Thursday, April 18, 2013
White Pitcher: “Obama Gonna Take Our Guns Away, Man”
(www.politico.com)
“Today’s day and age has gotten so crazy. Shoot man, Obama wants to take our guns from us and everything. You got all this stuff going on; it’s just a little bit insane for me, man. I’m not sure how to take it.”
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Page 52 of 57 pages
‹ First < 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 >There's paranoid, and then there is that.
Plug your TV into your computer.
Other way around. :) If all you care about is streaming from Netflix, and the like, I would get a roku. I'd wait off buying a PS3/X-box right now since the next generation is coming by the lastest in 2014.
I'd only get a Wii U if I wanted Nintendo games. (And I have one.)
Plug your TV into your computer.
They're in two separate rooms on two different levels that would require a very long cord to connect them. But more than that, there's almost nothing I've noticed available for streaming that I can't get somewhere else, either on TCM or YouTube, whereas on Netflix 90% of the movies I've rented are available on DVD only. I just don't see any real value to adding the streaming option.
The point, though -- is I hate paying for something continually if I can plunk down a one-time payment to have it forever. It's like paying rental on a storage locker when I have an empty closet that can EASILY store everything in that locker.
Connectivity/access is another matter -- it's not really feasible for me to run my own broad network (home networks are another matter - there - clouds are completely worthless and pointless... I can be my own cloud in a local network environment).
Consequently -- right now, I accept that I do have to pay someone to provide the roads/access to data, whenever it's stored external and I'm not within range of my own local network.
That said, though -- I haven't played/attempted to do it much because there's simply not a lot of data that I need 'away from home' that I can't store locally (i.e., even my on my 'little' 32 gig iphone, I've got all the music library I really need) -- but I'm willing to bet that it would be a relative piece of cake for me to enable my home device to serve as my storage and I could just layer into remotely.
It was a no brainer for us because I used it to pay off a 2nd mortgage that was about to balloon. Now I pay myself $400/month at 5% interest for 6 years!
Security's a good place to over-engineer.
Right, but it's better to die slowly than die quickly.
Best in which voice:
1) Clint Eastwood
2) Donald Rumsfeld
3) Homer Simpson
?
Woody Allen
Right now, the service providers handle all of their billing for them-- HBO is simply not set up for it, and they have no interest in taking over that aspect of the business. I know that sounds like a minor thing, but going around the service providers would have the effect of biting the hand that feeds them (the service providers) for not too much of a gain, while requiring HBO to establish a payment processing infrastructure that they don't really feel like developing. The people without cable willing to pay for a Go subscription are very vocal, but not very plentiful-- or at least that's how they're regarded by HBO. This also means the service providers are here to stay, at least for now, because they're keeping some content exclusive/expensive (FX has pulled out of Hulu for the most part, ect).
Especially with the death of unlimited data plans, I am also not a fan of the cloud. On a related note, I just downloaded some Steam games to my work computer, and they were coming in at 5 MB/s. So I don't mind the cloud on campus, as long as I'm hard-wired. Our wi-fi is insanely lacking in capacity and coverage-- which I think is the rule, rather than the exception at a lot of campuses, and one of the reasons students seem slow to jump on the cloud train.
Helen Mirren?
Linda Hunt
Sky GO (which I suppose is the same as HBO GO), works great for me. I essentially use it to watch Game of Thrones. So I activate my account in March, pay a monthly fee of £10 or whatever it is, watch the show on my computer, then de-activate it in May. Rinse and repeat next year.
I also subscribe to LoveFilm (the UK equivalent of Netflix, though we have Netflix here now too). The DVD by mail and streaming stuff is still packaged together, so I have 3 DVDs at any given time, and stream mostly TV shows. I like that set up in that I treat the DVD rentals like a massive collection on shuffle. I'm passive to the point of paralysis, so I enjoy not making a decision. I just feed into the system a list of hundreds of movies and get to be surprised when the mail arrives. Though clearly it's not entirely random, they gave me the Godfather earlier this week, then the Godfather Part II in the next delivery. I suppose you guys haven't heard of those ones either!
