCain thinks ear-marks are evil, which means he's doing his job of representing and pursuing Arizona's best interests very poorly.
If you mean to say it works at hogging resources and weaseling its way into all sorts of other processes and applications where it is of dubious (at best) use, then sure, but if you mean to imply it's a better music player than just about any other option you're full of it.
As far as I'm concerned, the two single biggest drawbacks to iPods are that they cost twice as much and you actually have to install iTunes.
For the record, I still don't see what's so damned hard about making an MP3 player connect to a computer as a flash hard drive. Just let me copy/paste the files through whatever file browser I use, and skip this whole syncing nonsense if I don't want to do it. And for all the people who do (for some reason) find that their media player is the best tool for copying files onto their MP3 player, they can do so with any player they want rather than the one their player's manufacturer wants.
Public schools are government institutions. As a work generated by a government entity, lessons and lectures are defined as being in the public domain. The teacher cannot legally confiscate these notes under any pretense of copyright, because they have waived all such copyrights by virtue of having made such work under contract to such an agency.
In other words, IF this is a public school, the teacher can't do that, and needs to be slapped down.
Furthermore... why do they care if future students read the same notes? If the notes are effective at teaching the information, then the student who took them has actually written a successful (in the educational sense) textbook and deserves a great deal of praise, not punishment. The only issue that could be caused is if students record test answers in their notes, which is easily (and comedically) resolved by slightly changing the questions between semesters (ie. make superficial changes to equation values, reorder multiple choice questions, etc). They are just being lazy and/or paranoid, and in any case doing great harm to the goals of public education.
Of course, if this is a private school, then the above may or may not be moot depending on all sorts of whacky stuff. If that's the case, good luck and godspeed.
My guess is that Comcast didn't see your community as valuable enough to pursue until there was already strong competition. Their usual MO, at least around here, is to get towns to sign into contracts where all competition is stifled before it can get off of the ground and then providing the bare minimum service expected at the highest price tolerated in order to keep people from complaining and taking political or economic action against their coerced mediocrity.
In their defense, however, they could be a lot worse. There's always good old Charter around to make Comcast look like the best thing since sliced bread.
Here in the US we pay more for health care per capita than any other nation in the world. I'm going to let that sink in, then you tell me if your assumption still makes any sense at all.
I wonder if it's occurred to any of these super-sleuths that Obama received more campaign donations than any other candidate in history, getting more than double McCain's donations. No shit that employees from company X in industry Y donated dramatically more to the Obama campaign than they did to McCain... that's true almost across the board. Hell, a bunch of McCain's top donor groups actually donated more to Obama.
But thanks for the link to YET ANOTHER fucking obvious article written just to get Conservatives who refuse to accept what's already happened (by and large, they're the same folks who four years ago would jump down somebody's throat for suggesting that maybe Bush was, in fact, a terrible president who should be impeached, in case you aren't sure who to look for) riled up about "those liberals at that company I want to make look sinister".
If everything you do requires two hands on the keyboard hitting keys in programs you are ALWAYS familiar with you'll get what you're describing.
How many people browse the web with only a keyboard? How many people edit pictures/music/movies with only a keyboard? How many people use a dozen programs in a different day, each with different keyboard shortcuts that would need to be muscle-memoried? I think a strong case could be made that people who use one hand on the keyboard with their other on the mouse will spend more time just moving their mouse hand to the keyboard than they would mousing.
Much like "touch typing is just faster" falls apart once special characters and numbers are introduced in large quantities, or when one is not transcribing but rather writing original text (where regardless of typing technique, most people can press keys considerably faster than they can think of keys to press), "keyboard shortcuts are faster" falls apart when you start using apps that are unfamiliar, unpredictable or simply make more sense with a mouse (for the last two, think a web browser running online apps... even the ones that could be used keyboard only are liable to become such a convoluted and machine-specific mess that it's hardly worth the hassle of figuring out how).
Of course, the best option is just to give people both and let them use whatever they want. We're probably only talking milliseconds here anyway, so perception is all that really counts.
