I suspect the Big 3 can't get a decent ultra-efficient car on the road in America because they're shooting the moon looking for government assistance.
Why spend billions of dollars to build cars for the hitherto unprofitable American marketplace (I don't think Ford has made money in the US since the late 1990's), when there's a slim chance that the Federal government will GIVE you the development money for the asking?
"We can't compete against 'JapInaOrean' cars anymore. If we fold, tens of thousands of 'mericans will lose their jobs to those overseas folks."
President Whoever writes a check because no one can be the guy that 'killed' America's most famous industry; even though it got cancer in the 1960's, and has been comatose and on life support since the 1980's.
Never mind that Big Oil who (with the Pharmacos) owns Washington and all in it, would see record revenue losses if we all-of-a-sudden cut our fuel expenses by 50%. Oh, they'd still make money. Just not as much as the recent profits from their gouging.
Big Oil keeps them in line with their plan, and without Big Oil's support, you can bet your derrick that any support Michigan sees from Washington would disappear faster than a hooker at the Kennedy compound.
It's not a 'ripoff' if it's something you can't do yourself.
Your average mechanic will charge you $25 to change the oil in your car. That's about double what materials would set you back at AutoZone.
Further, although I'm perfectly capable of changing my oil, I find a better value in paying someone else to do it rather than going to the parts store, crawling around in the dirt, and then going back to the parts store to return the used oil for recycling.
So how, again, is Apple ripping people off? They don't require owners to upgrade at all, let alone to do so through their stores. They don't prevent other companies from servicing their products, and they don't void warranties if I should choose to upgrade my own RAM/HDD. In fact, upgrading RAM on the MBP's is dead simple.
In moderation, most things are good. If I make a really good car, and I call it a Sephir, I don't want another company to be able to call their car (or car-related service) a Sephir.
However, do I care if there's a Sephir cola? Probably not.
Do I care if someone makes an email service @sephir.com? Probably not.
Frankly, I probably wouldn't care if 'Sephir' became synonymic with 'car.'
But the problem, at least in the US, is that firstly, to hold a trademark, I must actively defend it. Meaning that to demonstrate that defense, I have to C&D or sue every ISP and cola manufacturer that uses it, so that when some slimy car company opens up and tries to usurp it from me, I have a legal leg to stand on.
The other problem is a sense of entitlement. Two search engines called Google? Award it to the original Google. A non-information technology product called Google using dissimilar trade dress (meaning the word, but not the logo as it sits today)? Let them run with it. It shouldn't hurt anything.
It's not IP that hurts progress. It is the overreaching of IP theories and laws that hurt progress. If a person invents or makes something really good, why not allow him/her to enjoy some real 'bonuses' for having done so?
I too have a Jeep (Wrangler). It's an '05 with the 2.4l 4-cylinder. It's nearly paid off, and I do plan on keeping it since it gets ~20mpg in town, and I don't do much highway driving.
Is 20mpg great? No. But like you, the premium to go to a more fuel efficient car is a killer. At $60/tank (overestimate), I could buy a tank a week and still come out ahead over a new car.
What makes it a real 'value' is that I drive about 8,000 miles per year. That's right, kids. I drive about half as much as the average driver.
My wife drives a lot more, and so we bought a Civic for her (not the hybrid). 33 in town and damn near 40 on the highway. She drives about 10,000 per year.
I live in a city of a million people or so that sprawls all over the place, and has no real public transportation.
I'm a photographer, and while a camera is bike-able or walk-able, the other support equipment isn't. So driving, for me, is really a necessity. Often (as in once a week or more), work requires that I travel on unpaved/ungraded roads with about 100 lbs of photographic equipment.
When searching for ways to save on gas, my wife and I discovered that the best way really is just to drive less.
If I could afford the car (and had any desire to drive one), I could buy one of the giant Hummers and still come out ok only because of my driving habits.
I am thankful every day that I don't have a suburb-to-city-center commute. All that time and money gone.
