How many clues does it take to realize the writer of the article knows nothing about harddrives, and is just regurgitating the PR sheet the company wired to him?
From the article:
The drive has an UltraDMA/100 interface... The drive is also compatible with the earlier UltraDMA/66 and UltraDMA/33 interfaces, albeit with reduced performance.
Drives do not max out the UltraDMA/66 interface as it is, so the only time the/100 makes a difference is on burst, which rarely happens with a modern OS that keeps its own cache. UDMA/100 will be marketing hype for a couple more years
Maxtor didn't design the 531DX for use in applications--such as video editing--that demand the highest performance, but the company did include a 2MB data buffer.
The 2MB data buffer is also rather meaningless. It gives improvement, by about half a percent on average. The spindle speed and access time is much more important. Maxtor's spindle speed for this drive is a low 5400RPM and the access time is a high 15 milliseconds.
But the 531DX uses a technology called ramp loading that locks the head in a plastic latch above the drive surface when you power it down.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but IBM drives could be purchased with this feature for over a year. And they do it with more than one read/write head.
Let's not kid ourselves. This is a value market drive, and though it has a nice areal density (30GB a platter), it won't be fast, and even though it uses the IBM head rest technology, it won't be that much more reliable. Everything else is PR fluffery.
------------
After reading the legal papers, I would have to say the real problem Imagine is facing is not copyright infringment, but rather trademark infringement.
Nintendo does not have much of a case for copyright infringment (though I haven't seen the guide). In the past it has been very hard for game companies to sue guide publishers for using screenshots. This generally falls under fair use, much like Ebert showing clips of the movie he's reviewing. The pictures are generally considered supplemental to the content. Of course, if there isn't enough Imagine-generated content per copyrighted image, Imagine may be in more trouble than I thought.
Trademark infringement, however, looks like a win for Nintendo at first glance. You can't just use someone else's logo without permission to sell your merchandise... which is certainly the case if the logo is plastered on the cover of your book! Imagine already got into trouble with trademark infringment before when their Nintendo64 site first came online. There was no court case, but you can be damned sure they pulled the offending logos after Nintendo sent them a letter.
Bottom line is, I'd be pissed off if I made a strategy guide for my game, and someone made their own strategy guide, and gave it the same look and feel as mine! Trademark diluting is nasty stuff for companies, (ala bandaids, xeroxing, and kleenex) and I don't think courts look highly on businesses that appropriate someone else's trademark.
--------------- It is easy to control all that you see,
It will be interesting in the coming months to watch how the DOJ's currently 'obvious' position on Microsoft changes once Bush starts asserting power and the new order starts creeping in. It is easy to control all that you see,
Well, while I agree that the majority of games are for children, it has been shown that the age is being raised. Nintendo learned that the hard way when they targeted the N64 for children only and Sony ate them for lunch. So even if the games are still 'childish', they are selling to adults.
If you go back to the main story though, you'll see that there are really large numbers of adults playing video games. They're playing solitaire online. Or canasta online, or whatever. You can't get much money from these people yet, they're happy playing with things that are 'Free with Windows', but this is a trend that could change if something catches their eye.
As for artistic growth, well, it sounds like you're not a game developer, but don't take that the wrong way. The story is only one of many things that is the art. I have alluded that the game industry is growing like the movie industry, but games != movies, and the games that think they are movies have a tendency to flop. And some games do have decent plots anyway, but you won't find them in FPS games.
--------- It is easy to control all that you see,
These suits are another expression of the angst that this loss of cultural identity has caused, as the old certainties of Meiji Japan were ripped away and replaced by the values of the soulless Kairetsu. The warrior ethos and clothing of the Samurai has been replaced by the businesswear and corporate values of the salaryman.
What??? These suits are promotional items, used to sell BubbleGum Crisis anime in America, just like LucasArts has a bunch of StormTrooper suits that my friend got to use to promote Star Wars at his bookstore. Well, okay, it's true that Star Wars is based on the whole samurai ethic and Japanese movies, but that's not the point, which is that people like a show, especially when being convinced to buy something.
And the suits do, in fact, kick a lot of ass, for all their wear and tear.
P.S. A "Did you know" for all you true blue rpg geeks out there. The guy who is selling these, Robert Woodhead, is the creator of Wizardry. Bam!
