Speak for yourself handsome, I left IT and am never going back. I still pop out the occasional bit of dogfood for my own personal use and amusement. Programming is so much more rewarding when you don't have PHB and his cronies demanding to know how far along you are.
Believe it or not, but some people derive more enjoyment from debugging and exploiting commercial games in fun and inventive ways than they do actually... you know... playing them.
Others enjoy creating super nerdy little console applets and shellscripts that play silly tunes, of any number of other fun, useless and silly things. Things like-- how fast can I determine if an arbitrary 4byte integer is prime or not? It serves no real useful purpose-- other than to see how well you can do it. There is no pressure; only the fun. And sometimes, later on down the road, you might come across somebody that needs a fast factoring routine, so you just hand them yours, smile, and know you made somebody's day.
That's the way I see programming, and the way I want to go about it. Software is made to make people's lives, in general, better. It shouldn't be used to rip people off.
I will be upfront and openly stated that I do not approve of the very notion of trying to "own" an idea. I think it's a collossally bad idea, and epically wasteful and backward to even attempt. I write software purely for my own amusement, in my own time, and I will be upfront and say it sucks balls, because it does. It isn't made to service somebody else. Its the happy stickfigure I keep on the frige. If somebody needs a generic stickfigure, sure, they can use a copy of mine all they want. If they replace it with a better one later, sure-- no sweat.
That's the way FOSS is supposed to work, and the way it is envisioned, and I like it. The current state of most FOSS projects are beyond my meger abilities, and so there is little I could contribute to them besides philosophical and public support.
However, I still make cute little diversions for my own pleasure, on my own time, and it is not related to my occupation. (Though I have made a few automation scripts for my employer off-the-cuff to solve some sticky problems here and there, but I did not make those for fun. I did them so I could do my job, and they are good enough for me.)
I do *NOT* want a programming job. I don't care how much money you throw at me. It stops being a pleasure, when you no longer do I for fun. It becomes a job, and I quickly lose my love for it. I like my current job doing aviation engineering. Programming and fiddling with computers and tech gadgets is a fun and educational hobby that helps keep me sharp. I don't want your job. You can keep it.
I believe you have read what I said backwards on purpose.
Either that, or your reading comprehension skills are abysmal.
In either case:
I said that if your app costs.99 dollars in wherever USA, and you sell it in kenya for the same.99 USD price, and enforce that price with DRM, you are breaking your own law.
I was pointing out that fair market prices for say, cupertino CA-- is not consistent with the fair market price for the exact same item in say, Enid OK. Using DRM, and other methods to halt second hand sales, and other shennanigans to prevent the 60$ MSRP being violated is exactly the same thing.
That's all well and good, but when the prevailing market pressures driving down the costs of software make your paycheck impossible, dont come crying to me.
From your own link, under the "Where it does not apply" section:
The Balassa-Samuelson effect argues that the law of one price is not applicable to all goods internationally, because some goods are not tradable. It argues that the consumption may be cheaper in some countries than others, because nontradables (especially land and labor) are cheaper in less developed countries. This can make a typical consumption basket cheaper in a less developed country, even if some goods in that basket have their prices equalized by international trade.
Also from that article, but as an interpretation, the one just before that one:
The law also need not apply if buyers have less than perfect information about where to find the lowest price. In this case, sellers face a tradeoff between the frequency and the profitability of their sales. That is, firms may be indifferent between posting a high price (thus selling infrequently, because most consumers will search for a lower one) and a low price (at which they will sell more often, but earn less profit per sale).
This is *EXACTLY* what I was talking about.
DRM such as regional protections and the prevention of the second hand marketplace actively prevents the customer from finding the good at the more appropriate price for their regional economy. While the US may have a single economy on paper (a single currency), the buying power of that currency varies wildly between the states. That means the first quoted exception rules the day; it is exactly the same as if you were doing business internationally. Where I work and live, 30k is an equitable wage. Where you live it is not.
This is no different than saying somebody in Kenya may earn only 2k a year. That 2k can get them all their food and supplies. Good luck doing that here. Their money buys more things for them, and they need less of it. Demanding a price tailored to OUR market, in THEIR market is unethical. We would be asking for over a week's wages at a 60$ price point. That's the point.
For you, a 60$ game is worth under 2hrs of work. For me, it is worth half a day. The difference in value is quite large. YOUR price is inflated for MY market. I want you to reduce your unit price, and sell more units, to match the actual VALUE of your product, when selling it in MY marketplace.
THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOUR QUOTED LAW SAYS TO DO. (See the second quote.)
Attempting to force me to pay the higher price by removing my options (preventing me from having knowledge of better alternatives) and by demanding that your work is worth more than my max price (your product is not sellable in my market) as the reason for it, is TWO out of the three excemptions to your vaunted "One price" law!
If I sa my truckload of dirt costs a million dollars, and the public at large says it is worth at most 100 dollars, there is no way I can equitably sell my dirt. If I sell it for 100 dollars, I feel cheated, and consider the deal unequitable.
The cost to dig the dirt is inconsequential. The dirt could very well have cost a million to dig. It could be fabulously rich in platinum ore or something. The problem is the perception of value. If your product is percieved as cheap, and of little value, you will never reach equity in the transaction.
There are two things you can do:
1) don't sell high value dirt for 100 dollars. (High value games at.99 dollars.)
2) seek to improve public awareness so that people understand what they are getting, and why your dirt costs what it does.
If the second option incurs a cost sufficient that it negates any tangible value in getting the equitable price accepted, (yes, you start selling dirt for a million dollars, but it costs trillions of dollars to educate the public, making the effort wasted) it is completely absurd economically as an option, leaving only option #1. Don't sell high value dirt. Only sell cheap dirt, because it is all people will buy.
See for instance, my own views about the price of games.
I am completely unwilling to pay 60$ for a game. I will pay at most 45$, and that had better be epic in every sense of the word. I hold this assertion because:
I make 30k a year. This tabulates out to around 14$/hr. The equivalent of my life I expend to obtain your game is a little over 4 hours. Is your game worth 4 hours of my life? I don't believe it is. You might invest weeks or months of your life to produce the game-- no contest. The question is if it is equitable to demand 4hrs of average time spent working from the thousands of people you intend to sell it to. For the sake of argument, let's say you spent 2 years making it. (Straight up, nonstop, no sleep, total time spent == 2 years.) That is 17520 hours. At 4hrs per person, you would break parity at 4380 buyers. The average game sells millions of copies. At 1 million copies sold, that is a markup over parity for your time of 228%. Unless there are that many people involved in production, (which I don't see in the end credits...) that price is inflated. Usually games with the 60$ price point sell far more than that. Usually in the 5 to 6 million unit numbers. That comes closer to 1140 people spending 2 years of their life, nonstop, to necessitate that price, assuming equal exchange of time.
