Not relevant. It was the law and he broke it. Of course it was unjust but we get into a whole mess of legal trouble if we start revising past laws and pardoning people of crimes we now think where unjust.
I see where you're coming from, and it's a good argument, assuming it would cause a legal mess. I don't pretend to be as smart as most of the folks on this forum, but my position is if a law is determined to be unjust, people should no longer be punished for it, even if the punishment is simply having an arrest on their record. Based on that position, I think it's absolutely a relevant point. Your position seems to be two-fold: the law is the law at the time it was the law, making a crime punishable, regardless of whether the law broken is now deemed unjust, and it would cause a mess of legal trouble to attempt to an "undo". Admittedly, I don't know enough about law to determine exactly what problems specific or general pardons for breaking this law would cause, but I do know people are pardoned all the time, and it doesn't seem to cause much if any damage. Folks even receive pardons for crimes that are NOT now considered unjust (there are plenty of examples of pardons offered in return for testimony or evidence against someone else), and those pardons don't seem to be the causing our legal system to crumble, at least in any specific sense (the almighty dollar seems to be doing that on its own). Also, we might have to agree to disagree on this point; otherwise I think we get dangerously close to opinions on what the law is intended to accomplish.
How about exactly because it's 50 years later and he's dead. Why bother?
We bother because it rights a past wrong. I know if I was convicted of a crime that led to my professional disgrace and I ended my life 2 years later (not saying the conviction led directly to this; just that it seems likely to have contributed in Turing's case), anybody who knew me in life or now reads my history and agrees that I was unjustly damaged by a stupid law would feel vindicated if I was given a posthumous pardon. If the assumption is there's more to be gained than lost by offering the pardon (which is my position), then it's the right thing to do.
That's not much of a counter-argument.
Put less sarcastically, my argument is if there's no harm in offering pardons to one person convicted of this particular crime, there's no harm offering a blanket pardon to all people convicted of this particular crime. Of course, this is not true of a crime that is still on the books, but violators of many current laws have been pardoned individually. I provided an example of this situation previously, but here are a few more http://people.howstuffworks.com/presidential-pardon2.htm. It seems to me that if one can somehow be pardoned of a crime that is still illegal, one can and should be pardoned of a "crime" that is not.
My position on this is simply that in a case where a law is found wrong enough to be completely reversed, there seems to be enough precedent set that anyone convicted of the crime should be completely exonerated from any wrongdoing. Let's look at it a different way: if someone is currently serving a sentence for breaking a law that is overturned, should they finish their sentence? I don't think that's right, and I suppose my naivety extends this opinion to offering a pardon for the entire crime, not just the remainder of the punishment. In Turing's case, his punishment can never be acknowledged as a mistake to him, precisely because he's dead. Still, there are people who would like to see the reversal of this law come all the way around, exonerating anybody who was damaged by it, posthumously or not.
I should also add that I don't think atheism has much to do with god, at all, really. God just fits under the general umbrella of "The Supernatural" and due to some serious emotional and religious baggage, God, and hence, religion, tends to get top billing.
At it's pure form, the concept of atheism isn't about "assuming something doesn't exist without evidence". Logic tells us there's probably all sorts of stuff that exists that we can't see right now, as every scientists knows, but speculating on this type of stuff is also scientifically worthless; at least until a way to observe a supernatural phenomena comes around (which, ironically, means the phenomena is no longer "supernatural").
If you can't observe a thing's characteristics, composition, behavior, effect on surroundings, etc then you cannot make any useful predictions or comparisons with any certainty. This is typically why atheists choose not to believe in the supernatural, and it's also why atheism isn't a "religion" per se. It's simply the intentional skepticism of the un-proven.
Speaking as an atheist, no, I don't expect that a predictable or useful model of any god exists. Based on inferences from other scientific fields, I also don't believe compelling evidence of a god will be presented, and so I disregard the concept other than as a fun story, just like I do for warp travel and cyborgs named Data. But if presented with unequivocal, repeatable, testable evidence of a god's existence, I would look into it further. If the evidence was compelling enough, I'd change my opinion. I'd do the same for cold fusion, santa claus, the female g-spot (hehe).