---------- It is easy to control all that you see,
Jon is simply looking at the fact that the games industry now generates more revenue than the movie industry. This is important because it illuminates what is so apparent to us, but isn't to a big portion of America. Why he posts it here where we all know versus anywhere else is beyond me.
But to answer your statement, games are Not a niche market now. They don't fit in the kids demographic, or the weirdos(us) demographic, or whatever. Anybody these days now has a reason to play a videogame. This is evident from any the statistics you care to research.
So when you say that its all about 'a few pimply-faced geeks' you are either a troll or off your rocker, because this market is huge. This means as much culturally to us as much as movies mean to us culturally. No more, no less, which is where Katz and I disagree most likely.
One thing that I find really interesting is how games are becoming more and more like movies. I don't mean that playing games is like watching a movie, I'm talking about movie development. Games for the Playstation2 that look decent and play decent are requiring humungous development teams to bear fruit. People like Square decided to make their Final Fantasy movie because they already had so much money invested in tools that could be used for movie development, and the other tools that they acquire making the movie can now be used to make games! Even if the movie completely flops, they still win, because suddenly they have the world's best tech demo, and the machines to make the prettiest damn games you've ever seen.
This is synergy! If you want to know what the game industry will look like in 5-10 years, just review a history book of the movie industry.
---------------
It is easy to control all that you see,
It looks like a ray of hope for those defendants who live outside of California, and I don't mean to belittle their possible victory, but does this lend anything to our war against the MPAA?
It seems like the Californian defendants are still in bad shape, and if they lose, it will be just as bad as if ALL the defendants lost. The MPAA will use any victorious ruling they get to prosecute related issues in later cases, whether just one of us loses, or 100.
I'm still worried.
---------------- It is easy to control all that you see,
Why am I writing this when this topic has already been around for over three hours so there are too many posts for anyone to ever see this? Oh well, I guess I'm just a crazy fool.
It's not too easy to see what the shake down of these four consoles is going to be in two or three years, but here is a take on the strength and weakness of the four players, and what we can expect them to do.
Dreamcast: The first one out of the gate. Their strengths are their strong first-party support, a cheap system, and the first ones to establish an Internet presence. Their first-party is second only to Shigeru Miyamoto. Their system will be the cheapest of all systems, cheaper than the GameCube, and may be as cheap as the GameBoy advance. Everything they shipped shipped Internet-ready, and even though it took a year, the software now uses it.
Their weaknesses will prove overwhelming, however. Their hardware, to put it bluntly, is maxed out. This means that there will only be less, not more, support to this system in the years to come. It's Internet support is crippled by the lack of a hard-drive. This is not a big deal this year, but the next machines will have this support, and it will be very very important. And the final nail is that the system has already lost in Japan, to the PS2, which doesn't even have a fistful of good games yet. Let's get to that now, shall we...
Playstation 2:Let's start with the weaknesses. It is almost impossible to program for right now, requiring a massive development team and gifted coders. This is resulting in a stunning mediocrity of released games. This will NOT change in the near future. Sony is losing money because Japan is more interested in it's DVD capabilities which is crippling its DVD player sales. Sony loses money on the hardware, and is not making it back in software. It has no harddrive or internet connection. Oops. Noone buys peripherals that are over $50. It's been proven in the marketplace. If they want to establish an Internet presence, these devices will have to be sold at a loss (do the losses ever stop for Sony?). Moving on to the strengths, they have what noone else has, and may never have this generation: the most consoles sold. They win if they continue to throw money at their problem. Accept the losses for another whole year, give away harddrives and ethernet connections, and finally people will have the software developed to make great games, and everyone will own a PS2 and will buy said games. This is their only way to win.
X-box:This is getting entirely too long, so I will shorten my entries on these last two consoles. The weaknesses of the X-Box is that they have horrible 1st party support, and no presence in a saturated market. Their strengths are great, however. They have EA, and may have Square, they have a box that is easier to code for, and they have internet and a hard-drive. The ball is in Sony's court, but if Sony doesn't continue to spend money enhancing the PS2, then Microsoft wins. The X-Box is better, but no normal consumer will buy both a PS2 AND an X-Box.
