No-one saw it happen, therefore it hasn't been decided. Therefore it may not have happened, but if we prove that it did indeed happen, we might show that it didn't happen.
I haven't seen anything over $30 yet on the store (That's the oxford dictionary by the way). Having said that, I haven't found a single game anywhere NEAR the complexity of most handheld games competition. I won't pay more than $5-$15 for a game that lets me tilt my phone around to move a ball through a maze. No matter how good the maze. It's simply not INTERESTING enough.
However, if a game did come out that would keep me interested for the length of time that I might get from a console, I would be more than happy to shell out a similar price.
I should point out though, that the main motivation of me buying an iPhone wasn't to play games on it, but rather some of the other functions, like email, the touchscreen, good maps.google and a few others. The games are a nice distraction - nothing more.
For the most part - in a game for example, you get a few levels with full features.
I haven't really come across a demo yet that didn't give me a good indication of whether the game was worth buying or avoiding.
There have been some annoying demos that did in fact turn me off wanting to even investigate further, but I would call that a poor demo. I don't expect all the levels in a demo, but I would expect a few levels with a good array of features to get a proper idea for the game.
If a company is serious about selling a product, they should be serious enough to put together a proper demo of the product that will make people WANT to buy it.
I worked on the Unreal series of games up to and including UT2004. I can tell you that the detail that was payed to demos and shows was JUST as high as the final product. The levels had to be perfect, the functionality there and most of all people had to ENJOY the things.
This is what most of the developers are doing. I have bought a ton of full priced games (that are $5-15) as well as a few apps after trying the free versions.
I think the article could be slightly amended to read: "Poor quality high priced apps won't sell for iPhone" or even "high priced apps without a demo version won't sell on the iPhone" and it would be much closer to the mark.
At that temp, quite a few metals have trouble too.
There are five metals on that list that have a melting point lower than the boiling point of water. What's your point? Yes, it's really, really hot at 1173K. I get that, but I don't get why that HAS to rule out ANY form of life that we haven't discovered, imagined or conceptualized.
I am not saying that life HAS to be there. My point is that I am not going to rule it out based on things I don't understand that well.
As for life in empty space? Give me a reason of why microbes could not exist on an asteroid floating in space?
I kind of doubt that there would be enough of anything other than gasses on the surface of a sun, no matter how cool, which would lead me to think that there weren't enough elements present to form even the most basic of organisms, but hey, maybe one day in the future we will, yet again, make a new discover that will show us we were wrong in the past. I mean, we seem to do that a lot with new discoveries. Backtracking on previous "understandings" that is.
Lets just not rule things out with too thick a marker eh?
I don't see any reason for the post above to be modded "Troll". You can't just call someone a troll because you disagree with them.
Side note: Re-educating them into lovers of America? LOL! Why not just leave them be and send them home to their families. They would probably appreciate that more than any re-education program about how good America is. Not to be rude to American's, but it's just not all about you all the time:)
Okay, to give you a little more info (in a hurried fashion, as I am at work and should be peeking into a database right now)...
Yes, they do discover most planets through the wobble method, however, when they have this information, they can actually start to look at the planets themselves. Once you know it's there, and you know the orbit, you can stop looking at the wobble and focus on where the planet is you see.
As for working out composition, it's called gas chromatography. Here is a brief history of it:)
Well, we found stuff living at the boiling point of water here. Why is it so hard to keep an open mind for the chance that something more exotic than we have found so far on this hunk of dirt exists out there?
As for hotter than the surface of some stars? That's a bit misleading. There are thermal vents on our planet hotter than the surface of some stars if you count the same stars you are referring to - and that's not exactly mind-blowing.
If you talk to the Russians, I reckon they would say they "eat 21 million German bank accounts for breakfast". I guess it's only news because it's a western European country.
It's not like getting valid numbers is hard these days though. I mean just google for tons of pages describing it and you can effectively have all the valid numbers you want.
Also, if they were to insist upon financial recompense, it would ordinarily be a sum that bore some relationship to economic reality, not the extortionate sums the RIAA lawyers demand of their victims.
But this is the exact problem here. Each individual offence/infringement is minute, but the sheer volume of what is going on is what is causing hurt to the companies. While putting forward a damages claim of a few dollars as might be representative of the actual ingringement might be more accurate, it would clearly not be any sort of deterrent. However, rather than putting up stupidly high sums of damages as the RIAA as currently chasing, might it not be a better "everybody wins" solution to make the ruling along the lines of $5 for damages plus ten hours community service as a punishment.
