According to the NYTimes the price raising was a mistake that only affected the UK Itunes store and nothing else. So of all the retailers and online shops only one was affected, Itunes, and only one region, the UK. If SONY wanted to capitalize on her death they likely would have raised prices across the board and just not the UK Itunes shop.
This probably was an error. Someone assigned to managing SONY's UK Itunes account royally fucked up by changing the price. And now it is basically a PR disaster because even though it likely was an accident SONY looks absolutely retarded. Someone will lose his or her job over this for sure.
Sadly I'm sure that some sneering fuck CEO from the RIAA or MAFIAA or SONY or whatever is sitting on his throne thinking of ways to capitalize on Whitney Houston's death without taking a major PR hit. They see her death as basically an opportunity for a lot of profit and a great time to line their pockets.
California taxpayers alone are on the hook for $21.8 billion for the fiscal year of 2011 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean really...we can't find $226 million from all national the taxpayers to fund cutting edge science? Science that will have an everyday impact on our lives once NASA's technology becomes consumer grade. But we can steal $21.8 billion in one year from one state alone to fund the wars? Wonderful.
The real priorities of NASA should be to inspire kids to learn math and science, expand our international relationships, and to get involved in Muslim outreach.
How can NASA inspire children to be interested in math and science when NASA is busy wasting time on some Mars mission? You think any kids in this country cared when we landed people on the moon? Or that the moon landings inspired hundreds if not thousands of hours of films and documentaries and books that have immeasurable academic value especially for kids.
And how does going to Mars help NASA with its international diplomatic goals? When is NASA going to become IASA? We need to reach out to other countries with diplomacy before we can reach out to Mars.
And there are no Muslims on Mars. (Or are there? I'm not really an expert). So that's not going to help with the critically important 'Muslim outreach' program that is a top priority for the space teams. How can we possibly waste the time and effort of our nation's leading scientists and minds when the Muslim world doesn't feel good about its contribution to science.
Let's face it. NASA is slowly, or rapidly, becoming nothing more than a political punching bag to beat up on during election cycles. The government floats the organization enough to keep a lot of people in work but won't commit to anything extraordinary like the Apollo Program. And every few years a politician gets to make some insane claim like 'Moon Bases' to excite people into getting out the vote.
Think about all of the things that Turing accomplished in his life. Father of computer science. Father of artificial intelligence. Incredible at code breaking. Brilliant mind with exceptional talent. A genius. Patriot during a time of war. Marathon runner. A leading and formidable intellect he had.
But all of that didn't matter because he was gay.
A pardon is a joke and whitewashes history and puts a false Disney happy ending on a horrific story. "Oh yeah he was persecuted for being gay but at least after he died he was pardoned so we get to feel good about ourselves". This isn't a fairytale. This is history and it wasn't nice.
He was one of the smartest people alive and majorly contributed to the war effort and none of it mattered against him being gay. And after being humiliated and stripped of his security clearance he killed himself. End of story.
And how did he kill himself? Just like Snow White was poisoned in his favorite fairytale. He poisoned an apple with cyanide and then took a big chunk out of it and waited to die. That's his fairytale ending. A pardon is an empty gesture in my opinion.
This really isn't that difficult. If someone is coming into your store and won't buy from you because they can get it elsewhere for cheaper then simply match the price. Either that or throw in some extras like a free upgrade or accessory if they purchase the item in question.
I would always go into Best Buy and look through their enormous DVD library. The shop near me had literally hundreds of foreign films and shows in stock all in region 1 including a gigantic aisle of only anime films and shows. I'd show up, take note of what looked good, and then go online and find them for literally 50-80% off in brand new sealed boxes.
One time I wanted to buy a DVD and said that if they matched the online price of another retailer that I would buy it. They declined and I ended up buying it online later that day.
It's really not that hard for consumers who have a choice. You might occasionally need the convenience of immediate purchase at retail. But most of the time people can wait to order consume electronics or entertainment media. So they'll sacrifice immediacy in order to save money.
I support fair use and I love that people don't need to wade through paperwork or legalize to use something in academia, analysis, or news reporting.
Fair use is supposed to cover things like media criticism, allowing the entertainment media to show clips of television shows or films and offer constructive commentary or feedback. "Two thumbs up for Tropic Thunder" or whatever. Movie and film reviews are not always protected under fair use though and there are many times that YouTube channels with film reviews are axed. The way to get around that is usually to only use clips from the freely released movie trailers. Big media love to use clips themselves but they'll hound sites or video sharing services that allow for clips coinciding with negative reviews.
Fair use is also to cover academia, using clips for education purposes. Showing someone how a movie scene is made or why this film's scene is iconic or so on. My professors didn't need to obtain a license from whatever studio to show a hundred of us Goodfellas and The Godfather in college.
Fair use is even for news reporting, if a story needs to have a clip that might be copyrighted, and it benefits the public and actively augments the news story, then invoking fair use to use a clip with copyright might be appropriate.
But claiming 'fair use' for a political advertisement? I don't think so. There is nothing academic going on here. There is nothing being analyzed for the sake of teaching. And there is no objective news reporting occurring here. This is simply a politician taking a reporter out of context to create an artificial soundbite to further his political career. It's pathetic. It is not fair use to use a news report in a political advertisement.
That being said the news media should not be surprised. Between the shows like 'Crossfire' or the O'Reilly Factor where nothing is objective at all, and newspapers endorsing presidential candidates, the news media has been directly involving themselves in politics for years by getting involved with ideological arguments and directly supporting candidates. Now the candidates have figured out that they can just bypass the media and use the reporters words, even out of context, to help them campaign.