If you're a lot younger (I'm 54), YM will certainly V. Though at that, vinyl was around before I was born, and there are lots of people older than me who are delighted today that they never sold off their collections of records.
Another angle (and more relevant) is just to say that there will probably be a market for a big-stock DVD rental supplier for a long time to come. It's just that that supplier, Netflix or whoever, won't be strangling the entire media world in exponentially more lethal ways, the way the stock market prefers large corporations to do.
You're forgetting Men with Brooms, which I know all of you have seen. I mean, come on, it's easily in the discussion for top 10 movies about curling made in the past fifteen years.
Netflix streaming is great for t.v. shows, especially for someone like me who rarely has time to regularly watch shows in primetime. They have a fantastic selection. On the other hand, their movie selection is pretty terrible.
This seems like a pretty tech savvy bunch, but every so often a development occurs that blows my mind a little bit. Cell phones didn't faze me at all, perhaps because of their appearance in Star Trek when I was a kid, but this kind of capacity on a key chain staggers me a little. Maybe because for so long (in tech terms) everything was getting more and more closely packed into the space of hard drvies a thumb drive seems like it's skipping a step... I'm going to get a kick out of 'laptops' in five years that are nothing more than key chains you set on a table top and that project a usable keyboard and active computer screen at ninety degree angles, all created by light projection.
Yup. Padding with Hong Kong police procedurals is pretty unimpressive.
To that I'd add the advantages of dead tree books over kindles, though there you have to weigh aesthetics vs storage space. But for the average book, if you're willing to wait a year or two, the average price of a printed book is lower than the corresponding price of the electronic version. Not to mention that there's zero resale value in the case of the latter.
It's true that storage of discs is inefficient, but it's not like even a few hundred of them are exactly enormous. I love owning entire runs of TV shows on discs.
Well, if you live in a broom closet, I can see the storage problem, but right now I've got over 3000 movies on DVDs stored in about 7 cubic ft. of space, completely out of sight but accessible within less than a minute.
If you're a lot younger (I'm 54), YM will certainly V. Though at that, vinyl was around before I was born, and there are lots of people older than me who are delighted today that they never sold off their collections of records.
I've got about 1200 vintage R&B 45s and about 200 jazz & classical CDs, but I admit it's easier to just find them all on YouTube or turn on WPFW or WETA whenever I want to listen to music. If I had to start all over I doubt if I'd bother to replace most of what I own now.
Their streaming selection is pretty lame, but their DVD library isn't really that bad. It all depends on what sort of movie genres you like, and whether you can live with the relative slowness of the mail, but (for example) I've yet to look for a film from the Criterion Collection that they couldn't provide. They're not great for recent foreign and indie movies, but for $8.47 a month you can't have everything.
Given how the net has caused the price of ordinary books to plummet, and given the hassle of selling the occasional book over the net, I think the resale value of the average printed book is a moot point. When a friend passed he left me about 600 books, mostly on literary criticism and the like. A dealer stopped by the house and wanted to cherry pick a couple of boxes worth, for which he would have given me a couple of hundred dollars. A lot of the titles go for $10 or so on abebooks, and I suppose if I wanted to go through the trouble of inventorying, entering, and storing them, answering inquiries, packing the books, shipping them... I might be able to turn a profit. Even the local library doesn't want them as a donation more than a week ahead of their next annual book sale. Ten months from now. What a pain in the ass paper books are.
In the short run, I agree, being in the process of moving several hundred books that nobody wants out of my overcrowded office.
In the long run – I know that somebody's going to be able to pick up whichever of those books survive to 2113 and read it exactly as I'm reading it today. I am really not sure about e-books. There is something to be said for a format that has been stable for over 1,500 years.
Who's better, though? I tried Facets for harder-to-find things awhile back, but their service is lousy by comparison to Netflix.
