Meh.
... in Chinese... Straw man. I never disagreed with the multiple use of "yuan."
was written with a Singaporean audience in mind Straw man. It wasn't. Slashdot != Singapore. I'm talking about the Slashdot article, not the Singaporean article. Quoting verbatim is pure laziness on the part not of IDG, but of the article poster. You are deliberately misinterpreting my point. Again.
In fact, Singlish, the semi-official creole spoken on the island Pointless red herring and/or straw man.
I don't think there's ever a time that using "renminbi" is wrong, I've pointed out at least three cases where it is clearly wrong, including the fact that it is grammatically incorrect in English and in Chinese to omit the unitary denomination, and further it is incorrect because it is awkward and inconsistent with the written English word.
250 RMB That is a secondary abbreviation and is not as correct. Expansion to "renminbi" is less correct than "Chinese Yuan" because there is no unitary base specified.
Since you're fond of google Are you serious? You're using the number of hits returned from a Google search as evidence to prove your claim?
Are you being deliberately dense? You cannot say "san renminbi" in Chinese because the grammar does not allow it! Neither does the grammar allow it in English, and therefore the terminology is just plain wrong.
Sometimes, it's not the least bit clear you actually bothered to read mine. Way to steal my comment and try to throw it back at me.
I am no longer willing to participate in this thread. I think your claims are wrong, your English comprehension is poor, your arguments are based far more on logical fallacy than mine are, and therefore this will be my last response. Feel free to get the last word in. I won't bother reading it. I suppose it would probably behoove you not to waste any more of your time. Agree that we disagree and let it be.
I explained to you that those of us that work in Forex prefer to say renminbi, because it unambiguously refers to the mainland's currency
Uh.. you're misapprehending my previous note. I accepted that completely unproveable statement, but that doesn't mean that I think it is correct. I think you guys are grammatically incorrect. I think your use of the term is a poor but possibly necessary abbreviation, so I admit that in your daily life it might be easier to use a single term that both denotes currency origin *and* unitary value amongst people who have agreed to make it so for the sake of brevity.
You claim that the symbol is RMB; however, the "official ISO 4217 abbreviation is CNY." Additionally, xe.com and every financial site I've visited so far use CNY as the abbreviation for the currency. Your claims are beginning to sound suspect for this reason and because you decry what you perceive as my logical fallacies while engaging in at least five of them in your retort.
You seem to have accepted this, and are now arguing that there would have been nothing wrong with the author of the submission using the term "yuan" in place of "renminbi". This is what is known as a straw man fallacy[...]
I am quite familiar with logical fallacies. What you are doing is, however, more of a logical fallacy that what I am doing. I am the one whose point we are now arguing, and therefore it is my argument in which this discussion exists. I am simply restating my original point in new words to try to convey meaning and to assist in defining a context within which we can have meaningful discourse.
What you are doing is additionally a tactic sometimes called reframing the argument. You're subtly altering context and then arguing within that as though the original argument had simply vapourised into thin air. That's simple rhetoric and way more of a straw man than I ever indulged in.
My original note was to point out that it would have been grammatically and effectively correct English to use the term "X yuan". Therefore, continuing to advocate that point is in fact not a logical fallacy at all. On the other hand, you are incorrect that I have not addressed your argument. I have. I have stated that within money-market traders renminbi may be a good shorthand. For effective communication with the populace at large, however, it is wholly inappropriate, grammatically incorrect (from either a Chinese or an English perspective) and more confusing to those of us who are not within your infinitesimally small money-trading group.
Since I, myself, speak and write natively in English, the best frame of reference to decide on correct terminology in my own language for that which I will use to communicate with the average English reader is to find people who natively write and speak Mandarin and then work together with them to find accurate terms to express Chinese concepts.
It is useless to argue that a money-market term is somehow more appropriate for the general public at large. This is incorrect. For you, differentiating currencies in as little space as possible may be important. For the article itself, which is what I was complaining about, the differentiation has already been made by the context, and therefore, effective communication is simply not happening. The fact that we're arguing about this is excellent evidence of that fact.
To reiterate, what you said originally was that the author of the article was wrong and that "renminbi" should not be used, and that "yuan" should be used instead. To this I countered that there was nothing wrong with using "renminbi." [...] Now, if the thesis of your argument were: "It would have been ok to say 'yuan' instead of 'renminbi' in the context in question", I would agree with you, and that would be the end of it. [...] This, however, is not what you are claiming.
Huh? Sounds like semantics to me. Let's see.. my original note said: "I'm pretty sure the currency
Please show me exactly where in my post I called you a moron? I called "anyone who purchased D&D books as a financial investment" a moron. I did not say "Sudog is a moron for buying D&D books". You would only be taking my broad statement as a personal slander if you are one of those morons who bought them as a financial investment.
Those are called semantics; the meaning and intent was clear, and you wouldn't have made the statement at all unless you considered me to be part of that group. If you had assumed I was not looking for an economic investment you wouldn't have said anything. In searching for the truth of the matter, at the best you were trolling me for it, and in that event I still get to call you names.
Old Heinlein books in mint condition get a few dollars. Early publishings with limited covers perhaps? Most SF in the 50's and 60's never had more than 100,000 copies printed in one publishing. Scarcity raises value. There are millions of copies of the 3rd ed. books. Considering this, $5-10 for a used 3.0 book is pretty reasonable.
