I completely disagree. The purpose of FEMA, DHS, security screenings, etc is NOT to keep people in fear, but to keep them feeling safe and secure in the knowledge (?!) that their government is working hard (?!) to protect them from the bad guys (!?).
It reminds me of an old episode of Yes, Prime Minister regarding Trident submarines for the UK. The purpose of the subs isn't to protect the UK from the Soviets--the Soviets already know that the Britain can't defend herself. It's to make the British people BELIEVE that they're protected.
But in your defense, I think we both agree that the DHS' primary goal is not to stop terrorists....
I don't disagree with that sentiment. And to be frank, there are a billion Muslims in the world and a lot of them play videogames. If you created a game that was somehow anti-Christian you won't get bombs thrown in your headquarters but you will certainly reduce your sales to a certain subset of Christianity.
(I have a friend who refused to buy Van Halen's F.U.C.K. album because he felt it was offensive. And NOT (like a normal person) because Sammy Hagar was the lead singer.)
You're "absolutely appalled" by something you read on the Internet? By a cliche, even? You must need a sedative drip just to get sleep at night.
But I'll bite anyway.
1. Christians. At least 2 people have died in the last 20 years due to these bombings. Just the Madrid bombing alone killed over a hundred people. And let's not ignore the fact that your "Christian terrorists" are targeting the people who are performing the abortions, wheras Islamic terrorists will target anyone who's easy to kill. They usually don't even try to avoid killing other Muslims.
2. It was almost a thousand years ago. The next time the pope raises an army and marches on Jerusalem I'll admit you have a point.
3. Christianity. And Islam.
It's not really about religion, though, is it? You could justify terrorism with quotes from the Kama Sutra if you had to. It just so happens that today's terrorist-on-the-go is using Islam as an excuse for trying to destroy civilization. Forty years ago they used Marx and Mao. You can't blame Islam for September 11th any more than you can blame Karl Marx for Stalin's purges.
Lots of negative PR means lots of lost sales? It depends on the source of the negative PR and on the target audience.
The mainstream media rarely mentions GTA in a positive way, but it hasn't hurt the series' sales any because your average GTA player takes Fox News' approbation as a Good Thing.
By your logic, if a restaurant gives free appetizers to their best customers then they're "removing value" from the meals of all of their other customers. If a casino comps a high roller they're "removing value" from everyone else who visits the casino.
Rewarding customers who give you money is a better system than punishing all customers regardless. Maybe if the used-game retailers want to share the money they make on used games with the publishers they can come to some sort of a deal so that used-game buyers get some bonus material, too. But not offering merchandise to people who aren't paying you for it is hardly "greed".
Keep your expectations low and keep as much detail out of your presentation as possible. Systems administration is boring to most adults--imagine what it's like when you're 9 and don't even understand the need for it.
And try not to give your presentation after a fireman. (I gave mine after a BANK TELLER and I still had a class of sixth-graders staring up at the clock every 30 seconds.)
Also, you might try not talking about your job. Either talk about the rockets or talk about how the kids use computers and how your knowledge applies to that. (On second thought, stick to the rockets...)
Maybe because all the sounds aren't coming from the exact same point in space, and/or because you actually have one microphone on each side of your head to tease the sounds apart?
(I don't know, I'm just throwing out reasonable-sounding ideas...)
I don't disagree with you, but there's a category of questions between your two examples which is (I think) where SO is aimed. API references sometimes tell you everything/except/ how to use a function (or at least they don't cover more than one or two standard cases). And your second question would be more suitable for SO phrased as "how can I stop Firefox from doing [x]".
I'm still on the fence as to whether their concept will work or not. I've gotten a couple of excellent answers to very specific questions that two hours of Googling didn't solve. But there's a LOT of noise on the site and the wiki-style editing that's supposed to suppress the noise hasn't been able to keep up.
The other point is that the participants in the private beta have been a self-selected group of developers who are interested in programming and making the site work. Now that it's public it should either fail or succeed really fast.
I had a couple of XSLT questions that hours of Googling had failed to answer. I posted them on SO and a Finnish gentleman answered them (correctly) within 30 minutes. I was impressed.
Now that it's out of private beta, I don't know what'll happen to it. And I'm still not sold on the whole hybrid forum/wiki format. But regardless of what happens to the site going forward, it was a huge help to me last week.
There's a "Homework" tag, and anyone with enough rank to tag questions can apply it (even if the student didn't.)
