It is absolutely not appropriate to also charge parents in every case where "children" are charged. If a 15 year old starts skipping class class and shoplifting candy bars, that's not the parents' fault, and they shouldn't be charged with anything.
The actual solution is to use the legal system to scare the bejeezus out of the kid, tell the parents what's going on, and create just enough hassle that everyone is sure the parents ARE taking the real punishment into their own hands and that the kid learns the appropriate lesson. Charging the parents for some obscure accessory or negligence crime is overkill, and it does a lot more harm than good.
As much as I hate Boston, they don't deserve full credit for the epic level of pork-barreling that went on with the bog Dig. That went through all sorts of state and Federal politics as well. It's also not fair to call them 'incompetent", most of them are very competent, very intelligent people who get a lot done... the problem is that their job isn't to responsibly run the city of Boston, it's to make themselves as wealthy as possible in the shortest amount of time, at taxpayer expense if at all possible.
That said, you forgot to mention a couple of other events in Boston's "illustrious" history. First, there's Shay's Rebellion, a local uprising from my neck of the woods (Pittsfield-Amherst-Springfield area) that many historians cite as one of the major motives behind the U.S. Constitution (prior to that, the same function was served by the Articles of Confederacy); a bunch of Revolutionary War veterans and farmers armed themselves and captured an armory in an attempt to overthrow the government, before being slaughtered by mercenaries hired by the Boston plutocrats who were simultaneously collecting exorbitant rent and arbitrarily raising taxes in order to pay themselves higher salaries. They were, in effect, running half of the Commonwealth's area as an enormous sharecropping plantation, raping Western Massachusetts for all it was worth in order to keep Boston, where they all spent most of their time, well funded and to expand the industrial efforts that were beginning in the Central and Northeastern parts of the state (Worcester-Lowell).
You also forgot to mention the Quabbin Reservoir: four small towns in the Swift River Valley were forcibly depopulated, the people who lived there paid a fraction of the value of their land and left to find new homes, and then the valley was flooded and a subterranean aqueduct nearly 25 miles long was dug just to bring water to the SECOND largest reservoir in the Commonwealth. The homes and livelihoods of the people living in the area were deemed to be worth less than providing Boston, which had long ago completely depleted its own natural resources, with more water to waste.
Oh, and boy am I glad that my taxes mostly go to funding unnecessary local projects in Boston, despite that I don't spend any time there, I live closer to the capitals of two other states, and the towns around here are all starved for funding because well over half of all available state aid goes to just one Metropolitan area.
People wonder why I get angry when I tell them I live in Massachusetts, and they ask "near Boston?"
Really? I think they're great. You can use them just like folders, except that you can put any number of labels on a given email; it's like putting the same thing in every folder you might want to look for it. same with contact groups.
Yeah, I got it... I was responding to the guy above who asked, specifically, what the "HR" (hint: the first two characters in the joke are "HR") stood for. For all I know, he got it too.
Since you and others have been so asinine about it:
I helped run what was essentially a small computer lab (a physics lab, technically, but since the physics functionality was mostly provided by a combination of software and semi-DIY equipment, this is a mere technicality... especially since that hardware and software worked just fine) comprised entirely of Macs (well, okay, there was one Dell... but most of the time it was unplugged, because the professor in charge was a Mac fanboy, so it hardly counts) as a course of doing my job, I learned how to perform basic end-user maintenance stuff, and since part of my job was actually just being there (so the lab could remain open) I spent a decent amount of time using them to do things like browse the web, write papers, etc. simply because they were the only option. Expert, no, but I'm not unfamiliar with OSX.
iPods may not cost more than the Zune, but there are legions of other digital music players out there, many of which require no more fiddling with a computer than a USB thumb drive and cost far less. In terms of improved functionality: I like Ogg Vorbis, and last I checked, Apple had no plans to ever make iPods play nice with Ogg. I just wonder why the universal response to my criticizing the iPod's price tag was to bring up the Zune... a product I wasn't even thinking about (I try not to, actually...)