Conceptually, atheism is to religion as crossing a bridge is to bungee jumping.
It's about knowing it's possible to take a leap of faith (HA!!!) and choosing not to for various reasons. In atheism, chief among these reasons is not believing in the supernatural and/or unprovable, much like a potential bungee jumper may not trust the bungee cord if he's not allowed to see it before jumping.
Anybody who says otherwise just doesn't get what atheism is about.
After I'm dead, both are equivalent to each other (in a system which doesn't punish descendants for their parents crimes; in a system which did, there would remain a substantive difference, but that's more a problem with punishing descendants for the crimes of their ancestors than with the form of corrective measure for the original conviction.) They both amount to a statement that the law at the time, and its impact on me, was wrong, but do nothing to actually correct the impact on me which is no longer correctable.
Your argument just as easily applies in the opposite direction. What harm does it cause the State to grant a pardon instead of just an apology when they are legally equivalent (as in the case of a dead subject)?
It's obvious that from the emotional and/or moral standpoint of many people, they are not equivalent, or there wouldn't be a petition asking for the pardon. Rather, the apology would have sufficed. So, logically, the pardon should be granted as it has a greater total positive effect with equal legal repercussions (since the apology was already offered, all legal repercussions are now moot, as well).
Sorry... I like you, but I call baloney on this one.
The difference between a retroactive pardon (forgiveness for the State's mistake in writing laws) and retroactive prosecution (punishment for the State's mistake in writing laws) is pretty well defined.
Pardons are granted all the time, and new laws are signed all the time too, but I can't think of any cases of retroactive prosecution. I suppose it's always possible, but this concept is one of the defining cornerstones of modern society. I agree its loss would be devastating, but I don't think pardons are a threat.
How about the fact that the law was unjust? That in itself should trump guilt or trial errors; assuming the law was unjust from the second it was put into practice (and I definitely do) he never should have been arrested in the first place.
It generally seems that UK pardons are difficult to obtain, and I actually do see the reasoning of the courts, though I disagree with it. The following tidbit from the UK section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon was of particular interest to me:
One notorious recent case was that of the drug smugglers John Haase and Paul Bennett. They were pardoned in July 1996 from 18-year sentences, having served ten months, on the advice of then Home Secretary Michael Howard.[9] This was intended to reward them for information they gave to the authorities, but there was speculation about Howard’s motives.[10] In 2008, they were given 20-year and 22-year sentences after it was found that their information was unreliable.
No talk of innocence, guilt, "good behavior" or other such nonsense; they talked, so they walked. Sure, they were put back in after it was found out they lied, but this means they were pardoned on the hope that their information was reliable. If scumbags like this get a pardon 10% into their sentence for what turned out to be garbage data (gaining 12 years of freedom in the process), why not Alan Turing a half-century after his conviction and subsequent death? Even if pardons are "earned" by helping the state, then surely Mr. Turing contributed more than these asshats, and what he gave us will stand for decades to come.
Also, the reasoning of "if we pardon him, then we have to pardon everybody else" is as stupid for this as it is for potato chips. Pardon Alan Turing sets a precedent, and then a general pardon follows closely on its heels.
I started getting upset when I read the story, but your thought did occur to me. Also, the UK has legislation on the table that would "disregard" the past convictions.
Even still, one good reason (and I think good enough) to pardon Turing is it gets a ball rolling and brings the issue to the public's attention. Quietly disregarding past convictions does a lot legally, but not a whole lot for the public perspective (if no one knows, no one cares, by definition).
That phrase you hear so often, "caught early", is just as likely as "caught late". People really do need to see their doctors and get screened with mammograms and colonoscopies to find these diseases as early as possible. But for someone who finds they're already in stage 4 by the time they're diagnosed, the decision to go through chemo, or not, is usually a cosmetic one.
