I don't know; Microsoft has often been less than original, but look at what they did with console gaming: they pretty much ignored the industry entirely until they came out with the Xbox which was pretty innovative (e.g., different sized controllers, hard drive, robust and stable online component.) It wasn't entirely influential - Nintendo will always do their own thing - but I think the current shape of the console market (DLC, downloadable games, online marketplaces, the prevalence of online play) was largely shaped by Microsoft. If they take this same approach to netbooks it may well be worth the wait; Microsoft may be evil but they also have a lot of money and expertise to throw at a problem once they are interested.
Sorry, but saying that life expectancy hasn't advanced much if you ignore all the people who didn't die young doesn't really seem to be much of a statement at all.
Regardless, it signals a serious problem: either a man qualified to be the Secretary of the Treasury can't figure out our byzantine tax laws, or he purposefully committed fraud and therefore wasn't qualified. Neither outcome is at all desirable.
Anyone can post, "I for one welcome our new zombie overlords," but these guys will be able to demonstrate that they supported the apocalypse before it started! They will be eaten last, and you and I will wish we had been on that team.
Probably, but chances are most users, no matter how unobtrusive the ads may be, will likely regret not forking over the "extra" $25 to try and have at least ONE electronic experience that is ad-free, as one can hardly get away from advertising these days, no matter where you are.
This post brought to you by Coca-Cola. Coke is it!
I don't think it's denial so much as evidence of the everyday phenomenon that irrational, emotion-based attackers often lead to irrational, emotion-based defenders, regardless of the validity of either stance. There has been, objectively speaking, a lot of media hype and confusion surrounding the incident; people were talking about Chernobyl on day one, when it wasn't remotely relevant, and we've been getting sometimes conflicting, sometimes outdated information. Pointing out that the plant failure is a sort of aberration (it took a disaster well past the plant's designed capability to withstand, and even then the failure wasn't immediate and for a while looked relatively minor) and that, on balance, nuclear power isn't particularly unsafe compared to widely accepted sources of power such as coal, isn't denial so much as providing context - something the media should be doing. The fact that the disaster continues and has gotten worse is irrelevant; just because the sun will eventually go nova doesn't mean that Chicken Little is a bastion of reason and fact-based journalism.
I think most/. readers are relatively sensitive to the kind of fear-mongering that the world's media unquestionably engages in on a regular basis, so that even a minor exaggeration of this accident triggers a FUD-killing antibody response from them. I think at its core, it's not a defense of nuclear power so much as an attack on irrational fear.
The real value of being vague is that any specified threat would not scare everyone. By leaving it up to the individual, each person conjures up not just a boogeyman, but a personalized boogeyman that actually scares them as an individual. The best part about this is that the government can never act on the threat since it is actually a legion of different threats, all promoted by different segments of the populace as "the real problem." So instead of having the people say, "well if the [specified threat] are so bad why don't we DO something about it," you get the populace fighting over what the real threat is; it's permanent and self-sustaining without casting much doubt on authority. It's a pretty brilliant technique, as long as your main concern is retaining power and not actually making anyone's lives any better.
That doesn't make any sense at all. You're saying that when I make an assertion I also get to define how that assertion is to be countered? Okay! I am King of the World. You can only defeat this by proving it within my scripture, which is presented here in its entirety:
I question whether computer illiterate users actually think that way. Ask one what version of Office they are running, and they will reply, "Microsoft." I think that whole premise is deeply flawed.
Yes but that is doing things backwards. They are starting with a belief and then seeking to gather evidence for that belief, while ignoring any evidence that doesn't support their working hypothesis. None of those religions started as Christian and said, "whoops, you know what - check the Dead Sea Scrolls, we should be Jewish," and changed their beliefs to fit the evidence. The proceedings may well be logical and methodical, but it's all being done within an illogical framework of poor methodology. If you assume you already know the answer, then looking for supporting evidence is not an honest search for the truth; it's just counting how many people in the choir voted for singing.
