Yeah, especially when you take advantage of the no-balance-required frequent flyer cards.
My wife and I put basically every purchase on our FF rewards card - and pay it off in full at the end of every month.
We get all the benefits of the buyer's protection, the miles and the security and pay nothing in interest. All the CC company gets from us are the merchant's fees.
I'll preface this by saying that more freedom is always better, and I don't like Ford.
However, this is not really an oddball case at all. Ford, I'm fairly certain, registers all their designs as trademark(s), thereby enabling them to legally preclude an entity from reproducing said designs for their own commercial purposes. In fact, in order to maintain their trademark, Ford has to actively defend their trademark which is likely the reason for this action. IE, if they let this relatively harmless group operate outside of fair use, they have to let everyone do so (in other words, their trademark is no longer a trademark).
Although I wouldn't put it past them to try, they cannot stop you from taking pictures of your car to send to mom, put on your MySpace page or keep on your desk at work. They can't stop you from taking a picture of the car to put with your Auto Trader ad when you go to sell it.
They probably can't stop you from using photos of a car in a fine art piece for sale or display (artistic appropriation is a bit touchy, but is generally allowed by the courts).
They can't stop you from taking pictures of the car to accompany a news piece (for example, a photo of a Police Interceptor in flames or a photo of a Focus on the road for a review).
As for printing playing cards, calendars, posters, coffee mugs, etc. and selling them, for profit or not, they will do what they can to keep you from doing so. That is pretty much in-the-clear commercial appropriation, and is not allowed.
In other cases, usually the sports organization or the player him/herself owns the TM to their likeness to prevent me from going to an event, shooting pictures of the player and then selling prints/posters off my website. That doesn't mean that I don't still own the copyright to the photo, it just restricts what I can do to exercise my use of that photo. It doesn't stop me from publishing the photo as a news piece.
One could argue that if these are heavily modified cars, they are no longer identifiable as Ford's TM, and then the logo could be airbrushed out and the photo/calendar is probably a-ok.
The problem is that Ford is likely acting completely within their rights here, and unless this group has the cash to fight it in court, it's a case-closed event.
I'll reiterate that one of the pitfalls of trademark is that they have to be protected to be enforced, unlike (or at least less than) copyright. Some suit somewhere got wind of this and has no choice but to enforce their trademark to keep the trademark.
It depends on many levels. If they take a mugshot of you in a public place with no reasonable expectation of privacy and publish the photo online or in print as a news or documentary piece (this guy sits in the park, or walks on the sidewalk), you can sue, but you won't win.
If they take that mug shot of you and use it in an advertisement (aka "commercial appropriation of likeness") without your written permission, yes you can sue and you'll probably win.
IANAL, but I am a professional news and documentary photographer.
I agree with everything you said, but would also like to add a few others.
Consumer credit ab/use is out of hand. People are spending themselves to insolvency, and then the first speed bump they hit (lost job, new roof, unplanned medical expenses) drives them under.
I'm not ascribing blame to corporations completely, but in the end every business sells a product. In order to increase the amount of money they make, they need to sell more product and/or cut operating expenses. That means, in part, cutting jobs and benefits while going out of their way to sell more product to people who can not, across the board, afford to buy more product.
Less-than-intelligent banks and people took advantage of too-good-to-be-true loans to do/afford stuff that they otherwise couldn't.
My personal bank account is at an old and large bank, still held in majority by its founding family. My business account is at a local credit union because they don't screw me on fees nearly as badly.
When I went to the credit union on Friday, I noticed banner ads suggesting people take out a second mortgage to go on vacation and take a 100-month car loan so they can drive a luxury car on an ecobox car budget.
The bank isn't forcing people to do it, but those are both such bad ideas that I can't even begin to clear the bile from my throat.
People just finance everything these days. First off, they don't realize how much extra they're paying in interest and second, it just allows them to eat up every dollar in their paychecks before they even get them.