I really wonder what's going to happen. The entirety of this country's economy is reliant on cheap, reliable energy. Those days are probably gone; at least for a while.
And while bigger cities can add/upgrade subways, buses, etc., what is the mid-sized sprawled city to do? After all, that's where most Americans live. See places like Madison, San Diego, Portland, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Houston, Davenport, etc.
Just playing the devil's advocate, but who's to say they weren't right?
Calculators, spell-checkers, Elvis, moving pictures and electricity all became widely available, expected commodities, in the 20th century.
It is entirely possible that the events and advances following the 'Gilded Age' will be viewed by historians as the great flash before the bang that ended America as we knew it.
In other words, there are many great countries and nations that saw their greatest wealth and power nearly immediately before their fall.
It's not more important, it's just one of the more hotly contested amendments. And frankly I perceive that the idea behind it is to guarantee that We the People can defend, with force if necessary, our other rights.
As to handguns and farmer's shotguns, I think that history has proven that very basic weapons can be used to overtake a stronger and better equipped military. See: Iraq (presently), Cuba (1959), Mogadishu, Somalia (1993), Mexico (1910), Bolivia (1952), and I could keep going for a long time.
I would go so far as to say that if you feel that an army can't be fought off with revolvers and shotguns/.30-30 rifles, perhaps we should band together and widely allow AR-15s, AK-47s, and.308 sniper rifles.
Indeed, innocent people have their lives cut short by gun violence every year. A.22 in the hands of a boyscout is as deadly as a shotgun in yours, if you mean it to be. Does it matter what shoots the bullet? Accepting that, there are plenty of other people murdered every year without the aid of guns. Try as we might, people seem to continue murdering other people. With that rationale, look at how well gun control has worked in England. Only the criminals have guns, and stabbings/bludgeonings are more common than ever. So weapons do not make people violent. We inherently are.
Why are we so afraid of guns? Your chances of getting hurt or dying in a car-related accident is several orders of magnitude greater than being hurt/killed by a gun.
A family member is more likely to kill you than a complete stranger. And those deaths happen as often through beating, strangling, stabbing, burning and drowning as through firearms.
Indeed, not everyone can be trusted with a tank. Not everyone can be trusted with a car, alcohol, prescription drugs, children, pets, money, and the list goes on. We can regulate till Rapture and still not
See, I believe in America. Not the present administration, not the xenophobic, fear-state, consumerist, cowering child now known as *Merika. But I believe in the tenets of freedom that thousands of people have fought and died to forge and protect.
You should be able to eat, drink, fuck, marry, drive, wear, say, buy and do whatever you want with very, very few restrictions so long as your doing so does not materially prohibit or infringe upon another's right to do the same, or materially harm another party.
So, I stand for the second amendment the same way I stand for the first, fifth, fourth, fourteenth and the rest. But the second gives me piece of mind that I have a last resort in the defense of my freedoms and my life.
Freedom comes in three boxes: ballot, soap and ammo. Use in that order.
I travel quite extensively for business and pleasure to countries rich and poor, 'Eastern' and 'Western.'
I can assure you that being a foreigner visiting another country never gives you many rights, everyone keeps databases and your information is probably never really that secure.
I have applied for visas for various countries and have been shown my intelligence record for a few, including information about where I stayed in-country, who my contacts there were, and even in one case, the brand of cigarettes I smoked (quit years ago).
I do work as a journalist, so I stick out a bit more, but I can guarantee that the folks who travel all the time with big companies have equally thick files.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but only pointing out that these days, everyone plays spy games with foreign visitors.
I'll bite because you're obviously (AC) embarrassed by your own opinion.
Many of those pictures you have hanging in your home and/or office exist BECAUSE of copyright. That music and video hogging space on your iPod... you know, the stuff that helps you make it through your workout? It's there precisely because of copyright.
Sure, some aspects of copyright law have gotten out of control. But it is copyright that allows artists to fully pursue their art, and to make the work that you (or others) deem socially, culturally and personally important.