I think it could be helpful to think of "cancer survivors" in discrete groups: First, the folks who caught it early, went through treatment, eradicated the invasion, and stay on top of it the rest of their lives.
Second, the folks who never dreamed it could happen to them, got sick, found the type and depth of the disease, and STILL fought and fought to survive against all odds. Both groups are admirable and strong, but the second group (who admittedly could been in the first group with an ounce of prevention) and the victims who die are the ones who showcase how loathsome cancer truly is.
As someone who's been there, take your strength from the "good days" and be aware that you are showing your love in the purest way possible by being there for her on the "bad days". Whatever you do, don't let despair win, and remember that even though your mother may change further, being there for her is helpful for both of you.
Also, your mom will likely stay the same warm, sweet, and vibrant woman, but she may revert to past personality traits that she's long put behind her. In fact, I could actually have fun with my grandfather during these times, as I got to see a side of him I'd never known. She also may get angry (like, nuclear-grade angry) and not know why. I've always thought of the anger as the mind grasping what's happening, and railing against it, and it's helped me to stay calm and be patient. She'll need you even more then.
Who knows though? Alzheimer's follows a different path at different speeds for different people. No matter what happens I salute you for hanging in there.
I feel for you, friend. My father, too, fought with cancer for a long time. He had a few types (melanoma, colon), but the biggie was an aggressive type of brain cancer. He survived several surgeries to remove the tumors, earning himself a skull plate and permanent baldness in the process. I was, of course, happy to have him continue to be in my life, but the damage to his personality, memory, motor control, and emotional capacity was truly devastating; it was much like my dad wasn't my dad anymore, not entirely. He probably shouldn't have continued to drive, but... he fell asleep at the wheel narcolepsy-style some years later, and complications led to his death (much more to that story, actually, but I digress).
Anyway, the situation was readily comparable to symptoms of Alzheimer's, which my father's father started to develop at an early age (late 50s). I never really knew my grandpa; just stories I'd hear in the rare lucid times or from family members.
Anybody who's had to suffer along with someone who has Alzheimer's knows what true strength is, and how draining it can be. Watching someone who's been a powerful force in your life slowly wither mentally is just about the most heartbreaking thing you can go through. You don't really ever get over it.
You know, they don't say what the 100,000 workers' specific jobs are. Perhaps they're dedicating some percentage of them to patrol the perimeter for suicides before the media gets hold of pictures?
Seriously though; it's very interesting to me that so many people would line up to work there. Perhaps our opinion on working conditions is skewed when based on our relative comfort compared to Chinese workers' conditions. I don't know if we should be comparing on absolute "good" or "bad" working conditions, when the workers seem to be comparing based on "better" or "worse" relative conditions (one of which is obviously pay).
All that said, it'd sure give us all warm fuzzy feelings to find out Foxconn is leading an improvement in working conditions for China, and they seem in a position to do so.
More sophisticated than brain or heart surgery? More sophisticated than calculating vectors and propulsion for various spacecraft?
Not trying for profession pissing contest; just pointing out that there are other professions where keeping track of various items, concepts, and relationships are also important. Mistakes have happened in all complex fields, and will continue to do so, but simple solutions such as teeloo's bear at least some thought. Perhaps a modification of his simple theory could reduce accidents by 5% at minimal cost. Who knows?
I disagree that it's best to have an auto-magic tool detection system anyway. The point isn't to make tool tracking absolutely foolproof, the point is to remind the engineer not to be foolish.
Exactly. All that was needed was a reminder that something wasn't right, and then it should have been up to the engineer to find out what it was. In fact, that's probably BETTER than pointing out exactly which tool is missing; that would create a false sense of security. Plus, the engineers will get trained to be meticulous as they work to avoid having to go over every inch of the aircraft after the job is "complete".
I think he meant "ballast", which definitely would hamper the SS Republican Asshat.
I'm just happy to find that another person names the boats in Battleship, too, even if it is an AC.
I think that the publishers are terrified that we'll all find out that the used games market IS remarkably similar to piracy. In neither case does the publisher lose revenue.