My wife and I splurged a bit around the holidays and bought a relatively large flat panel TV. Across most of the stores we went to while shopping around, we had a hard time figuring out what the "buy it now" price was for the hardware. In most cases, the pricetag would say something like $129/mo in huge print and then $1699 in small print somewhere. Needless to say, we weren't interested in financing a TV.
I'm not saying credit or financing is inherently evil. Immediate needs (shelter, transportation, medical etc.) are ripe for financing. If you can pay cash, all the better. People confuse needs and wants. We didn't buy the big TV until just now because we didn't have the hard currency to do it. No way were we going to buy an unnecessary TV on a credit card.
We, especially the children of the platinum card spend-all 1980's need to take a minute (or a class) in personal finance and household economics. Where our parents might not have even had credit cards in their 20's and 30's, we grew up in their midst, moreso without the feel and smell of Bejamin Franklin in our back pocket on Friday. Plastic spends easier than cash.
Credit is a tool, but a dangerous one. We need to use it wisely.
I am one of those people who has some difficulty distinguishing between upsampled DVD and true HD channels. I've seen some HD broadcast shows that look fairly poor (by which I mean stuff originally shot in HD), and some upsampled movies look better than HD.
I myself am a pro photographer. I haven't shot a 35mm neg in years, but do still shoot medium and large format films. It all comes down to the source. A 35mm negative will enlarge acceptably well to ~24x36 reliably. I can do 24x36 inch gallery quality prints from my 12mp D2X bodies reliably, and while encountering the same types of problems you see enlarging a 35mm neg that much.
My point is, the stuff shot and processed very well in SD stock will look good either as-is or upsampled on an HDTV. The stuff shot, processed and edited on intern night is going to look like crap, even if it was shot in IMAX and downsampled for humble old 4:3 SDTV.
I am in no way, shape or form affiliated with the following company, but have used them for years in my own home brewing adventures. They're based in Arizona, but ship all over the place and have some pretty decent prices. They sell kits (basically pre-packaged recipes) or individual bags of barley, hops, yeast, etc.
The under 30 crowd loves to bash Bush, not only because he's deserving of some serious criticism, but because it's cool and hip, and because Stewart is on somewhere in between South Park and some other probably mindless show on Comedy Central. They watch because it tells them what they want to hear how they want to hear it.
But it extends well beyond. 60 Minutes routinely focused on stories appealing to the American post-retirement crowd, and always did so with a soothing background to news items that they knew old folks would follow. In between Polident and Depends commercials.
CNN, MSNBC and Fox News are nothing more than background chatter. The news tickers are the most valuable aspects of their broadcasts, and you don't need the sound on to hear them. The newsreaders are just 30-45 year old walking, talking breast implants to give the viewer something to look at. These companies are aware that their broadcasts will be aired, with the sound down, on a handful of TVs at whatever the chic corporate/professional lunch spot is, as well as probably on a TV in the employee break room, or as mom/dad are home doing the ironing between taking the kids to school and soccer practice.
Nothing gets too offensive, nothing too graphic. Nothing too in-depth, nothing too intelligent. They know that their product is nothing more than filler viewed briefly by many. In between commercials for Lexus, cleaning products, dick-hard drugs and calmly reassuring Herpes medication commercials.
In the end, the same problem facing print media faces TV media. Despite claims to the contrary, their corporate parents will sacrifice the critical aspects of a sound journalistic mission for the almighty buck. And they'll do it in such a way that most of the unwashed masses enjoy it. We've got Spears' strange behavior, Paris' vagina and endless feel-good stories about dancing cats to keep CNN in alligator loafers for a long time to come.
Apparently, my subconscious is convinced that at some point I'll face a life-and-death struggle with Salma Hayek.
In my dreams, I find myself wrestling her on a giant bed at a really nice hotel. The problem is, she's naked, so I know she doesn't have any weapons, and she's really doesn't seem very interested in hurting me.