In non-mint mostly crappy condition, Stranger in a Strange Land fetched exactly $5. The Mote in God's Eye fetched exactly $3.99. That's pretty fucking good considering their original prices were $2.50 and $4.50 respectively. Even taking inflation into account, that's $14.58 and $19.73 respectively, which means crappy, stained editions are 1/3 and around 1/4 their original cost.
For a current Manual of the Planes v3.0, Abebooks has them listed right now for $4.80. Used. I paid $48 for it, new. That's 1/10th of its original value and that's mostly because it's a relatively rarer book.
For my Player's Handbook, v3.0, Abebooks has them listed right now for $3.87. New, it was $37. That's 1/10th its original value again.
v3.5? More than double that, for a book that's four years newer. But they're dead ends, both of them.
From your previous post, your implication was towards people who bought the books as an investment, as per definition 3.
Now you're just being inconsistent. First you're saying you're not calling me a moron, and then you're saying that you inferred from my original post that I did mean the word "investment" in the economic sense. Internal inconsistencies like this, in a reply, generally indicate that someone (you) is trying to weasel his way out of something he now thinks was stupid. Just admit you were sorry--is that so fucking hard? You're anonymous for Christ's sake. You really think your reputation on here (of all fucking places) needs to be protected?
I certainly felt that I got my money's worth from the expense. If you feel you didn't get your dollar's worth from it, that's totally your call.
You know, for someone who claims to comprehend English, you're doing a remarkably bad job of it. I did have fun--why the fuck else would I go out and spend $500 on the v3.0 books if I wasn't on fucking board? And your recall of recent notes seems to be spotty too: I fucking said as much when I told you I bought them to begin with! Plus, the fact that I'm currently playing v3.5, but haven't purchased any of v3.5 books, should indicate that I'm still having fun with people I like to spend time with. What you're missing is the point I make about WotC's market exploitation, which is what my complaint is all about. If WotC were smarter, they wouldn't cannibalise their market by releasing patch errata to get people to buy new books. People get resentful about that. If you come out with a new book, fucking make it worth the additional $45 and we'll fucking buy it!
See, that's what we're all angry about. WotC is releasing books the same way stupid computer companies release books: by doing it in an underhanded or lazy-ass way and not just moving-the-fuck-on with a new game system. Their lack of imagination is directly translated into marketing ploys like the v3.5 fiasco and their rapidly shrinking release timetables
Ravenloft was introduced in 2nd Ed., and that's my point. Your Ravenloft books haven't had their value destroyed by "errata" from Ravenloft 2.1. They're still applicable, and are still interesting. I've played Ravenloft since the 90s. It's obvious that some people simply aren't capable of grasping the fact that WotC are just doing bad business: they've drunk the kool-aid and seem unaware that there is a better way of doing it. They'll buy everything they make because they're fanboys who're not capable of comprehending the fact that WotC *could* be doing better as a business by not alienating their current fanbase.
The clarion call of, "Caveat emptor," is so completely illogical I won't even bother responding.
And I won't buy 4th Ed. And I'm going to tell everyone what WotC likes to do so they can go into the purchase with their eyes open and not be side-swiped as I was.
Well, since you started the name-calling, I'll feel free to do the same.
You stupid fucking jackass. I never bought them as an economic investment expecting *appreciation* in value. However, even pocketbooks retain some measure of their original value as books. I have old Heinlein books here that I can still get a few reasonable dollars for, especially if they're in mint condition.
I'm not looking for *appreciation* you idiot. I'm looking for *some reasonable semblance of value after buying a huge collection of books.*
When I use the term "investment" I do not mean investment in the "get more out than I put in" economic sense. Do you even speak fucking English?
And you're proving my point! 2nd Ed still has value as a game and as books! You're using them in 3.5! Are you still using 3.0? No?
The same thing *is* going to happen to 4. 3.5 will be essentially incompatible, and there's no guarantee that 4.5 won't come out in a few years and destroy any playing value in 4.0. That's my point. For the 3.x series, I can't even recoup a *used book* value from my initial purchases as an exit strategy to put towards the new books. Nobody wants 3.0. Nobody will want 3.5. They're just as bad as those old computer books you see a tonne of in bookstores! Nobody wants them because they're useless and completely outdated and everyone *moved on*.
Even Amazon is selling huge amounts of d20 stuff at a steep discount because they know the exact same thing. So why should I bother buying any 4th ed?
I can still find Beyond the Supernatural books for a significant fraction of their original prices, and people still like to trade Shadowrun and Rifts books around because they were unique and interesting. 1st Edition still fetches pretty decent dollar value on eBay.
The expensive binding and covers and glossy pages of the 3.x editions were pointless and deceptive.
All I did was take the article, which stated "X renminbi" and showed it to my friends. One has two advanced degrees and is from Kunming and studied extensively in Beijing. He has a wife who's a recent immigrant. I also asked two others just to be sure. They all say that the English terminology used in the article is incorrect--that it should be "3 yuan". The problem that we have is only one of classification, since more than one country uses the word "yuan" as part of their currency systems, not one of semantics as you and I are arguing. However, as you'll shortly realise, this is not a problem at all.