Gamecube:Finally, Nintendo. This company will win and lose at the same time. They lose because their console will arrive too late. They have the best first-party team in the world, but it makes no difference in this upcoming saturated market. But they win because it doesn't matter. They can sit this whole generation out and still amass profits because of Gameboy and Son. They have a monopoly on hand-held software, period, and they can reap as much profit as they want from that. It simply does not matter that they are missing out on the next-generation console war.
Well, if you've read all the way through this, thank you for listening to my diatribe. I don't pretend to know the real answers, but this is the only result I can see. PS2 will win by losing the most money. Will that result in a console crash? Well, I guess you should flip a coin.
------------------- It is easy to control all that you see,
Before I get to the meat of my comment, let me say I disagree with most of the people that blame video games for making kids violent sociopathic outcasts. It happens the other way around. Kids who are socially outcast are simply more likely to play video games, because it is a mostly solitary activity (not counting limited social interaction on the Internet). Excessive video gaming is a symptom, not a cause.
But I am arguing for MORE censorship, even so. Not like banning, or burning, or Big Brother, but more SELF-censorship. As more and more parents get worried, if they see the people that create games do nothing, they will turn to the government for help, almost surely overreact, and the gaming industry will be shackled.
On the other hand, if companies take action NOW, and make normal parents (not the Right-Wing extremist parents) content, they will defuse this whole growing situation. The warning labels on games have been a good step. (I would like to see less age-discrimination and more labels like 'mature audiences only', but that is a separate discussion).
This is only one good step. What the industry needs to do now is to advertise these warnings more prominently, from television, to the stores they sell these games to, and let everyone know that they are actively interested in helping parents choose games appropriate to their children. This is GOOD censorship. If parents feel that they have the power over their children's lives, then the situation over gaming violence will defuse, without game banning, and industry restrictions, and nasty unconstitutional stuff like that.
------------------ It is easy to control all that you see,
ArsTechnica
has had a great discussion of the PS2 innards for some time now. The Firingsquad stuff was neat, but I still think the article by John Stokes outweighs it.
It is easy to control all that you see,
Re:I Got 0.11 But I Cheated.
on
Quickie Twister
·
· Score: 1
Call me a liar, I won't mind but I got
a got a 0.0 on the second try, for some unknown reason.
Just got a thought in my head, why haven't I pushed the button yet, so I clicked, and it changed right as I clicked. You'd think it would do something special, but nooooooooo....
Very weird though, I'm now having delusions of being psychic. It is easy to control all that you see,
If we lived in a void where economic policy resulted in exactly what was theorized, your argument would be valid. As it is, social theory is at least as important as economic theory. One only has to look back to past centuries to see what a society increasingly based on inherited wealth will bring us.
Points that are obvious:
It is in people's best interest to make themselves lots of money.
Having lots of money gives people greater access to resources (higher education, smart lawyers, etc.) that will make them more money.
People with less money will have less access to these resources.
Inheritance is a means of giving money to family and friends (and whomever one chooses), in a way that can be completely unrelated to the pressures of capitalism.
The process of inheritance means that people with lots of money are able to give lots of money to anyone in a way that is not subject to pressures of capitalism. This gives these newly rich people large amounts of access to resources that will allow them to make even more money.
It is hard not to conclude that inheritance is a system in our society (and in most other societies) that can completely sustain and better those whose families are already rich. Note that this has nothing to do with how well our economy is doing, but everything to do with the ability to take the cream of the crop using resources that most of our society does not have access to. It is not subject to the pressures of capitalism! Of course it makes sense for richer people to support the economy because they do make less money in a poorer economy than they would otherwise (but relatively to poorer people, still more, do you see the difference?), but the key factor is that they do not have to. They can choose which economic policies to support because of their position. This can only result in even greater relative wealth for them, which by definition means less relative wealth for others.
Inheritance tax dampens this cycle. There are surely other ways to remove the cycle, but it seems other methods would be draconian and unenforcable so I am happy the government sticks with this. It's true that it isn't the best solution in that the government gets this money and it isn't invested in our economy immediately (I'm not that much of a socialist, honest!). However it's better that it is put in the hands of people that include some I have voted for, as opposed to those that I will never, ever, have the chance to vote for.