The ONLY way a publisher can claim lost revenue in either case is to PROVE that a used purchase or an infringement would have resulted in a brand new sale if the other options weren't available. I don't think it's possible to predict what the real ratio of "New sale! Yay shiny!" customers to "I'll just go without, oh and fuck you and your prices and DRM, too." customers would be.
I would think that the market would generally be divided up into a group of people who primarilly buy new games, and a group of people who primarilly infringe copyright or buy used. I'm not sure that preventing the second group from buying used games will tend to move them into the first group.
It seems apparent, to me, that the way to move stingy group B into spending group A is to make it easier and cheaper for group B to buy the way group A does. If a company is not willing to lower prices and raise convenience to the point where members of group B switch groups, then you don't get their sales. This is true whether or not group B has the means to pirate or buy used.
Even my daughter knows she can't sell lemonade for $0.10 per glass to people with no dimes, and she doesn't expect her customers to run an obstacle course to get her product; rather, she lets customers pay what they can and sets her stand up on the sidewalk. And, I don't even want to think about the problems in trying to enforce a "no lemonade re-sale" policy.
I like your points, but I think you misunderstood the parent. I don't think the post touched on re-sale at all. Mr. AC was trying to make the point that a person who does not purchase a game (or software, or movie, or music, etc) and a person who pirates a game are identical, economically speaking, to the vendor's bottom line.
In other words, pirating and simply not buying a product do not count for or against a company's revenue. It's a statistical zero either way (no revenue OR cost to the company), and I like the parent's presentation of this point. I've always thought it silly that companies say "Pirating cost us x amount of dollars this quarter! To the court rooms to sue!!!" but they don't say "People who didn't buy our product cost us x amount of dollars this year! To their homes to pry the money from their wallets!!!"
Sure, the pirates got to use and enjoy the stuff for free, but it's a pretty tangled mess to decide who would have purchased and who simply would have gone without. I love cheeseburgers, but sometimes I can't afford them. So, I don't buy them. Still, if a friend offers me a free cheeseburger, I'll probably eat it. That doesn't mean Carls Junior just lost a sale. And no, it's NOT appropriate to say my friend stole my free cheeseburger, because the digital nature of intellectual "property" makes all comparisons to physical objects super silly. The closest analogy would be my friend copying an existing cheeseburger digitally, leaving said original cheeseburger under the heat lamp, and feeding my belly with a freebie created from nothing. The only person that lost anything was my buddy, who spent the time making my cheeseburger, probably because he needs me to DD to the bar later. Asshole.
Actually, it's my opinion that pirating a piece of software makes it more likely that a purchase will be made on that game, or possibly a future one, once the purchaser is in a better position to buy. At the very least, a person in this scenario is more likely to buy than someone who's never even heard of a company, or simply doesn't buy games, much the same as Carls Junior is more likely to sell a cheeseburger to someone who likes their food after getting a no-cost freebie than to someone who's never even heard of them, or simply doesn't buy fast food at all. This seems double obvious if the company that sells cheeseburgers makes it easier to buy them than to convince your buddy to copy them. (Note, this means I really, really don't want my pickles or cheese shipped at a later date, after proof of purchase is supplied). Also, I'm hungry.
Re:What does the hell does NP Hard mean?
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Pac-Man Is NP-Hard
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I think I got it... thank you, that really was helpful.
As an aside, I'm starting to think simplifying an explanation for NP-Hard is NP-Hard, and my personal understanding of all of these explanations is NP-Complete. Hey, wait.... do I get my $1,000,000 now?
Re:What does the hell does NP Hard mean?
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Pac-Man Is NP-Hard
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· Score: 1
I'm confused by NP-Hard still. Does this mean that NP-Hard problems CANNOT be verified in polynomial time? I get that the "at least as hard as any problem in NP" bit but I don't see why they aren't a just a subset of NP (or maybe they are? Maybe that's my question; which is the superset?)