I'm a commercial photographer, and I'm unfortunately facing some of the same challenges as the recording and motion picture industries. Further, legislation changing copyright affects not only the movie studios and record labels, but often how copyright applies to me.
Now, I think I'm pretty progressive in my thinking on copyright. Does the creator of the work deserve payment for the product of his labors? Yes. Does he deserve royalties forever and ever and ever? Probably not. Does he deserve royalties for some period of time? Probably.
So here's a what-if: I'm out on assignment about weekend outings for a magazine. I am not an employee of the magazine, and there is no permanent transfer of rights for the images I make. I retain copyright and license the work to the publisher for a specified time.
Eventually, I may want to re-license the work to that same publisher or someone completely different. I may want to hire someone to re-license my work (Corbis, Getty, etc.)
Without adequate protection, someone could very easily appropriate my work and use it for their own commercial purposes. Even with protection of the law, it happens fairly frequently.
The problem is, where do I draw the line? As a businessman and artist, I think 'life of the author' is fair. As a consumer, I think 5-15 years is probably fair.
That's where we get into fair use. Atlantic Monthly wants to run a photo of mine anywhere in the magazine? Seems to me that they're profiting from a work I created. I should be duly compensated (in an agreement between myself and the magazine). Your sister has a website where she posts pictures of her cats and pretty sunsets, and happens to like a cat photo I took? Let her post the photo in a non-commercial non-endorsed way, and I couldn't care less. Now, if she compiles a book of cat and sunset pictures that she's found, I want a cut of the action.
We really need to start coming up with some solutions to these problems.
I'm out on a limb here, but I'm betting the computer was financed by private donation and public funds/subsidy.
In which case, the university has to ask itself what it needs. How much 'worse' is the 17th fastest box from the 5th or 1st fastest? Does it meet the needs of the university over the length of its amortization?
2007 was the first year that I went to the library only a handful of times (3, I think). Yet I still managed to read about a book per week (or two, depending on my workload).
With the number of second-hand and discount bookstores in town and online, it's pretty easy and economical to just buy books that I think I'm going to read or review more than once.
My wife and I spend what most families spend at the movies/movie rental places on books. Seems to work pretty well for us, and you get to keep the books.
And I'm positively sure that YOUR country is a shining example of world citizenry, and thereby allows you to drop stones on others from the lofty heights of your marble palace.
It's ok though; I'm sure when you're running things it'll all be better.
I very much agree that there is a semi-poor class that may have basic but adequate food and shelter, but generally has no access to modern healthcare, continuing education opportunities, and perhaps most importantly, no chance for social mobility.
This is a very difficult line to draw, though. Rather than looking only to Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia for these people, we can look also to the streets of London, Chicago, Paris or anywhere else there is a true (and far too often, growing) lower working class.
The question then to be answered is: Will a computer be the best aid to get the working poor out of their negative situation? I think they first need access to quality educators and role models (where so often their parents can't be role models or educators), then comes the need for quality health care.
Personally, I think without great teachers, mentors and role models, we could send them free 17" MacBook Pros (keep in mind the OLPC isn't distributed freely, either) and free copies of Maple, Office and Maya and we'd still not be doing them any good.
Because, quite simply, the mom and pop stores just don't exist anymore. If they do, they're often just tax shelters with nothing in stock, and no interest in selling anything. But for the most part, they've been driven away by Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Fry's, etc.
Beyond that, it's definitely a price thing. People don't value their time much, but when they only have $50 available balance on their credit card, they darn well need to spend $49.99.
Basically, lowest price wins. Volume dictates how low companies can go.
Unfortunately, you can't blame this on King George squarely. He has a more than compliant Senate, House of Representatives and Supreme Court (all full of Democrats and Republicans) willing to let him do whatever he wants while they debate whether or not next Thursday should be the National Purple Day or National Yellow Day (in a non-binding resolution kinda way).