The TI was my introduction to computers (at 5 years old no less!) in 1982 and wow, it was fantastic. Tunnels of Doom was great, I remember the music, fighting kobolds (I believe), and even the scratchy loading sounds from our cassette player (I guess we were too poor to buy the disk drive).
I also remember playing Ms Pacman, Donkey Kong, and other classics, and realizing how much BETTER they actually looked and played than on my friend's atari console. It was really ironic since they were Atari games themselves (why would Atari make their games look better on other systems?). For instance, donkey kong on the Atari was limited to two levels, while it had four on the TI. There seemed to be more colors, correct sounds, and perhaps a higher resolution on the TI to, IIRC.
TI also introduced me to programming, too. Somehow my dad had a book on TI programming with a whole bunch of sample code. Now, I had no idea what this code did, after all, I was only 6 or 7 at the time, but I definitely understood that with these lines in a book, if they were typed into the computer I could have a game which I MADE MYSELF! There must have been a thousand lines or something, but at the end, somehow miraculously (no typos, which sounds impossible), it worked. I had a maze game saved onto a cassette! To make a long story short, I have been doomed to be a computer programmer ever since.
------------------------------------------------- It is easy to control all that you see,
What's wrong with old laws to stop new monopolies?
on
A Post-Microsoft World
·
· Score: 1
Oh no, we have laws that were around before Microsoft! It would be ludicrous to use them, they must be so antiquated that they are useless!
Does anyone else see a problem with that line of thinking? For crying out loud Katz, the whole reason there is an OS 'revolution' is that people took the 30-year-old-plus technology that is Unix and created Linux, which you herald as the inevitable (and I guess for the sake of this article, already present) successor to the Microsoft empire. And what about science? Gravity is a pretty old theory these days, let's scrap that, too!
Any law has flaws, but to disregard one because it's old is one of the silliest arguments I've ever heard. I think you've succummed to the attitude of: "now that everyone is working at the speed of light, everything that we knew before no longer applies." Rubbish.
I just read in a different article on Slashdot, something like, "We see farther because we stand on the backs of giants". I don't see why we aren't allowed to use our century-old giants to help us fight the good fight.
Since I've seen plenty of posters with jobs that keep them working for way over forty hours, I thought I'd chime in. Since graduating this past year, I've had a lovely time working a 32-35 hour a week job in the city where I graduated. The pay is lacking, (at least for a real computer-programming job) but in return I have been granted absolutely no stress (the boss takes all, and I mean ALL the heat) and copmletely flexible hours. For instance, on Wednesdays I like to show up at 9 and leave at 2:30 to go have lunch with my college buddies. People are always complaining as they grow old that they've put too much time into their work, and not enough into family, friends, and just living. I don't want to make that same mistake. Oh, I'll be leaving for a higher paying job come next year, and probably start working 40 hours, but I simply will not work longer than that, even if I have to get turned down for a better position. That simple. Finishing up, a final thought. Having no stress means that I don't have to think about work at home at all. Heck, I still feel like programming when I'm at home, so I usually put an hour into my own personal projects, instead of being bone-tired and able only to watch T.V. without a brain cramp. I guess you have to make a decision sometimes. Do you want to be able to afford the fancy life, or do you want to be able to enjoy the life you've already got?
Slashdot Mirror
From the article: The drive has an UltraDMA/100 interface... The drive is also compatible with the earlier UltraDMA/66 and UltraDMA/33 interfaces, albeit with reduced performance. /100 makes a difference is on burst, which rarely happens with a modern OS that keeps its own cache. UDMA/100 will be marketing hype for a couple more years
Drives do not max out the UltraDMA/66 interface as it is, so the only time the
Maxtor didn't design the 531DX for use in applications--such as video editing--that demand the highest performance, but the company did include a 2MB data buffer.
The 2MB data buffer is also rather meaningless. It gives improvement, by about half a percent on average. The spindle speed and access time is much more important. Maxtor's spindle speed for this drive is a low 5400RPM and the access time is a high 15 milliseconds.
But the 531DX uses a technology called ramp loading that locks the head in a plastic latch above the drive surface when you power it down.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but IBM drives could be purchased with this feature for over a year. And they do it with more than one read/write head.