I do worry from time to time about things falling through the cracks of various media. (Ah, the worries I have.) A film I should see and never have is The Set-Up, with Robert Ryan, for instance. It plummeted recently from #8 or 9 in my Netflix queue down into the bottom where basically you have no hope of ever seeing it. What happens in such cases? DVD out of print and all the Netflix copies lost? OTOH there are 60 of them on sale at Amazon from $2.39 apiece, so I reckon this is a moment when I should follow my own advice in #2567 and just buy the damn thing.
What's Joe's deal, anyway? You'd think with all the random energy and the relentless ability to be wrong on every conceivable issue along with a special willingness to pervert honesty, integrity, and the rules of argumentation in the service of partisan crap, he'd be a hit on the interwebs; a star of his own blog with at least a cult following, and maybe more. He strikes me as one of those magical people who are actually unable to smell their own ########.
Does he think without his endless, stupid distractions the lefties here will solve the problem of universal health care?
Did we get a link for this bit of business yet?
My only knowledge is second-hand, from others who use these devices. But I've heard a lot of complaints about the rendering of graphics in Kindle books. Many college textbooks are going to iPad or other tablet formats - a student today showed me an iPad app for astronomy courses that is wonderful (it's self-orienting as you hold it over your head against the night sky, and pans to represent a swath of the sky as you move it). Amazingly better than the paper charts remember from college, naturally. And probably a lot better than their Kindle equivalents, too.
It would be just a larger scale version of Maine and Nebraska's idiosyncracies in that regard, which I don't think anyone sees as partisan manipulations of the process, but only more American electoral weirdness.
I don't know how your scenario would happen in practice. I mean, the 2000 Presidential election was clearly stolen, but nothing happened. (It's not that it was clear Gore would have won if every vote had been counted--it's just that it was clear that the process was stopped at a wholly arbitrary point, and that solely happened in order to select Bush as the winner. I would have loved to have seen one of four justices [all four, actually] resign from the Court after that decision.)
In what you describe, I don't see any way for a 9-10 point Dem pop vote win to end with a Republican President as any kind of surprise. The news would have been abuzz for months if not years ahead of time over exactly that possibility. Are you suggesting that the Pubs might push something through like their current EC plan, in a half dozen states; judicial appeals fail, the Supreme Court turns the Dems down 5 to 4, then even though everyone knows it might be coming, HRC beats Bobby Jindal 54%-45% but loses the EC by something like 271-267?
All that depends on the books in question, since there are tens of thousands of books which are worth a lot more than either the original or the current list price, not to mention the price that you can pick up most books at a year or two after publication. But it's true that if you value books only for the "information", then the space problem can override all other considerations.
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[Netflix isn't] great for recent foreign and indie movies
Who's better, though? I tried Facets for harder-to-find things awhile back, but their service is lousy by comparison to Netflix.
Hard to say if anything's better than Netflix, and I actually find their overall selection of DVDs to be quite good. For recent foreign and indie movies about all I can think of is patience.
I do worry from time to time about things falling through the cracks of various media. (Ah, the worries I have.) A film I should see and never have is The Set-Up, with Robert Ryan, for instance. It plummeted recently from #8 or 9 in my Netflix queue down into the bottom where basically you have no hope of ever seeing it. What happens in such cases? DVD out of print and all the Netflix copies lost? OTOH there are 60 of them on sale at Amazon from $2.39 apiece, so I reckon this is a moment when I should follow my own advice in #2567 and just buy the damn thing.
FWIW The Set-Up plays on TCM anywhere between once and three times a year,** so it shouldn't be hard to record and watch. But whether you go that route or just buy a copy off Amazon, it's more than worth the money, given that it's easily among the half dozen best sports films ever made, and arguably only behind Raging Bull and The Wrestler. Robert Ryan was a collegiate boxing champion, and even at 39 he still gave a hell of a performance as an over the hill fighter.
