I realize that many people have bad experiences with Indian and Pakistani tech support, but I just want to note that I had difficulties setting up a Netgear wireless base station/router to play well with a Linux firewall/router running NAT. Now clearly this is not a standard setup for home users and was in fact clearly noted as unsupported, however, I called to resolve 2 separate issues with (clearly) Indian tech support. Both times the person I spoke with was extremely knowledgeable and went out of their way to get me running. I haven't run into many American support staff who could help me with any technical questions, especially with non officially supported set ups.
Not trying to flame, just to put a little balance into the picture. "Americanized" foreign call centers seem disingenuous to me, however, if outsourcing SOME support results in skilled support staff being affordable, I'm OK with that. It just seems that the dialogue about outsourcing needs to be balanced with by recognizing where it can be a good thing rather than automatically cry that the sky is falling.
I know, I know, why be reasonable when we can freak out and spread lots of FUD. I am on/. for godsakes...
I kind of see it like spam. Most of the people who read about this will be pissed off, but a few will be intrigued and preorder a console or invest in it as a long shot. With the exposure they're getting, they're going to "accidentally" reach at least a few receptive minds. Also, on the offhand that they actually put together a product in some form, no matter how poor it is, people will now have heard of it...
(For the record, I think it's bogus and am apalled at their attempts to further pervert the legal system for financial gain.)
Mod parent up. My father who is a pilot has said the same on numerous occasions. He got to listen to the Alaska Air flight that went down's voice recorder of the last 5 minutes or so before it crashed and said that from what they can tell those guys were doing everything as they were supposed to based on training. They couldn't see the whole picture and thus their actions may have made the situation worse.
It could be said that this was pilot error. However, how accurate would that be if they were following their training, standard procedure and all that?
It comes down to this. Any fatal accident will be blamed on pilot error because the pilot isn't there to defend himself (herself).
Or better, no one say it. I believe that the music industry has become so completely broken that the major labels could not possibly turn around and become worthwhile. Better the more and more money goes into the RIAA until they realize it's too late and the Indy labes have actually gotten a foothold acting as contractors to musicians rather than the other way around.
Actually, Good Charlotte got a spot touring with Lit after playing as basically a garage band out of high school for 3 years. It was 6-8 months into touring with Lit that they got attention from the labels and signed (in May of 2000).
I agree that the major labels have started to try some different things in order to run some error control after all the rap stars who took turns singing in each other videos (ever seen a song with ______ feat. ______ & _____ remixed by ________ feat. _______?) or Creed and the fifty bands that all sounded like them?
I just wonder why everyone feels like they need the government to parent their children. If your kids are playing these games, then stop them, talk to them, play with and make sure they understand that they are just games, etc. If your kids are playing at a friend's house, this law won't do a thing. Since that friend's parents clearly are involved (implicitly or actively), make sure you know who your child's friend's parents are. Make sure they know and respect your parenting. As I said before, the state getting involved does nothing to prevent the problems with your own children. You are always going to have to be a parent if you want to have control in your children's lives.
If you don't like public games, then accompany your children there or build up enough respect and responsibility so that they don't play them when you're not around. If you don't do that, then they'll go and smoke weed and drink, and have unprotected sex, and whatever else is scaring parents these days. Seriously, what is the attraction with the government making a law to cover parents who don't want to do what's necessary to control their kids? It has been shown over and over to not be effective anyway!??! As an example, did you drink before you were 21? What about use drugs? Smoke cigarettes? What about your friends? You know there was a law against that right? Wait, are you saying that the law didn't stop you/them?!!?!?
Why not create a material that self replicates and includes the data in all of its "progeny". You could even include adaptive behaviors into the self replicating medium so it will change form to adapt to different environmental stimuli. Now all you have to do is seed it on a Class M planet and come back whenever you need to access your backup.
I see your argument as flawed because it runs into one of two problems.
Either everything can be classified as an intellectual work...
or... you neglect the value of some things that are not intellectual despite the fact that they provide some positive function.
Take for example a cheap knockoff of the good of your choice. It does not work as well, last as long, have the same aesthetics, etc. of the "intellectual" basis, yet in at least some cases, the lack of these features is translated as a reduced cost to someone. Be it shorter production time (initial if you want to talk about a digitalizable good), or distrubutional cost.
If you would like to prove me wrong, I challenge you to think of a single nonintellectual good or service, that does not provide value.
As a recently graduated Economics major (read: armed and dangerous), maybe I can explain why his use of "if" is indeed sincere. The Federal Reserve has two stated goals:
1: Maximize growth
2: Maximize stability
Although many people clamor for constant economic growth (particularly during a recession), you notice that the Fed hasn't completely dropped the Fed Funds Rate to zero (which would theoretically stimulate the maximum level of gdp growth). They haven't because they fear inflation, ie. instability.