I have priced equivalent PCs and Macs on many occasions. The Macs were universally more expensive. By a sizable amount. 10%-15% on a purchase over $1000 is a sizable amount. Yes, they did come with more 'features", but as one commenter noted, they were generally features I didn't want, or which I could get for a much lower price tag.
Apple accessories absolutely cost far more... I'm not talking 3rd party hardware here (it would be silly if I were, don't know where that idea came from), I'm talking $40 carrying cases for iPods (I've seen generic ones of perfectly acceptable quality for $5-$10), I'm talking about $120 iSights that provide no greater (or lesser) functionality than a $20 webcam and a $10 boom mic for the vast majority of users (the few for whom it does make a difference are probably better served by a real, professional grade video camera and/or microphone anyway), mice that cost $50 and don't even have a second button, never mind a scroll wheel with a built in third. You're welcome to go check Newegg if you don't believe me, but i swear, most of this stuff can be had for far less, and often you get a lot more for it.
I don't have a huge amount of *nix experience. I know that's like saying I don't like pizza round these parts, but i don't. I also don't know what that has to do with anything, aside, perhaps, from the fact that OSX is built on a Unix back end, but they also went to great pains to ensure most users would never need to know that, or even care. Since when does not being a Linux guru make me any less qualified to determine that Macs aren't worth my money?
I used OSX when it first came out. I used it after the Panther upgrade. I used it after the next upgrade. Maybe everyone else saw the justification for the $100 upgrades, but I hardly noticed. There were a couple new widgets, things were slightly more stable, it was certainly an improvement... but it was hardly earth-shattering. If anyone else tried to charge a hundred bucks for that they'd get laughed at. On a side note, I don't have Vista installed. I don't WANT Vista installed. I cringe at the mere thought of letting that piece of cludge anywhere near my Precious. Honestly, I hadn't even upgraded to XP from 2000 until this past fall... on second thought, scratch the part above where I said anyone else would get laughed at, I have yet to find any but the most superficial differences in terms of using the two. Apparently I'm just not perceptive enough to catch the amazingness of what qualifies as a "major upgrade" nowadays, but I don't think a downgraded UI (thankfully revertable) and a new WiFi control interface (much improved, but still) should be the most noticeable changes to a pay up
It does make sense, actually. It makes sense for the same reasons that IBM doesn't do their own banking. It takes a lot of time, money, and expertise to build a robust data center and server group capable of maintaining zero down time across an unlimited geographical area, and it simply doesn't make sense for companies with no expertise in these areas to reinvent the wheel so they can take it in house.
You prove that it makes more sense to do it that way every time you go to the supermarket and buy food rather than tending your own fields... and just think, that food has probably gone through AT LEAST three middle men (who, as a matter of course, increase the price on the way out) once you include the store itself, and it's STILL more efficient for you to buy it than it is to gas up a tractor yourself.
The fact that IBM makes money on the deal doesn't mean that these companies don't save.
It stands for "House of Representatives", I believe, and is placed at the beginning of each proposed bill's title so that it can be correctly identified as having originated there.
Or maybe "House Resolution", I'm not quite sure... I haven't taken a civics class since some time in high school.
So... Macs don't cost an obscene amount of money relative to comparable PCs? Has Apple stopped making people pay $100+ for the equivalent of a "Service Pack"? Do Apple accessories not cost exponentially more than identical products, even those made by other brand name companies? Are iPods not far more expensive than competing players with greater functionality? Since when?
Those of us who don't worship at the Church of Apple are not ignorant of the Book of Jobs, we just choose not to buy into it... figuratively or otherwise. It's not that we don't "get" Macs, it's that we don't care, and you're too much of an elitist prick to "get" why.
[not posting AC because it's lame, and I'm willing to take a Karma hit from the fanboys]
Either complain to your company's IT department to change that, or stop using Flickr at work.
If they won't change it, then I guess they don't care about your ability to use Flickr while you're there. I really doubt that the corporate prohibition on web mail would hold up against any valid work-related reasons you may have to be writing comments about about drunk cat pictures.
Because the major NIC vendors are doing so poorly at it...
If you make the best NIC for the money, people will buy it. If you make the best 802.11 card for the money, people will buy that too.