In the 18th and 19th Centuries, throughout Western Europe and the New World, this was the stuff revolutions and uprisings were made of...
I guess that was a time before big screen TVs, MasterCards and corporate fiefdom.
This is NOT a troll, nor is it meant to be otherwise inflammatory. Just a question:
How many of the 9/11 (since that's always the battlecry) attackers would have been caught by this? Would the Unabomber been caught by this? Would Lee Harvey Oswald been caught by this?
The attacks will always come from the directions that aren't monitored.
This is the government monitoring its citizens simply for the sake of doing so. And if they happen to actually catch/avert a terrorist, so much the more reason to continue the program.
To the rest of the world: Most American's aren't really like this. The entire base from which we elect our politicians is fscked. Give us some time while we reformat and reboot.
There is nothing wrong with guns, or countries that have lots of guns. Keep in mind that firearms are inanimate hunks of metal that are given purpose by their user.
The problem is that some Americans, and people of other nationalities as well, have a wild thirst for power but no honest means to obtain it. Therefore, they turn to threats and violence as a means of getting their way. This unchecked aggression leads to more aggression on the part of the would-be assailants as well as their victims (as caused by fear).
If it weren't guns, it would be sharp, pointy sticks. As a person who's read a lot of history, I'd rather be shot than cleaved with a semi-sharp sword or dagger.
In 2004, I was covering the Presidential debate and Kerry rally following it in Phoenix.
The press facilities at the debate were adequate, but sucked nine kinds of ass at the Kerry rally.
As per company policy, I FTP'd my photos in following the event only to find out that most of them were received as corrupted.
So I drove around with my laptop on the passenger seat looking for an open wireless point. I drove past a house with every light on, and an open access point. Since the light was on, I decided to ring the doorbell to let the homeowner know who was camped out in front of their driveway with a laptop.
The guy came to the door and said the wireless was 'obviously' open for all to use, since he didn't lock it down. He told me I was welcome to come in and sit in the house while I worked, provided that he and his wife could look over my shoulder at the pictures.
Pretty simple solution here coppers: Don't pursue speeders. We're already doing ticket-by-mail for traffic enforcement. How is a piggy writing down a plate number and mailing the ticket any different?
As for criminal chases, don't do it. Even my podunk town has 2 police helos and one sheriff's helo flying in shifts. Use those to more safely pursue criminals.
But instead of using the above common sense, let's just spend top dollar on 'consultants' to find a taxpayer funded $1,000 solution to a $3 problem.
Pigs must be cannibals: they seem to like to eat pork.
As a professional news and documentary still photographer, there are a few points I'd like to make:
1) DLP chips are notoriously fragile and even more susceptible to dust and dirt than CCDs/JFET/CMOS chips. DLPs AFAIK are also much more expensive to manufacture and are a lot more power hungry. I need to get 1-2 days of shooting on the same number of batteries.
2) I still use medium format film for a lot of things not intended for newspaper or magazine use only because it enlarges much better than a 12mp DSLR or 35mm film. Besides, a 29mp back for a Hasselblad runs about $30,000USD. I don't see digital sensors replacing medium format film anytime in the next 20 years.
3) Although I would love to see better grayscale photos coming out of cameras and more dynamic range with less noise, at some point good enough is just that. The newest generation of DLSRS blow away film in terms of noise/grain at equivalent ISOs respectively. I would rather see refinements to the current 'breed' of digis than jumping to yet another new-and-improved format.
Slashdot Mirror
They have been in use for years in professional-grade (and now even consumer-grade) autofocus camera lenses.
See the Canon USM lenses and the Nikon Silent Wave (S) series lenses.
Yeah, especially when you take advantage of the no-balance-required frequent flyer cards.
My wife and I put basically every purchase on our FF rewards card - and pay it off in full at the end of every month.
We get all the benefits of the buyer's protection, the miles and the security and pay nothing in interest. All the CC company gets from us are the merchant's fees.