Why not spend the time to design a Catapult along the lines of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? Slinging huge piles of metal bound rock or whatever would provide for the mass to either break apart smaller asteroids or to deflect larger ones. Sling enough at the Death Rock From Space, and you can move it. The cost of such a device could also be much less than shooting lots of nukes way the hell out into space and there would be the benefits of sending satellites and other things into space much more cheaply. Just seems like a better idea than nukes...
Many people state the need for antitrust law because they assume that once a company establishes monopoly power, they can raise their price and keep control without improving services or products, but rather by leveraging other tools (licensing, patents, trademarks, branding, etc). I assert two things:
1: there are no good examples of true monopolies existing for more than 5-10 years in the last 100 years with the exception of government backed (by law) monopolies (i.e., Ma Bell).
2: If a temporary monopoly tries to deter competition by product innovation, who cares? We, the consumer, get better stuff as the competition forces better products. On the other hand, if the monopoly does not innovate, the nice thing about the capitalist market system is that there are many people willing to give enough money to back a potential competitor to overcome most of the entry barriers a monopoly can erect (branding-enough money and advertising will buy a brand, licensing-think subsidized trials "hey try my software for a month and I'll GIVE you money!!", etc.). Once a competitor gets its foot in the door, it can make money on the margins due to the monopoly's sloppiness (look at AMD raking in Intel market share over 2000).
The problems are thus not related to antitrust, but to the trade barriers that the law establishes. We should stop worrying about antitrust law, and instead fix the problems with protecting innovation.
Meaning? CUT PATENT LAW AND ESTABLISH SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE, NOT A GOOD.
I live in Issaquah when I'm not at school. I recently got a cable modem with At&t @home. I have gotten sustained download speeds well over 600K/bytes per second. Upload is capped like everyone else at 128k/bits/sec. Another point that others have not noted is that the latency is really low. generally I get in the 50's or 60 ms. All for 40 a month. I have no complaints yet.
If you read their original filing with the SEC, Transmeta spoke of the idea that their technology would apply the same level of scalabilty of Linux to processor design. There have been several instances in which they referred to Linus' involvement as part of their scalability plans.
I always thought it would be cool to have a glove-like thing that has some sort of gyroscope in it to determine your rotation and then you could move around the screen by "tilting" your hand and click by moving fingers or something. It would be perfect for mobile computing as well.
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I realize that many people have bad experiences with Indian and Pakistani tech support, but I just want to note that I had difficulties setting up a Netgear wireless base station/router to play well with a Linux firewall/router running NAT. Now clearly this is not a standard setup for home users and was in fact clearly noted as unsupported, however, I called to resolve 2 separate issues with (clearly) Indian tech support. Both times the person I spoke with was extremely knowledgeable and went out of their way to get me running. I haven't run into many American support staff who could help me with any technical questions, especially with non officially supported set ups.
/. for godsakes...
Not trying to flame, just to put a little balance into the picture. "Americanized" foreign call centers seem disingenuous to me, however, if outsourcing SOME support results in skilled support staff being affordable, I'm OK with that. It just seems that the dialogue about outsourcing needs to be balanced with by recognizing where it can be a good thing rather than automatically cry that the sky is falling.
I know, I know, why be reasonable when we can freak out and spread lots of FUD. I am on
There's no such thing as bad publicity."
I kind of see it like spam. Most of the people who read about this will be pissed off, but a few will be intrigued and preorder a console or invest in it as a long shot. With the exposure they're getting, they're going to "accidentally" reach at least a few receptive minds.
Also, on the offhand that they actually put together a product in some form, no matter how poor it is, people will now have heard of it...
(For the record, I think it's bogus and am apalled at their attempts to further pervert the legal system for financial gain.)
Mod parent up. My father who is a pilot has said the same on numerous occasions. He got to listen to the Alaska Air flight that went down's voice recorder of the last 5 minutes or so before it crashed and said that from what they can tell those guys were doing everything as they were supposed to based on training. They couldn't see the whole picture and thus their actions may have made the situation worse.
It could be said that this was pilot error. However, how accurate would that be if they were following their training, standard procedure and all that?
It comes down to this. Any fatal accident will be blamed on pilot error because the pilot isn't there to defend himself (herself).
Or better, no one say it. I believe that the music industry has become so completely broken that the major labels could not possibly turn around and become worthwhile. Better the more and more money goes into the RIAA until they realize it's too late and the Indy labes have actually gotten a foothold acting as contractors to musicians rather than the other way around.
Actually, Good Charlotte got a spot touring with Lit after playing as basically a garage band out of high school for 3 years. It was 6-8 months into touring with Lit that they got attention from the labels and signed (in May of 2000). I agree that the major labels have started to try some different things in order to run some error control after all the rap stars who took turns singing in each other videos (ever seen a song with ______ feat. ______ & _____ remixed by ________ feat. _______?) or Creed and the fifty bands that all sounded like them?