It is important to note: I do not consider your time to be more expensive than mine. I am angineer, who works in avionics. I am simply not union. My wage is equitable. If your rate of pay is necessary to be higher to have a decent quality of living, it is because your local economy suffers higher inflation than mine. By demanding the higher price as a flat rate instead of pricing for the local economy, you are expecting me to accept a bad deal. End of discussion on that point. If you had developed it locally, you would not have been paid as much for your time. Demanding that I subsidize your higher cost of living is unethical. My money is worth more to me than yours is. I expect to compartively more for it than you do. If you make 60k a year (twice what I do) you should adjust the price you think your game is worth against my pay grade and local economy's buying power. You will find that for the same equity you are demanding, you would have to be paying 120$ for your games. If you feel this is unequitable, congratulations. Now you know why I won't pay that price.
I am happy to pay at most 45$. To your buying power, that is a 90$ game. It had better be damned good.
Blanket price setting sets unrealistic prices, which people refuse to pay. Their refusal to pay that price is NOT unreasonable. The blanket pricing *IS*.
I don't care that your home costs a million dollars. Your home here, of comparable v
I believe I pointed out that the problem was with percieved value. If you think your widget is worth X, but the public at large thinks it is worth Y, (where Y is any integer, including 0 and negative integers.) You will not sell very many widgets.
That is exactly what is happening here. Software devs say "My app costs X". The public says "your app is worth Y". The dev tries to force the issue with DRM, and the public tries to force the issue wit piracy. Equitable exchange is fundementally broken.
This is a tricky problem that invariably gets lots of people mad at me, but I will chip in anyway. Internet opinions are a dime a dozen. If you don't like mine, I'm sure you'll find one you do somewhere else.
That said:
I don't think programming, making music, or creating artworks are valid "occupations". Good hobbies, even hobbies that could produce income, but not "Occupations". I personally think that anyone who seriously thinks they can make a reliable income on any of those needs their heads examined. They all rely on apparent vaue instead of objective value. A car has objective value. The mona lisa has apparent value. There is no denying the vaue of even a horribly ugly car. There is tremendous argument over the value of an unpleasant painting. What is "ugly", and what is "unpleasant?" Those are both subjective metrics, which the artist or engineer do *NOT* have authoritative say in. That "ugly" car can have undeniable value: obscene top speeds, out of control fuel economy, long engine life, etc. Selling the ugly car might impact the price, but no-one will say that the ugly car is worthless. The mona lisa on the other hand: some people may say that it is trite; formulaic and boring in subject matter. Well rendered, but dull. There's any number of similar items created in art schools by very talented people. They end up in the dumpster regularly. That it was painted by davinci is its only outstanding value. (This is not my opinion, btw. Just a made up one that is plausble.) It is only valuable to a collector, of which the person is not one, and they therefore would not buy the painting at any price. No amount of shouting "It's a priceless masterpiece!" In their face will change their opinion, and the apparent value of the work.
The same is true for software. A developer could write pure gold in the form of completely typesafe, unexploitable loops and routines-- and still have people hate it because the app is "trite", or even "ugly." The app could be a developmer masterpiece that does radically amazing things, but people would treat it with indifference, because they don't see nor ascribe to such forms of value. This is why programming is not a valid choice as a primary occupation.
Throw into the mix that most software does not solve a particular, life changing need (outside of embedded systems and the like anyway..) and the objective value of a programmer becomes painfully and dismally clear. The plumber is more valuable for keeping the sewerage out of the kitchen, and for keeping the water running, tha a programmer making angry birds is, at leas on the objective sense.
Same with the garbage man, or the janitor.
Any time where there is a disagreement on value, regardless of type, if one party tries to force the hand of the other, an equitable arangement simply cannot be made. It's axiomatically impossible. If both parties cannot come to an equitable agreement on value, then there is no basis for an economy for that product. Not a sufficiently reliable one anyway. This is what happened to the buggywhip makers. They made a product that suddenly had no real purpose as people moved away from horse drawn vehicles. No amount of wrangling and price fixing will force the other side of the arrangement, the consumer, to purchase the product at the demanded price, and at the demanded volume. The market for the product ceased to exist. The same is true for software. If no one is willing to buy the software, no amount of wrangling, price fixing, and litigious behavior will make it a viable market. Arguing that this will result in the precipitous drop in availability of software, much like the historic drop in buggywhip manufacture, is tangental. The fact that the market cannot endure is still clearly evident.
If you are a professional software dev (IE, it is your primary source of income), my advice to you is to seek alternative employment with a consistently traded value for the labor, and do software as a potentially lucrative hobby on the side.
Same goes for music and art. You won't see me cry for your plight as the market abandons you, and you suffer a tech bubble burst. The writing is on the wall. Don't ignore it.
No silly, they are doing everything they can to PROMOTE filesharing! With the asymmetry reversed like that, one seeder can service 3 leechers at 100% saturation! Imagine the swarm size attainable!
Agreed. You should never use a "widely known" phrase as a password. You should only use the musical score and cadence progression from your favorite song instead. The association is unknown unless you blab it. The reason people frequently use a song reference straight up is because it is easy to remember. Creating a random and high entropy password that fits the progression of that easily remembered musical phrase has nearly the same recall capability as using the unsecure lyrical phrase.
The idea is to have the ease of generation, length, and recall capacity of the musical score-- coupled to the secure and cryptically high entropy passphrase. (There is no reason why this technique could not be used with a raw hexadecimal crypto key, for instance. Just say the numbers and letters as the new lyrics.)
I was merely pointing out this connection. You *can* make use of your favorite song in the creation of your verifiably strong passwords and crypto keys-- you just use "parody" lyrics that "jive" with the musical score. Your brain will readily store the association, and then you can easily remember the password.
The association has no externally observable connection to your mnemonic device, and is unique to the individual who created it as long as they don't blab it. This forces the attacker to resort to brute force. If your password is sufficiently long, and high enough entropy, the universe will end before he successfully guesses it.