1) The damages are realistic. The RIAA gets it's money back for the customers.
2) The person downloading isn't financially crippled for life for downloading some music.
3) The ten hours of community service acts as a deterrent to make downloading music less appealing if you have to possibly give up a weekend working in a homeless persons hostel.
4) The charities/community services get a helping hand.
In my eyes, everybody wins.
While I agree with you in spirit, I don't think that this is plausible and here is why:
1) Do a competent technological investigation.
2) Hire competent and honorable lawyers.
This I do agree with. Totally.
3. If you obtain evidence of someone actually infringing your copyrights, send them a cease and desist letter and ask them to enter into an appropriate cease and desist agreement.
But infringing copyright through downloading songs off the net is basically stealing. That's akin to asking a corner shop owner to send a letter to a guy who pinched a packet of bubble gum to stop it.
If a proven infringer refuses to enter into a cease and desist agreement, sue him or her, in a lawsuit supported by actual evidence, based upon actual legal theories.
Again, given the tiny sums of money we are talking about per infrigement, it's almost impossible to sue for damages. I mean an award of $3 damages isn't really worth it is it?
I think that if the RIAA really wants their artists to prosper and make a lot of sales - which in turn makes a lot of money - they should be looking at getting small community service based sentences to people who steal music over the net. I am sure if a person gets caught stealing something like a packet of bubblegum from the corner store a few times, they will eventually get sent to community service for a few hours. The punishment both fits the crime and helps the community - and would make for a fantastic deterrent.
(Excuse the lack of proper structure, I am typing at work, and keep getting distracted from a train of thought)
The top section of your post makes some sense, but let me poke a few holes in some of the rest of it.
But they don't. Sure, people write new books and make new songs, but the incentive isn't really there anymore. Most copyrights nowadays are held by corporations, not people.
But corporations are also the ones spending the money. Going with your artistic guy writer guy. He wants to get his latest work published, who does he turn to? A corporation who thinks that his work is worth investing their business money into. As a part of the deal, he gets a certain amount of the cash from sales, but he is in effect selling his work to the company. It would be nice if he could just publish it for free and give the publisher a percentage for publishing, promoting and publicizing - but that world is filled with handbags full of rainbows and pink fairies with pots of gold.
Make it so only people - not corporations - can hold copyrights. Copyright cartels literally sit on their duffs getting fat off of royalties and trying to protect that money. It's the very definition of protection money and most of the time it doesn't even go to the artists themselves anyway.
See above point. I don't think that's realistic or productive.
Make fines in the case of restitution more reasonable. A fine of hundreds of dollars for a song that can be bought for $0.99 is patently ridiculous. Restitution on fair market value with a 200%-300% penalty would be more than fair enough to make up any money lost.
This would work if you got caught more often than not. If I tried to download a song worth $1 and got caught and had to pay $5 for it, and it happened again, and maybe again, I reckon I might start looking at buying said song. The problem here is that there is such a small chance of being caught. The fines don't seem fair or reasonable. Tell you what though, instead of fining for thousands of dollars, how about making the people who get caught serve a little community service? We can always do with more help at charities - and I am sure it would be a good way to get some PR back for the labels.
I am not saying the RIAA is going the right way about what they are doing, but I am also a bit of a realist.
Here is another totally random thought, I wonder how many people would be more inclined to buy music rather than downloading it if the musicians weren't making literally millions and millions of dollars off it in some cases? It's hard to cry "stop stealing my stuff" on behalf of an artist who makes apparent squillions of dollars with all the downloading anyhow? Wonder how many people would change their tune if the music industry started drying up due to not being profitable for artists.
Slashdot Mirror
Bravo! That's the funniest post I have read in a while :)
I am going to get QUANTUM on this.
No-one saw it happen, therefore it hasn't been decided. Therefore it may not have happened, but if we prove that it did indeed happen, we might show that it didn't happen.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
"to create fear, disorient ... and prolong capture shock." - Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, (then the) U.S. military commander in Iraq
give them a reason to hate us?
I haven't seen anything over $30 yet on the store (That's the oxford dictionary by the way). Having said that, I haven't found a single game anywhere NEAR the complexity of most handheld games competition. I won't pay more than $5-$15 for a game that lets me tilt my phone around to move a ball through a maze. No matter how good the maze. It's simply not INTERESTING enough.