My misbehavior-deterrent system was my dad wielding a belt (nice, thick 2-inch leather one) or my mother with a wooden spoon. She got so good with that spoon across my brother's and my knuckles that she could break the spoon without breaking the skin. And before anyone starts crying abuse, we deserved it.
I didn't do graffiti not because I was afraid of the police, but because I knew that my dad would have me out there removing it - with a toothbrush and my fingernails.
Sure, I ditched school and stayed out late some nights, but even while breaking the rules, I didn't do so audaciously enough to warrant an ass-kicking.
But I have a better solution. Once schools take leave of this trend towards becoming 12-year daycare centers, there will be plainly visible benefits to attending. For the kids that don't want to be there? After age 15 or 16, let 'em go. It will keep the good-for-nothing lowlifes and degenerates away from the kids who at least have the sensibility to try, even just a little bit, to learn something valuable.
As the good jobs gradually slip out of the US, and hard-working immigrants amass wealth and power, there will be plenty of toilet-cleaning, food service and retail jobs available to those dropouts. You don't need much education for a $7/hour job.
The best part is that after the losers drop out and accept horrible jobs, some of them will rear children with strong work ethics and a desire to go further than dad did.
A school is only as 'good' as it's worst students, and I don't necessarily mean grade-wise. By keeping these young adults in school against their will, we are only making life worse for the kids who want to be there.
Years ago, people at 15-16 were working as welders, miners, steel workers, soldiers, dock workers and in other no-diploma-required professions. They made adult decisions and lived through them.
Today, 15-16 year old kids are coddled too much. Let them fall fast and hard. Most will learn pretty quick that the real world isn't selling pot and hanging out at the mall.
The kids who will cause trouble as a direct result of not being detained in school will cause problems anyway. If they really can't be 'saved' by the system, why keep the rotten apples in the same bushel as the kids who have a chance?
My wife and I are fortunate enough to have a close (and quite affluent) friend with a beachside house in Mexico. It's only a couple of in the car to get there, so we go frequently.
On vacation, I have little use for the Internet, although admittedly I do check my email several times a day. I'm self-employed, so when I'm out of town, there's no one answering the phone.
It used to be that we had to visit the town's only cybercafe (2 PII 200 boxes running Win98) to get online on a shared (I think) 14.4 connection. Not too bad for checking emails, weather forecasts and baseball scores.
The guy who owns the house is increasingly spending more time down there, so he paid to run a cable out to the property to get a modest broadband connection. It cost him about $15,000 to do. He will, however, likely make that back in the first few months he is able to fully telecommute from the beach palace.
Although it's nice having a US telephone number in Mexico via VOIP, and a pretty reliable in-home method of getting to my email, having the connection in some ways sucks.
I'm one of those guilty people who will work on vacation (after all, it's a one-man op), and I'll find myself reading the news online in the house's office rather than sitting on the beach with the paper and a michelada.
The point of this diatribe is that for people needing to get the news, email and weather, dialup is more than sufficient.
In fact, for running a non-IT business remotely, dialup should also suffice.
I'm a professional photographer, and I frequently file photos for print distribution over slow-ass dialup when I'm on the road. Sizing the photos to 10 inches on the long axis @ 200ppi and a quality of '9 or 10 out of 12' yields a 600kb-900kb photo that can be run sufficiently well in any newspaper and even some magazines.
My advice: Sack up and pay for the more expensive satellite or buried line connection, or sack up and deal with not being able to watch crappy YouTube videos while on summer holiday.
I know an awful lot of photographers who frequently get fscked on copyright infringement (including me).
I could care less if someone grabs one of my photos to use as their wallpaper or throw on their MySpace page, email to their friend, etc.
What pisses me off to no end is that publications will try to sneak in additional uses of my work, OR that companies will grab photos and appropriate them for use in ads in print, or more likely on their site.
So yes, there are plenty of creative professionals out there who aren't rich rockstars with expensive drug habits, and who have basically no prospect of ever becoming rich in the standard American sense of the word, and who need a solid method of protecting their interests.
