If you want to, say, play left 4 dead 2 online on xbox, can you just buy a copy from one of those asian nations and go online with them? Australia having it's own region codes, you couldn't play it on an australian xbox, and couldn't play an asian version on an asian console in australia?
Having explanations for how things work which do not require handwavium (e.g. "element zero") or magic (e.g. "biotics") and which follow the known laws of physics makes scifi "hard".
Are you sure that's the actual, commonly accepted standard for what qualifies as hard sci-fi, or are you just saying you personally don't consider it hard sci fi if any fictional technology is featured? The wiki page goes on to say "Neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy—instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful" so I'm not sure why element zero would necessarily move mass effect from hard science.
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both
Mass effect was pretty much the closest thing to "hard sci fi" I've encountered in a video game. A google search for "hard sci fi videogames" came up with two yahoo questions asking if there were any, mass effect was mentioned in both as the closest examples of it, so I'm not alone in that opinion. There was a scientific explanation in the codex (text that got added under a menu nearly every time you encountered something new in the game) that was surprisingly detailed. You could just play the game and ignore the explanations, but in case you were wondering why your guns overheated but never ran out of ammo in ME1, there was a detailed explanation you could pull up.
At the same time, they are very similar to star-trek. I would call it more like star-trek than "Rendezvous with Rama" by Artur C. Clarke (which wikipedia mentions as an example of hard sci fi).
I'm sure calling mass effect hard sci fi would annoy some slashdotters, but with an interactive media, there's different challenges. Perhaps "star trek level" is as hard sci-fi as anyone has figured out how to make a game and still call it a game, rather than an interactive science lesson.
Two issues. One: it would call attention to the issue. The public by and large isn't too concerned about privacy (see facebook.) Corporations would have an interest in not calling any more attention to it, whether they want to spy on you or whether they simply don't want spend any extra money ensuring the stuff they sell you could not spy on you. Participation in this privacy star program would be voluntary, and no one would participate in it.
Two: Those people that don't care about privacy (most of them), that won't be a selling point for them. Those of us who do care about it, are we going to trust a coalition of large corporations to not spy on us just because they put a sticker on their products saying as much? I certainly wouldn't. This certification would thus have no value to either group.
Ah, then I'm preaching to the choir, sorry for that. Anyway point wasn't about WHEN gamestop earned most of it's money, but on what. You're saying gamestop doesn't earn most of it's profit off of used games (be they release days or not)? Rwven's point was that without used games, gamestop isn't going to be in revolt for too long.
I was just a cashier for two months in Missouri seven years ago. They didn't have me calculate the profits the branch was making per night, maybe they open the books to cashiers or game advisers or whatever they call them now. But I disagree with your assessment that anyone working in any capacity at gamestop would know that release days were significantly more profitable than other days.
The problem there then would seem to lie with voting period, not the two party system or primaries. It sounds like you would have voted for him even if he had been one of a dozen different party candidates.
Obviously a multiparty system would not create better candidates out of thin air. If people we want to be elected to office are not running for election, it could be due to the two party system. However I believe what discourages good people from running for office is far more complex than that. Thus I think abandoning the system we have now would not produce candidates, and would not have changed the outcome in the 2008 election: we still would have voted for Obama.
Minor point: have you ever worked in retail? The guy likely wasn't as dense as you thought he was, he was likely following a script that Best Buy corporate offices tell him to follow, and would rather irritate you than get reprimanded for being reasonable. Retail employees are not paid to think, more often, they're paid to try to get YOU NOT TO THINK.
Which is another reason why I'm not sad that best buy is failing.
I worked at gamestop. It's not a matter of traffic or customer numbers, it's a matter of margins. On those midnight releases, a lot of money is flowing from the customer to gamestop. However, before that, a lot of money has flowed from Gamestop to whoever is publishing the game. Gamestop charges you $60 maybe for red dead redemption. They have though likely paid $55 for the disc to sell you, making $5.