As for the GP's point, if SO wants to become the source of all good bits it would *need* to duplicate the questions that can be easily Googled so that it has all of the answers. A lot of the information on Wikipedia could have been Googled as well, but the people who added that info added value to Wikipedia regardless.
I think that even if you have a great game, the mere fact that it has "representational" graphics is going to hurt it in the long run. Pac Man has essentially no graphics--it was abstract in 1980, it's still abstract in 2008, and it'll be abstract in 2080. But in 20 years GTA 3 will look like a poor representation of reality, rather tahn not looking like any reality.
It's almost like the Uncanny Valley--graphics that don't try to look real can't take you out of the game, whereas graphics that are more realistic *will* take you out of the game once those graphics are out-of-date.
Ha ha but seriously. Look at the Google map of Detroit. In much of the city something like 50% of the lots are vacant--the housing values declined to the point where the houses were simply knocked down. The StreetView for those areas is eerie.
I'm not (solely) blaming unions for that; the exodus of the wealthy, gross mismanagement by the auto companies, and Detroit's poor government have contributed as well. But "turning Silicon Valley into Detroit" would represent a colossal failure.
IANAL, but I believe much of the argument depends on when and why you registered the name. If your last name was "Scion" and you had registered "scion.com" back in 1992, AND for the last 15 years it had been your personal home page and email address, then Toyota probably wouldn't be able to accuse you of squatting.
But if you registered "scion.com" just after you learned that Toyota was starting a new nameplate, and you filled the page with links to various car-related websites, then you don't have nearly as much of a leg to stand on. IIRC, Mr. Nissan had registered his domain name early, but the website was seemingly designed to make money off of people who assumed "nissan.com" was the car company. Reserving your name is OK, but trying to confuse the customers of a mega-corporation with mega-lawyers is a risky gambit.
I always thought the classiest act was the guy who owned delta.com back in the 90s. I forget what the company was (a little consulting shop, maybe?), but right on his front page he had links to Delta Airlines, Delta Dental, Delta Faucets, and Delta Power Tools for people who had done an "address-bar search".
At the financial companies where I've worked, the ratio of IT to non-IT people has been about 1:3.
One factor is that an awful lot of large financial firms have had IT departments since the 1960s. If you were to start up a new bank today, you would probably buy all off-the-shelf components and need relatively few in-house IT people to manage the vendors and support the end users. But if you started in 1965 then you've got lots of in-house applications that were built over the last 40 years, and a large, capable, and powerful in-house IT staff that is more comfortable building new capabilities from scratch than being dependent on vendors.
And to agree with the original post, the need to get these things RIGHT the first (or at worst, the second) time tends to give the IT department additional power and control.
Then you have to factor in that if you're in the financial industry, you don't really need a lot of people to build widgets, drive trucks, man cash registers, etc. and it's not uncommon for 95% of customer interactions to occur via the web or automated phone interfaces. (When was the last time you actually talked to a human at your bank?) So there isn't really a need for many people who *aren't* in the IT department.
I'm not saying monogamy is good or that polyamory is bad. I'm just saying there are benefits to monogamy that have nothing to do with one's religious beliefs. According to the GP's logic, an atheist should feel no obligation to enter into or to stay faithful in a monogamous relationship. But that's an absurd statement.
Polyamory is probably closer to the natural order of things, but a lot of society is based on monogamy. My point is that your own conscience, other people in your life, and society as a whole all have rewards and punishments, so a simplistic "people are monogamous because the church told them to" argument fails to capture the whole thing.
Being faithful to one partner could be a sign of respect for that person. It could be a sacrifice willingly made to get the benefits of a partner's full attention and devotion. It could be a practical way to insure that a stable and pleasant home life stays stable and pleasant. It could be a demonstration to your kids that in order to have somebody sacrifice for you, you must first sacrifice for them. It might be a way to prevent getting cuckolded or raising another man's child (what's good for the goose...). Or you might just love the person so much that hurting them isn't worth a few hours of pleasure.
There are a lot of reasons to be faithful to one person. You need to stop letting the Christian church define everything for you.
Slashdot Mirror
I completely disagree. The purpose of FEMA, DHS, security screenings, etc is NOT to keep people in fear, but to keep them feeling safe and secure in the knowledge (?!) that their government is working hard (?!) to protect them from the bad guys (!?).
It reminds me of an old episode of Yes, Prime Minister regarding Trident submarines for the UK. The purpose of the subs isn't to protect the UK from the Soviets--the Soviets already know that the Britain can't defend herself. It's to make the British people BELIEVE that they're protected.
