Studios can only make so many blockbusters at a time, and they'd prefer to invest in the ones that pay off *well*. A movie can make a profit and still be considered a failure if their goals are set high.
Commercial airlines do often use their excess capacity to carry US Postal Service loads, in fact that was how airline regulation in the US got started, as a means to provide guaranteed business to the airlines in exchange for faster mail (and development of a nascent industry).
As I recall, the original plan was to make 5 "oddysee" games in the Oddworld universe. The story was planned right from the get-go. Of course it's difficult to plan ahead for reception of the games, publisher enthusiasm, funding, etc, so what's happened thusfar is slightly different.
There's been spin-offs (Abe's Exodus) and maybe you can blame those of milking the franchise, but I don't think you can say that about the Oddworld series generally.
We're arguing semantics. Executive Orders have the full force of law unless the POTUS is not given such power. So they have force of law unless they don't. The Constitution or Congress has to bestow the appropriate authority on him (see the EPA, FCC, FTC, etc).
An Executive Agreement has the same force as an executive order, namely none. It instructs the White House on how to act in situations (telling the FBI which cases to pursue with what priorities, etc). In order to actually change the law you need to "implement" the treaty either as a regular law in all of Congress or as a capital-T Treaty in the Senate.
Bad form to reply twice, but I forgot something rather crucial: the "right" way to do this sort of thing might be to offer notifications over XMPP (i.e. Jabber/GTalk). Twitter used to do this, but they couldn't figure out how to keep it running under heavy load (which I would consider a fault on their end rather than as a fault in XMPP as a solution).
XMPP would at least take advantage of established listening pathways (GTalk clients on mobile devices, etc).
I agree, that's the "right" way to tackle subscription mechanisms. But it's not the right way to tackle Twitter, because one of the defining features of Twitter is its ubiquity: i.e. if you have a phone/computer/netbook that's capable of running any sort of app whatsoever, you can run a Twitter app. As it stands now to write a Twitter client, you need to be able to do HTTP GET requests (every modern environment provides for this) and parse XML. That's it. But to do pub/sub, you'd presumably need to be able to listen, which you can't always do, say, on a smartphone or a Firefox extension.
Except you couldn't find a black person who was in favor of racial segregation. Since this is a so-called "moral" issue, you can, however, find black folks who are in favor of anti-gay legislation.
Isn't that kind of a biased sample to pull from, since ending forced segregation was pretty much universally accepted to be something that would increase (or at the very least not decrease) black people's quality of life?
I think you do have a very good point however that this issue is different in that it's being framed as a so-called "moral" issue. And that plays very well to African American culture. If you look at the demographics on Prop 8, you'll find that the one segment of the population that voted almost unanimously for it were black females, who are far more likely to represent the "fine upstandin' church-goin' crowd" (not to be stereotypical about it, but there's fine line between that and representing the actual culture of a vast majority of a demographic).
There would still be scalpers to sell to people who decide at the last minute they want to attend but would be willing to pay a high-ish price. But that would be more acceptable to me, since everyone would at least have the same chance as the scalpers to buy tickets, rather than some random lottery or being well-connected to the seller.
You're really just pointing out one of the problems with so-called free market capitalism. The much touted advantage of capitalism is that market competition drives down prices, which increases utility to the consumer. But it doesn't work so well, as in the cases you suggested, where there is a limited supply of non-fungible goods.
That's *one* of the features of the market mechanism. Another important one (especially in this context) is that goods get into the hands of people who value them most.
In a perfect world everyone would have a large but finite supply of money, and then the question would be how best to allocate your funds to best achieve your desires. One person might be willing to pay what others consider an abnormally high price for tickets, while another might really like bowling, or racing yachts, or whatever. The situation with tickets is complicated by the fact that not everyone has the same income, and performing artists want to appeal to *all* their fans, not just the wealthy ones.
I will say, I understand Eleanor a bit. Sheet music seems amazingly expensive to me. Why does it cost $4 to download and print sheet music?
It's a different market. The characteristics of the people who are likely to need sheet music are different from those who are casually looking for music to listen to. They might represent a choir or orchestra group with an actual budget.
Pricing shouldn't be used as a justification for saying a given business is broken, it merely reflects the equilibrium of that business world.
You'll note there's never been a real push to enforce it and that is probalby because the state AGs are smart enough to know if it went to the federal courts, they'd likely get slapped down.