Meanwhile, kids trickle in during the majority of the time gamestop is open. They might be selling back a game they bought two weeks before at $60. What gamestop gives them in return depends on supply and demand, but it's likely the kid will get $20 for it. Gamestop will then put the game on the shelf for $55. Someone else will come in for the new game, the cashier will point out that they can buy it gently used for 5 dollars less. Gamestop has therefore made $35.
Moreover, that $20 is store credit. If the kid wants cash, then gamestop will give him $16, so the kid takes the store credit. Which, of course, means that gamestop keeps that too. Gamestop essentially made $55 on reselling a two week old game.
This is no secret. Bring any game into a gamestop, ask how much you will receive for it in cash, and compare that to how much they're selling it for used. It's less than half of what they'll get. They do not make that profit margin on new game sales. The cashier or manager can and will confirm that.
They make very little comparatively on new game sales. In fact, the only reason they sell new games at all is to get people going into the store so they can advertise to them and try to get them bringing in lightly used games. Gamestop is, essentially, a used game store, despite the fact that they occasionally sell a lot of new games at once.
You expect this kind of craven, heavy-handed behavior out of a Samsung or a Panasonic, sure. But Sony?!?!?
I realize the last part of that was sarcasm, but was the first part also sarcasm, specifically Samsung? I've noticed an accumulation of electronics I own that have the samsung label on them (phone, computer). I've since started watching out for news about scummy behavior from them, but aside from some release date issues, I haven't come across anything that suggests they're acting like a large corporation. So before I give them any more money, I'd like to know if I'm supporting a regular evil corporation here or if I'm supporting an unusually evil corporation that is more effective at PR than sony.
I'm looking forward to the day when we use logic and reason instead of emotion and fear to get science funding and sway public opinion.
Well, here's hoping the public starts responding to logic and science more than fear and PR. Bees pollinate 90% of the worlds crops, and they're dying out quickly. We need to identify why they're failing and then protect them or else we're going to face big food shortages. I don't care how it gets sold to the public or even IF it gets sold to the public. It's fine with me if tax dollars are spent on this research without the public even realizing it, so long as that doesn't jeopardize it.
We could also work with the parties we have now, voting in the primaries for people who will be willing to change the special interests grasp on power. Of course that would require voting in the primaries, which we don't like to do, but I'd submit that if Americans are too lazy to vote in primaries, we're FAR too lazy to "call america done and start over."
But with the first past the post voting system we have, they really don't matter aside from those rare times when one of the two parties dies and another one rises to take its place.
We could change it of course. We could change the constitution, which would require forcing most members of congress to make a vote that would hurt both republican and democratic parties. So that's a technical possibility.
There are primaries you can vote in. I hear a lot of talk about Ron Paul, very little talk about "I registered as a republican and voted for Ron Paul in the primary." Then we talk about how the two candidates are virtually identical, seeing no connection between the two.
It doesn't clarify my major confusion, which is "Why the fuck does the school care so much about his twitter account, profanity, or the combination thereof?"
Ever wonder if rigid adherence to school authority and brutally forcing full compliance ends up producing an incompetent electorate who are unable to maintain a democracy?
I have, and the conclusion I came to was that it wasn't, since they were far more brutal in schools traditionally, yet democracy was maintained.
Maybe bringing back corporal punishment in schools, and making kids realize that authority figures are very often the enemy, would be better in some ways.
Does opera have anything similar to noscript though? Last time I checked, the closest thing was turning it off globally, then when you got to a website you trusted, you had to open a menu and enable all scripts on that site. No option to deny facebook, google, ads etc but allow script I actually want to work. All or nothing. Been about a year since I last investigated this.
The purpose of avoiding emotionally-laden terms on standardized tests is prevent biasing the test against any students.