It's not that I think I should make money off work I did once for ever and ever and ever. It's that for as long as a photo is worth something to you (in a sense of using it to advance your business and/or product), it's worth something to me.
The middle class is always the group that gets crapped all over. Especially families with incomes in the $120k-$150k range.
The middle class generates most of the man-hours, are the largest consumers, generally (in my opinion formed of anecdotal experience) the most above-board group, and pay a majority of the taxes.
Yup, shaft. Sans lube, usually. Hell, Uncle Sam doesn't even typically kiss me first and tell me I'm pretty...
I agree with the gist of your argument, but let's keep in mind that the Fed didn't just 'give' Chase $29b.
It was a loan, and Chase will have to enter payments to Uncle Sam.
The government spends tons of money in really stupid ways, but I don't see a $29b loan to be a 'stupid way,' provided it prevented further financial meltdown.
This $600 stimulus package, however IS a dumb waste of money. Give my family $1200 in May so you can come at me in April for $1400. That money comes from somewhere...
I've always thought a good argument for debate would be "Who's rolled over more? The Europeans for dealing with extreme taxes on everything or the Americans who generally left Europe to live free of excessive and unfair taxation, and now live with excessive and unfair taxation?
Trust me, we don't need less monetization. What we need is a more reasonable business model.
First off, we have to keep in mind that software and songs are not the only forms of IP. I'm a professional photographer, and I can't tell you how often I get fscked when companies, yes companies, steal my IP to advance their business. You want one of my pictures to put on your ddesktop? Fantastic. Nike wants one of my pictures to sell more shoes? Open the wallet. You want to start printing out my photos and selling them at the local street fair? Open your wallet AND hire a lawyer.
But let's stick with the music example for now. I agree that the 'label' as it stands is a dead model. It served to offset the marketing and production costs for bands who could otherwise not afford to press records and get them to stores in sufficient quantities while yet managing to advertise them.
With the internet (and for that matter, cheaper CD manufacturing) distribution is a fractional cost of what it once was, and smaller numbers of CDs can be pressed for on-demand sales. And, if bands aren't signed to labels, they can make more money touring and selling t-shirts if they can afford to front the cash for such operations.
Without adequate monetization, bands could never get the money to get started.
What we need is a deregulation of sorts. It's the laws and practices forcing adherence to the present model that causes the problems. The money's fine. In fact, would you do your job for free? Because even if you're goal is art for art's sake, it's still a full time job to make it, market it, distribute it, account for it, pay the taxes on it and finally, maintain a place in which to make it. The guys that make the records you listen to every day, whether it's the Chicago Symphony Orchestra or Britney Spears work full-time jobs to put those albums out. Just because your job doesn't necessarily include appearances and rehearsals as part of the day-to-day, doesn't mean that these people aren't working to produce their art (or schlock that sells).
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect the Big 3 can't get a decent ultra-efficient car on the road in America because they're shooting the moon looking for government assistance.
Why spend billions of dollars to build cars for the hitherto unprofitable American marketplace (I don't think Ford has made money in the US since the late 1990's), when there's a slim chance that the Federal government will GIVE you the development money for the asking?
"We can't compete against 'JapInaOrean' cars anymore. If we fold, tens of thousands of 'mericans will lose their jobs to those overseas folks."
President Whoever writes a check because no one can be the guy that 'killed' America's most famous industry; even though it got cancer in the 1960's, and has been comatose and on life support since the 1980's.
Never mind that Big Oil who (with the Pharmacos) owns Washington and all in it, would see record revenue losses if we all-of-a-sudden cut our fuel expenses by 50%. Oh, they'd still make money. Just not as much as the recent profits from their gouging.
Big Oil keeps them in line with their plan, and without Big Oil's support, you can bet your derrick that any support Michigan sees from Washington would disappear faster than a hooker at the Kennedy compound.
That's the problem; and one of the dangers of not having brisk 'n' mortar newspapers anymore (even if they don't actually print on paper).