It's not that I misunderstood them: they saw the article, said it was referring to the currency awkwardly and incorrectly. That part I relayed accurately and correctly. For whatever reason, and I freely admit I may have misinterpreted the reason *why*, they think the term is incorrect.
However, note that the article *head* said "in China." Therefore the origin of the currency is not in dispute, and therefore the more accurate and correct term is "1,521 yuan". The renminbi use is looking a lot like an Anglicisation that apparently awkwardly, needlessly, and redundantly specifies the currency's origin (since by context it's already obvious.).. and the last thread is archived already.
So! In English it seems to me that it would be better to adopt the more English version of the currency's name, the same way that we differentiate the country's origin when using the generic term "dollar":
Canadian Dollars United States Dollars... and since yuan is a term like "dollar" which is used in more than one country, it would be more grammatically accurate to *in English* be consistent with how we describe other units of currency that share a common base, and therefore it would be more accurate to say:
1,521 Chinese Yuan... or:
700 Korean Yuan
The second mistake the article author makes is to assume that "renminbi" is something that will mean anything to English speakers. Anyone who knows of the Chinese currency will also know it is called the Yuan. I highly doubt that the number of people who even ever heard the term "renminbi" is more than a tiny fraction of the people who've heard the terms "Japanese Yen" and "Chinese Yuan".
And so falling back on the assumption of what should be correct is doubly incorrect based on your arguments: the author needs to consider his audience, and has not done so, the author is using an unfamiliar term in English which even native Chinese speakers think is wrong, and the author makes the mistake of ignoring context when choosing unnecessarily unfamiliar words to his audience.
Therefore it should either have been 1,521 Chinese Yuan, or just 1,521 yuan, and the point would have been better and more clearly made.
What I have a problem with what is sometimes referred to as "translator's hubris." Translator's hubris should be self-defining; however, to clarify: it is the ego of the translator which tries to redefine a common term "more correctly" based on the translator's knowledge of both languages without actually considering pre-existing knowledge of one audience or the other, and without considering the contextual damage that the attempt at specificity would do if the translation they are advocating were to be adopted by the translator's audience at large.
Just as business executives have lingo which is specific to their day-to-day activities but is not appropriate for general communication, money-market traders can't expect the populace at large to adopt their terminology either just because they think they know better. In reality, the populace is quite a bit more adept at communicating with itself than narrowly-trained individuals who seem to ignore commonly-accepted usage that pre-exists their newfound enlightenment.
Not only that, but I still think I'm right.. the Wikipedia article (admittedly lame, but still) and all the searches I do say: "The base unit of the renminbi is the yuan."
Therefore, using plain "renminbi" is still wrong, I think.
You tool. The *value* of the 3.x books is practically nil. The value of the 2nd edition books is still so-so, and the value of the 1st edition basically hasn't changed in years. People don't want to invest *new* money in an *old* game. So either you stick with 3.5 (or 3.0) and the hundreds and hundreds of dollars we shelled out for them--and essentially negate the possibility of any truly new players joining up who would rather go with the latest so as not to get stuck in the rut of old editions like "those crufty old seniors next door who still play 1st edition," or we have to shell out yet more money to actively play an actively-maintained ruleset a.k.a. 4th ed.
It's not that 4th edition came out. It's that they destroyed any value the previous books had with their 3.5 edition, and then followed that only a scant 3 or so years later with yet another edition.
1st edition was ingrained for over a decade. 2nd edition had even longer. 3rd edition? Why buy an expensive hardcover book that you know can't even be sold on eBay anymore for more than $5? Or, for 4th edition, why buy a hardcover book that won't be worth more than $5 on eBay when 4.5 comes out in three years?
Books aren't supposed to rapidly depreciate in value: they're made on a precious natural resource (trees) and to build in planned obsolescence is to slap not only environmentalists in the face by printing what will be trash (not treasure) in a handful of years, but to every gamer who's even remotely concerned about the books as an investment.
Even fucking Warhammer's base armies can last decades and you can still play them, and they're some of the biggest money-grabbers there are!
WotC is screwing guys like me over. I was 100% into 3.0, and I paid hundreds of dollars picking up the various optional rulesets and official books. I bought the psionics book, manual of the planes, the core rulebooks, and about a dozen others I'm too choked to name right now, and now I can't fucking sell them for more than $50 for the whole set. If I'm fucking lucky. They're worthless, both in economic value, and in play-value: NOBODY new is EVER going to learn the 3.0 ruleset. Ever.
And now they're doing essentially the same thing with 3.5. The community will stagnate unless d20 lives on, and *everyone new* will be playing 4.0 from now on. Period.
That is *BULLSHIT.* At least 1st and 2nd were so radically different they were essentially completely different games.
Bah. Never another dollar. Fuck you WotC. You took my money and flushed it down the fucking toilets. Never again, assholes.
Sorry to follow you to this thread; renminbi, according to every *recent (last two years)* Chinese immigrant around me (a handful of them,) is what they natively call their own currency, but is not what they natively call their own currency when referring to specific amounts. They use the term "yuan" when referring to a unit amount. The renminbi is the name of the currency and when referring to the currency system itself that is precisely what they call it; however, when referring to a specific unit amount, they're all disagreeing with your prior post to me. You need a unitary amount and that's what the Yuan is.
They say, that to differentiate it from other "yuan" systems "renminbi" gets tacked on but you still need to call it the yuan.