Which is why you want to avoid mentions of rape, violence, dead parents, or other terms that are clearly emotional-laden to a good chunk of the students. How many students are bombing these tests because their parents are Jehovas Witnesses and they're upset about a mention of "birthday parties?" If the answer is "less than 1% of the students," then this is pointless regulation that only serves to justify someone's paycheck and increases the cost of the standardized tests.
Compared to what? How large consumer electronics organizations release hotly anticipated products? In the case of the Galaxy Nexus or whatever you want to call that phone, I was waiting around for months to hear a date announced. Then it was announced, then it was recanted. Then a worldwide release date that excluded the US was announced. I believe that may have been taken back and forth a time or two, don't really know since it didn't affect me. Then there was a US release date that was complicated by carriers dragging their heels or FCC approval or something like that. One could argue that's not directly samsung's fault, I'd argue it's about as much samsung's fault as this current issue is raspberry pi's fault. Anyway, by the time it finally got here, I had already bought a galaxy S2, which itself was rescheduled several times, once I believe due to some patent issues.
I hear some of you already typing that this is not a fair comparison, and you're right: samsung has much more money and employees to get it right.
Also, the street dates on the phones seem to have been announced very shortly before the actual release. I'm assuming that was so that they could squeeze a few more dollars out of people buying new, very soon to be obsolete phones. Which is bullshit.
Anyway, my point is this: On things I really want to buy, I want to have a rough estimate as to when I can buy it as early as possible. Delays are always going to happen, and I'd rather have a company push the date back and explain why it's delayed rather than the "Available next week. Actually no, it's not going to be, we'll tell you if and when it's happening. That is all."
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to, say, play left 4 dead 2 online on xbox, can you just buy a copy from one of those asian nations and go online with them? Australia having it's own region codes, you couldn't play it on an australian xbox, and couldn't play an asian version on an asian console in australia?
Having explanations for how things work which do not require handwavium (e.g. "element zero") or magic (e.g. "biotics") and which follow the known laws of physics makes scifi "hard".
Are you sure that's the actual, commonly accepted standard for what qualifies as hard sci-fi, or are you just saying you personally don't consider it hard sci fi if any fictional technology is featured? The wiki page goes on to say "Neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy—instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful" so I'm not sure why element zero would necessarily move mass effect from hard science.
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both
Mass effect was pretty much the closest thing to "hard sci fi" I've encountered in a video game. A google search for "hard sci fi videogames" came up with two yahoo questions asking if there were any, mass effect was mentioned in both as the closest examples of it, so I'm not alone in that opinion. There was a scientific explanation in the codex (text that got added under a menu nearly every time you encountered something new in the game) that was surprisingly detailed. You could just play the game and ignore the explanations, but in case you were wondering why your guns overheated but never ran out of ammo in ME1, there was a detailed explanation you could pull up.
At the same time, they are very similar to star-trek. I would call it more like star-trek than "Rendezvous with Rama" by Artur C. Clarke (which wikipedia mentions as an example of hard sci fi).
I'm sure calling mass effect hard sci fi would annoy some slashdotters, but with an interactive media, there's different challenges. Perhaps "star trek level" is as hard sci-fi as anyone has figured out how to make a game and still call it a game, rather than an interactive science lesson.
Two issues. One: it would call attention to the issue. The public by and large isn't too concerned about privacy (see facebook.) Corporations would have an interest in not calling any more attention to it, whether they want to spy on you or whether they simply don't want spend any extra money ensuring the stuff they sell you could not spy on you. Participation in this privacy star program would be voluntary, and no one would participate in it.
Two: Those people that don't care about privacy (most of them), that won't be a selling point for them. Those of us who do care about it, are we going to trust a coalition of large corporations to not spy on us just because they put a sticker on their products saying as much? I certainly wouldn't. This certification would thus have no value to either group.
Ah, then I'm preaching to the choir, sorry for that. Anyway point wasn't about WHEN gamestop earned most of it's money, but on what. You're saying gamestop doesn't earn most of it's profit off of used games (be they release days or not)? Rwven's point was that without used games, gamestop isn't going to be in revolt for too long.