I just can't wait until a reporter deliberately says "I support what X candidate is doing" because he has an under the table deal to be featured in a campaign. It would be easy. Get on TV, say you "want this candidate's ideas to become realized in America", and then wait until that clip is featured all over in a major campaign because of fair use. Most of these "journalists" and "reporters" care more about fame than objectivity so they'd likely welcome the attention.
This is not fair use but the media is so worthless and corrupt that it's almost impossible to care when a politician fucks them over. The media has been screwing America for the last decade with no sign of slowing down. Now if you'll excuse me I need to watch the fifth season of The Wire.
When the TSA or police use lots of racial or religious profiling everyone is up in arms about them being bigoted or prejudicial. "Oh they are picking on people who look Middle Eastern" "they are picking on the blacks" and whatnot. So then the TSA checks everyone without discriminating at all to show that anyone, even a senator, has to be groped and scanned before boarding because that senator might be a terrorist. Now the TSA has to be an equal opportunity offender and overly check people that are clearly not terrorists for the sake of equality.
Let the TSA and police do their jobs without having to equally check everyone so we can pretend like terrorists don't all come from the same background. Racial profiling might not be politically correct but it works. If we are wasting time harassing senators who are obviously not going to hijack the plane then something is obviously wrong.
Is a senator a terrorist? Probably not. This isn't Homeland. Are the five guys with brown skin with box cutters and mace terrorists? Yes probably but let's let them get on the plane. Is the family with grandparents smuggling cocaine in their luggage? Probably not. Are the two nervous looking Columbian men clinging to their luggage hiding something? Probably. But the TSA for political correctness has to check randomly and not profile which wastes time and resources and allows guys like Richard Reid the shoebomber into planes while Rand Paul is denied a flight.
Sony Corp. (SNE)â(TM)s Kazuo Hirai said the PlayStation 3 console will have a 10-year lifespan, suggesting the 5-year-old video-game player wonâ(TM)t be replaced soon.
How is it that Kaz Hirai says that Sony will be supporting the PS3 as a ten year device but they only allowed the consumers to purchase one year warranties when the system launched? If they truly believed that people would be playing the PS3 for another ten years they why is there no warranty that covers at least ten years of use? If I purchase a game system that is going to be supported with ten years of software then why is SONY not confident that the hardware will hold up for ten years and they'll only give out a warranty that covers one or two years at most?
Of course the reason why is obvious. Launch models are not built to last. The differences between launch models and slim models are numerous. I purchased five launch PS3s, the hardware backwards compatible models, and they all died within three years. The cost of replacing just one out of warranty PS3? Over $200 per unit through Sony customer support. When Sony is not even confident in the ten year life expectancy of a launch product it was rather aggravating when I read from the president that they saw the consoles as "ten year" products.
And honestly the hardware failures that I had with launch PS3s were basically pleasant experiences compared to the constant nightmares I had with 360 units suffering the RROD. MS sent me two refurbished launch 360s and those both red ringed within a week. It was another few weeks before people started to realize that something was very wrong with 360 hardware.
If MS and SONY are building these devices for 7-10 year cycles then allow us to purchase warranties to cover the devices during those years. Or at least lower the price of a repair. I cannot possibly see how it is respectful to a consumer to demand $200 to fix a defective unit on top of the $500-$600 that it cost at retail to initially purchase the device.
Exactly. The TSA reported that they collected $409,085.56 in loose change. But how much else went unreported that was left behind? The TSA guy making a low annual salary doesn't pocket half of the money that he finds, or splits it up with the rest of the low level employees? Or how many guys don't even bother to report any left behind change at all?
The manager doesn't skim a little off of the top before sending in the money to the TSA headquarters? If someone gives him $50 in change he might not pocket a few dollars here and there? The TSA headquarters president doesn't skim a little off of the top before reporting the money? You get $750K in coins and you might skim a thousand dollars worth, right? It's all part of the game.
This is like when a drug dealer gets pulled over with $15,000. By the time the money makes it to the station it magically becomes $10,000. Then somewhere in between the time the money enters the station and is processed it becomes $5,000. It's just part of the game.
Ticket prices are the same because the studios mandate the minimum price for ticket prices. The standard agreement between the theatres and the studios specifies what percentage of the gate receipts the studio gets (can be as high as 90% of the ticket price) and that the theatre will charge a certain minimum price.
Actually it can be as high as 100% in some instances. Some studios will want to keep 100% of ticket sales for the opening weekend of a major blockbuster and force the theaters to make their money selling foods and drinks. If you have something like a new comic book movie or major action film coming out then you know that the theaters will be packed tightly for that first week.
So for example, Star Wars Attack of the Clones and Star Wars Revenge of the Sith took 100% of ticket sales from my local theater during the first week according to the manager. Meaning they only made money off of candy and soda and nothing from ticket sales for the first week.
Terrorists use twitter? Okay. Easily solution. Just ban Twitter. I mean a smart person would let the 'terrorists' congregate in the open and see if any of those fish lead you to a bigger fish or a whale but I guess just shutting Twitter down saves a lot of paperwork.
Oh wait...terrorists are now using cell phones? Better ban those as well. Lord knows that we can't possibly let the terrorists win so we all must do our part and stop using phones of any kind. Anyone caught using a cell phone should of course be sent to Gitmo and heavily surfboarded*.
Hang on now...terrorists are driving cars and using roads? Better outlaw cars and remove the roads and transportation systems. If my memory serves me correctly, the 9/11 hijackers drove to the airport that day. So by security theater logic, if there were no roads or cars that....no 9/11 happens. If only we had been prepared that day.
Terrorists are using glasses to see better? Better create an entire government division to enforce and strictly regulate corrective vision dealers. Not a licensed corrective lens dealer? Then you're going to jail as part of the war on terror.