I do agree though. The naked lyrics to a song are by no means secure. It would be easily attacked with a dictionary attack, and some meatspace intel about the target's interests. Its about as dumb as using a name, a birthdate, or other "personal" data chunk as a password. A clever data mining period followed by a dictionary attack, and you're pwned.
Thats a pretty long list of seemingly unrelated words. (the full list is even longer.)
To keep the list, I imagined it as a series of cryptic announcer panels in a cheesy comic book. Our hero first swings somewhere "About above" the perp, "across 'after'" (rather, a large neon sign which features the word), "against 'along'" (where he scales up some graffiti on a wall saying "cant we all just get along?") , "Among; Around" (where he disperses among a crowd to get around the security forces patrolling a media event), and then "Beyond, but by." where he sneaks backstage behind the perp-- beyond observation, but near his mark.
I can remember the narrative structure, and so can remember the list. It got really complicated for the full list of prepositions though, which has over 50 words in it.
A list of prepositions has structure that could be defeated, because all the words are prepositions, and it's alphabetized. However, the approach to storyboard the obscure and seemingly disjointed and unrelated words into a coherent mnemonic will (or at least should) work with any long list of random words if you are imaginative enough. It helps you move "nonsense" out of short term memory, where it cant possibly be preserved, and into long term memory.
Another technique is to remember cadence and pitch along with the written words, so its like reciting a poem or a song. Humans are wired for music, even if they cant sing or play an instrument. Musical progressions are powerful tools for remembering bits of data. The lyrics dont need to make sense. Take for instance, the false lyrics to hiakugojuichi, "TV says donuts are high in fat, kazoo. Found a hobo in my room. It's princess leiah, the yodel of life, now give my sweater back or I'll play the guitar." While certainly more cogent than say: "Apples blessed toroid gamma crochet gingerbread tickling robot coffee watermelon ex-wife lead emergence confound listless goofball union applesauce tuple bastard wood", and therefore easily attacked, the latter can also be recorded musically/ through cadence. Observe:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord {Apples blessed toroid gamma crochet gingerbread}
He has opened up the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored { tickling robot coffee watermelon ex-wife lead}
He has struck down all our en'mies and has put them to the sword, his truth goes marching on {emergence confound listless goofball union applesauce, tuple bastard wood}
Eg, if you "sing" the incoherent words to that tune, you will find the cadence matches sufficiently that you can then use the familiar song to recall the obscure list. Lyrics do not have to make sense, nor does the music have to be original, for the memory improving effect to manifest itself.
Good luck as an attacker, trying to figure out that my passphrases are all cadence based mnemonic devices. Even with the plaintext in front of you, if I didnt point it out, you would never see it.
That "Glory haleluja" one was 21 words long. You can remember a list of almost indefinite length, if you properly cross-link it with other information in subtle and obscure ways like this. I used that musical score, because it is frequently lobbed at people from a young age, and gets a strong hold, and is fairly commonly known.
Still, its pretty clear how music can help you remember even secure passwords.
While I *do* get the joke, (no whooshes please, it's lame.) This is a false comparison.
You are compairing "superfiscial plot with sparkly graphics: then" with "superfiscial plot and sparkly graphics:now".
You should compare "text mode story adventure game" against "pac man", and "massively open ended plot games, like daggerfall (mid 90s, has different, but related endings)" against "doom and duke nukem".
As the article points out, there aren't many of the "story focused" games out there. He pines for "text adventure" narrative depth, but with "wow, the boobies jiggle when she walks!" Hyper-realistic art assets of the gutless shooters and flat fantasy titles.
My mom is (was) a fine artist, and has macular degeneration. Is is almost completely blind in one eye, and half blind in the other.
It is my wish that IPS treatments for macular repair become a reality before she dies of old age, as it is something I would really like to get for her.
I'm not knocking the progress on this optical implant, but it only does greyscale and without serious microsurgery, will never stop being greyscale only. She needs full color to regain what she lost.
When they can regenerate damaged retinal tissue, I'm flying mom to Europe.
Its real simple to understand these asshats. They hold the following constellation of views:
1) if we have licensed it, it's ours. 2) if we comission it, it's ours. 3) if one of our signed artists makes it, it's ours. -- 4) if it's ours, we can do whatever we damned well want with it. 5) if somebody is violating their limited license for something that is ours, we will squash them.
The conflict between "You were given limited rights. You may not redistribute however you like!" And their internal rose-colored view of how copyright should work never crosses their mind. They operate under the blanket policy that anything they license, comission, or sponsor is their full, exclusive right. That's why they make stupid blunders like this, time and time again.
It's also why they get cranky like a baby with diaper rash when they can't get full, exclusive rights to properties. Their business model revolves around having exclusive power, and dolling out highly nonexclusive licenses.
To defeat them, we need to cut off their supply of exclusives. Nothing short of oxygen deprivation will kill them. Like ants though, they have quite a bit of bottled air, and will take decades to kill off.
Big media was a bad idea for everyone involved except government, middlemen, and lawyers.
Killing the purpose of FOIA, (a sunshine provision to enable a well informed public) because of the political equivelent of the paparatzi is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
We instituted FOIA because government needed more public oversight to keep it honest. If politics are getting involved, removing the oversight is the wrong direction. Placing limits on the number of FOIA requests an agency can request per quarter is superior as a remedy.
Yes, but I actually live there. Thats a normal year for me.:D
Secret is to stay out of the sun, and indoors. in a wild situation, such as "end of the world", you dig out the home under the sod layer, line it with the pensylvania limestone and scrubwood to hold it up, and live indoors during the summer. Basement temp is closer to 70 to 80F, which is livable.
That is actually somewhat comforting to know. Thank you.
However, that still doesnt address the dunbar's number issue. I would still contest that dense urban living is not psychologically healthy for humans, since humans are unable to integrate into a societal matrix of that scale, and will tend toward creating local structures within that larger one that they are better able to cope with. (Gangs, neighborhood affiliations, political affiliations, affluence clubs, etc.) This is deleterious as it causes sub-optimal planning, and promotes the use of stereotypes to help cope with the excess stimulation.
I am not willing to *Cause* a doomsday CME, but I do feel let down when a powerful one heads our way and it isnt life changing.