Google News is not, by any stretch of the imagination a newspaper. It only grabs and republishes stories printed elsewhere.
It has no editorial oversight, no control over stories and no way or interest in fact checking.
That's what people need to get through their heads. While we may expect everything on the 'Net to be free, fact checkers and editors cost money.
I'd warn a lot earlier. Like when you're 50% over your plan.
Contract or not, this isn't a business game, it's a game of gotcha with customers.
Lure people in with words like "unlimited," "free," "included" and then trickily word an overly verbose contract to make exceptions for everything.
The outward limit of infinity? Damn. Must be hard to buy pants. But then again, if you're not spending any money...
Yeah, that Sun "U logo" thing would look badass on my chest.
It doesn't hurt to speak another language well.
Look at it from a 'reach' standpoint:
With Chinese, you can converse with a huge number of people; and people who are part of an up-and-coming superpower.
Spanish and English basically guarantee you can converse with just about the entirety of the Western Hemisphere, as well as folks in the Philippines.
Spanish can also be learned fairly quickly.
I'd go that route.
It's not a 'ripoff' if it's something you can't do yourself.
Your average mechanic will charge you $25 to change the oil in your car. That's about double what materials would set you back at AutoZone.
Further, although I'm perfectly capable of changing my oil, I find a better value in paying someone else to do it rather than going to the parts store, crawling around in the dirt, and then going back to the parts store to return the used oil for recycling.
So how, again, is Apple ripping people off? They don't require owners to upgrade at all, let alone to do so through their stores. They don't prevent other companies from servicing their products, and they don't void warranties if I should choose to upgrade my own RAM/HDD. In fact, upgrading RAM on the MBP's is dead simple.
Not trolling, as this is a serious question:
What data do you have that is so important as to require TrueCrypt, and yet is something that would be carried around off-site?
For what it's worth, I have a Buffalo 1.5TB TerraStation that I bought in October of 2006.
Having knocked on wood, it's been taken offline only once, when I moved to a new house across town.
I keep it on a UPS, and have very reliable power anyway.
It houses my on-site photo catalog, and has been going strong with no problems.
It set me back around $1,000, if memory serves.
Moderation. As in, 'In moderation.'
In moderation, most things are good. If I make a really good car, and I call it a Sephir, I don't want another company to be able to call their car (or car-related service) a Sephir.
However, do I care if there's a Sephir cola? Probably not.
Do I care if someone makes an email service @sephir.com? Probably not.
Frankly, I probably wouldn't care if 'Sephir' became synonymic with 'car.'
But the problem, at least in the US, is that firstly, to hold a trademark, I must actively defend it. Meaning that to demonstrate that defense, I have to C&D or sue every ISP and cola manufacturer that uses it, so that when some slimy car company opens up and tries to usurp it from me, I have a legal leg to stand on.
The other problem is a sense of entitlement. Two search engines called Google? Award it to the original Google. A non-information technology product called Google using dissimilar trade dress (meaning the word, but not the logo as it sits today)? Let them run with it. It shouldn't hurt anything.
It's not IP that hurts progress. It is the overreaching of IP theories and laws that hurt progress. If a person invents or makes something really good, why not allow him/her to enjoy some real 'bonuses' for having done so?
I too have a Jeep (Wrangler). It's an '05 with the 2.4l 4-cylinder. It's nearly paid off, and I do plan on keeping it since it gets ~20mpg in town, and I don't do much highway driving.
Is 20mpg great? No. But like you, the premium to go to a more fuel efficient car is a killer. At $60/tank (overestimate), I could buy a tank a week and still come out ahead over a new car.
What makes it a real 'value' is that I drive about 8,000 miles per year. That's right, kids. I drive about half as much as the average driver.
My wife drives a lot more, and so we bought a Civic for her (not the hybrid). 33 in town and damn near 40 on the highway. She drives about 10,000 per year.
I live in a city of a million people or so that sprawls all over the place, and has no real public transportation.