Let's not kid ourselves. This is a value market drive, and though it has a nice areal density (30GB a platter), it won't be fast, and even though it uses the IBM head rest technology, it won't be that much more reliable. Everything else is PR fluffery.
------------
It is easy to control all that you see,
Visit http://www.alexandria.de/
----------------
It is easy to control all that you see,
Anyway...
After reading the legal papers, I would have to say the real problem Imagine is facing is not copyright infringment, but rather trademark infringement.
Nintendo does not have much of a case for copyright infringment (though I haven't seen the guide). In the past it has been very hard for game companies to sue guide publishers for using screenshots. This generally falls under fair use, much like Ebert showing clips of the movie he's reviewing. The pictures are generally considered supplemental to the content. Of course, if there isn't enough Imagine-generated content per copyrighted image, Imagine may be in more trouble than I thought.
Trademark infringement, however, looks like a win for Nintendo at first glance. You can't just use someone else's logo without permission to sell your merchandise... which is certainly the case if the logo is plastered on the cover of your book! Imagine already got into trouble with trademark infringment before when their Nintendo64 site first came online. There was no court case, but you can be damned sure they pulled the offending logos after Nintendo sent them a letter.
Bottom line is, I'd be pissed off if I made a strategy guide for my game, and someone made their own strategy guide, and gave it the same look and feel as mine! Trademark diluting is nasty stuff for companies, (ala bandaids, xeroxing, and kleenex) and I don't think courts look highly on businesses that appropriate someone else's trademark.
---------------
It is easy to control all that you see,
It will be interesting in the coming months to watch how the DOJ's currently 'obvious' position on Microsoft changes once Bush starts asserting power and the new order starts creeping in.
It is easy to control all that you see,
If you go back to the main story though, you'll see that there are really large numbers of adults playing video games. They're playing solitaire online. Or canasta online, or whatever. You can't get much money from these people yet, they're happy playing with things that are 'Free with Windows', but this is a trend that could change if something catches their eye.
As for artistic growth, well, it sounds like you're not a game developer, but don't take that the wrong way. The story is only one of many things that is the art. I have alluded that the game industry is growing like the movie industry, but games != movies, and the games that think they are movies have a tendency to flop. And some games do have decent plots anyway, but you won't find them in FPS games.
---------
It is easy to control all that you see,
What??? These suits are promotional items, used to sell BubbleGum Crisis anime in America, just like LucasArts has a bunch of StormTrooper suits that my friend got to use to promote Star Wars at his bookstore. Well, okay, it's true that Star Wars is based on the whole samurai ethic and Japanese movies, but that's not the point, which is that people like a show, especially when being convinced to buy something.
And the suits do, in fact, kick a lot of ass, for all their wear and tear.
P.S. A "Did you know" for all you true blue rpg geeks out there. The guy who is selling these, Robert Woodhead, is the creator of Wizardry. Bam!
----------
It is easy to control all that you see,
But to answer your statement, games are Not a niche market now. They don't fit in the kids demographic, or the weirdos(us) demographic, or whatever. Anybody these days now has a reason to play a videogame. This is evident from any the statistics you care to research.
So when you say that its all about 'a few pimply-faced geeks' you are either a troll or off your rocker, because this market is huge. This means as much culturally to us as much as movies mean to us culturally. No more, no less, which is where Katz and I disagree most likely.
One thing that I find really interesting is how games are becoming more and more like movies. I don't mean that playing games is like watching a movie, I'm talking about movie development. Games for the Playstation2 that look decent and play decent are requiring humungous development teams to bear fruit. People like Square decided to make their Final Fantasy movie because they already had so much money invested in tools that could be used for movie development, and the other tools that they acquire making the movie can now be used to make games! Even if the movie completely flops, they still win, because suddenly they have the world's best tech demo, and the machines to make the prettiest damn games you've ever seen.
This is synergy!
If you want to know what the game industry will look like in 5-10 years, just review a history book of the movie industry.
---------------
It is easy to control all that you see,
It seems like the Californian defendants are still in bad shape, and if they lose, it will be just as bad as if ALL the defendants lost. The MPAA will use any victorious ruling they get to prosecute related issues in later cases, whether just one of us loses, or 100.