Anyway that's what I meant. So you're right, but I'm pretty sure I am too. And I'm pretty sure well-travelled actual native Chinese people from Beijing and the outer provinces trump "guy who spent 5 years in China and speaks Mandarin." (I have triangulation going for me..)
This is a case where the original user tried to rip Dell off by using a deep-link URL to bypass the normal storefront and get a $549 computer at $379. Meanwhile, it's a decision that applies to grandfathered contracts anyway, since Canada now has the Consumer Protection Act which "prohibits" contract clauses that "oblige a consumer to refer a dispute to arbitration."
Additionally, the action the *consumers* brought against Dell was a result of Quebec-specific consumer protection laws.
Finally, the Court specifically mentioned that courts still have the right to "refer" the matter to arbitration, which implies that the right to have a court actually hear such a case to begin with hasn't been removed. Besides, the decision states it even more clearly: "Before departing from the general rule of referral, the court must be satisfied that the challenge to the arbitrator's jurisdiction is not a delaying tactic and that it will not unduly impair the conduct of the arbitration proceeding."
The Court here when it says "referral" is specifically describing the right of a lower court *not* to refer the matter to arbitration if it so decides to.
What the fuck difference does it make whether an OS does or does not produce random pids for children? The code is supposed to be portable, and he's making the assumption that the pid is a source of randomness.
.. yea, sure, they'd be great.. if they actually worked. Which they don't. If you have any non-standard device sitting in between a client and server which speaks a non-standard protocol, unless the device can guarantee that to each end there is in fact no modification of the traffic, that the device itself is completely transparent, the device is useless.
And I mean that: next time you implement one of these so-called miracle devices, run a TCP dump from both ends. If the TCP syn cookie is different, DO NOT INSTALL IT, AND RETURN THE DEVICE IMMEDIATELY.
Don't say someone didn't warn you.
I've spent the last four to six months debugging peoples' networks where it has invariably come down to these WAN-accelerators getting in the way and mangling network traffic.
Then link *them both*, you moron. Why are you forcing us to visit a blogger that we clearly hold in contempt? That's not democracy. If we want to vote with our traffic to some blogger, we'll go there. Meanwhile, you're not giving us a choice. You're the one who's being un-democratic, you stinking fascist!
This blog-linking on the front page of Slashdot is driving me nuts! What's the point when I can just get the real link from a/. clone somewhere? We all know what the real deal is: Slashdot is driving traffic to some stupid blog. Are there kickbacks? Who knows?
They're already doing it. Besides, what makes you think there's some kind of magical shared secret that all the BitTorrent clients out there will be privvy to but not the ISPs? The only way around that is to devolve the communications into private, small groups of invite-only networks that tightly control their own membership.
Or perhaps you think public key crypto will magically save you? Oh, sure. Like the exchange of public keys and subsequent patterns won't be a dead giveaway. "Hey look, these guys are exchanging a key Just-So and are now making a thousand outgoing connections to the rest of the world and trading massive amounts of data."
"Threaten and bully"? Now you're just being silly wasting my time. Either your English comprehension is impaired, or you are deliberately baiting me.
Simple points:
1. They explained quite clearly that he was in violation, that he should talk to his own lawyer, why they couldn't answer his legal questions, and then their lawyers were painfully clear about how he was in violation.
2. He didn't cooperate. Read the fucking thread. They were consistent and clear in their message from the start. He kept changing his fucking mind. Stop spreading FOSS wannabe FUD.
3. You're apparently not a lawyer. Or, if you are, you're a very bad one, and God help your clients.
Rude? Did you even read the correspondence? They asked him politely like a dozen times, and he lags, changes his mind, and sends them conflicting messages the whole time. They were polite and obvious about what they wanted right from the start.
I'm having trouble understanding how you think the idea that what the guy is doing is illegal is even up for debate. It M$' copyright. They can do what they want to do with it. Their licenses are clear. Their lawyers were clear in the follow-ups. It's obvious the lawyers were a last resort. They offered to let him meet with bigwigs. They discussed, they approached him on *his* terms multiple times, and each time he delayed, changed his mind, and generally behaved poorly.
Bah. He either plays by Microsoft's rules, or he doesn't play with Microsoft's stuff. It's as simple as that. Why's that so hard for you to understand?
They already have. Encrypted data is just as easy to profile as unencrypted. They can just block that too. You'll have to waste bandwidth to create subliminal channels and by that point there will *be* no point. People have some pretty strange notions of what encryption can actually buy them. I think it's actually steganography that you are implying will somehow magically save you from AT&T filtering. But it won't.
And where is it written that Microsoft has to provide legal advice? Where is it written that they must answer questions when they're clearly not satisfied with the situation? The Microsoft guy was consistent in his message right from the start: it's the dev himself who's been waffling the whole time. He didn't make it clear he wants to cooperate. He intimated he was going to do as Microsoft requested, and then suddenly changed his mind.. like five fucking times, and finally used the threat of further illegal activity as a lever to try to get Microsoft to cooperate *on his terms.*
It's Microsoft's copyright, it's Microsoft's software. They can do whatever the hell they want with it, and this guy doesn't seem to be interested in cooperating on *Microsoft's* terms, and so he draws out the exchange for.. what? Months now?