However, if a game did come out that would keep me interested for the length of time that I might get from a console, I would be more than happy to shell out a similar price.
I should point out though, that the main motivation of me buying an iPhone wasn't to play games on it, but rather some of the other functions, like email, the touchscreen, good maps.google and a few others. The games are a nice distraction - nothing more.
For the most part - in a game for example, you get a few levels with full features.
I haven't really come across a demo yet that didn't give me a good indication of whether the game was worth buying or avoiding.
There have been some annoying demos that did in fact turn me off wanting to even investigate further, but I would call that a poor demo. I don't expect all the levels in a demo, but I would expect a few levels with a good array of features to get a proper idea for the game.
If a company is serious about selling a product, they should be serious enough to put together a proper demo of the product that will make people WANT to buy it.
I worked on the Unreal series of games up to and including UT2004. I can tell you that the detail that was payed to demos and shows was JUST as high as the final product. The levels had to be perfect, the functionality there and most of all people had to ENJOY the things.
This is what most of the developers are doing. I have bought a ton of full priced games (that are $5-15) as well as a few apps after trying the free versions.
I think the article could be slightly amended to read: "Poor quality high priced apps won't sell for iPhone" or even "high priced apps without a demo version won't sell on the iPhone" and it would be much closer to the mark.
At that temp, quite a few metals have trouble too.
There are five metals on that list that have a melting point lower than the boiling point of water. What's your point? Yes, it's really, really hot at 1173K. I get that, but I don't get why that HAS to rule out ANY form of life that we haven't discovered, imagined or conceptualized.
I am not saying that life HAS to be there. My point is that I am not going to rule it out based on things I don't understand that well.
As for life in empty space? Give me a reason of why microbes could not exist on an asteroid floating in space?
I kind of doubt that there would be enough of anything other than gasses on the surface of a sun, no matter how cool, which would lead me to think that there weren't enough elements present to form even the most basic of organisms, but hey, maybe one day in the future we will, yet again, make a new discover that will show us we were wrong in the past. I mean, we seem to do that a lot with new discoveries. Backtracking on previous "understandings" that is.
Lets just not rule things out with too thick a marker eh?
I don't see any reason for the post above to be modded "Troll". You can't just call someone a troll because you disagree with them.
:)
Side note: Re-educating them into lovers of America? LOL! Why not just leave them be and send them home to their families. They would probably appreciate that more than any re-education program about how good America is. Not to be rude to American's, but it's just not all about you all the time
Okay, to give you a little more info (in a hurried fashion, as I am at work and should be peeking into a database right now)...
:)
Yes, they do discover most planets through the wobble method, however, when they have this information, they can actually start to look at the planets themselves. Once you know it's there, and you know the orbit, you can stop looking at the wobble and focus on where the planet is you see.
As for working out composition, it's called gas chromatography. Here is a brief history of it
Well, we found stuff living at the boiling point of water here. Why is it so hard to keep an open mind for the chance that something more exotic than we have found so far on this hunk of dirt exists out there?
As for hotter than the surface of some stars? That's a bit misleading. There are thermal vents on our planet hotter than the surface of some stars if you count the same stars you are referring to - and that's not exactly mind-blowing.
In other news. Temperatures hotter than the surface of stars used in everyday dessert cooking!
Yaaarrrrr, there be only one Black Pearl and she belongs to Cap't Jack Sparrow!
I for one welcome our new 1173 Kelvin alien overlords!
Gosh, I don't even know what to mod that. Insightful? Funny? Interesting? Under-rated? They all fit the bill so nicely.
Yeah, we pay pretty much the same rate for SMS here. I believe it is 25cents a message on most Aussie carriers.
She knows how to deal with Meese.
She sends them packing to the country of Africa? :P
This is the definitive "Woah" right here.
As the only other Canadian on slashdot, I second these opinions
Quick! There's only two of them! Lets get em!
If you talk to the Russians, I reckon they would say they "eat 21 million German bank accounts for breakfast". I guess it's only news because it's a western European country.
It's not like getting valid numbers is hard these days though. I mean just google for tons of pages describing it and you can effectively have all the valid numbers you want.
Also, if they were to insist upon financial recompense, it would ordinarily be a sum that bore some relationship to economic reality, not the extortionate sums the RIAA lawyers demand of their victims.