I'm still worried.
----------------
It is easy to control all that you see,
It's not too easy to see what the shake down of these four consoles is going to be in two or three years, but here is a take on the strength and weakness of the four players, and what we can expect them to do.
Dreamcast: The first one out of the gate.
Their strengths are their strong first-party support, a cheap system, and the first ones to establish an Internet presence. Their first-party is second only to Shigeru Miyamoto. Their system will be the cheapest of all systems, cheaper than the GameCube, and may be as cheap as the GameBoy advance. Everything they shipped shipped Internet-ready, and even though it took a year, the software now uses it.
Their weaknesses will prove overwhelming, however. Their hardware, to put it bluntly, is maxed out. This means that there will only be less, not more, support to this system in the years to come. It's Internet support is crippled by the lack of a hard-drive. This is not a big deal this year, but the next machines will have this support, and it will be very very important. And the final nail is that the system has already lost in Japan, to the PS2, which doesn't even have a fistful of good games yet. Let's get to that now, shall we...
Playstation 2:Let's start with the weaknesses. It is almost impossible to program for right now, requiring a massive development team and gifted coders. This is resulting in a stunning mediocrity of released games. This will NOT change in the near future. Sony is losing money because Japan is more interested in it's DVD capabilities which is crippling its DVD player sales. Sony loses money on the hardware, and is not making it back in software. It has no harddrive or internet connection. Oops. Noone buys peripherals that are over $50. It's been proven in the marketplace. If they want to establish an Internet presence, these devices will have to be sold at a loss (do the losses ever stop for Sony?). Moving on to the strengths, they have what noone else has, and may never have this generation: the most consoles sold. They win if they continue to throw money at their problem. Accept the losses for another whole year, give away harddrives and ethernet connections, and finally people will have the software developed to make great games, and everyone will own a PS2 and will buy said games. This is their only way to win.
X-box:This is getting entirely too long, so I will shorten my entries on these last two consoles. The weaknesses of the X-Box is that they have horrible 1st party support, and no presence in a saturated market. Their strengths are great, however. They have EA, and may have Square, they have a box that is easier to code for, and they have internet and a hard-drive. The ball is in Sony's court, but if Sony doesn't continue to spend money enhancing the PS2, then Microsoft wins. The X-Box is better, but no normal consumer will buy both a PS2 AND an X-Box.
Gamecube:Finally, Nintendo. This company will win and lose at the same time. They lose because their console will arrive too late. They have the best first-party team in the world, but it makes no difference in this upcoming saturated market. But they win because it doesn't matter. They can sit this whole generation out and still amass profits because of Gameboy and Son. They have a monopoly on hand-held software, period, and they can reap as much profit as they want from that. It simply does not matter that they are missing out on the next-generation console war.
Well, if you've read all the way through this, thank you for listening to my diatribe. I don't pretend to know the real answers, but this is the only result I can see. PS2 will win by losing the most money. Will that result in a console crash? Well, I guess you should flip a coin. -------------------
It is easy to control all that you see,
But I am arguing for MORE censorship, even so. Not like banning, or burning, or Big Brother, but more SELF-censorship. As more and more parents get worried, if they see the people that create games do nothing, they will turn to the government for help, almost surely overreact, and the gaming industry will be shackled.
On the other hand, if companies take action NOW, and make normal parents (not the Right-Wing extremist parents) content, they will defuse this whole growing situation. The warning labels on games have been a good step. (I would like to see less age-discrimination and more labels like 'mature audiences only', but that is a separate discussion).
This is only one good step. What the industry needs to do now is to advertise these warnings more prominently, from television, to the stores they sell these games to, and let everyone know that they are actively interested in helping parents choose games appropriate to their children. This is GOOD censorship. If parents feel that they have the power over their children's lives, then the situation over gaming violence will defuse, without game banning, and industry restrictions, and nasty unconstitutional stuff like that.
------------------
It is easy to control all that you see,
ArsTechnica has had a great discussion of the PS2 innards for some time now. The Firingsquad stuff was neat, but I still think the article by John Stokes outweighs it.
It is easy to control all that you see,
Call me a liar, I won't mind but I got a got a 0.0 on the second try, for some unknown reason.