I was just a cashier for two months in Missouri seven years ago. They didn't have me calculate the profits the branch was making per night, maybe they open the books to cashiers or game advisers or whatever they call them now. But I disagree with your assessment that anyone working in any capacity at gamestop would know that release days were significantly more profitable than other days.
The problem there then would seem to lie with voting period, not the two party system or primaries. It sounds like you would have voted for him even if he had been one of a dozen different party candidates.
Obviously a multiparty system would not create better candidates out of thin air. If people we want to be elected to office are not running for election, it could be due to the two party system. However I believe what discourages good people from running for office is far more complex than that. Thus I think abandoning the system we have now would not produce candidates, and would not have changed the outcome in the 2008 election: we still would have voted for Obama.
Minor point: have you ever worked in retail? The guy likely wasn't as dense as you thought he was, he was likely following a script that Best Buy corporate offices tell him to follow, and would rather irritate you than get reprimanded for being reasonable. Retail employees are not paid to think, more often, they're paid to try to get YOU NOT TO THINK.
Which is another reason why I'm not sad that best buy is failing.
I worked at gamestop. It's not a matter of traffic or customer numbers, it's a matter of margins. On those midnight releases, a lot of money is flowing from the customer to gamestop. However, before that, a lot of money has flowed from Gamestop to whoever is publishing the game. Gamestop charges you $60 maybe for red dead redemption. They have though likely paid $55 for the disc to sell you, making $5.
Meanwhile, kids trickle in during the majority of the time gamestop is open. They might be selling back a game they bought two weeks before at $60. What gamestop gives them in return depends on supply and demand, but it's likely the kid will get $20 for it. Gamestop will then put the game on the shelf for $55. Someone else will come in for the new game, the cashier will point out that they can buy it gently used for 5 dollars less. Gamestop has therefore made $35. Moreover, that $20 is store credit. If the kid wants cash, then gamestop will give him $16, so the kid takes the store credit. Which, of course, means that gamestop keeps that too. Gamestop essentially made $55 on reselling a two week old game.
This is no secret. Bring any game into a gamestop, ask how much you will receive for it in cash, and compare that to how much they're selling it for used. It's less than half of what they'll get. They do not make that profit margin on new game sales. The cashier or manager can and will confirm that.
They make very little comparatively on new game sales. In fact, the only reason they sell new games at all is to get people going into the store so they can advertise to them and try to get them bringing in lightly used games. Gamestop is, essentially, a used game store, despite the fact that they occasionally sell a lot of new games at once.
You expect this kind of craven, heavy-handed behavior out of a Samsung or a Panasonic, sure. But Sony?!?!?
I realize the last part of that was sarcasm, but was the first part also sarcasm, specifically Samsung? I've noticed an accumulation of electronics I own that have the samsung label on them (phone, computer). I've since started watching out for news about scummy behavior from them, but aside from some release date issues, I haven't come across anything that suggests they're acting like a large corporation. So before I give them any more money, I'd like to know if I'm supporting a regular evil corporation here or if I'm supporting an unusually evil corporation that is more effective at PR than sony.
I'm looking forward to the day when we use logic and reason instead of emotion and fear to get science funding and sway public opinion.
Well, here's hoping the public starts responding to logic and science more than fear and PR. Bees pollinate 90% of the worlds crops, and they're dying out quickly. We need to identify why they're failing and then protect them or else we're going to face big food shortages. I don't care how it gets sold to the public or even IF it gets sold to the public. It's fine with me if tax dollars are spent on this research without the public even realizing it, so long as that doesn't jeopardize it.
If that sounds elitist, sorry, but I really stopped valuing public opinion when public opinion said we should invade Iraq because Saddam had a bunch of WMD and was behind the 9/11 attacks.