I have no such delusions that the skyfairy will abduct me in his 3-ring emerald green and fire belching UFO, A-la Ezekiel, nor that I will get to bang a bunch of inexperienced virgins who are there just because they are virgins, a la the koran. (really, why not just get a blowup doll if you dont care about the most important part of the woman, which is inside her skull? it's always faithful, it never spends your money, and it never has a headache. further, if for some reason you dont want it anymore, it doesnt demand alimony.)
an exact ratio is a poor measure for what is an appropriate fluoride ion intake on a per-person basis.
Different people absorb the ion at different rates upon ingestion, so while one person might develop fluorosis, another might not, despite having an identical diet, and an identical fluoride intake, even when measured in total milligram quantities.
This is part of why fluoridation of drinking water is often a hotbutton issue, even among health experts and chemists. On one hand, there is a clear health benefit for the impoverished, who are statistically less educated, and often have poorer oral hygiene regimens. For such persons and their children, oral fluorine solution in the drinking water may well be the only source of fluorine that they come into contact with, and may make up the major public health contribution against dental caries for those demographics.
It however, has a nastier side.
Fluoride ion is delivered as a salt, dissolved in the water. This salt concentration can be... Concentrated.. by such mundane activities as preparing a meal that makes use of tapwater, such as cooking pasta. As such, the dietary intake of fluoride ion delivered through the municipal water supply may inadvertantly hyper-fluoridate the population, despite being delivered at a low concentration. This is entirely before toothpastes and mouthwashes even enter the picture.
In other countries besides the US, the fluoride is added to milk products, or to salt, in an effort to combat this secondary exposure route that concentrates the ion prior to ingestion, but still have it readily applied to the lower income demographics of the society that would benefit most from the fluoridation.
Sadly, fluorosis does not present itself with a major identifiable diagnostic factor until AFTER it is too late. It simply is incorporated asymptotically into tooth and bone tissues as they develop, and if the concentrations in those tissues are too high, it manifests the disorder.
This incorporation into tooth structure prior to the eruption of primary teeth is known as the "Secondary" benefit of fluoride, and can only be obtained through ingestion, which is often hailed by fluoride promoters. Within certain tolerances, (which are dangerously close to the fluorosis inducing side of things) the incorporation of fluoride into the calcium phosphate complex that comprises tooth enamel makes it naturally harder and more resistant to abrasions and decay. A little fluoride is a good thing.
However, too much fluoride is a bad thing, ranging from "Merely cosmetic", to "pathalogical".
Many people have very mild to moderate tooth fluorosis and do not even know it. It causes white streaking and a pearlescent quality to tooth enamel in the mild to moderate case. Extreme fluorosis causes yellowed, mottled, deformed, and brittle teeth. In most cases, this mild fluorosis is benign, and is merely cosmetic. Your dentist wont even mention it.
If you are worried about your fluoride intake, I really dont know what to tell you, other than to suggest using bottled water instead of municipal tap water to prepare meals, if your water is fluoridated, and to avoid eating your toothpaste, and drinking fluoride containing mouthwashes.
Me too! I didnt think something as electronegative as fluorine could remain in elementally pure form outside of a constantly irradiated supernova gas cloud, or similarly exotic environment. it reacts with pretty much everything! (and when it does, it doesnt let go!)
a sociopath, by definition, cares only about themselves and does not feel any moral obligation to other people.
a sociopath would not ask the question to begin with. the very idea of wondering about the conflict would not occur to them, as there would be no conflict. to them, the destruction of the planet, as long as they stood to benefit from it in some way, could only be seen as beneficial.
this is not the case with my motivation for the desire, and my desire for input about the dichotomy of that desire.
In several posts in reply to this thread you have spoken authoritatively on subjects about people, and in particular about myself, which you could not possibly be privy to, and assert that it is a definitive assessment of fact, despite the clear and obvious untruth and faulted logic of such statements.
for your benefit, I will fully explain below why I hold such a curious outlook, which will clearly demonstrate that it is not a sociopathic outlook, but may well be a pathological one, hence my desire for feedback.
For starters, I do not believe that humans in large population centers is ideal for human psychological health, nor for long term viability of the species as a whole. I base this assessment on the following bits of information:
In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474Ã--1018 J=132,000 TWh) Solar irradiation of the earth is 1600 EJ (444,000 TWh). to be sustainable, a little more than 1/4 of the planet's total surface would have to be devoted exclusively to solar energy. Energy consumption has increased 10% since this measurement according to world experts. This is not a viable strategy, as it would cause irreversible climate changes, and the vast majority of the earth's surface is ocean.
If the entire world population of ~7bn humans was elevated to 1st world status in terms of energy consumption, the combined demand would exceed total solar irradiation by more than double. This means that current human populations, if they remain constant, and neither grow nor decline, requires an alarming proportion of that figure to live in abject poverty.
These figures, other than rate of solar irradiation, are not holding steady, however. Both are growing. Energy consumption has greatly exceeded population growth, and continues to grow alarmingly. Population shows a trend suggesting it will peak at around 9bn.
The point is that current human populations cannot be sustained at *current* levels of energy consumption and *current* levels of living quality, and that both consumption and population are still rising.
The situation is not tenable, even when you use magical fairydust power distribution systems that are 100% efficient, which is not possible in this universe.
When you factor that energy transport infrastructure is typically 50 years old or older, and in poor or mismanaged condition in many areas due to poor planning and maintenance, as well as "ideal" distribution inefficiency rates for ideal room temperature conductors, the situation only gets worse.
At the current projections, human demand for energy will exceed sensible sunlight and fossil fuel's total capacity, go bankrupt, and strand 9bn people in a hot, post-tipping point, artificially heated biosphere, with little to no hope of escaping that fate.
A miracle technology, like fusion energy, might enable the game to be played longer, but the math still shows that its a losing game, and current funding into the research for sustainable, useful fusion for power generation has been abysmally poor. Fusion energy is the ultimate "Hail Mary" saving pass. I wouldnt count on it.
A devastating CME, "right now", would curb world population considerably while fossil fuel deposits still exist. It would do so in an uncari
they will arrive at my door, to find i am not home.
the first thing i would do, is abandon my wood frame home. it poses to great a prospect for bands of looters and gangs of thugs. they are welcome to what is inside. i wont be home, and would not return.
Slashdot Mirror
That infringement is so endemic suggests some deeper lying pathology, if you ask me.
I would be interested in seeing a corellation chart between extensions of copyright, and prevalence of reported infringement.
Its just a hunch, but I'd almost bet money that they shadow each other very faithfully.