Just got a thought in my head, why haven't I pushed the button yet, so I clicked, and it changed right as I clicked. You'd think it would do something special, but nooooooooo.... Very weird though, I'm now having delusions of being psychic.
It is easy to control all that you see,
If we lived in a void where economic policy resulted in exactly what was theorized, your argument would be valid. As it is, social theory is at least as important as economic theory. One only has to look back to past centuries to see what a society increasingly based on inherited wealth will bring us.
Points that are obvious:
It is hard not to conclude that inheritance is a system in our society (and in most other societies) that can completely sustain and better those whose families are already rich. Note that this has nothing to do with how well our economy is doing, but everything to do with the ability to take the cream of the crop using resources that most of our society does not have access to. It is not subject to the pressures of capitalism! Of course it makes sense for richer people to support the economy because they do make less money in a poorer economy than they would otherwise (but relatively to poorer people, still more, do you see the difference?), but the key factor is that they do not have to. They can choose which economic policies to support because of their position. This can only result in even greater relative wealth for them, which by definition means less relative wealth for others.
Inheritance tax dampens this cycle. There are surely other ways to remove the cycle, but it seems other methods would be draconian and unenforcable so I am happy the government sticks with this. It's true that it isn't the best solution in that the government gets this money and it isn't invested in our economy immediately (I'm not that much of a socialist, honest!). However it's better that it is put in the hands of people that include some I have voted for, as opposed to those that I will never, ever, have the chance to vote for.
It is easy to control all that you see,
I also remember playing Ms Pacman, Donkey Kong, and other classics, and realizing how much BETTER they actually looked and played than on my friend's atari console. It was really ironic since they were Atari games themselves (why would Atari make their games look better on other systems?). For instance, donkey kong on the Atari was limited to two levels, while it had four on the TI. There seemed to be more colors, correct sounds, and perhaps a higher resolution on the TI to, IIRC.
TI also introduced me to programming, too. Somehow my dad had a book on TI programming with a whole bunch of sample code. Now, I had no idea what this code did, after all, I was only 6 or 7 at the time, but I definitely understood that with these lines in a book, if they were typed into the computer I could have a game which I MADE MYSELF! There must have been a thousand lines or something, but at the end, somehow miraculously (no typos, which sounds impossible), it worked. I had a maze game saved onto a cassette! To make a long story short, I have been doomed to be a computer programmer ever since.
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It is easy to control all that you see,
Does anyone else see a problem with that line of thinking? For crying out loud Katz, the whole reason there is an OS 'revolution' is that people took the 30-year-old-plus technology that is Unix and created Linux, which you herald as the inevitable (and I guess for the sake of this article, already present) successor to the Microsoft empire. And what about science? Gravity is a pretty old theory these days, let's scrap that, too!
Any law has flaws, but to disregard one because it's old is one of the silliest arguments I've ever heard. I think you've succummed to the attitude of: "now that everyone is working at the speed of light, everything that we knew before no longer applies." Rubbish.
I just read in a different article on Slashdot, something like, "We see farther because we stand on the backs of giants". I don't see why we aren't allowed to use our century-old giants to help us fight the good fight.
Since I've seen plenty of posters with jobs that keep them working for way over forty hours, I thought I'd chime in. Since graduating this past year, I've had a lovely time working a 32-35 hour a week job in the city where I graduated. The pay is lacking, (at least for a real computer-programming job) but in return I have been granted absolutely no stress (the boss takes all, and I mean ALL the heat) and copmletely flexible hours. For instance, on Wednesdays I like to show up at 9 and leave at 2:30 to go have lunch with my college buddies. People are always complaining as they grow old that they've put too much time into their work, and not enough into family, friends, and just living. I don't want to make that same mistake. Oh, I'll be leaving for a higher paying job come next year, and probably start working 40 hours, but I simply will not work longer than that, even if I have to get turned down for a better position. That simple. Finishing up, a final thought. Having no stress means that I don't have to think about work at home at all. Heck, I still feel like programming when I'm at home, so I usually put an hour into my own personal projects, instead of being bone-tired and able only to watch T.V. without a brain cramp. I guess you have to make a decision sometimes. Do you want to be able to afford the fancy life, or do you want to be able to enjoy the life you've already got?