We could also work with the parties we have now, voting in the primaries for people who will be willing to change the special interests grasp on power. Of course that would require voting in the primaries, which we don't like to do, but I'd submit that if Americans are too lazy to vote in primaries, we're FAR too lazy to "call america done and start over."
But with the first past the post voting system we have, they really don't matter aside from those rare times when one of the two parties dies and another one rises to take its place.
We could change it of course. We could change the constitution, which would require forcing most members of congress to make a vote that would hurt both republican and democratic parties. So that's a technical possibility.
There are primaries you can vote in. I hear a lot of talk about Ron Paul, very little talk about "I registered as a republican and voted for Ron Paul in the primary." Then we talk about how the two candidates are virtually identical, seeing no connection between the two.
It doesn't clarify my major confusion, which is "Why the fuck does the school care so much about his twitter account, profanity, or the combination thereof?"
Remember kids, wiretap laws and the Bill of Rights don't apply to you when you're enrolled in school.
Ain't it interesting how wiretap laws don't apply to students at home but do apply to cops on duty in public being videotaped?
Ever wonder if rigid adherence to school authority and brutally forcing full compliance ends up producing an incompetent electorate who are unable to maintain a democracy?
I have, and the conclusion I came to was that it wasn't, since they were far more brutal in schools traditionally, yet democracy was maintained.
Maybe bringing back corporal punishment in schools, and making kids realize that authority figures are very often the enemy, would be better in some ways.
(sigh) meant to hit continue editing to correct that bold type...
Is there a list of schools that are... uh... tolerance schools? Non-zero tolerance? Greater than zero tolerance?
Going to need to choose a school for my kid in a few years, would rather he not grow up being taught that a police state is acceptable.
They can enforce the rules as they wish
They should wish something less stupid then.
Been a while since you last went to the sun, eh?
I came late to the party. Why is this a feature that Ubuntu and Firefox brag about?
Does opera have anything similar to noscript though? Last time I checked, the closest thing was turning it off globally, then when you got to a website you trusted, you had to open a menu and enable all scripts on that site. No option to deny facebook, google, ads etc but allow script I actually want to work. All or nothing. Been about a year since I last investigated this.
The purpose of avoiding emotionally-laden terms on standardized tests is prevent biasing the test against any students.
Which is why you want to avoid mentions of rape, violence, dead parents, or other terms that are clearly emotional-laden to a good chunk of the students. How many students are bombing these tests because their parents are Jehovas Witnesses and they're upset about a mention of "birthday parties?" If the answer is "less than 1% of the students," then this is pointless regulation that only serves to justify someone's paycheck and increases the cost of the standardized tests.
No it makes sense. What sucks is I just bought an ipad 3, which is of course obsolete due to the ipad 5.
lets not pretend this has been handled well.
Compared to what? How large consumer electronics organizations release hotly anticipated products? In the case of the Galaxy Nexus or whatever you want to call that phone, I was waiting around for months to hear a date announced. Then it was announced, then it was recanted. Then a worldwide release date that excluded the US was announced. I believe that may have been taken back and forth a time or two, don't really know since it didn't affect me. Then there was a US release date that was complicated by carriers dragging their heels or FCC approval or something like that. One could argue that's not directly samsung's fault, I'd argue it's about as much samsung's fault as this current issue is raspberry pi's fault. Anyway, by the time it finally got here, I had already bought a galaxy S2, which itself was rescheduled several times, once I believe due to some patent issues.
I hear some of you already typing that this is not a fair comparison, and you're right: samsung has much more money and employees to get it right.
Also, the street dates on the phones seem to have been announced very shortly before the actual release. I'm assuming that was so that they could squeeze a few more dollars out of people buying new, very soon to be obsolete phones. Which is bullshit.
Anyway, my point is this: On things I really want to buy, I want to have a rough estimate as to when I can buy it as early as possible. Delays are always going to happen, and I'd rather have a company push the date back and explain why it's delayed rather than the "Available next week. Actually no, it's not going to be, we'll tell you if and when it's happening. That is all."