I've actually seen a story about a guy who's on the sex offender registry in Texas because when he was 18 he and his girlfriend, who was 16 (can't remember the exact age, and it doesn't much matter) at the time were a long term relationship and having sex. She got into a fight with her mother, who in a moment of stupidity called the cops and reported that he was committing statutory rape... not to cause trouble for him, but to "punish" her daughter for something totally unrelated. the DA wouldn't drop the charges, even after everyone involved expressed that there was nothing actually wrong and that pursuing such criminal charges would just ruin his life for no reason. So now he's married to his "victim", with the full blessings of her parents, hasn't committed any crimes of any nature, but still has to deal with being registered sex offender for the rest of his life.
Kind of makes you wonder how these people sleep at night, doesn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
That's what makes borrow and spend so much better than tax and spend!
Sincerely,
the Republican Party
Well, I think the girl in the clip has some pretty compelling evidence she was "impacted".
We should make RFID highly controlled instead. Once we make RFID ownership illegal then only criminals will have RFID, and they'll be a whole lot easier to find.
Hey, it works for guns, right?
So what?
That's actually not a problem. Stupid people would blow their stack of money and be right back where they started, except that along the way they've provided a HUGE boost to consumer spending that allows all of the smart people to actually make a ton of money and get way ahead. This is precisely the effect we're looking to get with these bailouts, but this way no corporate execs get to take multi-million dollar personal bonuses without even having to work for them.
And for those of us who like our incumbents? It's not like they were elected last time because everyone disliked them so much.
Change for the sake of change isn't helpful, and it's not going to fix much of anything.
And it's not like they were ever in first place... I still don't get what people thought was so scary. Prior to WWII, their technology was way behind that of the US or UK, immediately after it was still way behind that of the US or UK, and all of a sudden people thought they might magically pull sci-fi weapons out of thin air? Maybe at the time it seemed more plausible.
I'd never realized that Paul Allen had anything to do with Charter, let alone ran it. I admit that I did very little homework on them before signing up... just enough to find out they were the only viable broadband option available to me where I live (DSL is too far from a switch and therefore very slow, there are no other cable companies in the municipality because of an exclusivity contract, and there's simply no way I can afford a T# or satellite connection). I also soon found out that they're ridiculously overpriced, have terrible customer support, routinely underserve their customers and can't even manage a channel numbering system that remotely reflects the actual FCC granted channels the networks broadcast over.
It figures that only a company run by a Microsoft exec could actually make my blood boil worse than Comcast.
"If you read your socialist sources, this is the well known Israeli way."
It's also, incidentally, the well known fascist way. I'm still waiting for the general public to catch on to that and stop accepting everything Israel does no matter how obviously wrong or oppressive just because they're afraid of being called anti-Semitic.
I'm glad to hear we've mastered traveling forward through time. This is a major breakthrough.
The point isn't that people wouldn't understand what you meant... the point is that your statement made an implication best described as "terrifying"; letting it go without comment is, ultimately, passive acceptance of a mode of thought I cannot abide.
Mountains out of mole hills it may be, but these things happen by the smallest of degrees.
"complete redacted"
There is no such thing. Complete is an absolute term, and once a portion is gone (redacted) it is no longer applicable.
I find your sincere use of Newspeak disturbing.
"Who told you that?"
Apple.
My Zen Stone does that as well. I am aware that there are MP3 players on the market which do this. I am not aware, however, of anyone else who can use their iPod in that way (although perhaps the Shuffle could, I admit to simply not caring about that one at all). In fact, last I knew, most iPods required some sort of activation in iTunes before they work at all, though I may have misunderstood that. Is it possible to even acquire iPod drivers without installing iTunes?
"So let me get this straight. You think other states should contribute to your admittedly high tax system because your senators are so benevolent and decide you really could use that money. Like you are getting any. You admit you are not having a high tax rate..."
I pay 3-4 times more federal tax than state. This is true of most people here. While our tax rate is high compared to other states' tax rates, most of the people who are complaining aren't actually paying it.
"Pork spending is just what it is. A spend of money on something not really needed. Though you could make an argument that the spending helps the economy in some ways by loosing it up for other projects. A redistribution of wealth."
Define "not really needed". While I won't deny there is some pork here, the bulk of our money goes to things like road maintenance, public safety, public education, and other projects that actually do have value to the community. And while I know "redistributing wealth" is a dirty word these days, I think it should be pointed out that one of the most appealing aspects of capitalism to its early proponents was that it allowed for wealth to be redistributed from landed aristocrats to whoever was actually best at earning it (and therefore most deserving of it). Nothing kills an economy or a community faster than too great a stratification of wealth, no matter what system it claims to use.