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Not relevant. It was the law and he broke it. Of course it was unjust but we get into a whole mess of legal trouble if we start revising past laws and pardoning people of crimes we now think where unjust.
I see where you're coming from, and it's a good argument, assuming it would cause a legal mess. I don't pretend to be as smart as most of the folks on this forum, but my position is if a law is determined to be unjust, people should no longer be punished for it, even if the punishment is simply having an arrest on their record. Based on that position, I think it's absolutely a relevant point. Your position seems to be two-fold: the law is the law at the time it was the law, making a crime punishable, regardless of whether the law broken is now deemed unjust, and it would cause a mess of legal trouble to attempt to an "undo". Admittedly, I don't know enough about law to determine exactly what problems specific or general pardons for breaking this law would cause, but I do know people are pardoned all the time, and it doesn't seem to cause much if any damage. Folks even receive pardons for crimes that are NOT now considered unjust (there are plenty of examples of pardons offered in return for testimony or evidence against someone else), and those pardons don't seem to be the causing our legal system to crumble, at least in any specific sense (the almighty dollar seems to be doing that on its own). Also, we might have to agree to disagree on this point; otherwise I think we get dangerously close to opinions on what the law is intended to accomplish.
How about exactly because it's 50 years later and he's dead. Why bother?
We bother because it rights a past wrong. I know if I was convicted of a crime that led to my professional disgrace and I ended my life 2 years later (not saying the conviction led directly to this; just that it seems likely to have contributed in Turing's case), anybody who knew me in life or now reads my history and agrees that I was unjustly damaged by a stupid law would feel vindicated if I was given a posthumous pardon. If the assumption is there's more to be gained than lost by offering the pardon (which is my position), then it's the right thing to do.
That's not much of a counter-argument.
Put less sarcastically, my argument is if there's no harm in offering pardons to one person convicted of this particular crime, there's no harm offering a blanket pardon to all people convicted of this particular crime. Of course, this is not true of a crime that is still on the books, but violators of many current laws have been pardoned individually. I provided an example of this situation previously, but here are a few more http://people.howstuffworks.com/presidential-pardon2.htm. It seems to me that if one can somehow be pardoned of a crime that is still illegal, one can and should be pardoned of a "crime" that is not.
My position on this is simply that in a case where a law is found wrong enough to be completely reversed, there seems to be enough precedent set that anyone convicted of the crime should be completely exonerated from any wrongdoing. Let's look at it a different way: if someone is currently serving a sentence for breaking a law that is overturned, should they finish their sentence? I don't think that's right, and I suppose my naivety extends this opinion to offering a pardon for the entire crime, not just the remainder of the punishment. In Turing's case, his punishment can never be acknowledged as a mistake to him, precisely because he's dead. Still, there are people who would like to see the reversal of this law come all the way around, exonerating anybody who was damaged by it, posthumously or not.
I should also add that I don't think atheism has much to do with god, at all, really. God just fits under the general umbrella of "The Supernatural" and due to some serious emotional and religious baggage, God, and hence, religion, tends to get top billing.
At it's pure form, the concept of atheism isn't about "assuming something doesn't exist without evidence". Logic tells us there's probably all sorts of stuff that exists that we can't see right now, as every scientists knows, but speculating on this type of stuff is also scientifically worthless; at least until a way to observe a supernatural phenomena comes around (which, ironically, means the phenomena is no longer "supernatural").
If you can't observe a thing's characteristics, composition, behavior, effect on surroundings, etc then you cannot make any useful predictions or comparisons with any certainty. This is typically why atheists choose not to believe in the supernatural, and it's also why atheism isn't a "religion" per se. It's simply the intentional skepticism of the un-proven.
Speaking as an atheist, no, I don't expect that a predictable or useful model of any god exists. Based on inferences from other scientific fields, I also don't believe compelling evidence of a god will be presented, and so I disregard the concept other than as a fun story, just like I do for warp travel and cyborgs named Data. But if presented with unequivocal, repeatable, testable evidence of a god's existence, I would look into it further. If the evidence was compelling enough, I'd change my opinion. I'd do the same for cold fusion, santa claus, the female g-spot (hehe).