The difference is that we have evidence that the cold fusion crackpot is just that; we've tried his ideas and they do not work. The religious heretic is rejected simply because he is saying something new.
Even if those things were demonstrated to your satisfaction, you could simply pose the same question again, substituting new things, as though science not having all the answers is somehow counter to science's never claiming to have had all the answers. It is also interesting to me that this is your idea of proof; can you demonstrate bringing back the dead? Turning water into wine? Willing planets into existence? Can you demonstrate the holy spirit, heaven, or hell? Why is this suddenly your requirement for proof when it comes to science? Is it because you expect science to be able to support its assertions, but not religion? Isn't that an implicit admission that science is a legitimate search for truth while religion isn't? How is your post not entirely hypocritical?
I see this a lot, and you've been modded troll already, but I will ask you this: why blame the gamers? It isn't as though there have been all these deep and amazing console games that the market snubbed in favor of watered-down garbage; they play the best games they're offered. The closest they have gotten to a real FPS (e.g., Halo) has been embraced (perhaps over-)enthusiastically. Seems to be that your ire is misplaced; if console games are to blame then the responsibility lies with developers and publishers, not the gamers themselves. Gamers didn't design Oblivion's interface. Gamers didn't design Dragon Age 2 so that it could run in my video card's RAM. Gamers didn't ASK for easier games... they just got them. Ninja Gaiden is one of the hardest games I've ever played, and it met with both critical acclaim (91 on Metacritic) and solid sales (Ninja Gaiden and its first remake/sequel sold 1.5 million copies.)
Easy games are fun, but I think the console gamers have spoken and said that they would like harder games as well. Devs and publishers may not be listening to them. If all you get are easy games, of course you will play easy games. But it seems to me that this is an assumption being made by the game makers, rather than a concerted effort by the consumers.
(Disclaimer: I don't own any consoles and haven't touched one in over a year. This is an outsider's view, and I could be wrong.)
Absolutely not. We need that money to fund more pointless never-ending wars like the ones on drugs and terrorism. We need to be researching less invasive ways to invade the privacy of citizens, so we can make the nation secure without anyone realizing that we're doing it by monitoring them 24/7. We need bigger CEO bonuses so that the wealthy can make all the rest of us happier by keeping the money that doesn't buy happiness. We need to route more money through the political process in case someone there hasn't gotten the message on how to vote.
Gaining knowledge doesn't add to the bottom line and impress stock brokers, so that's clearly a waste of cash. Just like education in general.
Not sure what history you're talking about, but the history of mankind has repeatedly shown that you can indeed wade into another culture and change it in a (historically speaking) short amount of time; controlling the change is difficult, but instigating change is fairly straightforward - you need only kill the right people. The US has directly or indirectly installed several of the world's governments. Are you under the impression that this did not change those cultures? If you trace the US's behavior back to the old European empires, whose behavior was not entirely dissimilar (though more overt in both practice and purpose,) then most of the world has experienced a cultural shift due to invasion, either military or economic, just in the past few hundred years. This doesn't even scratch the surface; the European empires themselves were following the example of Rome, which could itself look to Macedonia, which had an example in Persia... it's been happening at least since recorded history began, and the fact that most of those cultures no longer exist should be proof enough of the possibility. Even if you restrict this to very fast cultural shifts (say, within a single lifetime,) examples abound and should be easy to find should you care to look.
That doesn't make any sense at all. Clearly people are willing to pay for the service, or Netflix wouldn't be in business. That doesn't mean that current prices are optimal.
If you say it is worth nothing to you, then why are you pirating it?
I don't think the issue is as black and white as you portray it. I know an answer to this question: it's because you didn't know it was worthless until you actually tried it out. I don't know how many pirates really use piracy as a form of acquiring demos, but I do think that's often a legitimate use; the convention of forcing agreement with an EULA before the software can even be opened strikes me as backwards, ethically speaking. Ever bought a game, started to play it, and regretted paying for it? Did that developer really earn that particular sale? I have known people who claimed to pay for pirated games that they actually enjoyed, for example; I don't know whether they actually did that all the time, but it doesn't seem a very dishonest practice to me, especially given that most retailers don't have a return policy for software.