**If you like movies like The Set-Up, the $12.95 you pay for a year's subscription to TCM's program guide may be the best entertainment investment you'll ever make.
Hulu has the Criterion Collection. A collection of the best foreign films by the best foreign directors. My roommate swears by it. Its one of Hulu Plus' main draws.
It would be just a larger scale version of Maine and Nebraska's idiosyncracies in that regard, which I don't think anyone sees as partisan manipulations of the process, but only more American electoral weirdness.
The problem with dividing it up according to congressional districts is that unless you eliminated the two extra EC votes per state, the rural states would cumulatively have way more power than they deserve by population. At least with the winner takes all system, that advantage gets somewhat negated by the fact that in close elections in swing states, the urban voters can tip the balance.
The other problem is that partisan gerrymandering is so ubiquitous, and so subject to partisan interpretations by partisan courts, that allocating EC votes according to congressional districts would inevitably wind up being tilted in favor of whichever party controlled the most statehouses in the legislative sessions immediately following the latest census. Right now it favors the Republicans, but since they're overplaying their hand to the max, they shouldn't expect the Democrats to do them any favors in 2021 if the 2020 election puts them in control.
I'm not at all convinced Democrats in Congress would do anything significant, even in the case of blatant electoral theft. They'd use it only to bargain for increased power for themselves, as they did in 2000 when Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle sold off Dem rights to protest to Republican Senate leader Trent Lott for he sake of sharing equally in committee seats and congressional staff positions in the newly organized Senate.
Netflix also has the Criterion Collection in its DVD library. I've rented scores of those titles from Netflix over the past decade, whenever I get impatient with TCM's relatively meager selection of foreign movies. I'm not knocking Hulu, just mentioning this counterpoint.
You may be right, but I do think that the Dems have learned a lot since 2000, and in particular their social networking is a LOT better equipped to fight back now than it was then. If Gov. McDonnell signs that nice little bit of redistricting theft that the GOP pulled off in Virginia the other day, I guarantee that it'll come back to haunt them, as its blatantly racist impact becomes understood. Already some Republican governors are starting to back off on similar plans, even if the RNC still seems to think that they can get away with them---it's as if the RNC is taking up Kehoskie's "forget the changing demographics, let's just win more and more white votes" strategy.
Sure, but that's not what you were talking about in 2571. There you were referring to 'average' books, and so was I.
I know no one who does this, but YMMV.
Sure, but we were talking about what would send people out into the streets; not what was ultimately fair. I agree the EC is a silly system for the specific reason you describe, and many more.
That's an excellent summary of why we shouldn't even try to repair gerrymandering in order to more 'fairly' divide up the EC vote. No one (do they? How could they?) any longer thinks the judiciary is remotely impartial, so trusting the courts to better divvy up the districts is a fool's errand.
As for Dems playing hardball in return in 2021, I'm not so sure. Despite Republican abuse of the filibuster rules, I don't remotely expect Democrats to return the favor if they're in the minority after the next elections. Democrats take an incredibly long time to figure out they're being hosed then react in kind to it. Nature of the beasts, I guess.
We can hope, yeah? Still, I can't help noticing the Republicans paid no price of any kind, incredibly enough, for stealing the 2000 election. If you don't pay a price for that...
I admit I'm a little surprised at the Republicans here and there (especially after going 20 for 20 within the GOP in Viriginia) who get out of lockstep and allow as how they won't be supporting the new EC theft plans. Those refusals as much as anything might be the key to breaking this latest plot.
Now, if Democrats would only get massively behind re-enfranchising people who have served their time, we could probably shove the GOP substantially to the left...
edit: "Netflix also has the Criterion Collection in its DVD library."
Yes!! Great stuff.
Sure, but that's not what you were talking about in 2571. There you were referring to 'average' books, and so was I.
Point taken. I was just trying to note that there are many exceptions to the general rule.
But it's true that if you value books only for the "information", then the space problem can override all other considerations.