But in your defense, I think we both agree that the DHS' primary goal is not to stop terrorists....
When did Slashdot become Stack Overflow?
I don't disagree with that sentiment. And to be frank, there are a billion Muslims in the world and a lot of them play videogames. If you created a game that was somehow anti-Christian you won't get bombs thrown in your headquarters but you will certainly reduce your sales to a certain subset of Christianity.
(I have a friend who refused to buy Van Halen's F.U.C.K. album because he felt it was offensive. And NOT (like a normal person) because Sammy Hagar was the lead singer.)
You're "absolutely appalled" by something you read on the Internet? By a cliche, even? You must need a sedative drip just to get sleep at night.
But I'll bite anyway.
1. Christians. At least 2 people have died in the last 20 years due to these bombings. Just the Madrid bombing alone killed over a hundred people. And let's not ignore the fact that your "Christian terrorists" are targeting the people who are performing the abortions, wheras Islamic terrorists will target anyone who's easy to kill. They usually don't even try to avoid killing other Muslims.
2. It was almost a thousand years ago. The next time the pope raises an army and marches on Jerusalem I'll admit you have a point.
3. Christianity. And Islam.
It's not really about religion, though, is it? You could justify terrorism with quotes from the Kama Sutra if you had to. It just so happens that today's terrorist-on-the-go is using Islam as an excuse for trying to destroy civilization. Forty years ago they used Marx and Mao. You can't blame Islam for September 11th any more than you can blame Karl Marx for Stalin's purges.
Lots of negative PR means lots of lost sales? It depends on the source of the negative PR and on the target audience.
The mainstream media rarely mentions GTA in a positive way, but it hasn't hurt the series' sales any because your average GTA player takes Fox News' approbation as a Good Thing.
It's easy to make a pacemaker with a removable battery. It's making people with removable pacemakers that's the bitch.
Isn't it possible that Steve Jobs loves both good design AND profits?
Fair, reasonable, and seemingly easy to implement. I wonder how the content-owners would manage to f**k it up if they tried it.
By your logic, if a restaurant gives free appetizers to their best customers then they're "removing value" from the meals of all of their other customers. If a casino comps a high roller they're "removing value" from everyone else who visits the casino.
Rewarding customers who give you money is a better system than punishing all customers regardless. Maybe if the used-game retailers want to share the money they make on used games with the publishers they can come to some sort of a deal so that used-game buyers get some bonus material, too. But not offering merchandise to people who aren't paying you for it is hardly "greed".
Keep your expectations low and keep as much detail out of your presentation as possible. Systems administration is boring to most adults--imagine what it's like when you're 9 and don't even understand the need for it.
And try not to give your presentation after a fireman. (I gave mine after a BANK TELLER and I still had a class of sixth-graders staring up at the clock every 30 seconds.)
Also, you might try not talking about your job. Either talk about the rockets or talk about how the kids use computers and how your knowledge applies to that. (On second thought, stick to the rockets...)
Maybe because all the sounds aren't coming from the exact same point in space, and/or because you actually have one microphone on each side of your head to tease the sounds apart?
(I don't know, I'm just throwing out reasonable-sounding ideas...)
I don't disagree with you, but there's a category of questions between your two examples which is (I think) where SO is aimed. API references sometimes tell you everything /except/ how to use a function (or at least they don't cover more than one or two standard cases). And your second question would be more suitable for SO phrased as "how can I stop Firefox from doing [x]".
I'm still on the fence as to whether their concept will work or not. I've gotten a couple of excellent answers to very specific questions that two hours of Googling didn't solve. But there's a LOT of noise on the site and the wiki-style editing that's supposed to suppress the noise hasn't been able to keep up.
The other point is that the participants in the private beta have been a self-selected group of developers who are interested in programming and making the site work. Now that it's public it should either fail or succeed really fast.
I had a couple of XSLT questions that hours of Googling had failed to answer. I posted them on SO and a Finnish gentleman answered them (correctly) within 30 minutes. I was impressed.
Now that it's out of private beta, I don't know what'll happen to it. And I'm still not sold on the whole hybrid forum/wiki format. But regardless of what happens to the site going forward, it was a huge help to me last week.
That question is used as the example of what not to ask, so instead there's this:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/35809/why-are-vi-and-emacs-popular
There's a "Homework" tag, and anyone with enough rank to tag questions can apply it (even if the student didn't.)