I'm sorry but your facts are wrong. The Use Tax has seen a Supreme Court ruling, and it was in its favor: Henneford v. Silas Mason Co. (300 US 577, 1937), approves provided the tax "is not so measured or conditioned as to hamper the transactions of interstate commerce or discriminate against them" (read as: as long as Use Tax isn't larger than the Sales Tax).
In an American company when something goes wrong, somebody is fired.
In a Japanese company when something goes wrong, they try to figure out what went wrong and fix it som that doesn't happen again. Explains why they overtook the US auto industry so quickly. Also explains how they turned a feudal agricultural economy in the 1800s to an industrial one only 30 years later.
In the Japanese culture, it's bad to say you can't do something, or to admit failure. Silly as it sounds to us westerners, instead of saying outright "no" they use mushy words to avoid losing face.
Are both those reads really right? It's possible that Japan perhaps has a healthy corptocracy where each organization takes care of its own, and maintains an unapologetic front externally. It does sound more likely to me, however, that Japan really isn't as tolerant of failure as most other developed countries.
the district court's dangerously expansive reading of the liability immunity provisions of the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] upsets the careful balance struck within the law and is bad public policy.
The courts' job isn't to make policy, it's to interpret and apply it! I'm tired of people criticizing court decisions because the outcome doesn't favor the party you're most sympathetic to. A decision is a good decision if it's consistent with the law, precedence, and is fairly and evenly applied.
RIAA, you want the law to say something other than what it does? Buy a senator, God knows you have enough money.
Or it's a press release to raise support among the general population, and when it comes time to implementation, more knowledgeable people will draft the actual language.
If you knowingly abet someone committing a crime, that itself is a crime. Similarly if a court judges that your actions knowingly aid the commission of an actionable civil tort, that itself can be actionable.
Yes, just like desegregation affects racists who are offended by blacks.
It does, and that demonstrates exactly what GP was saying. The civil rights bill passed in the 60s was enormously unpopular in some areas, and resulted quite a bit of political fallout for the Democratic party.
"Democracy is a sheep and two wolves voting on what's for dinner." --Franklin
This administration has been terrible. All this promise, and then failure.
That may be a small amount of hyperbole. The Obameter rates Obama still as having fulfilled more of his campaign promise than those he's broken or stalled on. Which isn't to say that "coming through on half the things you promise" is good enough (nor are all promises created equal), but I wouldn't call it failure.
But pointing out that information is available is itself a soundbite, perhaps one that people might buy, even though they might not be bothered to look up the information personally.
I have this problem a lot when trying to have political conversations with my friends. They get pointed the same news stories on the same topics by people close to them, so regardless of the context of the information inside, which they don't actually examine with a critical eye (if they read it at all!), they're led to believe that the consensus is what the headlines say. And good luck trying to hold a contrary, centrist, or nuanced opinion in that environment.
I don't mean to completely debase the car, it's surely sufficient for many people; I'm just saying you can get a lot more for that level of money. Sticker on Priuses within 30 miles of me right now *start* at $22k. For less than that I can get a fairly well-equipped Mazda 6, an Altima, or even Toyota's own Camry.
The Prius is also less performant than cars in its price-range, and has been selling sufficiently well for a number of years now. The car may suck, but if your marketing is good enough, it doesn't matter. Tesla seems to have very good PR right now, I'd say good enough for 5 years of profits before they have to re-address the tech, assuming their margins are high enough at current pricing.
Rule 1. of the internet, if you want it private... NOBODY post it.
FTFY. My control over others' behaviors is very low. Luckily I went to college before embarrassing your buddies publicly with drinking pictures became the status quo.
The Supreme Court is an exercise in "how can we get 5 of 9 ideologically polarized people to agree on something?" You know this decision was especially difficult to arrive at because (a) it says essentially nothing (b) for some of the bits of the nothing it said, one justice explicitly departed from the majority (giving us what, exactly? a plurality ruling on those points? or just no ruling at all?).
They punted because the jury was hung, in essence.
Depends on the town. I'm in Washington, DC and I despise the bar scene. But every now and then I travel to Chicago and it is a genuine joy to open conversations with random strangers (not for hookups). Maybe the people are friendly there, or the music's quieter, or I'm more bashful about making a bad impression where I live. But my friends agree, DC bars are for nights out with large groups, and that's about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Studios can only make so many blockbusters at a time, and they'd prefer to invest in the ones that pay off *well*. A movie can make a profit and still be considered a failure if their goals are set high.