Not only was he threatening to re-enable Express support in his product if Microsoft didn't come back to the email exchange, but he even demanded they reinstate his privileges and access to the commercial software he had before they yanked it due to his non-cooperation.
Slashdot Mirror
I am no longer willing to participate in this thread. I think your claims are wrong, your English comprehension is poor, your arguments are based far more on logical fallacy than mine are, and therefore this will be my last response. Feel free to get the last word in. I won't bother reading it. I suppose it would probably behoove you not to waste any more of your time. Agree that we disagree and let it be.
I explained to you that those of us that work in Forex prefer to say renminbi, because it unambiguously refers to the mainland's currency
Uh.. you're misapprehending my previous note. I accepted that completely unproveable statement, but that doesn't mean that I think it is correct. I think you guys are grammatically incorrect. I think your use of the term is a poor but possibly necessary abbreviation, so I admit that in your daily life it might be easier to use a single term that both denotes currency origin *and* unitary value amongst people who have agreed to make it so for the sake of brevity.
You claim that the symbol is RMB; however, the "official ISO 4217 abbreviation is CNY." Additionally, xe.com and every financial site I've visited so far use CNY as the abbreviation for the currency. Your claims are beginning to sound suspect for this reason and because you decry what you perceive as my logical fallacies while engaging in at least five of them in your retort.
You seem to have accepted this, and are now arguing that there would have been nothing wrong with the author of the submission using the term "yuan" in place of "renminbi". This is what is known as a straw man fallacy[...]
I am quite familiar with logical fallacies. What you are doing is, however, more of a logical fallacy that what I am doing. I am the one whose point we are now arguing, and therefore it is my argument in which this discussion exists. I am simply restating my original point in new words to try to convey meaning and to assist in defining a context within which we can have meaningful discourse.
What you are doing is additionally a tactic sometimes called reframing the argument. You're subtly altering context and then arguing within that as though the original argument had simply vapourised into thin air. That's simple rhetoric and way more of a straw man than I ever indulged in.
My original note was to point out that it would have been grammatically and effectively correct English to use the term "X yuan". Therefore, continuing to advocate that point is in fact not a logical fallacy at all. On the other hand, you are incorrect that I have not addressed your argument. I have. I have stated that within money-market traders renminbi may be a good shorthand. For effective communication with the populace at large, however, it is wholly inappropriate, grammatically incorrect (from either a Chinese or an English perspective) and more confusing to those of us who are not within your infinitesimally small money-trading group.
Since I, myself, speak and write natively in English, the best frame of reference to decide on correct terminology in my own language for that which I will use to communicate with the average English reader is to find people who natively write and speak Mandarin and then work together with them to find accurate terms to express Chinese concepts.
It is useless to argue that a money-market term is somehow more appropriate for the general public at large. This is incorrect. For you, differentiating currencies in as little space as possible may be important. For the article itself, which is what I was complaining about, the differentiation has already been made by the context, and therefore, effective communication is simply not happening. The fact that we're arguing about this is excellent evidence of that fact.
To reiterate, what you said originally was that the author of the article was wrong and that "renminbi" should not be used, and that "yuan" should be used instead. To this I countered that there was nothing wrong with using "renminbi." [...] Now, if the thesis of your argument were: "It would have been ok to say 'yuan' instead of 'renminbi' in the context in question", I would agree with you, and that would be the end of it. [...] This, however, is not what you are claiming.
Huh? Sounds like semantics to me. Let's see.. my original note said: "I'm pretty sure the currency
Please show me exactly where in my post I called you a moron? I called "anyone who purchased D&D books as a financial investment" a moron. I did not say "Sudog is a moron for buying D&D books". You would only be taking my broad statement as a personal slander if you are one of those morons who bought them as a financial investment.
Those are called semantics; the meaning and intent was clear, and you wouldn't have made the statement at all unless you considered me to be part of that group. If you had assumed I was not looking for an economic investment you wouldn't have said anything. In searching for the truth of the matter, at the best you were trolling me for it, and in that event I still get to call you names.
Old Heinlein books in mint condition get a few dollars. Early publishings with limited covers perhaps? Most SF in the 50's and 60's never had more than 100,000 copies printed in one publishing. Scarcity raises value. There are millions of copies of the 3rd ed. books. Considering this, $5-10 for a used 3.0 book is pretty reasonable.
In non-mint mostly crappy condition, Stranger in a Strange Land fetched exactly $5. The Mote in God's Eye fetched exactly $3.99. That's pretty fucking good considering their original prices were $2.50 and $4.50 respectively. Even taking inflation into account, that's $14.58 and $19.73 respectively, which means crappy, stained editions are 1/3 and around 1/4 their original cost.
For a current Manual of the Planes v3.0, Abebooks has them listed right now for $4.80. Used. I paid $48 for it, new. That's 1/10th of its original value and that's mostly because it's a relatively rarer book.
For my Player's Handbook, v3.0, Abebooks has them listed right now for $3.87. New, it was $37. That's 1/10th its original value again.
v3.5? More than double that, for a book that's four years newer. But they're dead ends, both of them.
From your previous post, your implication was towards people who bought the books as an investment, as per definition 3.