Actually, this has always been the case.
I'll preface this by saying that more freedom is always better, and I don't like Ford.
However, this is not really an oddball case at all. Ford, I'm fairly certain, registers all their designs as trademark(s), thereby enabling them to legally preclude an entity from reproducing said designs for their own commercial purposes. In fact, in order to maintain their trademark, Ford has to actively defend their trademark which is likely the reason for this action. IE, if they let this relatively harmless group operate outside of fair use, they have to let everyone do so (in other words, their trademark is no longer a trademark).
Although I wouldn't put it past them to try, they cannot stop you from taking pictures of your car to send to mom, put on your MySpace page or keep on your desk at work. They can't stop you from taking a picture of the car to put with your Auto Trader ad when you go to sell it.
They probably can't stop you from using photos of a car in a fine art piece for sale or display (artistic appropriation is a bit touchy, but is generally allowed by the courts).
They can't stop you from taking pictures of the car to accompany a news piece (for example, a photo of a Police Interceptor in flames or a photo of a Focus on the road for a review).
As for printing playing cards, calendars, posters, coffee mugs, etc. and selling them, for profit or not, they will do what they can to keep you from doing so. That is pretty much in-the-clear commercial appropriation, and is not allowed.
In other cases, usually the sports organization or the player him/herself owns the TM to their likeness to prevent me from going to an event, shooting pictures of the player and then selling prints/posters off my website. That doesn't mean that I don't still own the copyright to the photo, it just restricts what I can do to exercise my use of that photo. It doesn't stop me from publishing the photo as a news piece.
One could argue that if these are heavily modified cars, they are no longer identifiable as Ford's TM, and then the logo could be airbrushed out and the photo/calendar is probably a-ok.
The problem is that Ford is likely acting completely within their rights here, and unless this group has the cash to fight it in court, it's a case-closed event.
I'll reiterate that one of the pitfalls of trademark is that they have to be protected to be enforced, unlike (or at least less than) copyright. Some suit somewhere got wind of this and has no choice but to enforce their trademark to keep the trademark.
Nothing to see here...
It depends on many levels. If they take a mugshot of you in a public place with no reasonable expectation of privacy and publish the photo online or in print as a news or documentary piece (this guy sits in the park, or walks on the sidewalk), you can sue, but you won't win.
If they take that mug shot of you and use it in an advertisement (aka "commercial appropriation of likeness") without your written permission, yes you can sue and you'll probably win.
IANAL, but I am a professional news and documentary photographer.
I agree with everything you said, but would also like to add a few others.
Consumer credit ab/use is out of hand. People are spending themselves to insolvency, and then the first speed bump they hit (lost job, new roof, unplanned medical expenses) drives them under.
I'm not ascribing blame to corporations completely, but in the end every business sells a product. In order to increase the amount of money they make, they need to sell more product and/or cut operating expenses. That means, in part, cutting jobs and benefits while going out of their way to sell more product to people who can not, across the board, afford to buy more product.
Less-than-intelligent banks and people took advantage of too-good-to-be-true loans to do/afford stuff that they otherwise couldn't.
My personal bank account is at an old and large bank, still held in majority by its founding family. My business account is at a local credit union because they don't screw me on fees nearly as badly.
When I went to the credit union on Friday, I noticed banner ads suggesting people take out a second mortgage to go on vacation and take a 100-month car loan so they can drive a luxury car on an ecobox car budget.
The bank isn't forcing people to do it, but those are both such bad ideas that I can't even begin to clear the bile from my throat.
People just finance everything these days. First off, they don't realize how much extra they're paying in interest and second, it just allows them to eat up every dollar in their paychecks before they even get them.
My wife and I splurged a bit around the holidays and bought a relatively large flat panel TV. Across most of the stores we went to while shopping around, we had a hard time figuring out what the "buy it now" price was for the hardware. In most cases, the pricetag would say something like $129/mo in huge print and then $1699 in small print somewhere. Needless to say, we weren't interested in financing a TV.