"I know MANY people who moved away from what they called taxachusetts. Or my favorite quote from one of them 'i moved away and am making less money but take home more'. He made 10% less but took home 20-30% MORE money to spend on his family. Also ask all the people who work 'on the border' if they live in massachusetts. You will get some interesting answers. But I would be willing to bet most of the reasons is money..."
So do I. A lot of them move back when they realize that without taxes, you get no public services. One of the more interesting ones I've heard is the different levels of consumer protection one gets here (or in similarly taxed states) compared to elsewhere; effectively, here we have them, and elsewhere you don't. As for people working here and living elsewhere, I assure you it has nothing to do with their tax payments: our state income tax is applied based on where you are employed, not where you live. I work with some guys from New Hampshire, and they are paying Mass income tax anyway (and complain that it is the bulk of their tax burden, even though the numbers plainly show federal withholding FAR outstripping state). That said, our cost of living is pretty high, which is probably at least in part because of taxes, but high property value and high standard of living almost certainly have something to do with it.
"If you enjoy being a slave to the state (which you obviously do) stay there. Just dont think I want to you to enjoy your spending of my money on whatever because I live somewhere else."
I enjoy getting public services for the taxes I pay. You can call that slavery if you wish, but it doesn't make it so. Anyway, if your senators can't get your money is spent on you, well, it's not my problem you can't get decent senators for your state, but maybe you should be directing your anger at states that actually do take in more Federal money than they pay... like Alaska.
"McCain is doing what he said he would do (even though I am not from that state it did interest me). Kerry and Kennedy do what they say they are going to do spend more of everyone elses money. They do not say it in that way they probably say it something like 'we are going to enact/propose programs that will XYZ'. Which means spending money."
And what he said he'd do hurts his state. He's promised not to secure any money for Arizona, and in doing so hasn't caused there to be less spending or less taxation, just less money in his state. Politicians are in the business of spending other people's money in ways that benefit their constituents, that's the game, and criticizing people who are good at doing what
Fun fact: Karl Marx never killed anyone. No really, he didn't. Look into it.
"But would you buy a product from a company that knew about the issue and continued to sell the product anyway?"
Yeah, I'm still looking for a car manufacturer that knows their cars won't break down after years of use too. They all know what how and hy things will break, and they do nothing to fix it. Bastards.
"Senators Kennedy and Kerry haven't helped Massachusetts much at all, if at all."
That's really not true. a good deal of money is funneled into Massachusetts through the Federal government for all sorts of wacky things, and it certainly isn't because this state lacks money to for things itself (we have the second highest per capita income along with a relatively high tax rate... which I love saying just because it frustrates right-wingers trying to justify how that makes sense without blowing their own theories completely out of the water) or we have such an enormous population. It's because they actually do what Senators are supposed to do, and represent the interests of their state. A very valid criticism of Senators who refuse to, for example, use the ear-mark system, is that by doing so they aren't solving any problems but rather harming their state... Arizona is actually suffering for the fact that McCain thinks ear-marks are evil, which means he's doing his job of representing and pursuing Arizona's best interests very poorly.
Works at what?
If you mean to say it works at hogging resources and weaseling its way into all sorts of other processes and applications where it is of dubious (at best) use, then sure, but if you mean to imply it's a better music player than just about any other option you're full of it.
As far as I'm concerned, the two single biggest drawbacks to iPods are that they cost twice as much and you actually have to install iTunes.
For the record, I still don't see what's so damned hard about making an MP3 player connect to a computer as a flash hard drive. Just let me copy/paste the files through whatever file browser I use, and skip this whole syncing nonsense if I don't want to do it. And for all the people who do (for some reason) find that their media player is the best tool for copying files onto their MP3 player, they can do so with any player they want rather than the one their player's manufacturer wants.
Public schools are government institutions. As a work generated by a government entity, lessons and lectures are defined as being in the public domain. The teacher cannot legally confiscate these notes under any pretense of copyright, because they have waived all such copyrights by virtue of having made such work under contract to such an agency.