Conceptually, atheism is to religion as crossing a bridge is to bungee jumping.
It's about knowing it's possible to take a leap of faith (HA!!!) and choosing not to for various reasons. In atheism, chief among these reasons is not believing in the supernatural and/or unprovable, much like a potential bungee jumper may not trust the bungee cord if he's not allowed to see it before jumping.
Anybody who says otherwise just doesn't get what atheism is about.
After I'm dead, both are equivalent to each other (in a system which doesn't punish descendants for their parents crimes; in a system which did, there would remain a substantive difference, but that's more a problem with punishing descendants for the crimes of their ancestors than with the form of corrective measure for the original conviction.) They both amount to a statement that the law at the time, and its impact on me, was wrong, but do nothing to actually correct the impact on me which is no longer correctable.
Your argument just as easily applies in the opposite direction. What harm does it cause the State to grant a pardon instead of just an apology when they are legally equivalent (as in the case of a dead subject)?
It's obvious that from the emotional and/or moral standpoint of many people, they are not equivalent, or there wouldn't be a petition asking for the pardon. Rather, the apology would have sufficed. So, logically, the pardon should be granted as it has a greater total positive effect with equal legal repercussions (since the apology was already offered, all legal repercussions are now moot, as well).
Sorry... I like you, but I call baloney on this one.
The difference between a retroactive pardon (forgiveness for the State's mistake in writing laws) and retroactive prosecution (punishment for the State's mistake in writing laws) is pretty well defined.
Pardons are granted all the time, and new laws are signed all the time too, but I can't think of any cases of retroactive prosecution. I suppose it's always possible, but this concept is one of the defining cornerstones of modern society. I agree its loss would be devastating, but I don't think pardons are a threat.
It generally seems that UK pardons are difficult to obtain, and I actually do see the reasoning of the courts, though I disagree with it. The following tidbit from the UK section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon was of particular interest to me:
One notorious recent case was that of the drug smugglers John Haase and Paul Bennett. They were pardoned in July 1996 from 18-year sentences, having served ten months, on the advice of then Home Secretary Michael Howard.[9] This was intended to reward them for information they gave to the authorities, but there was speculation about Howard’s motives.[10] In 2008, they were given 20-year and 22-year sentences after it was found that their information was unreliable.
No talk of innocence, guilt, "good behavior" or other such nonsense; they talked, so they walked. Sure, they were put back in after it was found out they lied, but this means they were pardoned on the hope that their information was reliable. If scumbags like this get a pardon 10% into their sentence for what turned out to be garbage data (gaining 12 years of freedom in the process), why not Alan Turing a half-century after his conviction and subsequent death? Even if pardons are "earned" by helping the state, then surely Mr. Turing contributed more than these asshats, and what he gave us will stand for decades to come.
Also, the reasoning of "if we pardon him, then we have to pardon everybody else" is as stupid for this as it is for potato chips. Pardon Alan Turing sets a precedent, and then a general pardon follows closely on its heels.
I started getting upset when I read the story, but your thought did occur to me. Also, the UK has legislation on the table that would "disregard" the past convictions.
This guy reasons it out pretty well: http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/why-im-not-supporting-campaign-for.html
Even still, one good reason (and I think good enough) to pardon Turing is it gets a ball rolling and brings the issue to the public's attention. Quietly disregarding past convictions does a lot legally, but not a whole lot for the public perspective (if no one knows, no one cares, by definition).
That phrase you hear so often, "caught early", is just as likely as "caught late". People really do need to see their doctors and get screened with mammograms and colonoscopies to find these diseases as early as possible. But for someone who finds they're already in stage 4 by the time they're diagnosed, the decision to go through chemo, or not, is usually a cosmetic one.
I think it could be helpful to think of "cancer survivors" in discrete groups: First, the folks who caught it early, went through treatment, eradicated the invasion, and stay on top of it the rest of their lives.