What about pirating something you paid for in the past but have since lost the media? Is that still stealing? You've already paid the developer for his time and work, and this action is costing him absolutely nothing, even indirectly, unless your position is that he has earned a second sale, which is not a position I would agree with.
I'm sure piracy impacts game sales negatively and therefore people's lives, and so on the whole it would be ideal if pirating did not exist. However, I wonder how much piracy is caused by the developers themselves, and how much they overestimate that impact for dramatic effect. Games without any copy protection at all can still sell lots of copies, and at least some video game companies seem to be making a lot of money despite this scourge. The publicity developers give piracy is surely not healthy for them; I wonder how many kids first heard about software piracy from a developer or while wondering what DRM was for, exactly. I wonder how many people are driven to piracy by DRM (that happened to me only once, so I'm not claiming it's common, but it certainly does happen,) and how many people are encouraged to pirate because the pirated product is simply better (for example, I crack all my purchased games because requiring the CD to play them has no social or technological justification - this isn't strictly piracy, granted, but it increases downloads for cracks and surely encourages the crackers... perhaps it also inflates the apparent number of pirates.) Perhaps fighting piracy on a large scale is having the undesirable effect of making that "community" stronger; it would be easier to win public support if software developers weren't actively and willfully punishing their customers in their quest for (let's face it) not justice, but greater profits.
I think the real problem is that the underlying causes are primarily social, and developers are using very poor PR strategies.
Slashdot Mirror
You can have innovation that fails in the marketplace; that does not mean that it wasn't innovative.
I don't know; Microsoft has often been less than original, but look at what they did with console gaming: they pretty much ignored the industry entirely until they came out with the Xbox which was pretty innovative (e.g., different sized controllers, hard drive, robust and stable online component.) It wasn't entirely influential - Nintendo will always do their own thing - but I think the current shape of the console market (DLC, downloadable games, online marketplaces, the prevalence of online play) was largely shaped by Microsoft. If they take this same approach to netbooks it may well be worth the wait; Microsoft may be evil but they also have a lot of money and expertise to throw at a problem once they are interested.
Sorry, but saying that life expectancy hasn't advanced much if you ignore all the people who didn't die young doesn't really seem to be much of a statement at all.
Why is this marked Troll? It really is the video of Mike Rowe at TED.
Regardless, it signals a serious problem: either a man qualified to be the Secretary of the Treasury can't figure out our byzantine tax laws, or he purposefully committed fraud and therefore wasn't qualified. Neither outcome is at all desirable.
Gee, too bad I'm not a western guy.
Of course you are... keep moving to the east, and you will see.
Anyone can post, "I for one welcome our new zombie overlords," but these guys will be able to demonstrate that they supported the apocalypse before it started! They will be eaten last, and you and I will wish we had been on that team.
Probably, but chances are most users, no matter how unobtrusive the ads may be, will likely regret not forking over the "extra" $25 to try and have at least ONE electronic experience that is ad-free, as one can hardly get away from advertising these days, no matter where you are.
This post brought to you by Coca-Cola. Coke is it!
I don't think it's denial so much as evidence of the everyday phenomenon that irrational, emotion-based attackers often lead to irrational, emotion-based defenders, regardless of the validity of either stance. There has been, objectively speaking, a lot of media hype and confusion surrounding the incident; people were talking about Chernobyl on day one, when it wasn't remotely relevant, and we've been getting sometimes conflicting, sometimes outdated information. Pointing out that the plant failure is a sort of aberration (it took a disaster well past the plant's designed capability to withstand, and even then the failure wasn't immediate and for a while looked relatively minor) and that, on balance, nuclear power isn't particularly unsafe compared to widely accepted sources of power such as coal, isn't denial so much as providing context - something the media should be doing. The fact that the disaster continues and has gotten worse is irrelevant; just because the sun will eventually go nova doesn't mean that Chicken Little is a bastion of reason and fact-based journalism.