I'm a photographer, and while a camera is bike-able or walk-able, the other support equipment isn't. So driving, for me, is really a necessity. Often (as in once a week or more), work requires that I travel on unpaved/ungraded roads with about 100 lbs of photographic equipment.
When searching for ways to save on gas, my wife and I discovered that the best way really is just to drive less.
If I could afford the car (and had any desire to drive one), I could buy one of the giant Hummers and still come out ok only because of my driving habits.
I am thankful every day that I don't have a suburb-to-city-center commute. All that time and money gone.
I really wonder what's going to happen. The entirety of this country's economy is reliant on cheap, reliable energy. Those days are probably gone; at least for a while.
And while bigger cities can add/upgrade subways, buses, etc., what is the mid-sized sprawled city to do? After all, that's where most Americans live. See places like Madison, San Diego, Portland, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Houston, Davenport, etc.
Just playing the devil's advocate, but who's to say they weren't right?
Calculators, spell-checkers, Elvis, moving pictures and electricity all became widely available, expected commodities, in the 20th century.
It is entirely possible that the events and advances following the 'Gilded Age' will be viewed by historians as the great flash before the bang that ended America as we knew it.
In other words, there are many great countries and nations that saw their greatest wealth and power nearly immediately before their fall.
Here's my answer for you:
It's not more important, it's just one of the more hotly contested amendments. And frankly I perceive that the idea behind it is to guarantee that We the People can defend, with force if necessary, our other rights.
As to handguns and farmer's shotguns, I think that history has proven that very basic weapons can be used to overtake a stronger and better equipped military. See: Iraq (presently), Cuba (1959), Mogadishu, Somalia (1993), Mexico (1910), Bolivia (1952), and I could keep going for a long time.
I would go so far as to say that if you feel that an army can't be fought off with revolvers and shotguns/.30-30 rifles, perhaps we should band together and widely allow AR-15s, AK-47s, and .308 sniper rifles.
Indeed, innocent people have their lives cut short by gun violence every year. A .22 in the hands of a boyscout is as deadly as a shotgun in yours, if you mean it to be. Does it matter what shoots the bullet? Accepting that, there are plenty of other people murdered every year without the aid of guns. Try as we might, people seem to continue murdering other people. With that rationale, look at how well gun control has worked in England. Only the criminals have guns, and stabbings/bludgeonings are more common than ever. So weapons do not make people violent. We inherently are.
Why are we so afraid of guns? Your chances of getting hurt or dying in a car-related accident is several orders of magnitude greater than being hurt/killed by a gun.
A family member is more likely to kill you than a complete stranger. And those deaths happen as often through beating, strangling, stabbing, burning and drowning as through firearms.
Indeed, not everyone can be trusted with a tank. Not everyone can be trusted with a car, alcohol, prescription drugs, children, pets, money, and the list goes on. We can regulate till Rapture and still not
See, I believe in America. Not the present administration, not the xenophobic, fear-state, consumerist, cowering child now known as *Merika. But I believe in the tenets of freedom that thousands of people have fought and died to forge and protect.
You should be able to eat, drink, fuck, marry, drive, wear, say, buy and do whatever you want with very, very few restrictions so long as your doing so does not materially prohibit or infringe upon another's right to do the same, or materially harm another party.
So, I stand for the second amendment the same way I stand for the first, fifth, fourth, fourteenth and the rest. But the second gives me piece of mind that I have a last resort in the defense of my freedoms and my life.
Freedom comes in three boxes: ballot, soap and ammo. Use in that order.
Sir (or Ma'am):
I travel quite extensively for business and pleasure to countries rich and poor, 'Eastern' and 'Western.'
I can assure you that being a foreigner visiting another country never gives you many rights, everyone keeps databases and your information is probably never really that secure.
I have applied for visas for various countries and have been shown my intelligence record for a few, including information about where I stayed in-country, who my contacts there were, and even in one case, the brand of cigarettes I smoked (quit years ago).
I do work as a journalist, so I stick out a bit more, but I can guarantee that the folks who travel all the time with big companies have equally thick files.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but only pointing out that these days, everyone plays spy games with foreign visitors.