Second, the folks who never dreamed it could happen to them, got sick, found the type and depth of the disease, and STILL fought and fought to survive against all odds. Both groups are admirable and strong, but the second group (who admittedly could been in the first group with an ounce of prevention) and the victims who die are the ones who showcase how loathsome cancer truly is.
As someone who's been there, take your strength from the "good days" and be aware that you are showing your love in the purest way possible by being there for her on the "bad days". Whatever you do, don't let despair win, and remember that even though your mother may change further, being there for her is helpful for both of you.
Also, your mom will likely stay the same warm, sweet, and vibrant woman, but she may revert to past personality traits that she's long put behind her. In fact, I could actually have fun with my grandfather during these times, as I got to see a side of him I'd never known. She also may get angry (like, nuclear-grade angry) and not know why. I've always thought of the anger as the mind grasping what's happening, and railing against it, and it's helped me to stay calm and be patient. She'll need you even more then.
Who knows though? Alzheimer's follows a different path at different speeds for different people. No matter what happens I salute you for hanging in there.
I feel for you, friend. My father, too, fought with cancer for a long time. He had a few types (melanoma, colon), but the biggie was an aggressive type of brain cancer. He survived several surgeries to remove the tumors, earning himself a skull plate and permanent baldness in the process. I was, of course, happy to have him continue to be in my life, but the damage to his personality, memory, motor control, and emotional capacity was truly devastating; it was much like my dad wasn't my dad anymore, not entirely. He probably shouldn't have continued to drive, but... he fell asleep at the wheel narcolepsy-style some years later, and complications led to his death (much more to that story, actually, but I digress).
Anyway, the situation was readily comparable to symptoms of Alzheimer's, which my father's father started to develop at an early age (late 50s). I never really knew my grandpa; just stories I'd hear in the rare lucid times or from family members.
Anybody who's had to suffer along with someone who has Alzheimer's knows what true strength is, and how draining it can be. Watching someone who's been a powerful force in your life slowly wither mentally is just about the most heartbreaking thing you can go through. You don't really ever get over it.
You know, they don't say what the 100,000 workers' specific jobs are. Perhaps they're dedicating some percentage of them to patrol the perimeter for suicides before the media gets hold of pictures?
Seriously though; it's very interesting to me that so many people would line up to work there. Perhaps our opinion on working conditions is skewed when based on our relative comfort compared to Chinese workers' conditions. I don't know if we should be comparing on absolute "good" or "bad" working conditions, when the workers seem to be comparing based on "better" or "worse" relative conditions (one of which is obviously pay).
All that said, it'd sure give us all warm fuzzy feelings to find out Foxconn is leading an improvement in working conditions for China, and they seem in a position to do so.
I saw Batman do that once. Shit just got real.
More sophisticated than brain or heart surgery? More sophisticated than calculating vectors and propulsion for various spacecraft?
Not trying for profession pissing contest; just pointing out that there are other professions where keeping track of various items, concepts, and relationships are also important. Mistakes have happened in all complex fields, and will continue to do so, but simple solutions such as teeloo's bear at least some thought. Perhaps a modification of his simple theory could reduce accidents by 5% at minimal cost. Who knows?
I disagree that it's best to have an auto-magic tool detection system anyway. The point isn't to make tool tracking absolutely foolproof, the point is to remind the engineer not to be foolish.
Exactly. All that was needed was a reminder that something wasn't right, and then it should have been up to the engineer to find out what it was. In fact, that's probably BETTER than pointing out exactly which tool is missing; that would create a false sense of security. Plus, the engineers will get trained to be meticulous as they work to avoid having to go over every inch of the aircraft after the job is "complete".
Brilliant! If I push it just as hard as I possibly can and hold it there, it'll take me home and then shut my car off!
Nah, use a good ol' Amerkin Hummer. It's the only way I can see getting the grown up frat boys to enjoy dumping them all in the ocean.
Ironically, you decimated his post. I could care less, though, as I'm trying to be discrete.