*alternate non-torture version of waterboarding where you just beat someone in the head with a surfboard.
Nothing made me wants to kill and harm people more than Stuntman. That game makes Demons Souls look like Super Mario Galaxy. I must have smashed hundreds if not thousands of Dualshock 2 controllers in frustration and anger at that game.
*overtake* *squeeze past truck* *hard right*
After five minutes of Stuntman I'd have to spend a good week playing milder and gentler games like Doom or Grand Theft Auto to calm myself down.
I went to one of the most 'wired' schools in the U.S. for undergraduate school. Strong wireless internet signal across the entire campus, a desktop computer and projector in every classroom, and lots of 'tech' classrooms where every desk was fully equipped with a desktop PC and LCD monitor. Not to mention multiple broadcast facilities, television studios, recording studios, and other professional grade media centers. Basically there were no shortages of distractions.
The 'tech' classrooms look like a modern LAN center and I took many courses in those rooms. If the course material and lectures were interesting enough then every single student paid attention. If we were having an open debate about a major political or social issue then everyone was paying attention and taking notes or waiting to make a comment. If the teacher was dropping important knowledge, immediately relevant to our lives then as students, or knowledge that would have an impact on us in the future all the way until our deaths, we would make sure to listen. We listened because those professors knew how to engage every single student, from the jocks and stoners to the academics to the kids who just coast from class to class, everyone paid attention to the best professors and everyone knew to take course from those professors.
There was one professor who had a reputation for teaching students everything that they wanted out of college, out of life. No matter what course you took from him he would give it his all and change how you saw the world. Critical skills necessary to succeed going forward in not just academics but socially, financially, things that last a lifetime, he would gift to students. Every type of student wanted this professor to teach them. No one text messaged in those classes, no one spent time on Facebook, no one was checking NFL scores, everyone was listening, absorbing, learning.
In the classes where the teacher wasn't engaging or interacting with the students, then students felt discouraged with college, and instead became easily distracted. They weren't learning anyways so they might as well have fun with their time. Though it was mostly the courses that I took that were 100 level where everyone would play internet games or peruse Facebook.
The point is that I had a professor who was able to engage all types of students at all levels of courses. It didn't matter if it was an elementary 100 level introductory course or a grueling 500 level graduate level course. He gave every course his best effort. And he made every student interested in the material. Of course that was one professor out of dozens that I had. The rest of the professors barely seemed interested in teaching. Many seemed disinterested in even being present in a room with other people.
The only 'ban' should be ensuring that laptops and cell phones don't make a lot of noise. If you type loudly, your phone keeps ringing, or you're listening to music, then you are creating noise pollution that directly interferes with the learning abilities of those around you. But banning laptops because the professors can't engage their students does nothing to address the fact that the students don't respect the professors enough to not stare at a screen rather than listen and learn.
Shouldn't the RIAA be going after them for reviewing CD burners that can burn copied files? Or for reviewing software that rips.mp3 files or.wav files from audio CDs? Shouldn't PC Mag and all other publications be restricted from writing about anything that could potentially assist in copying music?
Internet connected devices and faster internet speeds have made developers extremely lazy. In the days of the SNES for example, if you released a game with game breaking bugs and glitches, there was no way to patch them out and fix the game. You had to release games without game breaking bugs and glitches in them no matter what...unless you wanted a major recall on your hands. Games were tested overly and thoroughly to ensure that every single problem possible was discovered and dealt with before the game shipped to retail. How many game breaking errors are found on the best SNES games that people still play today? Does Super Mario suffer from any major issues that crash the game? Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Mega Man X? How many game saves have been corrupted in Chrono Trigger on the SNES? I've never seen it happen and CT has been out for a long time. Look at the best and more popular PS2 games that were released not that many years ago. Did Grand Theft Auto or Metal Gear Solid or Final Fantasy or Virtua Fighter on the PS2 suffer from game breaking glitches or bugs on the PS2? I've played thousands of hours of all of those games individually and never once did I have to hard reset my console because the game froze my hardware.
How many AAA titles on the SNES or PS2 were as horribly built as the games we play today that are designed for the current generation of consoles (and even current PC games)?
Why are so many titles not tested now? Easy. Developers can rush games out to market, without checking for bugs or glitches, and then patch them in later. Hell, think of the money and time they save on testing the product. Instead of having to test the games themselves, or hire specialists or outsource to a testing company, they let the masses discover the bugs and glitches on their own. It's turned into free labor essentially, game testing has. Instead of having to make sure that a game works before it ships out, the companies can release a broken game, and then patch it later. But only if enough people complain.
Anyone remember the Fallout 3 'The Pitt' DLC on the 360? When it first came out it was literally unplayable. You would reach the entrance to the area surrounding the steel plant and the game would crash no matter what. Bethesda had to pull the DLC from the marketplace and try again to release a working version. They didn't test the DLC before they released it. And a year later when they put the same DLC on the PS3 it was just as bug and glitch ridden. And yes I'm singling out the Fallout series for this example but it's not just the Fallout series that is guilty here.
And of course the gaming media won't say anything because they are slaves to the almighty advertising dollar. Look at scores for Fallout New Vegas and read the reviews where many reviewers simply mention the bugs and glitches in passing, as if they are nothing noticeable, and simply try to wash them away with phrases like "this is a MUST HAVE title".
I feel bad for the person who buys Fallout 3, an entirely single player game, for their console, because they like single player games, and they don't play online. Imagine spending the money on Fallout 3 and not being online connected and never getting the patch to fix this game. You basically can't game in this day and age without being connected to the internet so that you can patch your incomplete and bug filled retail games.