Speak for yourself handsome, I left IT and am never going back. I still pop out the occasional bit of dogfood for my own personal use and amusement. Programming is so much more rewarding when you don't have PHB and his cronies demanding to know how far along you are.
Believe it or not, but some people derive more enjoyment from debugging and exploiting commercial games in fun and inventive ways than they do actually... you know... playing them.
Others enjoy creating super nerdy little console applets and shellscripts that play silly tunes, of any number of other fun, useless and silly things. Things like-- how fast can I determine if an arbitrary 4byte integer is prime or not? It serves no real useful purpose-- other than to see how well you can do it. There is no pressure; only the fun. And sometimes, later on down the road, you might come across somebody that needs a fast factoring routine, so you just hand them yours, smile, and know you made somebody's day.
That's the way I see programming, and the way I want to go about it. Software is made to make people's lives, in general, better. It shouldn't be used to rip people off.
I will be upfront and openly stated that I do not approve of the very notion of trying to "own" an idea. I think it's a collossally bad idea, and epically wasteful and backward to even attempt. I write software purely for my own amusement, in my own time, and I will be upfront and say it sucks balls, because it does. It isn't made to service somebody else. Its the happy stickfigure I keep on the frige. If somebody needs a generic stickfigure, sure, they can use a copy of mine all they want. If they replace it with a better one later, sure-- no sweat.
That's the way FOSS is supposed to work, and the way it is envisioned, and I like it. The current state of most FOSS projects are beyond my meger abilities, and so there is little I could contribute to them besides philosophical and public support.
However, I still make cute little diversions for my own pleasure, on my own time, and it is not related to my occupation. (Though I have made a few automation scripts for my employer off-the-cuff to solve some sticky problems here and there, but I did not make those for fun. I did them so I could do my job, and they are good enough for me.)
I do *NOT* want a programming job. I don't care how much money you throw at me. It stops being a pleasure, when you no longer do I for fun. It becomes a job, and I quickly lose my love for it. I like my current job doing aviation engineering. Programming and fiddling with computers and tech gadgets is a fun and educational hobby that helps keep me sharp. I don't want your job. You can keep it.
I am sure I am not alone.
I believe you have read what I said backwards on purpose.
Either that, or your reading comprehension skills are abysmal.
In either case:
I said that if your app costs .99 dollars in wherever USA, and you sell it in kenya for the same .99 USD price, and enforce that price with DRM, you are breaking your own law.
I was pointing out that fair market prices for say, cupertino CA-- is not consistent with the fair market price for the exact same item in say, Enid OK. Using DRM, and other methods to halt second hand sales, and other shennanigans to prevent the 60$ MSRP being violated is exactly the same thing.
But whatever.
That's all well and good, but when the prevailing market pressures driving down the costs of software make your paycheck impossible, dont come crying to me.
THAT is what I was getting at.
From your own link, under the "Where it does not apply" section:
Also from that article, but as an interpretation, the one just before that one:
This is *EXACTLY* what I was talking about.
DRM such as regional protections and the prevention of the second hand marketplace actively prevents the customer from finding the good at the more appropriate price for their regional economy. While the US may have a single economy on paper (a single currency), the buying power of that currency varies wildly between the states. That means the first quoted exception rules the day; it is exactly the same as if you were doing business internationally. Where I work and live, 30k is an equitable wage. Where you live it is not.
This is no different than saying somebody in Kenya may earn only 2k a year. That 2k can get them all their food and supplies. Good luck doing that here. Their money buys more things for them, and they need less of it. Demanding a price tailored to OUR market, in THEIR market is unethical. We would be asking for over a week's wages at a 60$ price point. That's the point.
For you, a 60$ game is worth under 2hrs of work. For me, it is worth half a day. The difference in value is quite large. YOUR price is inflated for MY market. I want you to reduce your unit price, and sell more units, to match the actual VALUE of your product, when selling it in MY marketplace.
THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOUR QUOTED LAW SAYS TO DO. (See the second quote.)
Attempting to force me to pay the higher price by removing my options (preventing me from having knowledge of better alternatives) and by demanding that your work is worth more than my max price (your product is not sellable in my market) as the reason for it, is TWO out of the three excemptions to your vaunted "One price" law!
Sorry fucker, but I wont pay it.
Not a specific person; the public as a whole.
If I sa my truckload of dirt costs a million dollars, and the public at large says it is worth at most 100 dollars, there is no way I can equitably sell my dirt. If I sell it for 100 dollars, I feel cheated, and consider the deal unequitable.
The cost to dig the dirt is inconsequential. The dirt could very well have cost a million to dig. It could be fabulously rich in platinum ore or something. The problem is the perception of value. If your product is percieved as cheap, and of little value, you will never reach equity in the transaction.
There are two things you can do:
1) don't sell high value dirt for 100 dollars. (High value games at .99 dollars.)
2) seek to improve public awareness so that people understand what they are getting, and why your dirt costs what it does.
If the second option incurs a cost sufficient that it negates any tangible value in getting the equitable price accepted, (yes, you start selling dirt for a million dollars, but it costs trillions of dollars to educate the public, making the effort wasted) it is completely absurd economically as an option, leaving only option #1. Don't sell high value dirt. Only sell cheap dirt, because it is all people will buy.
See for instance, my own views about the price of games.
I am completely unwilling to pay 60$ for a game. I will pay at most 45$, and that had better be epic in every sense of the word. I hold this assertion because:
I make 30k a year. This tabulates out to around 14$/hr. The equivalent of my life I expend to obtain your game is a little over 4 hours. Is your game worth 4 hours of my life? I don't believe it is. You might invest weeks or months of your life to produce the game-- no contest. The question is if it is equitable to demand 4hrs of average time spent working from the thousands of people you intend to sell it to. For the sake of argument, let's say you spent 2 years making it. (Straight up, nonstop, no sleep, total time spent == 2 years.) That is 17520 hours. At 4hrs per person, you would break parity at 4380 buyers. The average game sells millions of copies. At 1 million copies sold, that is a markup over parity for your time of 228%. Unless there are that many people involved in production, (which I don't see in the end credits...) that price is inflated. Usually games with the 60$ price point sell far more than that. Usually in the 5 to 6 million unit numbers. That comes closer to 1140 people spending 2 years of their life, nonstop, to necessitate that price, assuming equal exchange of time.