If these new competitors are actually able to take your business away buy making better cards for less money, then in all likelihood they were already going to.
It makes no more or less business sense to keep things the way they are, except that we already have a lot of inertia towards doing things the way we already do them.
And in many of those cases the dominant life forms of Earth became extinct. The worst part is that the poets, philosophers and writers have been saying the "end of the world" would be man-made even longer than the scientists...
Welcome to the prologue to every post apocalyptic sci-fi book ever written.
I've driven through NJ before...
Seriously, it slipped my mind. Plus, I don't really know anyone from Jersey, so I couldn't really say that. same for DE and MD.
NH might seem a bit odd, but most of them I've met are actually pretty decent. Even the really conservative ones seem to tend more toward classical, secular conservatism, rather than this neo-Con "Christian" nonsense.
Not true. The Democrats value action if they agree with it... kind of like Republicans, only in a minority of issues they value different actions. For the past 16 or so years there has been a solid Republican majority in Congress, so the Democrats haven't had much chance to value things other than speech.
Sorry to ruin the "Democrat" stereotype you've been spoon fed by their political enemies, I know it was tasty.
If you open source something, you make your own patents unenforceable insofar as they apply to the thing in question. IBM is not capable of suing people for patent violation on software they distribute or allow others to distribute.
Yeah, it does seem that it be less expensive and function better if the USPO actually did their jobs the first time. Call me crazy, but I'd rather forgo another round of trivial tax cuts and start to see corrupt, inefficient, and chronically under performing get overhauled and increase services for the same amount or less than what we pay now.
I agree, they should be hocking games like GTA: Ethnic Rampage, The Sims Do the same Things Again, Need For Speed Underground Hot Pursuit 12, Tony Hawk's Segway Rebel, Star Wars: Make George Lucas Even Richer Through Ludicrous Amounts of Licensed Merchandise, and Final Fantasy XXVIII: 3. You know, the kinds of games that HAVEN'T been franchised to death.
While we're at it maybe we could import some backbone and tell Quebec to get stuffed...:-)
Please do. Quebecois are just like the asinine American stereotype of real French people... only worse... and not actually French. News flash Quebec: If you want to secede from Canada, you'll need to set up your own health care and money independent of the other provinces... I know you like using theirs, but you really can't once you stop paying taxes to Ottawa and they make it a felony to export any significant quantity of $CDN out of the country.
As for the rest, please accept my sincerest apologies for neo-Conservative politics, the last 20 years of country music, and the film adaptation of "A.I." We suck sometimes.
Anyway, you're comparing apples to socket wrenches... Torrent is a file transfer protocol which can be used legitimately. Spam is a specific abuse of the various e-mail protocols, and by definition cannot have any legitimate use. For your comparison to make sense, it would either have to be between using torrent to distribute virii and spam, or between torrent and SMTP/etc. traffic.
Cut-n-paste is lame, but if it's the first time for the particular story, it's still not redundant; perhaps someone who doesn't read every single comment in every single story hasn't seen it before, and it may be a good post aside from having been ripped off. Go AC and reply that it's a cut-n-paste, or mod as "overrated" (Yeah, I think this might be the only valid use for it...).
"First Post" is off topic, not redundant. It should be modded appropriately.
But you forget, J-Pop is great because it's from Japan. Being Japanese gives something the equivalent of +5 Insightful because everything about or from Japan is automatically better than the counterpart.
Japan is a utopia guys, a place without racism (just ask any Marine who has spent time in Okinawa...), well connected and outrageously violent organized crime (Yakuza who?), poverty and homelessness (that guy sleeping on the bench isn't homeless, he just wants to sleep on a bench, and don't offer him food, shelter, or spare change, because that is a very severe insult to his honor... besides, everybody knows that it's illegal to be homeless, and the police would arrest him if he were), or draconian anti-pornography laws (well, except for the part about no pubic hair).
Slashdot Mirror
It is absolutely not appropriate to also charge parents in every case where "children" are charged. If a 15 year old starts skipping class class and shoplifting candy bars, that's not the parents' fault, and they shouldn't be charged with anything. The actual solution is to use the legal system to scare the bejeezus out of the kid, tell the parents what's going on, and create just enough hassle that everyone is sure the parents ARE taking the real punishment into their own hands and that the kid learns the appropriate lesson. Charging the parents for some obscure accessory or negligence crime is overkill, and it does a lot more harm than good.