In other words, IF this is a public school, the teacher can't do that, and needs to be slapped down.
Furthermore... why do they care if future students read the same notes? If the notes are effective at teaching the information, then the student who took them has actually written a successful (in the educational sense) textbook and deserves a great deal of praise, not punishment. The only issue that could be caused is if students record test answers in their notes, which is easily (and comedically) resolved by slightly changing the questions between semesters (ie. make superficial changes to equation values, reorder multiple choice questions, etc). They are just being lazy and/or paranoid, and in any case doing great harm to the goals of public education.
Of course, if this is a private school, then the above may or may not be moot depending on all sorts of whacky stuff. If that's the case, good luck and godspeed.
My guess is that Comcast didn't see your community as valuable enough to pursue until there was already strong competition. Their usual MO, at least around here, is to get towns to sign into contracts where all competition is stifled before it can get off of the ground and then providing the bare minimum service expected at the highest price tolerated in order to keep people from complaining and taking political or economic action against their coerced mediocrity.
In their defense, however, they could be a lot worse. There's always good old Charter around to make Comcast look like the best thing since sliced bread.
Here in the US we pay more for health care per capita than any other nation in the world. I'm going to let that sink in, then you tell me if your assumption still makes any sense at all.
"I wonder what kind of ads showed up next to White House emails concerning political appointments?"
Buy SENATE SEATS Online Now! {www.blagojevich.com]
Anyone who didn't see that one coming from a million miles away deserves a shot in the balls.
Well, it's hard to say exactly... but so far it hasn't managed to piss me off completely, and OSX accomplished that 5 years ago.
For now the winner is Windows 7... but to be fair, it's still vaporware and has plenty of time to piss me off even more once it hits reality.
I wonder if it's occurred to any of these super-sleuths that Obama received more campaign donations than any other candidate in history, getting more than double McCain's donations. No shit that employees from company X in industry Y donated dramatically more to the Obama campaign than they did to McCain... that's true almost across the board. Hell, a bunch of McCain's top donor groups actually donated more to Obama.
But thanks for the link to YET ANOTHER fucking obvious article written just to get Conservatives who refuse to accept what's already happened (by and large, they're the same folks who four years ago would jump down somebody's throat for suggesting that maybe Bush was, in fact, a terrible president who should be impeached, in case you aren't sure who to look for) riled up about "those liberals at that company I want to make look sinister".
If everything you do requires two hands on the keyboard hitting keys in programs you are ALWAYS familiar with you'll get what you're describing.
How many people browse the web with only a keyboard? How many people edit pictures/music/movies with only a keyboard? How many people use a dozen programs in a different day, each with different keyboard shortcuts that would need to be muscle-memoried? I think a strong case could be made that people who use one hand on the keyboard with their other on the mouse will spend more time just moving their mouse hand to the keyboard than they would mousing.
Much like "touch typing is just faster" falls apart once special characters and numbers are introduced in large quantities, or when one is not transcribing but rather writing original text (where regardless of typing technique, most people can press keys considerably faster than they can think of keys to press), "keyboard shortcuts are faster" falls apart when you start using apps that are unfamiliar, unpredictable or simply make more sense with a mouse (for the last two, think a web browser running online apps... even the ones that could be used keyboard only are liable to become such a convoluted and machine-specific mess that it's hardly worth the hassle of figuring out how).
Of course, the best option is just to give people both and let them use whatever they want. We're probably only talking milliseconds here anyway, so perception is all that really counts.
I've actually seen a story about a guy who's on the sex offender registry in Texas because when he was 18 he and his girlfriend, who was 16 (can't remember the exact age, and it doesn't much matter) at the time were a long term relationship and having sex. She got into a fight with her mother, who in a moment of stupidity called the cops and reported that he was committing statutory rape... not to cause trouble for him, but to "punish" her daughter for something totally unrelated. the DA wouldn't drop the charges, even after everyone involved expressed that there was nothing actually wrong and that pursuing such criminal charges would just ruin his life for no reason. So now he's married to his "victim", with the full blessings of her parents, hasn't committed any crimes of any nature, but still has to deal with being registered sex offender for the rest of his life.
Kind of makes you wonder how these people sleep at night, doesn't it?