I can't wait to buy Fallout New Vega GOTY Edition in a few years. Hopefully Bethesda fixes the bugs by then.
This happened with sharks after Jaws and continues to this very day. The original author of Jaws, Peter Benchley, said that he regretted writing the novel and the creation of the film because it lead to the mass killing of so many species of sharks.
This is done to prevent someone sober from starting the car and then having someone drunk drive the car away. If you get someone else to start your car who is sober, and then halfway through your ride, while you are drunk, your car stops and forces you to prove you are sober, you cannot proceed from that point because you are drunk. You'd need someone sober in the car at that point to restart the car, and if someone is sober in the car, the odds are likely that that person will be the driver. It actually makes perfect sense.
All the fines were reduced by 10% because the companies co-operated with the probe. The crime was done in the name of money, profits. But the punishment, monetary, was reduced for cooperation. So basically what companies can learn from this is: price fix as much as possible, once caught cooperate as much as possible, then keep more of the profits from the price fixed products.
A 10th chip maker, Micron, was also part of the price-fixing cartel but escaped a fine in return for alerting the competition authorities. And if you blow in the competition you get to keep ALL of your price fixed profits. What kind of a system is this? Am I missing something here? How exactly are these companies being punished so that they won't do this again? Hell they are probably already learning from their mistakes and looking to secure another price fixing scam for the immediate future.
I used to work for ABC news and we never kept archive footage always accessible like you want. If we wanted something that was really old we'd have to dig it off a tape, an unplugged hard drive or powered off computer, or we'd have to find another news agency that had the footage and grab it off of a satellite feed. And this was a 24/7 TV news station responsible for national news programming where we would be tracking stories for years. If we didn't need a system where everything was instantly accessible then you needing it on an individual level might be overkill in my opinion.
I have over 30TB of music, movies, and raw video footage on my home computers and I just keep everything on separate external hard drives. I label the drives, back them up twice each, and then keep an index in a.txt file that is easy to search through. So if I want a 1080p backup copy of Blade Runner I search 'Blade Runner' in the.txt file and I see it's on drive 'A' and then I plug in drive 'A' and dump the movie on my computer. I also keep an external drive that has backups of every TV show I own on DVD. So if I want to watch The Wire then I plug in the external drive labeled 'TV' and have at it.
It's not individuals that paper companies need to worry about in my opinion. When you have major gaming companies like Ubisoft claiming that they will no longer manufacture paper game manuals then you have a the beginnings of a major problem (at least if you are in the paper industry or whatever). If large companies stop printing manuals for games, or software, or stop printing instruction manuals for home appliances, and so on, you'll probably see an even bigger impact on paper companies than the losses of individuals skimping on paper use.
I don't print anything anymore. I don't own a printer. And I doubt that I will need one in the future. However I buy tons of video games, movies, appliances, and so on. If those things stop coming with paper manuals and books then it will make a difference.
I download demos all of the time to evaluate games I am not familiar with. I downloaded the Virtual On demo for the X360 and then bought the game a week later. I download Super Puzzle Fighter HD for the PS3 based off of playing the demo. I hadn't even heard of Heavy Rain before I played the demo...and after playing the free demo from the PSN, I pre-ordered SIX fucking copies to give to my friends and coworkers when the game came out. Without demos I guarantee that I would own less than half as many games as I do now. Obviously for stuff like Metal Gear Solid 5 (upcoming PSP game), Monster Hunter Tri, and Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution, those games I didn't need demos for. I am familiar with past games in the series or trust those brands enough for a purchase sight unseen.
But if I can't get a demo for a game that I don't know about? Then I'll just pirate a full version and 'demo' that for a while going forward I guess. If I like the game then I'll buy it. If I don't then I'll probably delete it. Not having free demos probably won't hurt a resourceful nerd like me. I can find full versions on Us*n*t or just borrow a copy from one of my basement dwelling friends or coworkers and use them as demos.
This is only going to hurt more casual gamers who rely on free demos to sample products. Every week when the PSN or XBL update for new demos, or when Gamespot or whatever offers new PC demo downloads, that's just free marketing. A good demo spreads via word of mouth and becomes free promotion. No demo = no promotion, nothing to increase sales, no exposure.
So far this month we've heard that free demos are going away and that consoles will be a thing of the past. What other ridiculous and insane predictions do we have to look forward to the remainder of the year?
...that should be the title. Take the airbag that deploys in a car to help prevent death or serious injury in an automobile accident. The airbag is patented.
If a car company manufactures an automobile, and there is a production error, and the airbags aren't installed, they will be liable for damages suffered by the owners of the car who suffer accidents. They sold a product without standard safety features. It has nothing to do with a patent.
The Fermi Paradox is woefully shortsighted. How long did it take modern human to actually explore other continents and find out that other intelligent human life was inhabiting a large patch of land on the same planet? Decades? Centuries? Whatever the plural of millennium is? It took ages for humans to even begin to explore our own planet. Every single day we find new species, new small islands, new pockets of underwater ocean life.
If we can't even complete a species list on our own planet how can you expect us to even begin to understand how to contact (theoretical) alien life that exists far outside of our immediate grasp? For all we know a planet just like our earth, or earth in its infancy, or like our earth but at its end cycle, may exist somewhere out there. We have no way of being able to immediately confirm that though. And we might not ever.
Carl Sagan even wrote that we should be open to the idea that an intelligent life form could have visited earth in the past.
Slashdot Mirror
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/sony-says-price-of-2-whitney-houston-albums-was-raised-by-mistake/
According to the NYTimes the price raising was a mistake that only affected the UK Itunes store and nothing else. So of all the retailers and online shops only one was affected, Itunes, and only one region, the UK. If SONY wanted to capitalize on her death they likely would have raised prices across the board and just not the UK Itunes shop.