Commercial airlines do often use their excess capacity to carry US Postal Service loads, in fact that was how airline regulation in the US got started, as a means to provide guaranteed business to the airlines in exchange for faster mail (and development of a nascent industry).
As I recall, the original plan was to make 5 "oddysee" games in the Oddworld universe. The story was planned right from the get-go. Of course it's difficult to plan ahead for reception of the games, publisher enthusiasm, funding, etc, so what's happened thusfar is slightly different.
There's been spin-offs (Abe's Exodus) and maybe you can blame those of milking the franchise, but I don't think you can say that about the Oddworld series generally.
We're arguing semantics. Executive Orders have the full force of law unless the POTUS is not given such power. So they have force of law unless they don't. The Constitution or Congress has to bestow the appropriate authority on him (see the EPA, FCC, FTC, etc).
An Executive Agreement has the same force as an executive order, namely none. It instructs the White House on how to act in situations (telling the FBI which cases to pursue with what priorities, etc). In order to actually change the law you need to "implement" the treaty either as a regular law in all of Congress or as a capital-T Treaty in the Senate.
Bad form to reply twice, but I forgot something rather crucial: the "right" way to do this sort of thing might be to offer notifications over XMPP (i.e. Jabber/GTalk). Twitter used to do this, but they couldn't figure out how to keep it running under heavy load (which I would consider a fault on their end rather than as a fault in XMPP as a solution).
XMPP would at least take advantage of established listening pathways (GTalk clients on mobile devices, etc).
I agree, that's the "right" way to tackle subscription mechanisms. But it's not the right way to tackle Twitter, because one of the defining features of Twitter is its ubiquity: i.e. if you have a phone/computer/netbook that's capable of running any sort of app whatsoever, you can run a Twitter app. As it stands now to write a Twitter client, you need to be able to do HTTP GET requests (every modern environment provides for this) and parse XML. That's it. But to do pub/sub, you'd presumably need to be able to listen, which you can't always do, say, on a smartphone or a Firefox extension.
Except you couldn't find a black person who was in favor of racial segregation. Since this is a so-called "moral" issue, you can, however, find black folks who are in favor of anti-gay legislation.
Isn't that kind of a biased sample to pull from, since ending forced segregation was pretty much universally accepted to be something that would increase (or at the very least not decrease) black people's quality of life?
I think you do have a very good point however that this issue is different in that it's being framed as a so-called "moral" issue. And that plays very well to African American culture. If you look at the demographics on Prop 8, you'll find that the one segment of the population that voted almost unanimously for it were black females, who are far more likely to represent the "fine upstandin' church-goin' crowd" (not to be stereotypical about it, but there's fine line between that and representing the actual culture of a vast majority of a demographic).
There would still be scalpers to sell to people who decide at the last minute they want to attend but would be willing to pay a high-ish price. But that would be more acceptable to me, since everyone would at least have the same chance as the scalpers to buy tickets, rather than some random lottery or being well-connected to the seller.
You're really just pointing out one of the problems with so-called free market capitalism. The much touted advantage of capitalism is that market competition drives down prices, which increases utility to the consumer. But it doesn't work so well, as in the cases you suggested, where there is a limited supply of non-fungible goods.
That's *one* of the features of the market mechanism. Another important one (especially in this context) is that goods get into the hands of people who value them most.
In a perfect world everyone would have a large but finite supply of money, and then the question would be how best to allocate your funds to best achieve your desires. One person might be willing to pay what others consider an abnormally high price for tickets, while another might really like bowling, or racing yachts, or whatever. The situation with tickets is complicated by the fact that not everyone has the same income, and performing artists want to appeal to *all* their fans, not just the wealthy ones.
I will say, I understand Eleanor a bit. Sheet music seems amazingly expensive to me. Why does it cost $4 to download and print sheet music?
It's a different market. The characteristics of the people who are likely to need sheet music are different from those who are casually looking for music to listen to. They might represent a choir or orchestra group with an actual budget.
Pricing shouldn't be used as a justification for saying a given business is broken, it merely reflects the equilibrium of that business world.
You'll note there's never been a real push to enforce it and that is probalby because the state AGs are smart enough to know if it went to the federal courts, they'd likely get slapped down.