I think most /. readers are relatively sensitive to the kind of fear-mongering that the world's media unquestionably engages in on a regular basis, so that even a minor exaggeration of this accident triggers a FUD-killing antibody response from them. I think at its core, it's not a defense of nuclear power so much as an attack on irrational fear.
We at least have the ability to debate our actions and decide on a course of action that isn't entirely self serving.
Do we? I am beginning to seriously question this. I strongly suspect that what we have is the ability to frame our self-serving decisions as altruism.
The real value of being vague is that any specified threat would not scare everyone. By leaving it up to the individual, each person conjures up not just a boogeyman, but a personalized boogeyman that actually scares them as an individual. The best part about this is that the government can never act on the threat since it is actually a legion of different threats, all promoted by different segments of the populace as "the real problem." So instead of having the people say, "well if the [specified threat] are so bad why don't we DO something about it," you get the populace fighting over what the real threat is; it's permanent and self-sustaining without casting much doubt on authority. It's a pretty brilliant technique, as long as your main concern is retaining power and not actually making anyone's lives any better.
That doesn't make any sense at all. You're saying that when I make an assertion I also get to define how that assertion is to be countered? Okay! I am King of the World. You can only defeat this by proving it within my scripture, which is presented here in its entirety:
Book 1
Chapter 1
I am King of the World.
Unemployed CEO?
My liege!
Copy that, Anne_Nonymous. All the dogs are barking, over.
I question whether computer illiterate users actually think that way. Ask one what version of Office they are running, and they will reply, "Microsoft." I think that whole premise is deeply flawed.
Yes but that is doing things backwards. They are starting with a belief and then seeking to gather evidence for that belief, while ignoring any evidence that doesn't support their working hypothesis. None of those religions started as Christian and said, "whoops, you know what - check the Dead Sea Scrolls, we should be Jewish," and changed their beliefs to fit the evidence. The proceedings may well be logical and methodical, but it's all being done within an illogical framework of poor methodology. If you assume you already know the answer, then looking for supporting evidence is not an honest search for the truth; it's just counting how many people in the choir voted for singing.
The difference is that we have evidence that the cold fusion crackpot is just that; we've tried his ideas and they do not work. The religious heretic is rejected simply because he is saying something new.
Even if those things were demonstrated to your satisfaction, you could simply pose the same question again, substituting new things, as though science not having all the answers is somehow counter to science's never claiming to have had all the answers. It is also interesting to me that this is your idea of proof; can you demonstrate bringing back the dead? Turning water into wine? Willing planets into existence? Can you demonstrate the holy spirit, heaven, or hell? Why is this suddenly your requirement for proof when it comes to science? Is it because you expect science to be able to support its assertions, but not religion? Isn't that an implicit admission that science is a legitimate search for truth while religion isn't? How is your post not entirely hypocritical?
I see this a lot, and you've been modded troll already, but I will ask you this: why blame the gamers? It isn't as though there have been all these deep and amazing console games that the market snubbed in favor of watered-down garbage; they play the best games they're offered. The closest they have gotten to a real FPS (e.g., Halo) has been embraced (perhaps over-)enthusiastically. Seems to be that your ire is misplaced; if console games are to blame then the responsibility lies with developers and publishers, not the gamers themselves. Gamers didn't design Oblivion's interface. Gamers didn't design Dragon Age 2 so that it could run in my video card's RAM. Gamers didn't ASK for easier games... they just got them. Ninja Gaiden is one of the hardest games I've ever played, and it met with both critical acclaim (91 on Metacritic) and solid sales (Ninja Gaiden and its first remake/sequel sold 1.5 million copies.)
Easy games are fun, but I think the console gamers have spoken and said that they would like harder games as well. Devs and publishers may not be listening to them. If all you get are easy games, of course you will play easy games. But it seems to me that this is an assumption being made by the game makers, rather than a concerted effort by the consumers.