I'm not saying credit or financing is inherently evil. Immediate needs (shelter, transportation, medical etc.) are ripe for financing. If you can pay cash, all the better. People confuse needs and wants. We didn't buy the big TV until just now because we didn't have the hard currency to do it. No way were we going to buy an unnecessary TV on a credit card.
We, especially the children of the platinum card spend-all 1980's need to take a minute (or a class) in personal finance and household economics. Where our parents might not have even had credit cards in their 20's and 30's, we grew up in their midst, moreso without the feel and smell of Bejamin Franklin in our back pocket on Friday. Plastic spends easier than cash.
Credit is a tool, but a dangerous one. We need to use it wisely.
I am one of those people who has some difficulty distinguishing between upsampled DVD and true HD channels. I've seen some HD broadcast shows that look fairly poor (by which I mean stuff originally shot in HD), and some upsampled movies look better than HD.
I myself am a pro photographer. I haven't shot a 35mm neg in years, but do still shoot medium and large format films. It all comes down to the source. A 35mm negative will enlarge acceptably well to ~24x36 reliably. I can do 24x36 inch gallery quality prints from my 12mp D2X bodies reliably, and while encountering the same types of problems you see enlarging a 35mm neg that much.
My point is, the stuff shot and processed very well in SD stock will look good either as-is or upsampled on an HDTV. The stuff shot, processed and edited on intern night is going to look like crap, even if it was shot in IMAX and downsampled for humble old 4:3 SDTV.
And the same with still pictures.
I'm of course interested in breaking up the vast majority of monopolies.
Why is a state (as opposed to a Federal unit) spending it's money on anti-trust discovery?
It would appear to me that New York, and every other state in the Union, has more pressing issues on which to spend taxpayer money.
I am in no way, shape or form affiliated with the following company, but have used them for years in my own home brewing adventures. They're based in Arizona, but ship all over the place and have some pretty decent prices. They sell kits (basically pre-packaged recipes) or individual bags of barley, hops, yeast, etc.
Check out http://www.brewyourownbrew.com/
It's all honey potion-ing.
The under 30 crowd loves to bash Bush, not only because he's deserving of some serious criticism, but because it's cool and hip, and because Stewart is on somewhere in between South Park and some other probably mindless show on Comedy Central. They watch because it tells them what they want to hear how they want to hear it.
But it extends well beyond. 60 Minutes routinely focused on stories appealing to the American post-retirement crowd, and always did so with a soothing background to news items that they knew old folks would follow. In between Polident and Depends commercials.
CNN, MSNBC and Fox News are nothing more than background chatter. The news tickers are the most valuable aspects of their broadcasts, and you don't need the sound on to hear them. The newsreaders are just 30-45 year old walking, talking breast implants to give the viewer something to look at. These companies are aware that their broadcasts will be aired, with the sound down, on a handful of TVs at whatever the chic corporate/professional lunch spot is, as well as probably on a TV in the employee break room, or as mom/dad are home doing the ironing between taking the kids to school and soccer practice.
Nothing gets too offensive, nothing too graphic. Nothing too in-depth, nothing too intelligent. They know that their product is nothing more than filler viewed briefly by many. In between commercials for Lexus, cleaning products, dick-hard drugs and calmly reassuring Herpes medication commercials.
In the end, the same problem facing print media faces TV media. Despite claims to the contrary, their corporate parents will sacrifice the critical aspects of a sound journalistic mission for the almighty buck. And they'll do it in such a way that most of the unwashed masses enjoy it. We've got Spears' strange behavior, Paris' vagina and endless feel-good stories about dancing cats to keep CNN in alligator loafers for a long time to come.
Apparently, my subconscious is convinced that at some point I'll face a life-and-death struggle with Salma Hayek.