As much as I hate Boston, they don't deserve full credit for the epic level of pork-barreling that went on with the bog Dig. That went through all sorts of state and Federal politics as well. It's also not fair to call them 'incompetent", most of them are very competent, very intelligent people who get a lot done... the problem is that their job isn't to responsibly run the city of Boston, it's to make themselves as wealthy as possible in the shortest amount of time, at taxpayer expense if at all possible. That said, you forgot to mention a couple of other events in Boston's "illustrious" history. First, there's Shay's Rebellion, a local uprising from my neck of the woods (Pittsfield-Amherst-Springfield area) that many historians cite as one of the major motives behind the U.S. Constitution (prior to that, the same function was served by the Articles of Confederacy); a bunch of Revolutionary War veterans and farmers armed themselves and captured an armory in an attempt to overthrow the government, before being slaughtered by mercenaries hired by the Boston plutocrats who were simultaneously collecting exorbitant rent and arbitrarily raising taxes in order to pay themselves higher salaries. They were, in effect, running half of the Commonwealth's area as an enormous sharecropping plantation, raping Western Massachusetts for all it was worth in order to keep Boston, where they all spent most of their time, well funded and to expand the industrial efforts that were beginning in the Central and Northeastern parts of the state (Worcester-Lowell). You also forgot to mention the Quabbin Reservoir: four small towns in the Swift River Valley were forcibly depopulated, the people who lived there paid a fraction of the value of their land and left to find new homes, and then the valley was flooded and a subterranean aqueduct nearly 25 miles long was dug just to bring water to the SECOND largest reservoir in the Commonwealth. The homes and livelihoods of the people living in the area were deemed to be worth less than providing Boston, which had long ago completely depleted its own natural resources, with more water to waste. Oh, and boy am I glad that my taxes mostly go to funding unnecessary local projects in Boston, despite that I don't spend any time there, I live closer to the capitals of two other states, and the towns around here are all starved for funding because well over half of all available state aid goes to just one Metropolitan area. People wonder why I get angry when I tell them I live in Massachusetts, and they ask "near Boston?"
Really? I think they're great. You can use them just like folders, except that you can put any number of labels on a given email; it's like putting the same thing in every folder you might want to look for it. same with contact groups.
Not flamebaiting here, just putting it out there.
Yeah, I got it... I was responding to the guy above who asked, specifically, what the "HR" (hint: the first two characters in the joke are "HR") stood for. For all I know, he got it too.
Ooh, and doubly because I forgot to POT it. Whatever.
Since you and others have been so asinine about it: I helped run what was essentially a small computer lab (a physics lab, technically, but since the physics functionality was mostly provided by a combination of software and semi-DIY equipment, this is a mere technicality... especially since that hardware and software worked just fine) comprised entirely of Macs (well, okay, there was one Dell... but most of the time it was unplugged, because the professor in charge was a Mac fanboy, so it hardly counts) as a course of doing my job, I learned how to perform basic end-user maintenance stuff, and since part of my job was actually just being there (so the lab could remain open) I spent a decent amount of time using them to do things like browse the web, write papers, etc. simply because they were the only option. Expert, no, but I'm not unfamiliar with OSX. iPods may not cost more than the Zune, but there are legions of other digital music players out there, many of which require no more fiddling with a computer than a USB thumb drive and cost far less. In terms of improved functionality: I like Ogg Vorbis, and last I checked, Apple had no plans to ever make iPods play nice with Ogg. I just wonder why the universal response to my criticizing the iPod's price tag was to bring up the Zune... a product I wasn't even thinking about (I try not to, actually...) I have priced equivalent PCs and Macs on many occasions. The Macs were universally more expensive. By a sizable amount. 