(Disclaimer: I don't own any consoles and haven't touched one in over a year. This is an outsider's view, and I could be wrong.)
Maybe that's what happened.
Absolutely not. We need that money to fund more pointless never-ending wars like the ones on drugs and terrorism. We need to be researching less invasive ways to invade the privacy of citizens, so we can make the nation secure without anyone realizing that we're doing it by monitoring them 24/7. We need bigger CEO bonuses so that the wealthy can make all the rest of us happier by keeping the money that doesn't buy happiness. We need to route more money through the political process in case someone there hasn't gotten the message on how to vote.
Gaining knowledge doesn't add to the bottom line and impress stock brokers, so that's clearly a waste of cash. Just like education in general.
Not sure what history you're talking about, but the history of mankind has repeatedly shown that you can indeed wade into another culture and change it in a (historically speaking) short amount of time; controlling the change is difficult, but instigating change is fairly straightforward - you need only kill the right people. The US has directly or indirectly installed several of the world's governments. Are you under the impression that this did not change those cultures? If you trace the US's behavior back to the old European empires, whose behavior was not entirely dissimilar (though more overt in both practice and purpose,) then most of the world has experienced a cultural shift due to invasion, either military or economic, just in the past few hundred years. This doesn't even scratch the surface; the European empires themselves were following the example of Rome, which could itself look to Macedonia, which had an example in Persia... it's been happening at least since recorded history began, and the fact that most of those cultures no longer exist should be proof enough of the possibility. Even if you restrict this to very fast cultural shifts (say, within a single lifetime,) examples abound and should be easy to find should you care to look.
Why don't we import products made in China directly from China, instead of paying a retail middle man?
That doesn't make any sense at all. Clearly people are willing to pay for the service, or Netflix wouldn't be in business. That doesn't mean that current prices are optimal.
If you say it is worth nothing to you, then why are you pirating it?
I don't think the issue is as black and white as you portray it. I know an answer to this question: it's because you didn't know it was worthless until you actually tried it out. I don't know how many pirates really use piracy as a form of acquiring demos, but I do think that's often a legitimate use; the convention of forcing agreement with an EULA before the software can even be opened strikes me as backwards, ethically speaking. Ever bought a game, started to play it, and regretted paying for it? Did that developer really earn that particular sale? I have known people who claimed to pay for pirated games that they actually enjoyed, for example; I don't know whether they actually did that all the time, but it doesn't seem a very dishonest practice to me, especially given that most retailers don't have a return policy for software.
What about pirating something you paid for in the past but have since lost the media? Is that still stealing? You've already paid the developer for his time and work, and this action is costing him absolutely nothing, even indirectly, unless your position is that he has earned a second sale, which is not a position I would agree with.
I'm sure piracy impacts game sales negatively and therefore people's lives, and so on the whole it would be ideal if pirating did not exist. However, I wonder how much piracy is caused by the developers themselves, and how much they overestimate that impact for dramatic effect. Games without any copy protection at all can still sell lots of copies, and at least some video game companies seem to be making a lot of money despite this scourge. The publicity developers give piracy is surely not healthy for them; I wonder how many kids first heard about software piracy from a developer or while wondering what DRM was for, exactly. I wonder how many people are driven to piracy by DRM (that happened to me only once, so I'm not claiming it's common, but it certainly does happen,) and how many people are encouraged to pirate because the pirated product is simply better (for example, I crack all my purchased games because requiring the CD to play them has no social or technological justification - this isn't strictly piracy, granted, but it increases downloads for cracks and surely encourages the crackers... perhaps it also inflates the apparent number of pirates.) Perhaps fighting piracy on a large scale is having the undesirable effect of making that "community" stronger; it would be easier to win public support if software developers weren't actively and willfully punishing their customers in their quest for (let's face it) not justice, but greater profits.
I think the real problem is that the underlying causes are primarily social, and developers are using very poor PR strategies.