But this is the exact problem here. Each individual offence/infringement is minute, but the sheer volume of what is going on is what is causing hurt to the companies. While putting forward a damages claim of a few dollars as might be representative of the actual ingringement might be more accurate, it would clearly not be any sort of deterrent. However, rather than putting up stupidly high sums of damages as the RIAA as currently chasing, might it not be a better "everybody wins" solution to make the ruling along the lines of $5 for damages plus ten hours community service as a punishment.
1) The damages are realistic. The RIAA gets it's money back for the customers.
2) The person downloading isn't financially crippled for life for downloading some music.
3) The ten hours of community service acts as a deterrent to make downloading music less appealing if you have to possibly give up a weekend working in a homeless persons hostel.
4) The charities/community services get a helping hand.
In my eyes, everybody wins.
1) Do a competent technological investigation.
2) Hire competent and honorable lawyers.
This I do agree with. Totally.
3. If you obtain evidence of someone actually infringing your copyrights, send them a cease and desist letter and ask them to enter into an appropriate cease and desist agreement.
But infringing copyright through downloading songs off the net is basically stealing. That's akin to asking a corner shop owner to send a letter to a guy who pinched a packet of bubble gum to stop it.
If a proven infringer refuses to enter into a cease and desist agreement, sue him or her, in a lawsuit supported by actual evidence, based upon actual legal theories.
Again, given the tiny sums of money we are talking about per infrigement, it's almost impossible to sue for damages. I mean an award of $3 damages isn't really worth it is it?
Interestingly, I don't see why this stuff bypasses the police departments. Here in Australia, iiNet (one of our major ISP's) did just that when they were sent notices. They forwarded the notices to the police who then promptly did nothing. Now they are have the crosshairs firmly on them by the RIAA.
I think that if the RIAA really wants their artists to prosper and make a lot of sales - which in turn makes a lot of money - they should be looking at getting small community service based sentences to people who steal music over the net. I am sure if a person gets caught stealing something like a packet of bubblegum from the corner store a few times, they will eventually get sent to community service for a few hours. The punishment both fits the crime and helps the community - and would make for a fantastic deterrent.
(Excuse the lack of proper structure, I am typing at work, and keep getting distracted from a train of thought)
But they don't. Sure, people write new books and make new songs, but the incentive isn't really there anymore. Most copyrights nowadays are held by corporations, not people.
But corporations are also the ones spending the money. Going with your artistic guy writer guy. He wants to get his latest work published, who does he turn to? A corporation who thinks that his work is worth investing their business money into. As a part of the deal, he gets a certain amount of the cash from sales, but he is in effect selling his work to the company. It would be nice if he could just publish it for free and give the publisher a percentage for publishing, promoting and publicizing - but that world is filled with handbags full of rainbows and pink fairies with pots of gold.
Make it so only people - not corporations - can hold copyrights. Copyright cartels literally sit on their duffs getting fat off of royalties and trying to protect that money. It's the very definition of protection money and most of the time it doesn't even go to the artists themselves anyway.
See above point. I don't think that's realistic or productive.
Make fines in the case of restitution more reasonable. A fine of hundreds of dollars for a song that can be bought for $0.99 is patently ridiculous. Restitution on fair market value with a 200%-300% penalty would be more than fair enough to make up any money lost.
This would work if you got caught more often than not. If I tried to download a song worth $1 and got caught and had to pay $5 for it, and it happened again, and maybe again, I reckon I might start looking at buying said song. The problem here is that there is such a small chance of being caught. The fines don't seem fair or reasonable. Tell you what though, instead of fining for thousands of dollars, how about making the people who get caught serve a little community service? We can always do with more help at charities - and I am sure it would be a good way to get some PR back for the labels.
I am not saying the RIAA is going the right way about what they are doing, but I am also a bit of a realist.
Here is another totally random thought, I wonder how many people would be more inclined to buy music rather than downloading it if the musicians weren't making literally millions and millions of dollars off it in some cases? It's hard to cry "stop stealing my stuff" on behalf of an artist who makes apparent squillions of dollars with all the downloading anyhow? Wonder how many people would change their tune if the music industry started drying up due to not being profitable for artists.
Yup, they liked what they saw in China, and thought... "Hey, I want me one of those firewall things...". Disgraceful.
42.
That's actual people that took up the Netnanny offer before you start going on about some answer to life, the universe and everything.
Hi there,
I appreciate the time you have taken to try to explain this, but I feel that I am still somewhat missing the basic concepts behind your post.
Would you be so kind as to repost this using a much more slashdot friend car analogy?
- Thanks in advance,
- Fluffeh.