It is important to note: I do not consider your time to be more expensive than mine. I am angineer, who works in avionics. I am simply not union. My wage is equitable. If your rate of pay is necessary to be higher to have a decent quality of living, it is because your local economy suffers higher inflation than mine. By demanding the higher price as a flat rate instead of pricing for the local economy, you are expecting me to accept a bad deal. End of discussion on that point. If you had developed it locally, you would not have been paid as much for your time. Demanding that I subsidize your higher cost of living is unethical. My money is worth more to me than yours is. I expect to compartively more for it than you do. If you make 60k a year (twice what I do) you should adjust the price you think your game is worth against my pay grade and local economy's buying power. You will find that for the same equity you are demanding, you would have to be paying 120$ for your games. If you feel this is unequitable, congratulations. Now you know why I won't pay that price.
I am happy to pay at most 45$. To your buying power, that is a 90$ game. It had better be damned good.
Blanket price setting sets unrealistic prices, which people refuse to pay. Their refusal to pay that price is NOT unreasonable. The blanket pricing *IS*.
I don't care that your home costs a million dollars. Your home here, of comparable v
I believe I pointed out that the problem was with percieved value. If you think your widget is worth X, but the public at large thinks it is worth Y, (where Y is any integer, including 0 and negative integers.) You will not sell very many widgets.
That is exactly what is happening here. Software devs say "My app costs X". The public says "your app is worth Y". The dev tries to force the issue with DRM, and the public tries to force the issue wit piracy. Equitable exchange is fundementally broken.
This is a tricky problem that invariably gets lots of people mad at me, but I will chip in anyway. Internet opinions are a dime a dozen. If you don't like mine, I'm sure you'll find one you do somewhere else.
That said:
I don't think programming, making music, or creating artworks are valid "occupations". Good hobbies, even hobbies that could produce income, but not "Occupations". I personally think that anyone who seriously thinks they can make a reliable income on any of those needs their heads examined. They all rely on apparent vaue instead of objective value. A car has objective value. The mona lisa has apparent value. There is no denying the vaue of even a horribly ugly car. There is tremendous argument over the value of an unpleasant painting. What is "ugly", and what is "unpleasant?" Those are both subjective metrics, which the artist or engineer do *NOT* have authoritative say in. That "ugly" car can have undeniable value: obscene top speeds, out of control fuel economy, long engine life, etc. Selling the ugly car might impact the price, but no-one will say that the ugly car is worthless. The mona lisa on the other hand: some people may say that it is trite; formulaic and boring in subject matter. Well rendered, but dull. There's any number of similar items created in art schools by very talented people. They end up in the dumpster regularly. That it was painted by davinci is its only outstanding value. (This is not my opinion, btw. Just a made up one that is plausble.) It is only valuable to a collector, of which the person is not one, and they therefore would not buy the painting at any price. No amount of shouting "It's a priceless masterpiece!" In their face will change their opinion, and the apparent value of the work.
The same is true for software. A developer could write pure gold in the form of completely typesafe, unexploitable loops and routines-- and still have people hate it because the app is "trite", or even "ugly." The app could be a developmer masterpiece that does radically amazing things, but people would treat it with indifference, because they don't see nor ascribe to such forms of value. This is why programming is not a valid choice as a primary occupation.
Throw into the mix that most software does not solve a particular, life changing need (outside of embedded systems and the like anyway..) and the objective value of a programmer becomes painfully and dismally clear. The plumber is more valuable for keeping the sewerage out of the kitchen, and for keeping the water running, tha a programmer making angry birds is, at leas on the objective sense.
Same with the garbage man, or the janitor.
Any time where there is a disagreement on value, regardless of type, if one party tries to force the hand of the other, an equitable arangement simply cannot be made. It's axiomatically impossible. If both parties cannot come to an equitable agreement on value, then there is no basis for an economy for that product. Not a sufficiently reliable one anyway. This is what happened to the buggywhip makers. They made a product that suddenly had no real purpose as people moved away from horse drawn vehicles. No amount of wrangling and price fixing will force the other side of the arrangement, the consumer, to purchase the product at the demanded price, and at the demanded volume. The market for the product ceased to exist. The same is true for software. If no one is willing to buy the software, no amount of wrangling, price fixing, and litigious behavior will make it a viable market. Arguing that this will result in the precipitous drop in availability of software, much like the historic drop in buggywhip manufacture, is tangental. The fact that the market cannot endure is still clearly evident.
If you are a professional software dev (IE, it is your primary source of income), my advice to you is to seek alternative employment with a consistently traded value for the labor, and do software as a potentially lucrative hobby on the side.
Same goes for music and art. You won't see me cry for your plight as the market abandons you, and you suffer a tech bubble burst. The writing is on the wall. Don't ignore it.
No silly, they are doing everything they can to PROMOTE filesharing! With the asymmetry reversed like that, one seeder can service 3 leechers at 100% saturation! Imagine the swarm size attainable!
Agreed. You should never use a "widely known" phrase as a password. You should only use the musical score and cadence progression from your favorite song instead. The association is unknown unless you blab it. The reason people frequently use a song reference straight up is because it is easy to remember. Creating a random and high entropy password that fits the progression of that easily remembered musical phrase has nearly the same recall capability as using the unsecure lyrical phrase.
The idea is to have the ease of generation, length, and recall capacity of the musical score-- coupled to the secure and cryptically high entropy passphrase. (There is no reason why this technique could not be used with a raw hexadecimal crypto key, for instance. Just say the numbers and letters as the new lyrics.)
I was merely pointing out this connection. You *can* make use of your favorite song in the creation of your verifiably strong passwords and crypto keys-- you just use "parody" lyrics that "jive" with the musical score. Your brain will readily store the association, and then you can easily remember the password.
The association has no externally observable connection to your mnemonic device, and is unique to the individual who created it as long as they don't blab it. This forces the attacker to resort to brute force. If your password is sufficiently long, and high enough entropy, the universe will end before he successfully guesses it.
I do agree though. The naked lyrics to a song are by no means secure. It would be easily attacked with a dictionary attack, and some meatspace intel about the target's interests. Its about as dumb as using a name, a birthdate, or other "personal" data chunk as a password. A clever data mining period followed by a dictionary attack, and you're pwned.
That's why you use a mnemonic device.
For instance, to remember my prepositions in school, I was confronted with the following list:
(wrote memory was the method dujour at my gradeschool)
about, above, across, after, against, along, among, around, beyond, but, by ...
Thats a pretty long list of seemingly unrelated words. (the full list is even longer.)