I'll bite because you're obviously (AC) embarrassed by your own opinion.
Many of those pictures you have hanging in your home and/or office exist BECAUSE of copyright. That music and video hogging space on your iPod... you know, the stuff that helps you make it through your workout? It's there precisely because of copyright.
Sure, some aspects of copyright law have gotten out of control. But it is copyright that allows artists to fully pursue their art, and to make the work that you (or others) deem socially, culturally and personally important.
My misbehavior-deterrent system was my dad wielding a belt (nice, thick 2-inch leather one) or my mother with a wooden spoon. She got so good with that spoon across my brother's and my knuckles that she could break the spoon without breaking the skin. And before anyone starts crying abuse, we deserved it.
I didn't do graffiti not because I was afraid of the police, but because I knew that my dad would have me out there removing it - with a toothbrush and my fingernails.
Sure, I ditched school and stayed out late some nights, but even while breaking the rules, I didn't do so audaciously enough to warrant an ass-kicking.
But I have a better solution. Once schools take leave of this trend towards becoming 12-year daycare centers, there will be plainly visible benefits to attending. For the kids that don't want to be there? After age 15 or 16, let 'em go. It will keep the good-for-nothing lowlifes and degenerates away from the kids who at least have the sensibility to try, even just a little bit, to learn something valuable.
As the good jobs gradually slip out of the US, and hard-working immigrants amass wealth and power, there will be plenty of toilet-cleaning, food service and retail jobs available to those dropouts. You don't need much education for a $7/hour job.
The best part is that after the losers drop out and accept horrible jobs, some of them will rear children with strong work ethics and a desire to go further than dad did.
A school is only as 'good' as it's worst students, and I don't necessarily mean grade-wise. By keeping these young adults in school against their will, we are only making life worse for the kids who want to be there.
Years ago, people at 15-16 were working as welders, miners, steel workers, soldiers, dock workers and in other no-diploma-required professions. They made adult decisions and lived through them.
Today, 15-16 year old kids are coddled too much. Let them fall fast and hard. Most will learn pretty quick that the real world isn't selling pot and hanging out at the mall.
The kids who will cause trouble as a direct result of not being detained in school will cause problems anyway. If they really can't be 'saved' by the system, why keep the rotten apples in the same bushel as the kids who have a chance?
My wife and I are fortunate enough to have a close (and quite affluent) friend with a beachside house in Mexico. It's only a couple of in the car to get there, so we go frequently.
On vacation, I have little use for the Internet, although admittedly I do check my email several times a day. I'm self-employed, so when I'm out of town, there's no one answering the phone.
It used to be that we had to visit the town's only cybercafe (2 PII 200 boxes running Win98) to get online on a shared (I think) 14.4 connection. Not too bad for checking emails, weather forecasts and baseball scores.
The guy who owns the house is increasingly spending more time down there, so he paid to run a cable out to the property to get a modest broadband connection. It cost him about $15,000 to do. He will, however, likely make that back in the first few months he is able to fully telecommute from the beach palace.
Although it's nice having a US telephone number in Mexico via VOIP, and a pretty reliable in-home method of getting to my email, having the connection in some ways sucks.
I'm one of those guilty people who will work on vacation (after all, it's a one-man op), and I'll find myself reading the news online in the house's office rather than sitting on the beach with the paper and a michelada.
The point of this diatribe is that for people needing to get the news, email and weather, dialup is more than sufficient.
In fact, for running a non-IT business remotely, dialup should also suffice.
I'm a professional photographer, and I frequently file photos for print distribution over slow-ass dialup when I'm on the road. Sizing the photos to 10 inches on the long axis @ 200ppi and a quality of '9 or 10 out of 12' yields a 600kb-900kb photo that can be run sufficiently well in any newspaper and even some magazines.
My advice: Sack up and pay for the more expensive satellite or buried line connection, or sack up and deal with not being able to watch crappy YouTube videos while on summer holiday.