In my dreams, I find myself wrestling her on a giant bed at a really nice hotel. The problem is, she's naked, so I know she doesn't have any weapons, and she's really doesn't seem very interested in hurting me.
Weird, huh?
I'm a commercial photographer, and I'm unfortunately facing some of the same challenges as the recording and motion picture industries. Further, legislation changing copyright affects not only the movie studios and record labels, but often how copyright applies to me.
Now, I think I'm pretty progressive in my thinking on copyright. Does the creator of the work deserve payment for the product of his labors? Yes. Does he deserve royalties forever and ever and ever? Probably not. Does he deserve royalties for some period of time? Probably.
So here's a what-if: I'm out on assignment about weekend outings for a magazine. I am not an employee of the magazine, and there is no permanent transfer of rights for the images I make. I retain copyright and license the work to the publisher for a specified time.
Eventually, I may want to re-license the work to that same publisher or someone completely different. I may want to hire someone to re-license my work (Corbis, Getty, etc.)
Without adequate protection, someone could very easily appropriate my work and use it for their own commercial purposes. Even with protection of the law, it happens fairly frequently.
The problem is, where do I draw the line? As a businessman and artist, I think 'life of the author' is fair. As a consumer, I think 5-15 years is probably fair.
That's where we get into fair use. Atlantic Monthly wants to run a photo of mine anywhere in the magazine? Seems to me that they're profiting from a work I created. I should be duly compensated (in an agreement between myself and the magazine). Your sister has a website where she posts pictures of her cats and pretty sunsets, and happens to like a cat photo I took? Let her post the photo in a non-commercial non-endorsed way, and I couldn't care less. Now, if she compiles a book of cat and sunset pictures that she's found, I want a cut of the action.
We really need to start coming up with some solutions to these problems.
I'm out on a limb here, but I'm betting the computer was financed by private donation and public funds/subsidy.
In which case, the university has to ask itself what it needs. How much 'worse' is the 17th fastest box from the 5th or 1st fastest? Does it meet the needs of the university over the length of its amortization?
Bookmans? Tucson?
2007 was the first year that I went to the library only a handful of times (3, I think). Yet I still managed to read about a book per week (or two, depending on my workload).
With the number of second-hand and discount bookstores in town and online, it's pretty easy and economical to just buy books that I think I'm going to read or review more than once.
My wife and I spend what most families spend at the movies/movie rental places on books. Seems to work pretty well for us, and you get to keep the books.
And I'm positively sure that YOUR country is a shining example of world citizenry, and thereby allows you to drop stones on others from the lofty heights of your marble palace.
It's ok though; I'm sure when you're running things it'll all be better.
"...grows into an adult..."
So many of the world's working poor have no grand designs for years down the road when they're trying to figure out how to get days down the road.
I very much agree that there is a semi-poor class that may have basic but adequate food and shelter, but generally has no access to modern healthcare, continuing education opportunities, and perhaps most importantly, no chance for social mobility.
This is a very difficult line to draw, though. Rather than looking only to Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia for these people, we can look also to the streets of London, Chicago, Paris or anywhere else there is a true (and far too often, growing) lower working class.
The question then to be answered is: Will a computer be the best aid to get the working poor out of their negative situation? I think they first need access to quality educators and role models (where so often their parents can't be role models or educators), then comes the need for quality health care.
Personally, I think without great teachers, mentors and role models, we could send them free 17" MacBook Pros (keep in mind the OLPC isn't distributed freely, either) and free copies of Maple, Office and Maya and we'd still not be doing them any good.
Because, quite simply, the mom and pop stores just don't exist anymore. If they do, they're often just tax shelters with nothing in stock, and no interest in selling anything. But for the most part, they've been driven away by Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Fry's, etc.
Beyond that, it's definitely a price thing. People don't value their time much, but when they only have $50 available balance on their credit card, they darn well need to spend $49.99.
Basically, lowest price wins. Volume dictates how low companies can go.