I know no one who does this, but YMMV.
I've met many people like that, unfortunately. They'd pay $9.99 for an e-book copy of a Zora Neale Hurston novel over a first edition in dust jacket that was priced at $100.00, and think they were getting a relative bargain.
------------------------------------------
As for the GOP gerrymandering and the Democratic reaction: Let's wait and see. I could be wrong, but I think the days of the Democrats supplying vaseline to the Republicans are fast coming to an end, as the Republicans keep ratcheting up their Kehoskie strategy and thinking that's still a winning formula.
I know this: I gave equal amounts of money to the Dems in 2012 as I did in 2008, and the number of e-mail appeals I've been getting for (a) money, (b) petition signing, and (c) calls to mobilize are running ten times in number this month than they were in January 2009. I think that the operative year to remember is 2010 rather than 2000, and I think that more than ever the Dems are recognizing the true nature of the forces they're up against.
I've been waiting to see if anyone would comment on this, but I guess this piece of drivel didn't even pass the lefties' laugh test. (Credit where credit is due, etc.)
In Ta-Nehisi's World, there's no achievement gap between whites and blacks. No wonder everything seems so unfair, and racism can be found lurking around every corner.
I also think that for all its shortcomings, MSNBC (pretty clearly a gigantic arm of the Democratic party) has very, very successfully established itself as an effective counterweight to Fox. They have an impressive set of fact-checkers, far more so than Fox,and people I know in the industry, while acknowledging their obvious left-leaning, also recognize that MSNBC hews close to the facts. They have a nice range of commenters, and while the party line gets old fast, a pair of real thinkers in Hayes and Maddow and a master of Senate minutae and strategy in Lawrence O'Donnell. Fox doesn't have anyone like them, and the value of the network to the Democratic cause is impossible, imo, to overestimate. They're everything Air America was meant to be.
I still get a chuckle out of Joe thinking Bob Beckel at Fox was one of the pre-eminent liberal thinkers of our time.
Yikes! One of my few regrets in doing a fair bit of moving around during my life is that it means I never established a huge library of paper books. There's nothing like leafing through, say, great art books, and even the best organized electronic libraries aren't the same, for me. A well-made book is a treasure, not just a collection of information.
There's a big difference between "prominent" and "preeminent."
Bob Beckel is indeed a prominent liberal pundit, whether the lefties here want to admit it or not.
Seriously, Joe, you're the absolutely perfect Republican blogger. You're casting your pearls here before all manner of unappreciative lefty swine. Allow me to continue to encourage you to go forth and make a name for yourself as the righteous defender of all things good and white and pure. I mean it. You have everything it takes to succeed in that line of business, and it'd just have to be more rewarding than the reception you get in these parts.
If the lefties here don't like Bob Beckel, that's fine — I'm no fan myself — but claiming that a guy who has, for years, appeared several times per week on the highest-rated shows on the highest-rated cable network and also has a column on the op-ed page of USA Today doesn't qualify as a "prominent" political pundit is beyond absurd. If Bob Beckel isn't a prominent political pundit, then Ken Rosenthal isn't a prominent baseball reporter. (I know the lefties here shield their eyes at the sight of Fox News, but it does exist, it is the No. 1 cable news network, and it's a major platform for the people who appear on it.)
I've always been a reader, but until my mid-30's I was either moving every year or two or on the road for one hustle or another, and didn't really appreciate that. But at this point it's almost impossible to describe what my personal library means to me on more levels than I can probably understand myself. I've got somewhere over 8000 books, and though the answer to the first question I always get ("Have you read all of these books?") is obviously "No", I can tell you where each of them came from, and how each of them fit(s) into history at the time it was written. IMO none of us is capable of fully understanding the world we've lived in, but much more than google or wiki or any of those sources (which I use many times a day), what I've absorbed from those books makes me feel a bit less like a complete idiot than I might have felt without them. And that more than makes up for the minor space problem.
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