I know an awful lot of photographers who frequently get fscked on copyright infringement (including me).
I could care less if someone grabs one of my photos to use as their wallpaper or throw on their MySpace page, email to their friend, etc.
What pisses me off to no end is that publications will try to sneak in additional uses of my work, OR that companies will grab photos and appropriate them for use in ads in print, or more likely on their site.
So yes, there are plenty of creative professionals out there who aren't rich rockstars with expensive drug habits, and who have basically no prospect of ever becoming rich in the standard American sense of the word, and who need a solid method of protecting their interests.
It's not that I think I should make money off work I did once for ever and ever and ever. It's that for as long as a photo is worth something to you (in a sense of using it to advance your business and/or product), it's worth something to me.
They've been doing it with DUI for a while. And here in my state (some might call it the third world), THE OFFICERS ARE DRAWING BLOOD FROM SUSPECTS THEMSELVES IN THE BACK OF SQUAD CARS.
Sorry for the caps, but it makes me that angry.
To quote Office Space: Fuckin' A.
The middle class is always the group that gets crapped all over. Especially families with incomes in the $120k-$150k range.
The middle class generates most of the man-hours, are the largest consumers, generally (in my opinion formed of anecdotal experience) the most above-board group, and pay a majority of the taxes.
Yup, shaft. Sans lube, usually. Hell, Uncle Sam doesn't even typically kiss me first and tell me I'm pretty...
I agree with the gist of your argument, but let's keep in mind that the Fed didn't just 'give' Chase $29b.
It was a loan, and Chase will have to enter payments to Uncle Sam.
The government spends tons of money in really stupid ways, but I don't see a $29b loan to be a 'stupid way,' provided it prevented further financial meltdown.
This $600 stimulus package, however IS a dumb waste of money. Give my family $1200 in May so you can come at me in April for $1400. That money comes from somewhere...
I've always thought a good argument for debate would be "Who's rolled over more? The Europeans for dealing with extreme taxes on everything or the Americans who generally left Europe to live free of excessive and unfair taxation, and now live with excessive and unfair taxation?
You may now mod me 'troll.'
Trust me, we don't need less monetization. What we need is a more reasonable business model.
First off, we have to keep in mind that software and songs are not the only forms of IP. I'm a professional photographer, and I can't tell you how often I get fscked when companies, yes companies, steal my IP to advance their business. You want one of my pictures to put on your ddesktop? Fantastic. Nike wants one of my pictures to sell more shoes? Open the wallet. You want to start printing out my photos and selling them at the local street fair? Open your wallet AND hire a lawyer.
But let's stick with the music example for now. I agree that the 'label' as it stands is a dead model. It served to offset the marketing and production costs for bands who could otherwise not afford to press records and get them to stores in sufficient quantities while yet managing to advertise them.
With the internet (and for that matter, cheaper CD manufacturing) distribution is a fractional cost of what it once was, and smaller numbers of CDs can be pressed for on-demand sales. And, if bands aren't signed to labels, they can make more money touring and selling t-shirts if they can afford to front the cash for such operations.
Without adequate monetization, bands could never get the money to get started.
What we need is a deregulation of sorts. It's the laws and practices forcing adherence to the present model that causes the problems. The money's fine. In fact, would you do your job for free? Because even if you're goal is art for art's sake, it's still a full time job to make it, market it, distribute it, account for it, pay the taxes on it and finally, maintain a place in which to make it. The guys that make the records you listen to every day, whether it's the Chicago Symphony Orchestra or Britney Spears work full-time jobs to put those albums out. Just because your job doesn't necessarily include appearances and rehearsals as part of the day-to-day, doesn't mean that these people aren't working to produce their art (or schlock that sells).
There is a HUGE black market for booze and tobacco.
Organized crime still heavily relies on running stolen trucks of cigarettes and booze.
The biggest demand is for packs of cigarettes with quality forgeries of tax stamps on them.
I am very glad to hear that there still exist parents like you.
Thank you.