This probably was an error. Someone assigned to managing SONY's UK Itunes account royally fucked up by changing the price. And now it is basically a PR disaster because even though it likely was an accident SONY looks absolutely retarded. Someone will lose his or her job over this for sure.
Sadly I'm sure that some sneering fuck CEO from the RIAA or MAFIAA or SONY or whatever is sitting on his throne thinking of ways to capitalize on Whitney Houston's death without taking a major PR hit. They see her death as basically an opportunity for a lot of profit and a great time to line their pockets.
California taxpayers alone are on the hook for $21.8 billion for the fiscal year of 2011 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean really...we can't find $226 million from all national the taxpayers to fund cutting edge science? Science that will have an everyday impact on our lives once NASA's technology becomes consumer grade. But we can steal $21.8 billion in one year from one state alone to fund the wars? Wonderful.
The real priorities of NASA should be to inspire kids to learn math and science, expand our international relationships, and to get involved in Muslim outreach.
How can NASA inspire children to be interested in math and science when NASA is busy wasting time on some Mars mission? You think any kids in this country cared when we landed people on the moon? Or that the moon landings inspired hundreds if not thousands of hours of films and documentaries and books that have immeasurable academic value especially for kids.
And how does going to Mars help NASA with its international diplomatic goals? When is NASA going to become IASA? We need to reach out to other countries with diplomacy before we can reach out to Mars.
And there are no Muslims on Mars. (Or are there? I'm not really an expert). So that's not going to help with the critically important 'Muslim outreach' program that is a top priority for the space teams. How can we possibly waste the time and effort of our nation's leading scientists and minds when the Muslim world doesn't feel good about its contribution to science.
Let's face it. NASA is slowly, or rapidly, becoming nothing more than a political punching bag to beat up on during election cycles. The government floats the organization enough to keep a lot of people in work but won't commit to anything extraordinary like the Apollo Program. And every few years a politician gets to make some insane claim like 'Moon Bases' to excite people into getting out the vote.
Atheism isn't a religion.
"Dearly beloved....we are gathered here in the presence of math, gravity, evolution...."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_25w9CE73ak
Think about all of the things that Turing accomplished in his life. Father of computer science. Father of artificial intelligence. Incredible at code breaking. Brilliant mind with exceptional talent. A genius. Patriot during a time of war. Marathon runner. A leading and formidable intellect he had.
But all of that didn't matter because he was gay.
A pardon is a joke and whitewashes history and puts a false Disney happy ending on a horrific story. "Oh yeah he was persecuted for being gay but at least after he died he was pardoned so we get to feel good about ourselves". This isn't a fairytale. This is history and it wasn't nice.
He was one of the smartest people alive and majorly contributed to the war effort and none of it mattered against him being gay. And after being humiliated and stripped of his security clearance he killed himself. End of story.
And how did he kill himself? Just like Snow White was poisoned in his favorite fairytale. He poisoned an apple with cyanide and then took a big chunk out of it and waited to die. That's his fairytale ending. A pardon is an empty gesture in my opinion.
This really isn't that difficult. If someone is coming into your store and won't buy from you because they can get it elsewhere for cheaper then simply match the price. Either that or throw in some extras like a free upgrade or accessory if they purchase the item in question.
I would always go into Best Buy and look through their enormous DVD library. The shop near me had literally hundreds of foreign films and shows in stock all in region 1 including a gigantic aisle of only anime films and shows. I'd show up, take note of what looked good, and then go online and find them for literally 50-80% off in brand new sealed boxes.
One time I wanted to buy a DVD and said that if they matched the online price of another retailer that I would buy it. They declined and I ended up buying it online later that day.
It's really not that hard for consumers who have a choice. You might occasionally need the convenience of immediate purchase at retail. But most of the time people can wait to order consume electronics or entertainment media. So they'll sacrifice immediacy in order to save money.
I support fair use and I love that people don't need to wade through paperwork or legalize to use something in academia, analysis, or news reporting.
Fair use is supposed to cover things like media criticism, allowing the entertainment media to show clips of television shows or films and offer constructive commentary or feedback. "Two thumbs up for Tropic Thunder" or whatever. Movie and film reviews are not always protected under fair use though and there are many times that YouTube channels with film reviews are axed. The way to get around that is usually to only use clips from the freely released movie trailers. Big media love to use clips themselves but they'll hound sites or video sharing services that allow for clips coinciding with negative reviews.
Fair use is also to cover academia, using clips for education purposes. Showing someone how a movie scene is made or why this film's scene is iconic or so on. My professors didn't need to obtain a license from whatever studio to show a hundred of us Goodfellas and The Godfather in college.
Fair use is even for news reporting, if a story needs to have a clip that might be copyrighted, and it benefits the public and actively augments the news story, then invoking fair use to use a clip with copyright might be appropriate.
But claiming 'fair use' for a political advertisement? I don't think so. There is nothing academic going on here. There is nothing being analyzed for the sake of teaching. And there is no objective news reporting occurring here. This is simply a politician taking a reporter out of context to create an artificial soundbite to further his political career. It's pathetic. It is not fair use to use a news report in a political advertisement.
That being said the news media should not be surprised. Between the shows like 'Crossfire' or the O'Reilly Factor where nothing is objective at all, and newspapers endorsing presidential candidates, the news media has been directly involving themselves in politics for years by getting involved with ideological arguments and directly supporting candidates. Now the candidates have figured out that they can just bypass the media and use the reporters words, even out of context, to help them campaign.