Now you're just being inconsistent. First you're saying you're not calling me a moron, and then you're saying that you inferred from my original post that I did mean the word "investment" in the economic sense. Internal inconsistencies like this, in a reply, generally indicate that someone (you) is trying to weasel his way out of something he now thinks was stupid. Just admit you were sorry--is that so fucking hard? You're anonymous for Christ's sake. You really think your reputation on here (of all fucking places) needs to be protected?
I certainly felt that I got my money's worth from the expense. If you feel you didn't get your dollar's worth from it, that's totally your call.
You know, for someone who claims to comprehend English, you're doing a remarkably bad job of it. I did have fun--why the fuck else would I go out and spend $500 on the v3.0 books if I wasn't on fucking board? And your recall of recent notes seems to be spotty too: I fucking said as much when I told you I bought them to begin with! Plus, the fact that I'm currently playing v3.5, but haven't purchased any of v3.5 books, should indicate that I'm still having fun with people I like to spend time with. What you're missing is the point I make about WotC's market exploitation, which is what my complaint is all about. If WotC were smarter, they wouldn't cannibalise their market by releasing patch errata to get people to buy new books. People get resentful about that. If you come out with a new book, fucking make it worth the additional $45 and we'll fucking buy it!
See, that's what we're all angry about. WotC is releasing books the same way stupid computer companies release books: by doing it in an underhanded or lazy-ass way and not just moving-the-fuck-on with a new game system. Their lack of imagination is directly translated into marketing ploys like the v3.5 fiasco and their rapidly shrinking release timetables
It wasn't 8 years, goof! It was half that. You're ignoring 3.5.
Ravenloft was introduced in 2nd Ed., and that's my point. Your Ravenloft books haven't had their value destroyed by "errata" from Ravenloft 2.1. They're still applicable, and are still interesting. I've played Ravenloft since the 90s. It's obvious that some people simply aren't capable of grasping the fact that WotC are just doing bad business: they've drunk the kool-aid and seem unaware that there is a better way of doing it. They'll buy everything they make because they're fanboys who're not capable of comprehending the fact that WotC *could* be doing better as a business by not alienating their current fanbase.
The clarion call of, "Caveat emptor," is so completely illogical I won't even bother responding.
And I won't buy 4th Ed. And I'm going to tell everyone what WotC likes to do so they can go into the purchase with their eyes open and not be side-swiped as I was.
Well, since you started the name-calling, I'll feel free to do the same.
You stupid fucking jackass. I never bought them as an economic investment expecting *appreciation* in value. However, even pocketbooks retain some measure of their original value as books. I have old Heinlein books here that I can still get a few reasonable dollars for, especially if they're in mint condition.
I'm not looking for *appreciation* you idiot. I'm looking for *some reasonable semblance of value after buying a huge collection of books.*
When I use the term "investment" I do not mean investment in the "get more out than I put in" economic sense. Do you even speak fucking English?
And you're proving my point! 2nd Ed still has value as a game and as books! You're using them in 3.5! Are you still using 3.0? No?
The same thing *is* going to happen to 4. 3.5 will be essentially incompatible, and there's no guarantee that 4.5 won't come out in a few years and destroy any playing value in 4.0. That's my point. For the 3.x series, I can't even recoup a *used book* value from my initial purchases as an exit strategy to put towards the new books. Nobody wants 3.0. Nobody will want 3.5. They're just as bad as those old computer books you see a tonne of in bookstores! Nobody wants them because they're useless and completely outdated and everyone *moved on*.
Even Amazon is selling huge amounts of d20 stuff at a steep discount because they know the exact same thing. So why should I bother buying any 4th ed?
I can still find Beyond the Supernatural books for a significant fraction of their original prices, and people still like to trade Shadowrun and Rifts books around because they were unique and interesting. 1st Edition still fetches pretty decent dollar value on eBay.
The expensive binding and covers and glossy pages of the 3.x editions were pointless and deceptive.
All I did was take the article, which stated "X renminbi" and showed it to my friends. One has two advanced degrees and is from Kunming and studied extensively in Beijing. He has a wife who's a recent immigrant. I also asked two others just to be sure. They all say that the English terminology used in the article is incorrect--that it should be "3 yuan". The problem that we have is only one of classification, since more than one country uses the word "yuan" as part of their currency systems, not one of semantics as you and I are arguing. However, as you'll shortly realise, this is not a problem at all.
.. and the last thread is archived already.
... and since yuan is a term like "dollar" which is used in more than one country, it would be more grammatically accurate to *in English* be consistent with how we describe other units of currency that share a common base, and therefore it would be more accurate to say:
... or:
It's not that I misunderstood them: they saw the article, said it was referring to the currency awkwardly and incorrectly. That part I relayed accurately and correctly. For whatever reason, and I freely admit I may have misinterpreted the reason *why*, they think the term is incorrect.
However, note that the article *head* said "in China." Therefore the origin of the currency is not in dispute, and therefore the more accurate and correct term is "1,521 yuan". The renminbi use is looking a lot like an Anglicisation that apparently awkwardly, needlessly, and redundantly specifies the currency's origin (since by context it's already obvious.)
So! In English it seems to me that it would be better to adopt the more English version of the currency's name, the same way that we differentiate the country's origin when using the generic term "dollar":
Canadian Dollars
United States Dollars
1,521 Chinese Yuan
700 Korean Yuan
The second mistake the article author makes is to assume that "renminbi" is something that will mean anything to English speakers. Anyone who knows of the Chinese currency will also know it is called the Yuan. I highly doubt that the number of people who even ever heard the term "renminbi" is more than a tiny fraction of the people who've heard the terms "Japanese Yen" and "Chinese Yuan".