10%-15% on a purchase over $1000 is a sizable amount. Yes, they did come with more 'features", but as one commenter noted, they were generally features I didn't want, or which I could get for a much lower price tag. Apple accessories absolutely cost far more... I'm not talking 3rd party hardware here (it would be silly if I were, don't know where that idea came from), I'm talking $40 carrying cases for iPods (I've seen generic ones of perfectly acceptable quality for $5-$10), I'm talking about $120 iSights that provide no greater (or lesser) functionality than a $20 webcam and a $10 boom mic for the vast majority of users (the few for whom it does make a difference are probably better served by a real, professional grade video camera and/or microphone anyway), mice that cost $50 and don't even have a second button, never mind a scroll wheel with a built in third. You're welcome to go check Newegg if you don't believe me, but i swear, most of this stuff can be had for far less, and often you get a lot more for it. I don't have a huge amount of *nix experience. I know that's like saying I don't like pizza round these parts, but i don't. I also don't know what that has to do with anything, aside, perhaps, from the fact that OSX is built on a Unix back end, but they also went to great pains to ensure most users would never need to know that, or even care. Since when does not being a Linux guru make me any less qualified to determine that Macs aren't worth my money? I used OSX when it first came out. I used it after the Panther upgrade. I used it after the next upgrade. Maybe everyone else saw the justification for the $100 upgrades, but I hardly noticed. There were a couple new widgets, things were slightly more stable, it was certainly an improvement... but it was hardly earth-shattering. If anyone else tried to charge a hundred bucks for that they'd get laughed at. On a side note, I don't have Vista installed. I don't WANT Vista installed. I cringe at the mere thought of letting that piece of cludge anywhere near my Precious. Honestly, I hadn't even upgraded to XP from 2000 until this past fall... on second thought, scratch the part above where I said anyone else would get laughed at, I have yet to find any but the most superficial differences in terms of using the two. Apparently I'm just not perceptive enough to catch the amazingness of what qualifies as a "major upgrade" nowadays, but I don't think a downgraded UI (thankfully revertable) and a new WiFi control interface (much improved, but still) should be the most noticeable changes to a pay up
It does make sense, actually. It makes sense for the same reasons that IBM doesn't do their own banking. It takes a lot of time, money, and expertise to build a robust data center and server group capable of maintaining zero down time across an unlimited geographical area, and it simply doesn't make sense for companies with no expertise in these areas to reinvent the wheel so they can take it in house. You prove that it makes more sense to do it that way every time you go to the supermarket and buy food rather than tending your own fields... and just think, that food has probably gone through AT LEAST three middle men (who, as a matter of course, increase the price on the way out) once you include the store itself, and it's STILL more efficient for you to buy it than it is to gas up a tractor yourself. The fact that IBM makes money on the deal doesn't mean that these companies don't save.
It stands for "House of Representatives", I believe, and is placed at the beginning of each proposed bill's title so that it can be correctly identified as having originated there.
Or maybe "House Resolution", I'm not quite sure... I haven't taken a civics class since some time in high school.
So... Macs don't cost an obscene amount of money relative to comparable PCs? Has Apple stopped making people pay $100+ for the equivalent of a "Service Pack"? Do Apple accessories not cost exponentially more than identical products, even those made by other brand name companies? Are iPods not far more expensive than competing players with greater functionality? Since when?
Those of us who don't worship at the Church of Apple are not ignorant of the Book of Jobs, we just choose not to buy into it... figuratively or otherwise. It's not that we don't "get" Macs, it's that we don't care, and you're too much of an elitist prick to "get" why.
[not posting AC because it's lame, and I'm willing to take a Karma hit from the fanboys]
Either complain to your company's IT department to change that, or stop using Flickr at work. If they won't change it, then I guess they don't care about your ability to use Flickr while you're there. I really doubt that the corporate prohibition on web mail would hold up against any valid work-related reasons you may have to be writing comments about about drunk cat pictures.
Because the major NIC vendors are doing so poorly at it...
If you make the best NIC for the money, people will buy it. If you make the best 802.11 card for the money, people will buy that too.
If these new competitors are actually able to take your business away buy making better cards for less money, then in all likelihood they were already going to.
It makes no more or less business sense to keep things the way they are, except that we already have a lot of inertia towards doing things the way we already do them.