I'm sorry but your facts are wrong. The Use Tax has seen a Supreme Court ruling, and it was in its favor: Henneford v. Silas Mason Co. (300 US 577, 1937), approves provided the tax "is not so measured or conditioned as to hamper the transactions of interstate commerce or discriminate against them" (read as: as long as Use Tax isn't larger than the Sales Tax).
In an American company when something goes wrong, somebody is fired.
In a Japanese company when something goes wrong, they try to figure out what went wrong and fix it som that doesn't happen again. Explains why they overtook the US auto industry so quickly. Also explains how they turned a feudal agricultural economy in the 1800s to an industrial one only 30 years later.
From another comment...
In the Japanese culture, it's bad to say you can't do something, or to admit failure. Silly as it sounds to us westerners, instead of saying outright "no" they use mushy words to avoid losing face.
Are both those reads really right? It's possible that Japan perhaps has a healthy corptocracy where each organization takes care of its own, and maintains an unapologetic front externally. It does sound more likely to me, however, that Japan really isn't as tolerant of failure as most other developed countries.
the district court's dangerously expansive reading of the liability immunity provisions of the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] upsets the careful balance struck within the law and is bad public policy.
The courts' job isn't to make policy, it's to interpret and apply it! I'm tired of people criticizing court decisions because the outcome doesn't favor the party you're most sympathetic to. A decision is a good decision if it's consistent with the law, precedence, and is fairly and evenly applied.
RIAA, you want the law to say something other than what it does? Buy a senator, God knows you have enough money.
Or it's a press release to raise support among the general population, and when it comes time to implementation, more knowledgeable people will draft the actual language.
If you knowingly abet someone committing a crime, that itself is a crime. Similarly if a court judges that your actions knowingly aid the commission of an actionable civil tort, that itself can be actionable.
Yes, just like desegregation affects racists who are offended by blacks.
It does, and that demonstrates exactly what GP was saying. The civil rights bill passed in the 60s was enormously unpopular in some areas, and resulted quite a bit of political fallout for the Democratic party.
"Democracy is a sheep and two wolves voting on what's for dinner." --Franklin
This administration has been terrible. All this promise, and then failure.
That may be a small amount of hyperbole. The Obameter rates Obama still as having fulfilled more of his campaign promise than those he's broken or stalled on. Which isn't to say that "coming through on half the things you promise" is good enough (nor are all promises created equal), but I wouldn't call it failure.
But pointing out that information is available is itself a soundbite, perhaps one that people might buy, even though they might not be bothered to look up the information personally.
I have this problem a lot when trying to have political conversations with my friends. They get pointed the same news stories on the same topics by people close to them, so regardless of the context of the information inside, which they don't actually examine with a critical eye (if they read it at all!), they're led to believe that the consensus is what the headlines say. And good luck trying to hold a contrary, centrist, or nuanced opinion in that environment.
I don't mean to completely debase the car, it's surely sufficient for many people; I'm just saying you can get a lot more for that level of money. Sticker on Priuses within 30 miles of me right now *start* at $22k. For less than that I can get a fairly well-equipped Mazda 6, an Altima, or even Toyota's own Camry.
The Prius is also less performant than cars in its price-range, and has been selling sufficiently well for a number of years now. The car may suck, but if your marketing is good enough, it doesn't matter. Tesla seems to have very good PR right now, I'd say good enough for 5 years of profits before they have to re-address the tech, assuming their margins are high enough at current pricing.
Rule 1. of the internet, if you want it private... NOBODY post it.
FTFY. My control over others' behaviors is very low. Luckily I went to college before embarrassing your buddies publicly with drinking pictures became the status quo.
Did you really think the iPhone *actually* costs $199?
Do you think AT+T *actually* pays $530 minus $199?
The Supreme Court is an exercise in "how can we get 5 of 9 ideologically polarized people to agree on something?" You know this decision was especially difficult to arrive at because (a) it says essentially nothing (b) for some of the bits of the nothing it said, one justice explicitly departed from the majority (giving us what, exactly? a plurality ruling on those points? or just no ruling at all?).
They punted because the jury was hung, in essence.
Depends on the town. I'm in Washington, DC and I despise the bar scene. But every now and then I travel to Chicago and it is a genuine joy to open conversations with random strangers (not for hookups). Maybe the people are friendly there, or the music's quieter, or I'm more bashful about making a bad impression where I live. But my friends agree, DC bars are for nights out with large groups, and that's about it.