And so falling back on the assumption of what should be correct is doubly incorrect based on your arguments: the author needs to consider his audience, and has not done so, the author is using an unfamiliar term in English which even native Chinese speakers think is wrong, and the author makes the mistake of ignoring context when choosing unnecessarily unfamiliar words to his audience.
Therefore it should either have been 1,521 Chinese Yuan, or just 1,521 yuan, and the point would have been better and more clearly made.
What I have a problem with what is sometimes referred to as "translator's hubris." Translator's hubris should be self-defining; however, to clarify: it is the ego of the translator which tries to redefine a common term "more correctly" based on the translator's knowledge of both languages without actually considering pre-existing knowledge of one audience or the other, and without considering the contextual damage that the attempt at specificity would do if the translation they are advocating were to be adopted by the translator's audience at large.
Just as business executives have lingo which is specific to their day-to-day activities but is not appropriate for general communication, money-market traders can't expect the populace at large to adopt their terminology either just because they think they know better. In reality, the populace is quite a bit more adept at communicating with itself than narrowly-trained individuals who seem to ignore commonly-accepted usage that pre-exists their newfound enlightenment.
Not only that, but I still think I'm right.. the Wikipedia article (admittedly lame, but still) and all the searches I do say: "The base unit of the renminbi is the yuan."
Therefore, using plain "renminbi" is still wrong, I think.
You tool. The *value* of the 3.x books is practically nil. The value of the 2nd edition books is still so-so, and the value of the 1st edition basically hasn't changed in years. People don't want to invest *new* money in an *old* game. So either you stick with 3.5 (or 3.0) and the hundreds and hundreds of dollars we shelled out for them--and essentially negate the possibility of any truly new players joining up who would rather go with the latest so as not to get stuck in the rut of old editions like "those crufty old seniors next door who still play 1st edition," or we have to shell out yet more money to actively play an actively-maintained ruleset a.k.a. 4th ed.
It's not that 4th edition came out. It's that they destroyed any value the previous books had with their 3.5 edition, and then followed that only a scant 3 or so years later with yet another edition.
1st edition was ingrained for over a decade. 2nd edition had even longer. 3rd edition? Why buy an expensive hardcover book that you know can't even be sold on eBay anymore for more than $5? Or, for 4th edition, why buy a hardcover book that won't be worth more than $5 on eBay when 4.5 comes out in three years?
Books aren't supposed to rapidly depreciate in value: they're made on a precious natural resource (trees) and to build in planned obsolescence is to slap not only environmentalists in the face by printing what will be trash (not treasure) in a handful of years, but to every gamer who's even remotely concerned about the books as an investment.
Even fucking Warhammer's base armies can last decades and you can still play them, and they're some of the biggest money-grabbers there are!
WotC is screwing guys like me over. I was 100% into 3.0, and I paid hundreds of dollars picking up the various optional rulesets and official books. I bought the psionics book, manual of the planes, the core rulebooks, and about a dozen others I'm too choked to name right now, and now I can't fucking sell them for more than $50 for the whole set. If I'm fucking lucky. They're worthless, both in economic value, and in play-value: NOBODY new is EVER going to learn the 3.0 ruleset. Ever.
And now they're doing essentially the same thing with 3.5. The community will stagnate unless d20 lives on, and *everyone new* will be playing 4.0 from now on. Period.
That is *BULLSHIT.* At least 1st and 2nd were so radically different they were essentially completely different games.
Bah. Never another dollar. Fuck you WotC. You took my money and flushed it down the fucking toilets. Never again, assholes.
Sorry to follow you to this thread; renminbi, according to every *recent (last two years)* Chinese immigrant around me (a handful of them,) is what they natively call their own currency, but is not what they natively call their own currency when referring to specific amounts. They use the term "yuan" when referring to a unit amount. The renminbi is the name of the currency and when referring to the currency system itself that is precisely what they call it; however, when referring to a specific unit amount, they're all disagreeing with your prior post to me. You need a unitary amount and that's what the Yuan is.
They liken it to saying this, in English:
100 United Stated Currency.
100 what? Cents? Dollars? Quarters? Fifty-cent pieces?
They say, that to differentiate it from other "yuan" systems "renminbi" gets tacked on but you still need to call it the yuan.
Anyway that's what I meant. So you're right, but I'm pretty sure I am too. And I'm pretty sure well-travelled actual native Chinese people from Beijing and the outer provinces trump "guy who spent 5 years in China and speaks Mandarin." (I have triangulation going for me..)
Unicode doesn't require two bytes per character. What do you call UTF-8 if not Unicode?
.. should be referenced in this case as yuan, not renminbi.
This is a case where the original user tried to rip Dell off by using a deep-link URL to bypass the normal storefront and get a $549 computer at $379. Meanwhile, it's a decision that applies to grandfathered contracts anyway, since Canada now has the Consumer Protection Act which "prohibits" contract clauses that "oblige a consumer to refer a dispute to arbitration."
Additionally, the action the *consumers* brought against Dell was a result of Quebec-specific consumer protection laws.