I just can't wait until a reporter deliberately says "I support what X candidate is doing" because he has an under the table deal to be featured in a campaign. It would be easy. Get on TV, say you "want this candidate's ideas to become realized in America", and then wait until that clip is featured all over in a major campaign because of fair use. Most of these "journalists" and "reporters" care more about fame than objectivity so they'd likely welcome the attention.
This is not fair use but the media is so worthless and corrupt that it's almost impossible to care when a politician fucks them over. The media has been screwing America for the last decade with no sign of slowing down. Now if you'll excuse me I need to watch the fifth season of The Wire.
When the TSA or police use lots of racial or religious profiling everyone is up in arms about them being bigoted or prejudicial. "Oh they are picking on people who look Middle Eastern" "they are picking on the blacks" and whatnot. So then the TSA checks everyone without discriminating at all to show that anyone, even a senator, has to be groped and scanned before boarding because that senator might be a terrorist. Now the TSA has to be an equal opportunity offender and overly check people that are clearly not terrorists for the sake of equality.
Let the TSA and police do their jobs without having to equally check everyone so we can pretend like terrorists don't all come from the same background. Racial profiling might not be politically correct but it works. If we are wasting time harassing senators who are obviously not going to hijack the plane then something is obviously wrong.
Is a senator a terrorist? Probably not. This isn't Homeland. Are the five guys with brown skin with box cutters and mace terrorists? Yes probably but let's let them get on the plane. Is the family with grandparents smuggling cocaine in their luggage? Probably not. Are the two nervous looking Columbian men clinging to their luggage hiding something? Probably. But the TSA for political correctness has to check randomly and not profile which wastes time and resources and allows guys like Richard Reid the shoebomber into planes while Rand Paul is denied a flight.
Sony Corp. (SNE)â(TM)s Kazuo Hirai said the PlayStation 3 console will have a 10-year lifespan, suggesting the 5-year-old video-game player wonâ(TM)t be replaced soon.
How is it that Kaz Hirai says that Sony will be supporting the PS3 as a ten year device but they only allowed the consumers to purchase one year warranties when the system launched? If they truly believed that people would be playing the PS3 for another ten years they why is there no warranty that covers at least ten years of use? If I purchase a game system that is going to be supported with ten years of software then why is SONY not confident that the hardware will hold up for ten years and they'll only give out a warranty that covers one or two years at most?
Of course the reason why is obvious. Launch models are not built to last. The differences between launch models and slim models are numerous. I purchased five launch PS3s, the hardware backwards compatible models, and they all died within three years. The cost of replacing just one out of warranty PS3? Over $200 per unit through Sony customer support. When Sony is not even confident in the ten year life expectancy of a launch product it was rather aggravating when I read from the president that they saw the consoles as "ten year" products.
And honestly the hardware failures that I had with launch PS3s were basically pleasant experiences compared to the constant nightmares I had with 360 units suffering the RROD. MS sent me two refurbished launch 360s and those both red ringed within a week. It was another few weeks before people started to realize that something was very wrong with 360 hardware.
If MS and SONY are building these devices for 7-10 year cycles then allow us to purchase warranties to cover the devices during those years. Or at least lower the price of a repair. I cannot possibly see how it is respectful to a consumer to demand $200 to fix a defective unit on top of the $500-$600 that it cost at retail to initially purchase the device.
Exactly. The TSA reported that they collected $409,085.56 in loose change. But how much else went unreported that was left behind? The TSA guy making a low annual salary doesn't pocket half of the money that he finds, or splits it up with the rest of the low level employees? Or how many guys don't even bother to report any left behind change at all?
The manager doesn't skim a little off of the top before sending in the money to the TSA headquarters? If someone gives him $50 in change he might not pocket a few dollars here and there? The TSA headquarters president doesn't skim a little off of the top before reporting the money? You get $750K in coins and you might skim a thousand dollars worth, right? It's all part of the game.
This is like when a drug dealer gets pulled over with $15,000. By the time the money makes it to the station it magically becomes $10,000. Then somewhere in between the time the money enters the station and is processed it becomes $5,000. It's just part of the game.
Ticket prices are the same because the studios mandate the minimum price for ticket prices. The standard agreement between the theatres and the studios specifies what percentage of the gate receipts the studio gets (can be as high as 90% of the ticket price) and that the theatre will charge a certain minimum price.
Actually it can be as high as 100% in some instances. Some studios will want to keep 100% of ticket sales for the opening weekend of a major blockbuster and force the theaters to make their money selling foods and drinks. If you have something like a new comic book movie or major action film coming out then you know that the theaters will be packed tightly for that first week.
So for example, Star Wars Attack of the Clones and Star Wars Revenge of the Sith took 100% of ticket sales from my local theater during the first week according to the manager. Meaning they only made money off of candy and soda and nothing from ticket sales for the first week.
Terrorists use twitter? Okay. Easily solution. Just ban Twitter. I mean a smart person would let the 'terrorists' congregate in the open and see if any of those fish lead you to a bigger fish or a whale but I guess just shutting Twitter down saves a lot of paperwork.
Oh wait...terrorists are now using cell phones? Better ban those as well. Lord knows that we can't possibly let the terrorists win so we all must do our part and stop using phones of any kind. Anyone caught using a cell phone should of course be sent to Gitmo and heavily surfboarded*.
Hang on now...terrorists are driving cars and using roads? Better outlaw cars and remove the roads and transportation systems. If my memory serves me correctly, the 9/11 hijackers drove to the airport that day. So by security theater logic, if there were no roads or cars that....no 9/11 happens. If only we had been prepared that day.
Terrorists are using glasses to see better? Better create an entire government division to enforce and strictly regulate corrective vision dealers. Not a licensed corrective lens dealer? Then you're going to jail as part of the war on terror.