To keep the list, I imagined it as a series of cryptic announcer panels in a cheesy comic book. Our hero first swings somewhere "About above" the perp, "across 'after'" (rather, a large neon sign which features the word), "against 'along'" (where he scales up some graffiti on a wall saying "cant we all just get along?") , "Among; Around" (where he disperses among a crowd to get around the security forces patrolling a media event), and then "Beyond, but by." where he sneaks backstage behind the perp-- beyond observation, but near his mark.
I can remember the narrative structure, and so can remember the list. It got really complicated for the full list of prepositions though, which has over 50 words in it.
A list of prepositions has structure that could be defeated, because all the words are prepositions, and it's alphabetized. However, the approach to storyboard the obscure and seemingly disjointed and unrelated words into a coherent mnemonic will (or at least should) work with any long list of random words if you are imaginative enough. It helps you move "nonsense" out of short term memory, where it cant possibly be preserved, and into long term memory.
Another technique is to remember cadence and pitch along with the written words, so its like reciting a poem or a song. Humans are wired for music, even if they cant sing or play an instrument. Musical progressions are powerful tools for remembering bits of data. The lyrics dont need to make sense. Take for instance, the false lyrics to hiakugojuichi, "TV says donuts are high in fat, kazoo. Found a hobo in my room. It's princess leiah, the yodel of life, now give my sweater back or I'll play the guitar." While certainly more cogent than say: "Apples blessed toroid gamma crochet gingerbread tickling robot coffee watermelon ex-wife lead emergence confound listless goofball union applesauce tuple bastard wood", and therefore easily attacked, the latter can also be recorded musically/ through cadence. Observe:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord
{Apples blessed toroid gamma crochet gingerbread}
He has opened up the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored
{ tickling robot coffee watermelon ex-wife lead}
He has struck down all our en'mies and has put them to the sword, his truth goes marching on
{emergence confound listless goofball union applesauce, tuple bastard wood}
Eg, if you "sing" the incoherent words to that tune, you will find the cadence matches sufficiently that you can then use the familiar song to recall the obscure list. Lyrics do not have to make sense, nor does the music have to be original, for the memory improving effect to manifest itself.
Another, less contrived set of lyrics that seems incoherent are the actual lyrics to Lemon Demon's "Word disassociation"
Good luck as an attacker, trying to figure out that my passphrases are all cadence based mnemonic devices. Even with the plaintext in front of you, if I didnt point it out, you would never see it.
That "Glory haleluja" one was 21 words long. You can remember a list of almost indefinite length, if you properly cross-link it with other information in subtle and obscure ways like this. I used that musical score, because it is frequently lobbed at people from a young age, and gets a strong hold, and is fairly commonly known.
Still, its pretty clear how music can help you remember even secure passwords.
0x61660705
Or, an even more cleverly written "giggolos".
No one will ever spot it!
While I *do* get the joke, (no whooshes please, it's lame.) This is a false comparison.
You are compairing "superfiscial plot with sparkly graphics: then" with "superfiscial plot and sparkly graphics:now".
You should compare "text mode story adventure game" against "pac man", and "massively open ended plot games, like daggerfall (mid 90s, has different, but related endings)" against "doom and duke nukem".
As the article points out, there aren't many of the "story focused" games out there. He pines for "text adventure" narrative depth, but with "wow, the boobies jiggle when she walks!" Hyper-realistic art assets of the gutless shooters and flat fantasy titles.
He is lamenting that you don't see both together.
My mom is (was) a fine artist, and has macular degeneration. Is is almost completely blind in one eye, and half blind in the other.
It is my wish that IPS treatments for macular repair become a reality before she dies of old age, as it is something I would really like to get for her.
I'm not knocking the progress on this optical implant, but it only does greyscale and without serious microsurgery, will never stop being greyscale only. She needs full color to regain what she lost.
When they can regenerate damaged retinal tissue, I'm flying mom to Europe.
Its real simple to understand these asshats. They hold the following constellation of views:
1) if we have licensed it, it's ours.
2) if we comission it, it's ours.
3) if one of our signed artists makes it, it's ours.
--
4) if it's ours, we can do whatever we damned well want with it.
5) if somebody is violating their limited license for something that is ours, we will squash them.
The conflict between "You were given limited rights. You may not redistribute however you like!" And their internal rose-colored view of how copyright should work never crosses their mind. They operate under the blanket policy that anything they license, comission, or sponsor is their full, exclusive right. That's why they make stupid blunders like this, time and time again.
It's also why they get cranky like a baby with diaper rash when they can't get full, exclusive rights to properties. Their business model revolves around having exclusive power, and dolling out highly nonexclusive licenses.
To defeat them, we need to cut off their supply of exclusives. Nothing short of oxygen deprivation will kill them. Like ants though, they have quite a bit of bottled air, and will take decades to kill off.
Big media was a bad idea for everyone involved except government, middlemen, and lawyers.
Killing the purpose of FOIA, (a sunshine provision to enable a well informed public) because of the political equivelent of the paparatzi is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
We instituted FOIA because government needed more public oversight to keep it honest. If politics are getting involved, removing the oversight is the wrong direction. Placing limits on the number of FOIA requests an agency can request per quarter is superior as a remedy.
Yes, but I actually live there. Thats a normal year for me. :D
Secret is to stay out of the sun, and indoors. in a wild situation, such as "end of the world", you dig out the home under the sod layer, line it with the pensylvania limestone and scrubwood to hold it up, and live indoors during the summer. Basement temp is closer to 70 to 80F, which is livable.
That is actually somewhat comforting to know. Thank you.
However, that still doesnt address the dunbar's number issue. I would still contest that dense urban living is not psychologically healthy for humans, since humans are unable to integrate into a societal matrix of that scale, and will tend toward creating local structures within that larger one that they are better able to cope with. (Gangs, neighborhood affiliations, political affiliations, affluence clubs, etc.) This is deleterious as it causes sub-optimal planning, and promotes the use of stereotypes to help cope with the excess stimulation.
unfortunately, I have no such ambition.
I am not willing to *Cause* a doomsday CME, but I do feel let down when a powerful one heads our way and it isnt life changing.
I have no such delusions that the skyfairy will abduct me in his 3-ring emerald green and fire belching UFO, A-la Ezekiel, nor that I will get to bang a bunch of inexperienced virgins who are there just because they are virgins, a la the koran. (really, why not just get a blowup doll if you dont care about the most important part of the woman, which is inside her skull? it's always faithful, it never spends your money, and it never has a headache. further, if for some reason you dont want it anymore, it doesnt demand alimony.)
unlikely, she's a hoarder, and has roaches.