Unfortunately, you can't blame this on King George squarely. He has a more than compliant Senate, House of Representatives and Supreme Court (all full of Democrats and Republicans) willing to let him do whatever he wants while they debate whether or not next Thursday should be the National Purple Day or National Yellow Day (in a non-binding resolution kinda way).
In the 18th and 19th Centuries, throughout Western Europe and the New World, this was the stuff revolutions and uprisings were made of...
I guess that was a time before big screen TVs, MasterCards and corporate fiefdom.
This is NOT a troll, nor is it meant to be otherwise inflammatory. Just a question:
How many of the 9/11 (since that's always the battlecry) attackers would have been caught by this? Would the Unabomber been caught by this? Would Lee Harvey Oswald been caught by this?
The attacks will always come from the directions that aren't monitored.
This is the government monitoring its citizens simply for the sake of doing so. And if they happen to actually catch/avert a terrorist, so much the more reason to continue the program.
To the rest of the world: Most American's aren't really like this. The entire base from which we elect our politicians is fscked. Give us some time while we reformat and reboot.
There is nothing wrong with guns, or countries that have lots of guns. Keep in mind that firearms are inanimate hunks of metal that are given purpose by their user.
The problem is that some Americans, and people of other nationalities as well, have a wild thirst for power but no honest means to obtain it. Therefore, they turn to threats and violence as a means of getting their way. This unchecked aggression leads to more aggression on the part of the would-be assailants as well as their victims (as caused by fear).
If it weren't guns, it would be sharp, pointy sticks. As a person who's read a lot of history, I'd rather be shot than cleaved with a semi-sharp sword or dagger.
In 2004, I was covering the Presidential debate and Kerry rally following it in Phoenix.
The press facilities at the debate were adequate, but sucked nine kinds of ass at the Kerry rally.
As per company policy, I FTP'd my photos in following the event only to find out that most of them were received as corrupted.
So I drove around with my laptop on the passenger seat looking for an open wireless point. I drove past a house with every light on, and an open access point. Since the light was on, I decided to ring the doorbell to let the homeowner know who was camped out in front of their driveway with a laptop.
The guy came to the door and said the wireless was 'obviously' open for all to use, since he didn't lock it down. He told me I was welcome to come in and sit in the house while I worked, provided that he and his wife could look over my shoulder at the pictures.
Pretty simple solution here coppers: Don't pursue speeders. We're already doing ticket-by-mail for traffic enforcement. How is a piggy writing down a plate number and mailing the ticket any different?
As for criminal chases, don't do it. Even my podunk town has 2 police helos and one sheriff's helo flying in shifts. Use those to more safely pursue criminals.
But instead of using the above common sense, let's just spend top dollar on 'consultants' to find a taxpayer funded $1,000 solution to a $3 problem.
Pigs must be cannibals: they seem to like to eat pork.
I know a guy named Fuchs. He pronounces it "fyooks".
We in society, and certainly in the case of both of those examples, have become absolutely deluded in what 'rights' we have and haven't.
As a professional news and documentary still photographer, there are a few points I'd like to make:
1) DLP chips are notoriously fragile and even more susceptible to dust and dirt than CCDs/JFET/CMOS chips. DLPs AFAIK are also much more expensive to manufacture and are a lot more power hungry. I need to get 1-2 days of shooting on the same number of batteries.
2) I still use medium format film for a lot of things not intended for newspaper or magazine use only because it enlarges much better than a 12mp DSLR or 35mm film. Besides, a 29mp back for a Hasselblad runs about $30,000USD. I don't see digital sensors replacing medium format film anytime in the next 20 years.
3) Although I would love to see better grayscale photos coming out of cameras and more dynamic range with less noise, at some point good enough is just that. The newest generation of DLSRS blow away film in terms of noise/grain at equivalent ISOs respectively. I would rather see refinements to the current 'breed' of digis than jumping to yet another new-and-improved format.