I just wonder why everyone feels like they need the government to parent their children. If your kids are playing these games, then stop them, talk to them, play with and make sure they understand that they are just games, etc. If your kids are playing at a friend's house, this law won't do a thing. Since that friend's parents clearly are involved (implicitly or actively), make sure you know who your child's friend's parents are. Make sure they know and respect your parenting. As I said before, the state getting involved does nothing to prevent the problems with your own children. You are always going to have to be a parent if you want to have control in your children's lives.
If you don't like public games, then accompany your children there or build up enough respect and responsibility so that they don't play them when you're not around. If you don't do that, then they'll go and smoke weed and drink, and have unprotected sex, and whatever else is scaring parents these days. Seriously, what is the attraction with the government making a law to cover parents who don't want to do what's necessary to control their kids? It has been shown over and over to not be effective anyway!??! As an example, did you drink before you were 21? What about use drugs? Smoke cigarettes? What about your friends? You know there was a law against that right? Wait, are you saying that the law didn't stop you/them?!!?!?
Why not create a material that self replicates and includes the data in all of its "progeny". You could even include adaptive behaviors into the self replicating medium so it will change form to adapt to different environmental stimuli. Now all you have to do is seed it on a Class M planet and come back whenever you need to access your backup.
[cue twilight zone music now...]
I see your argument as flawed because it runs into one of two problems.
Either everything can be classified as an intellectual work...
or... you neglect the value of some things that are not intellectual despite the fact that they provide some positive function.
Take for example a cheap knockoff of the good of your choice. It does not work as well, last as long, have the same aesthetics, etc. of the "intellectual" basis, yet in at least some cases, the lack of these features is translated as a reduced cost to someone. Be it shorter production time (initial if you want to talk about a digitalizable good), or distrubutional cost.
If you would like to prove me wrong, I challenge you to think of a single nonintellectual good or service, that does not provide value.
As a recently graduated Economics major (read: armed and dangerous), maybe I can explain why his use of "if" is indeed sincere. The Federal Reserve has two stated goals:
1: Maximize growth
2: Maximize stability
Although many people clamor for constant economic growth (particularly during a recession), you notice that the Fed hasn't completely dropped the Fed Funds Rate to zero (which would theoretically stimulate the maximum level of gdp growth). They haven't because they fear inflation, ie. instability.
So, that "if" wasn't simply politeness.
Why not spend the time to design a Catapult along the lines of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? Slinging huge piles of metal bound rock or whatever would provide for the mass to either break apart smaller asteroids or to deflect larger ones. Sling enough at the Death Rock From Space, and you can move it. The cost of such a device could also be much less than shooting lots of nukes way the hell out into space and there would be the benefits of sending satellites and other things into space much more cheaply. Just seems like a better idea than nukes...
How is this offtopic? The link provided above is the perfect way for people to voice their concerncs over the proposed remedy to microsoft.
Many people state the need for antitrust law because they assume that once a company establishes monopoly power, they can raise their price and keep control without improving services or products, but rather by leveraging other tools (licensing, patents, trademarks, branding, etc).
I assert two things:
1: there are no good examples of true monopolies existing for more than 5-10 years in the last 100 years with the exception of government backed (by law) monopolies (i.e., Ma Bell). 2: If a temporary monopoly tries to deter competition by product innovation, who cares? We, the consumer, get better stuff as the competition forces better products. On the other hand, if the monopoly does not innovate, the nice thing about the capitalist market system is that there are many people willing to give enough money to back a potential competitor to overcome most of the entry barriers a monopoly can erect (branding-enough money and advertising will buy a brand, licensing-think subsidized trials "hey try my software for a month and I'll GIVE you money!!", etc.). Once a competitor gets its foot in the door, it can make money on the margins due to the monopoly's sloppiness (look at AMD raking in Intel market share over 2000).
The problems are thus not related to antitrust, but to the trade barriers that the law establishes. We should stop worrying about antitrust law, and instead fix the problems with protecting innovation.
Meaning?
CUT PATENT LAW AND ESTABLISH SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE, NOT A GOOD.
I can't wait until "IT ver. 2, now with SMARTWHEELS," what was that quote... 'took the stairs like a 45 degree ramp'?
I live in Issaquah when I'm not at school. I recently got a cable modem with At&t @home. I have gotten sustained download speeds well over 600K/bytes per second. Upload is capped like everyone else at 128k/bits/sec. Another point that others have not noted is that the latency is really low. generally I get in the 50's or 60 ms. All for 40 a month. I have no complaints yet.
If you read their original filing with the SEC, Transmeta spoke of the idea that their technology would apply the same level of scalabilty of Linux to processor design. There have been several instances in which they referred to Linus' involvement as part of their scalability plans.
I always thought it would be cool to have a glove-like thing that has some sort of gyroscope in it to determine your rotation and then you could move around the screen by "tilting" your hand and click by moving fingers or something. It would be perfect for mobile computing as well.