*alternate non-torture version of waterboarding where you just beat someone in the head with a surfboard.
Nothing made me wants to kill and harm people more than Stuntman. That game makes Demons Souls look like Super Mario Galaxy. I must have smashed hundreds if not thousands of Dualshock 2 controllers in frustration and anger at that game.
*overtake*
*squeeze past truck*
*hard right*
After five minutes of Stuntman I'd have to spend a good week playing milder and gentler games like Doom or Grand Theft Auto to calm myself down.
I went to one of the most 'wired' schools in the U.S. for undergraduate school. Strong wireless internet signal across the entire campus, a desktop computer and projector in every classroom, and lots of 'tech' classrooms where every desk was fully equipped with a desktop PC and LCD monitor. Not to mention multiple broadcast facilities, television studios, recording studios, and other professional grade media centers. Basically there were no shortages of distractions.
The 'tech' classrooms look like a modern LAN center and I took many courses in those rooms. If the course material and lectures were interesting enough then every single student paid attention. If we were having an open debate about a major political or social issue then everyone was paying attention and taking notes or waiting to make a comment. If the teacher was dropping important knowledge, immediately relevant to our lives then as students, or knowledge that would have an impact on us in the future all the way until our deaths, we would make sure to listen. We listened because those professors knew how to engage every single student, from the jocks and stoners to the academics to the kids who just coast from class to class, everyone paid attention to the best professors and everyone knew to take course from those professors.
There was one professor who had a reputation for teaching students everything that they wanted out of college, out of life. No matter what course you took from him he would give it his all and change how you saw the world. Critical skills necessary to succeed going forward in not just academics but socially, financially, things that last a lifetime, he would gift to students. Every type of student wanted this professor to teach them. No one text messaged in those classes, no one spent time on Facebook, no one was checking NFL scores, everyone was listening, absorbing, learning.
In the classes where the teacher wasn't engaging or interacting with the students, then students felt discouraged with college, and instead became easily distracted. They weren't learning anyways so they might as well have fun with their time. Though it was mostly the courses that I took that were 100 level where everyone would play internet games or peruse Facebook.
The point is that I had a professor who was able to engage all types of students at all levels of courses. It didn't matter if it was an elementary 100 level introductory course or a grueling 500 level graduate level course. He gave every course his best effort. And he made every student interested in the material. Of course that was one professor out of dozens that I had. The rest of the professors barely seemed interested in teaching. Many seemed disinterested in even being present in a room with other people.
The only 'ban' should be ensuring that laptops and cell phones don't make a lot of noise. If you type loudly, your phone keeps ringing, or you're listening to music, then you are creating noise pollution that directly interferes with the learning abilities of those around you. But banning laptops because the professors can't engage their students does nothing to address the fact that the students don't respect the professors enough to not stare at a screen rather than listen and learn.
Shouldn't the RIAA be going after them for reviewing CD burners that can burn copied files? Or for reviewing software that rips .mp3 files or .wav files from audio CDs? Shouldn't PC Mag and all other publications be restricted from writing about anything that could potentially assist in copying music?
Internet connected devices and faster internet speeds have made developers extremely lazy. In the days of the SNES for example, if you released a game with game breaking bugs and glitches, there was no way to patch them out and fix the game. You had to release games without game breaking bugs and glitches in them no matter what...unless you wanted a major recall on your hands. Games were tested overly and thoroughly to ensure that every single problem possible was discovered and dealt with before the game shipped to retail. How many game breaking errors are found on the best SNES games that people still play today? Does Super Mario suffer from any major issues that crash the game? Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Mega Man X? How many game saves have been corrupted in Chrono Trigger on the SNES? I've never seen it happen and CT has been out for a long time. Look at the best and more popular PS2 games that were released not that many years ago. Did Grand Theft Auto or Metal Gear Solid or Final Fantasy or Virtua Fighter on the PS2 suffer from game breaking glitches or bugs on the PS2? I've played thousands of hours of all of those games individually and never once did I have to hard reset my console because the game froze my hardware.
How many AAA titles on the SNES or PS2 were as horribly built as the games we play today that are designed for the current generation of consoles (and even current PC games)?
Why are so many titles not tested now? Easy. Developers can rush games out to market, without checking for bugs or glitches, and then patch them in later. Hell, think of the money and time they save on testing the product. Instead of having to test the games themselves, or hire specialists or outsource to a testing company, they let the masses discover the bugs and glitches on their own. It's turned into free labor essentially, game testing has. Instead of having to make sure that a game works before it ships out, the companies can release a broken game, and then patch it later. But only if enough people complain.
Anyone remember the Fallout 3 'The Pitt' DLC on the 360? When it first came out it was literally unplayable. You would reach the entrance to the area surrounding the steel plant and the game would crash no matter what. Bethesda had to pull the DLC from the marketplace and try again to release a working version. They didn't test the DLC before they released it. And a year later when they put the same DLC on the PS3 it was just as bug and glitch ridden. And yes I'm singling out the Fallout series for this example but it's not just the Fallout series that is guilty here.
And of course the gaming media won't say anything because they are slaves to the almighty advertising dollar. Look at scores for Fallout New Vegas and read the reviews where many reviewers simply mention the bugs and glitches in passing, as if they are nothing noticeable, and simply try to wash them away with phrases like "this is a MUST HAVE title".
I feel bad for the person who buys Fallout 3, an entirely single player game, for their console, because they like single player games, and they don't play online. Imagine spending the money on Fallout 3 and not being online connected and never getting the patch to fix this game. You basically can't game in this day and age without being connected to the internet so that you can patch your incomplete and bug filled retail games.