I am quite capable of cooking my own pancakes, in my clean kitchen. :D
an exact ratio is a poor measure for what is an appropriate fluoride ion intake on a per-person basis.
Different people absorb the ion at different rates upon ingestion, so while one person might develop fluorosis, another might not, despite having an identical diet, and an identical fluoride intake, even when measured in total milligram quantities.
This is part of why fluoridation of drinking water is often a hotbutton issue, even among health experts and chemists. On one hand, there is a clear health benefit for the impoverished, who are statistically less educated, and often have poorer oral hygiene regimens. For such persons and their children, oral fluorine solution in the drinking water may well be the only source of fluorine that they come into contact with, and may make up the major public health contribution against dental caries for those demographics.
It however, has a nastier side.
Fluoride ion is delivered as a salt, dissolved in the water. This salt concentration can be... Concentrated.. by such mundane activities as preparing a meal that makes use of tapwater, such as cooking pasta. As such, the dietary intake of fluoride ion delivered through the municipal water supply may inadvertantly hyper-fluoridate the population, despite being delivered at a low concentration. This is entirely before toothpastes and mouthwashes even enter the picture.
In other countries besides the US, the fluoride is added to milk products, or to salt, in an effort to combat this secondary exposure route that concentrates the ion prior to ingestion, but still have it readily applied to the lower income demographics of the society that would benefit most from the fluoridation.
Sadly, fluorosis does not present itself with a major identifiable diagnostic factor until AFTER it is too late. It simply is incorporated asymptotically into tooth and bone tissues as they develop, and if the concentrations in those tissues are too high, it manifests the disorder.
This incorporation into tooth structure prior to the eruption of primary teeth is known as the "Secondary" benefit of fluoride, and can only be obtained through ingestion, which is often hailed by fluoride promoters. Within certain tolerances, (which are dangerously close to the fluorosis inducing side of things) the incorporation of fluoride into the calcium phosphate complex that comprises tooth enamel makes it naturally harder and more resistant to abrasions and decay. A little fluoride is a good thing.
However, too much fluoride is a bad thing, ranging from "Merely cosmetic", to "pathalogical".
Many people have very mild to moderate tooth fluorosis and do not even know it. It causes white streaking and a pearlescent quality to tooth enamel in the mild to moderate case. Extreme fluorosis causes yellowed, mottled, deformed, and brittle teeth. In most cases, this mild fluorosis is benign, and is merely cosmetic. Your dentist wont even mention it.
If you are worried about your fluoride intake, I really dont know what to tell you, other than to suggest using bottled water instead of municipal tap water to prepare meals, if your water is fluoridated, and to avoid eating your toothpaste, and drinking fluoride containing mouthwashes.
*shrug*
Me too! I didnt think something as electronegative as fluorine could remain in elementally pure form outside of a constantly irradiated supernova gas cloud, or similarly exotic environment. it reacts with pretty much everything! (and when it does, it doesnt let go!)
incorrect.
a sociopath, by definition, cares only about themselves and does not feel any moral obligation to other people.
a sociopath would not ask the question to begin with. the very idea of wondering about the conflict would not occur to them, as there would be no conflict. to them, the destruction of the planet, as long as they stood to benefit from it in some way, could only be seen as beneficial.
this is not the case with my motivation for the desire, and my desire for input about the dichotomy of that desire.
In several posts in reply to this thread you have spoken authoritatively on subjects about people, and in particular about myself, which you could not possibly be privy to, and assert that it is a definitive assessment of fact, despite the clear and obvious untruth and faulted logic of such statements.
for your benefit, I will fully explain below why I hold such a curious outlook, which will clearly demonstrate that it is not a sociopathic outlook, but may well be a pathological one, hence my desire for feedback.
For starters, I do not believe that humans in large population centers is ideal for human psychological health, nor for long term viability of the species as a whole. I base this assessment on the following bits of information:
Humans cannot remember more than 200 to 300 people in a social complex.
In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474Ã--1018 J=132,000 TWh)
Solar irradiation of the earth is 1600 EJ (444,000 TWh). to be sustainable, a little more than 1/4 of the planet's total surface would have to be devoted exclusively to solar energy. Energy consumption has increased 10% since this measurement according to world experts. This is not a viable strategy, as it would cause irreversible climate changes, and the vast majority of the earth's surface is ocean.
(Citation)
If the entire world population of ~7bn humans was elevated to 1st world status in terms of energy consumption, the combined demand would exceed total solar irradiation by more than double. This means that current human populations, if they remain constant, and neither grow nor decline, requires an alarming proportion of that figure to live in abject poverty.
These figures, other than rate of solar irradiation, are not holding steady, however. Both are growing. Energy consumption has greatly exceeded population growth, and continues to grow alarmingly. Population shows a trend suggesting it will peak at around 9bn.
The point is that current human populations cannot be sustained at *current* levels of energy consumption and *current* levels of living quality, and that both consumption and population are still rising.
The situation is not tenable, even when you use magical fairydust power distribution systems that are 100% efficient, which is not possible in this universe.
When you factor that energy transport infrastructure is typically 50 years old or older, and in poor or mismanaged condition in many areas due to poor planning and maintenance, as well as "ideal" distribution inefficiency rates for ideal room temperature conductors, the situation only gets worse.
At the current projections, human demand for energy will exceed sensible sunlight and fossil fuel's total capacity, go bankrupt, and strand 9bn people in a hot, post-tipping point, artificially heated biosphere, with little to no hope of escaping that fate.
A miracle technology, like fusion energy, might enable the game to be played longer, but the math still shows that its a losing game, and current funding into the research for sustainable, useful fusion for power generation has been abysmally poor. Fusion energy is the ultimate "Hail Mary" saving pass. I wouldnt count on it.
A devastating CME, "right now", would curb world population considerably while fossil fuel deposits still exist. It would do so in an uncari
I can survive here.
I can survive there indefinitely.
hint: nobody lives there. nobody lives there for hundreds and hundreds of miles, and there are no roads.
they will arrive at my door, to find i am not home.
the first thing i would do, is abandon my wood frame home. it poses to great a prospect for bands of looters and gangs of thugs. they are welcome to what is inside. i wont be home, and would not return.