And in many of those cases the dominant life forms of Earth became extinct. The worst part is that the poets, philosophers and writers have been saying the "end of the world" would be man-made even longer than the scientists...
Welcome to the prologue to every post apocalyptic sci-fi book ever written.
I've driven through NJ before... Seriously, it slipped my mind. Plus, I don't really know anyone from Jersey, so I couldn't really say that. same for DE and MD. NH might seem a bit odd, but most of them I've met are actually pretty decent. Even the really conservative ones seem to tend more toward classical, secular conservatism, rather than this neo-Con "Christian" nonsense.
Not true. The Democrats value action if they agree with it... kind of like Republicans, only in a minority of issues they value different actions. For the past 16 or so years there has been a solid Republican majority in Congress, so the Democrats haven't had much chance to value things other than speech.
Sorry to ruin the "Democrat" stereotype you've been spoon fed by their political enemies, I know it was tasty.
Most of us in VT, MA, CT, NY, and RI (and some in NH and ME) feel your pain.
If you open source something, you make your own patents unenforceable insofar as they apply to the thing in question. IBM is not capable of suing people for patent violation on software they distribute or allow others to distribute.
Yeah, it does seem that it be less expensive and function better if the USPO actually did their jobs the first time. Call me crazy, but I'd rather forgo another round of trivial tax cuts and start to see corrupt, inefficient, and chronically under performing get overhauled and increase services for the same amount or less than what we pay now.
I stand corrected. Thank you for not being an AC troll.
Apparently you missed the part where I'm not Canadian... And no, Quebec uses the same health care system as the rest of Canada, which is nationalized.
Nice try, though.
I agree, they should be hocking games like GTA: Ethnic Rampage, The Sims Do the same Things Again, Need For Speed Underground Hot Pursuit 12, Tony Hawk's Segway Rebel, Star Wars: Make George Lucas Even Richer Through Ludicrous Amounts of Licensed Merchandise, and Final Fantasy XXVIII: 3. You know, the kinds of games that HAVEN'T been franchised to death.
Please do. Quebecois are just like the asinine American stereotype of real French people... only worse... and not actually French. News flash Quebec: If you want to secede from Canada, you'll need to set up your own health care and money independent of the other provinces... I know you like using theirs, but you really can't once you stop paying taxes to Ottawa and they make it a felony to export any significant quantity of $CDN out of the country.
As for the rest, please accept my sincerest apologies for neo-Conservative politics, the last 20 years of country music, and the film adaptation of "A.I." We suck sometimes.
Makes sense, since:
spam = bad
torrents != bad
Anyway, you're comparing apples to socket wrenches... Torrent is a file transfer protocol which can be used legitimately. Spam is a specific abuse of the various e-mail protocols, and by definition cannot have any legitimate use. For your comparison to make sense, it would either have to be between using torrent to distribute virii and spam, or between torrent and SMTP/etc. traffic.
Cut-n-paste is lame, but if it's the first time for the particular story, it's still not redundant; perhaps someone who doesn't read every single comment in every single story hasn't seen it before, and it may be a good post aside from having been ripped off. Go AC and reply that it's a cut-n-paste, or mod as "overrated" (Yeah, I think this might be the only valid use for it...).
"First Post" is off topic, not redundant. It should be modded appropriately.
But you forget, J-Pop is great because it's from Japan. Being Japanese gives something the equivalent of +5 Insightful because everything about or from Japan is automatically better than the counterpart.
Japan is a utopia guys, a place without racism (just ask any Marine who has spent time in Okinawa...), well connected and outrageously violent organized crime (Yakuza who?), poverty and homelessness (that guy sleeping on the bench isn't homeless, he just wants to sleep on a bench, and don't offer him food, shelter, or spare change, because that is a very severe insult to his honor... besides, everybody knows that it's illegal to be homeless, and the police would arrest him if he were), or draconian anti-pornography laws (well, except for the part about no pubic hair).
Pass the Pocky and turn up the Arashi.
Okay, seriously mods, the first comment posted cannot, by definition, be "redundant".
I realize that the parent may not have been the most insightful post, but don't be stupid.