I can't wait to buy Fallout New Vega GOTY Edition in a few years. Hopefully Bethesda fixes the bugs by then.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/fl-endangered-sharks-20101030,0,1055241.story
This happened with sharks after Jaws and continues to this very day. The original author of Jaws, Peter Benchley, said that he regretted writing the novel and the creation of the film because it lead to the mass killing of so many species of sharks.
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/books/news/article_1097132.php/Peter_Benchley_author_of_Jaws_dies_at_65
This is done to prevent someone sober from starting the car and then having someone drunk drive the car away. If you get someone else to start your car who is sober, and then halfway through your ride, while you are drunk, your car stops and forces you to prove you are sober, you cannot proceed from that point because you are drunk. You'd need someone sober in the car at that point to restart the car, and if someone is sober in the car, the odds are likely that that person will be the driver. It actually makes perfect sense.
All the fines were reduced by 10% because the companies co-operated with the probe.
The crime was done in the name of money, profits. But the punishment, monetary, was reduced for cooperation. So basically what companies can learn from this is: price fix as much as possible, once caught cooperate as much as possible, then keep more of the profits from the price fixed products.
A 10th chip maker, Micron, was also part of the price-fixing cartel but escaped a fine in return for alerting the competition authorities.
And if you blow in the competition you get to keep ALL of your price fixed profits. What kind of a system is this? Am I missing something here? How exactly are these companies being punished so that they won't do this again? Hell they are probably already learning from their mistakes and looking to secure another price fixing scam for the immediate future.
I used to work for ABC news and we never kept archive footage always accessible like you want. If we wanted something that was really old we'd have to dig it off a tape, an unplugged hard drive or powered off computer, or we'd have to find another news agency that had the footage and grab it off of a satellite feed. And this was a 24/7 TV news station responsible for national news programming where we would be tracking stories for years. If we didn't need a system where everything was instantly accessible then you needing it on an individual level might be overkill in my opinion.
I have over 30TB of music, movies, and raw video footage on my home computers and I just keep everything on separate external hard drives. I label the drives, back them up twice each, and then keep an index in a .txt file that is easy to search through. So if I want a 1080p backup copy of Blade Runner I search 'Blade Runner' in the .txt file and I see it's on drive 'A' and then I plug in drive 'A' and dump the movie on my computer. I also keep an external drive that has backups of every TV show I own on DVD. So if I want to watch The Wire then I plug in the external drive labeled 'TV' and have at it.
It's not individuals that paper companies need to worry about in my opinion. When you have major gaming companies like Ubisoft claiming that they will no longer manufacture paper game manuals then you have a the beginnings of a major problem (at least if you are in the paper industry or whatever). If large companies stop printing manuals for games, or software, or stop printing instruction manuals for home appliances, and so on, you'll probably see an even bigger impact on paper companies than the losses of individuals skimping on paper use.
I don't print anything anymore. I don't own a printer. And I doubt that I will need one in the future. However I buy tons of video games, movies, appliances, and so on. If those things stop coming with paper manuals and books then it will make a difference.
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/108/1084491p1.html [Ubisoft Removing Paper Game Manuals]
I download demos all of the time to evaluate games I am not familiar with. I downloaded the Virtual On demo for the X360 and then bought the game a week later. I download Super Puzzle Fighter HD for the PS3 based off of playing the demo. I hadn't even heard of Heavy Rain before I played the demo...and after playing the free demo from the PSN, I pre-ordered SIX fucking copies to give to my friends and coworkers when the game came out. Without demos I guarantee that I would own less than half as many games as I do now. Obviously for stuff like Metal Gear Solid 5 (upcoming PSP game), Monster Hunter Tri, and Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution, those games I didn't need demos for. I am familiar with past games in the series or trust those brands enough for a purchase sight unseen.
But if I can't get a demo for a game that I don't know about? Then I'll just pirate a full version and 'demo' that for a while going forward I guess. If I like the game then I'll buy it. If I don't then I'll probably delete it. Not having free demos probably won't hurt a resourceful nerd like me. I can find full versions on Us*n*t or just borrow a copy from one of my basement dwelling friends or coworkers and use them as demos.
This is only going to hurt more casual gamers who rely on free demos to sample products. Every week when the PSN or XBL update for new demos, or when Gamespot or whatever offers new PC demo downloads, that's just free marketing. A good demo spreads via word of mouth and becomes free promotion. No demo = no promotion, nothing to increase sales, no exposure.
So far this month we've heard that free demos are going away and that consoles will be a thing of the past. What other ridiculous and insane predictions do we have to look forward to the remainder of the year?
...that should be the title. Take the airbag that deploys in a car to help prevent death or serious injury in an automobile accident. The airbag is patented.
http://www.patents.com/Airbag/US6866291/en-US/
If a car company manufactures an automobile, and there is a production error, and the airbags aren't installed, they will be liable for damages suffered by the owners of the car who suffer accidents. They sold a product without standard safety features. It has nothing to do with a patent.
The Fermi Paradox is woefully shortsighted. How long did it take modern human to actually explore other continents and find out that other intelligent human life was inhabiting a large patch of land on the same planet? Decades? Centuries? Whatever the plural of millennium is? It took ages for humans to even begin to explore our own planet. Every single day we find new species, new small islands, new pockets of underwater ocean life.
If we can't even complete a species list on our own planet how can you expect us to even begin to understand how to contact (theoretical) alien life that exists far outside of our immediate grasp? For all we know a planet just like our earth, or earth in its infancy, or like our earth but at its end cycle, may exist somewhere out there. We have no way of being able to immediately confirm that though. And we might not ever.
Carl Sagan even wrote that we should be open to the idea that an intelligent life form could have visited earth in the past.
url:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_astronauts#Scientific_consideration
Is SONY going to make my PS3 explode?