Finally, the Court specifically mentioned that courts still have the right to "refer" the matter to arbitration, which implies that the right to have a court actually hear such a case to begin with hasn't been removed. Besides, the decision states it even more clearly: "Before departing from the general rule of referral, the court must be satisfied that the challenge to the arbitrator's jurisdiction is not a delaying tactic and that it will not unduly impair the conduct of the arbitration proceeding."
The Court here when it says "referral" is specifically describing the right of a lower court *not* to refer the matter to arbitration if it so decides to.
So.. uh.. wtf?
What the fuck difference does it make whether an OS does or does not produce random pids for children? The code is supposed to be portable, and he's making the assumption that the pid is a source of randomness.
Computer Science is not programming. Any code monkey can program. Computer Science is the science of computability and algorithms.
You may have been first post, but you still managed to confuse what CS actually is with what knobs from Goofball U. think it is.
.. yea, sure, they'd be great.. if they actually worked. Which they don't. If you have any non-standard device sitting in between a client and server which speaks a non-standard protocol, unless the device can guarantee that to each end there is in fact no modification of the traffic, that the device itself is completely transparent, the device is useless.
And I mean that: next time you implement one of these so-called miracle devices, run a TCP dump from both ends. If the TCP syn cookie is different, DO NOT INSTALL IT, AND RETURN THE DEVICE IMMEDIATELY.
Don't say someone didn't warn you.
I've spent the last four to six months debugging peoples' networks where it has invariably come down to these WAN-accelerators getting in the way and mangling network traffic.
*VERY* poorly implemented, to a one!
Why should we care about this sort of thing again?
Then link *them both*, you moron. Why are you forcing us to visit a blogger that we clearly hold in contempt? That's not democracy. If we want to vote with our traffic to some blogger, we'll go there. Meanwhile, you're not giving us a choice. You're the one who's being un-democratic, you stinking fascist!
Amen!
/. clone somewhere? We all know what the real deal is: Slashdot is driving traffic to some stupid blog. Are there kickbacks? Who knows?
This blog-linking on the front page of Slashdot is driving me nuts! What's the point when I can just get the real link from a
They're already doing it. Besides, what makes you think there's some kind of magical shared secret that all the BitTorrent clients out there will be privvy to but not the ISPs? The only way around that is to devolve the communications into private, small groups of invite-only networks that tightly control their own membership.
Or perhaps you think public key crypto will magically save you? Oh, sure. Like the exchange of public keys and subsequent patterns won't be a dead giveaway. "Hey look, these guys are exchanging a key Just-So and are now making a thousand outgoing connections to the rest of the world and trading massive amounts of data."
Yea, that won't be obvious.
"Threaten and bully"? Now you're just being silly wasting my time. Either your English comprehension is impaired, or you are deliberately baiting me.
Simple points:
1. They explained quite clearly that he was in violation, that he should talk to his own lawyer, why they couldn't answer his legal questions, and then their lawyers were painfully clear about how he was in violation.
2. He didn't cooperate. Read the fucking thread. They were consistent and clear in their message from the start. He kept changing his fucking mind. Stop spreading FOSS wannabe FUD.
3. You're apparently not a lawyer. Or, if you are, you're a very bad one, and God help your clients.
This thread is over. I will not respond again.
Rude? Did you even read the correspondence? They asked him politely like a dozen times, and he lags, changes his mind, and sends them conflicting messages the whole time. They were polite and obvious about what they wanted right from the start.
I'm having trouble understanding how you think the idea that what the guy is doing is illegal is even up for debate. It M$' copyright. They can do what they want to do with it. Their licenses are clear. Their lawyers were clear in the follow-ups. It's obvious the lawyers were a last resort. They offered to let him meet with bigwigs. They discussed, they approached him on *his* terms multiple times, and each time he delayed, changed his mind, and generally behaved poorly.
Bah. He either plays by Microsoft's rules, or he doesn't play with Microsoft's stuff. It's as simple as that. Why's that so hard for you to understand?
They already have. Encrypted data is just as easy to profile as unencrypted. They can just block that too. You'll have to waste bandwidth to create subliminal channels and by that point there will *be* no point. People have some pretty strange notions of what encryption can actually buy them. I think it's actually steganography that you are implying will somehow magically save you from AT&T filtering. But it won't.
"If you don't give me more free services and the time of your top developers, I'm going to do more illegal stuff."
Yea, that's a good way to convince Microsoft to do what you want them to.
And where is it written that Microsoft has to provide legal advice? Where is it written that they must answer questions when they're clearly not satisfied with the situation? The Microsoft guy was consistent in his message right from the start: it's the dev himself who's been waffling the whole time. He didn't make it clear he wants to cooperate. He intimated he was going to do as Microsoft requested, and then suddenly changed his mind.. like five fucking times, and finally used the threat of further illegal activity as a lever to try to get Microsoft to cooperate *on his terms.*
It's Microsoft's copyright, it's Microsoft's software. They can do whatever the hell they want with it, and this guy doesn't seem to be interested in cooperating on *Microsoft's* terms, and so he draws out the exchange for.. what? Months now?
Not only was he threatening to re-enable Express support in his product if Microsoft didn't come back to the email exchange, but he even demanded they reinstate his privileges and access to the commercial software he had before they yanked it due to his non-cooperation.
Gimme a break.