I think he meant "ballast", which definitely would hamper the SS Republican Asshat. I'm just happy to find that another person names the boats in Battleship, too, even if it is an AC.
I think that the publishers are terrified that we'll all find out that the used games market IS remarkably similar to piracy. In neither case does the publisher lose revenue.
The ONLY way a publisher can claim lost revenue in either case is to PROVE that a used purchase or an infringement would have resulted in a brand new sale if the other options weren't available. I don't think it's possible to predict what the real ratio of "New sale! Yay shiny!" customers to "I'll just go without, oh and fuck you and your prices and DRM, too." customers would be.
I would think that the market would generally be divided up into a group of people who primarilly buy new games, and a group of people who primarilly infringe copyright or buy used. I'm not sure that preventing the second group from buying used games will tend to move them into the first group.
It seems apparent, to me, that the way to move stingy group B into spending group A is to make it easier and cheaper for group B to buy the way group A does. If a company is not willing to lower prices and raise convenience to the point where members of group B switch groups, then you don't get their sales. This is true whether or not group B has the means to pirate or buy used.
Even my daughter knows she can't sell lemonade for $0.10 per glass to people with no dimes, and she doesn't expect her customers to run an obstacle course to get her product; rather, she lets customers pay what they can and sets her stand up on the sidewalk. And, I don't even want to think about the problems in trying to enforce a "no lemonade re-sale" policy.
I like your points, but I think you misunderstood the parent. I don't think the post touched on re-sale at all. Mr. AC was trying to make the point that a person who does not purchase a game (or software, or movie, or music, etc) and a person who pirates a game are identical, economically speaking, to the vendor's bottom line.
In other words, pirating and simply not buying a product do not count for or against a company's revenue. It's a statistical zero either way (no revenue OR cost to the company), and I like the parent's presentation of this point. I've always thought it silly that companies say "Pirating cost us x amount of dollars this quarter! To the court rooms to sue!!!" but they don't say "People who didn't buy our product cost us x amount of dollars this year! To their homes to pry the money from their wallets!!!"
Sure, the pirates got to use and enjoy the stuff for free, but it's a pretty tangled mess to decide who would have purchased and who simply would have gone without. I love cheeseburgers, but sometimes I can't afford them. So, I don't buy them. Still, if a friend offers me a free cheeseburger, I'll probably eat it. That doesn't mean Carls Junior just lost a sale. And no, it's NOT appropriate to say my friend stole my free cheeseburger, because the digital nature of intellectual "property" makes all comparisons to physical objects super silly. The closest analogy would be my friend copying an existing cheeseburger digitally, leaving said original cheeseburger under the heat lamp, and feeding my belly with a freebie created from nothing. The only person that lost anything was my buddy, who spent the time making my cheeseburger, probably because he needs me to DD to the bar later. Asshole.
Actually, it's my opinion that pirating a piece of software makes it more likely that a purchase will be made on that game, or possibly a future one, once the purchaser is in a better position to buy. At the very least, a person in this scenario is more likely to buy than someone who's never even heard of a company, or simply doesn't buy games, much the same as Carls Junior is more likely to sell a cheeseburger to someone who likes their food after getting a no-cost freebie than to someone who's never even heard of them, or simply doesn't buy fast food at all. This seems double obvious if the company that sells cheeseburgers makes it easier to buy them than to convince your buddy to copy them. (Note, this means I really, really don't want my pickles or cheese shipped at a later date, after proof of purchase is supplied). Also, I'm hungry.
I think I got it... thank you, that really was helpful.
As an aside, I'm starting to think simplifying an explanation for NP-Hard is NP-Hard, and my personal understanding of all of these explanations is NP-Complete. Hey, wait.... do I get my $1,000,000 now?
I'm confused by NP-Hard still. Does this mean that NP-Hard problems CANNOT be verified in polynomial time? I get that the "at least as hard as any problem in NP" bit but I don't see why they aren't a just a subset of NP (or maybe they are? Maybe that's my question; which is the superset?)