As for the GP's point, if SO wants to become the source of all good bits it would *need* to duplicate the questions that can be easily Googled so that it has all of the answers. A lot of the information on Wikipedia could have been Googled as well, but the people who added that info added value to Wikipedia regardless.
I think that even if you have a great game, the mere fact that it has "representational" graphics is going to hurt it in the long run. Pac Man has essentially no graphics--it was abstract in 1980, it's still abstract in 2008, and it'll be abstract in 2080. But in 20 years GTA 3 will look like a poor representation of reality, rather tahn not looking like any reality.
It's almost like the Uncanny Valley--graphics that don't try to look real can't take you out of the game, whereas graphics that are more realistic *will* take you out of the game once those graphics are out-of-date.
Ha ha but seriously. Look at the Google map of Detroit. In much of the city something like 50% of the lots are vacant--the housing values declined to the point where the houses were simply knocked down. The StreetView for those areas is eerie.
I'm not (solely) blaming unions for that; the exodus of the wealthy, gross mismanagement by the auto companies, and Detroit's poor government have contributed as well. But "turning Silicon Valley into Detroit" would represent a colossal failure.
kdawson posted this to the main page. Batzerto is the person with the domain issue.
IANAL, but I believe much of the argument depends on when and why you registered the name. If your last name was "Scion" and you had registered "scion.com" back in 1992, AND for the last 15 years it had been your personal home page and email address, then Toyota probably wouldn't be able to accuse you of squatting.
But if you registered "scion.com" just after you learned that Toyota was starting a new nameplate, and you filled the page with links to various car-related websites, then you don't have nearly as much of a leg to stand on. IIRC, Mr. Nissan had registered his domain name early, but the website was seemingly designed to make money off of people who assumed "nissan.com" was the car company. Reserving your name is OK, but trying to confuse the customers of a mega-corporation with mega-lawyers is a risky gambit.
I always thought the classiest act was the guy who owned delta.com back in the 90s. I forget what the company was (a little consulting shop, maybe?), but right on his front page he had links to Delta Airlines, Delta Dental, Delta Faucets, and Delta Power Tools for people who had done an "address-bar search".
SoftRAM claimed to do this, but the product didn't do anything except report to the user that it was doing something.
I didn't realize there were similar products that actually worked; I thought the whole concept was snake oil.
I'm assuming, because back in 1992 I remember reading that MCI had a 1 TB (!) database. It was big enough news to make it into PC Week.
At the financial companies where I've worked, the ratio of IT to non-IT people has been about 1:3.
One factor is that an awful lot of large financial firms have had IT departments since the 1960s. If you were to start up a new bank today, you would probably buy all off-the-shelf components and need relatively few in-house IT people to manage the vendors and support the end users. But if you started in 1965 then you've got lots of in-house applications that were built over the last 40 years, and a large, capable, and powerful in-house IT staff that is more comfortable building new capabilities from scratch than being dependent on vendors.
And to agree with the original post, the need to get these things RIGHT the first (or at worst, the second) time tends to give the IT department additional power and control.
Then you have to factor in that if you're in the financial industry, you don't really need a lot of people to build widgets, drive trucks, man cash registers, etc. and it's not uncommon for 95% of customer interactions to occur via the web or automated phone interfaces. (When was the last time you actually talked to a human at your bank?) So there isn't really a need for many people who *aren't* in the IT department.
I'm not saying monogamy is good or that polyamory is bad. I'm just saying there are benefits to monogamy that have nothing to do with one's religious beliefs. According to the GP's logic, an atheist should feel no obligation to enter into or to stay faithful in a monogamous relationship. But that's an absurd statement.
Polyamory is probably closer to the natural order of things, but a lot of society is based on monogamy. My point is that your own conscience, other people in your life, and society as a whole all have rewards and punishments, so a simplistic "people are monogamous because the church told them to" argument fails to capture the whole thing.
Being faithful to one partner could be a sign of respect for that person. It could be a sacrifice willingly made to get the benefits of a partner's full attention and devotion. It could be a practical way to insure that a stable and pleasant home life stays stable and pleasant. It could be a demonstration to your kids that in order to have somebody sacrifice for you, you must first sacrifice for them. It might be a way to prevent getting cuckolded or raising another man's child (what's good for the goose...). Or you might just love the person so much that hurting them isn't worth a few hours of pleasure.
There are a lot of reasons to be faithful to one person. You need to stop letting the Christian church define everything for you.