"Members of Congress have taken the step of criticizing various IT companies for their international policies. This includes Google and Microsoft, for what they call 'bowing to Beijing' and 'putting profits before American principles of free speech'.
But it is okay to gut the American economy by taking manufacturing and technology jobs, and exporting them overseas?
But this position is criticised as protectionism. Sure, in a world with a limitation of certain resources, let everyone come in and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, because everyone one wants a goose dinner. sheesh.
Bottom line: Don't kill the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs. AKA the Tragedy of the Commons.
Perfect the system we have here and, as in the case of East and West Berlin, the people will vote with their feet.
Which is why the USA has a border problem with Mexico. Not that they want to go to China. Like anything, it's the lure of the perceived "easy life". And in the USA, there is an alarmingly large section of the population who think they deserve the Paris Hilton LifeStyle(TM). Not that they should work for it, but that they deserve it.
WoW really is a very short game. You can reach end game extremely quickly, and for the most part, the game has no dynamic end-game content.
Sounds like they need something like a gold (or precious metal of your choice) rush, along with the politics hoardes like Ghengis Khan or the quivalent can bring.
I can remember the horror of a party walking into a favorite town and bar after a few months in the wilderness, only to discover the place had been over taken by dwarves (and all dwarves look alike you know) due to a mithral rush. Making, incidentally, their hard won hoard of gold and silver worth the equivalent of a hoard of copper and tin due to the rampant inflation. Did I mention there were too many dwarves?
Basically you are talking about changes in the game where the political climate is not at all static. And remember, a boss is not always killed siitng beside her/his hoard of magic and money. Maybe he is just in town for a visit. My favorite dungeons to run in the day were games where what the players did would setup the troubles they ran into later.
Example, low level players break into a hidden door in a hillside, exposing a long hidden complex. The door is such that they can't close it shut, and have to leave it open while they go to town a week travel away. They, of course, forget to hide it. This permits other things to get in while they are in town, and eventually allows other things to get out. This changes the balance of power, and things start to happen, because they do not know what they opened up in the first place, etc. When the war starts they know why certain things happened that everyone else is wondering about. Of course, folks tend to keep their mouth shut. and it rolls down hill from there.
It is easy to engineer something like this for a small group in a custom dungeon, but obviously more difficult to pull off in a custom world with many many players. If you have large raids into a city, you would thing the bosses would take proactive action against a raiding group or two, to make an example of some, just as a warning to others. That would make life interesting.
Of course, each side says they are being totally logical, and the other insane. You also see this in distro flame wars, religious debates, and other arguments about folks that provoke strong emotions. (thinking of the profound visceral reaction certain religious groups provoke in certain forums)
This probably also applies to the corporate sponsors of bills like the proposed law regarding analog hole who seem to be employing curious tactics, which if you think of it is merely an effort to protect the intellectgual property. With typical bad results. And which will provoke a strong reaction in some quarters once it becomes well known.
I know we should try to be rational. Sometimes this is hard to do.
The article states, 'If, for instance, a publication could establish a 10 point scale in which reviews were based upon purchase value and average games scored only a 3 or a 4, the higher scores would certainly become far more important. The lower scores would give the publication instant credibility as 'discerning gamers' and would free up the top scores (5-10) to show a more full range of differentiation for the top-tier titles gamers care about most.'"
This is easily accomplished doing something instead of averaging scores for different elements of game play. You work instead by multiplying them together. A came that score three perfect tens ends up with 1000 in this system, while 3 sevens gives you 343 for a score, and 3 eights gives you a score of 512. In a 4 star system, 5 scores of 4 give you 1024, while 5 scores of three stars gives you 243 as total. 5 score of 3.5 stars gives you 525 and change.
Strangly enough, the arguments given in Snopes do not demonstrate that the test is not for 1895 or isn't from Kansas. Rather, they criticise the test as being an invalid measurement of the modern requirements of education.
Consider: To pass this test, no knowledge of the arts is necessary (not even a nodding familiarity with a few of the greatest works of English literature), no demonstration of mathematical learning other than plain arithmetic is required (forget algebra, geometry, or trigonometry), nothing beyond a familiarity with the highlights of American history is needed (never mind the fundamentals of world history, as this exam scarcely acknowledges that any country other than the USA even exists), no questions about the history, structure, or function of the United States government are asked (not even the standard "Name the three branches of our federal government"), science is given a pass except for a few questions about geography and the rudiments of human anatomy, and no competence in any foreign language (living or dead) is necessary. An exam for today's high school graduates that omitted even one of these subjects would be loudly condemned by parents and educators alike, subjects about which the Salina, Kansas, students of 1895 needed know nothing at all. Would it be fair to say that the average Salina student was woefully undereducated because he failed to learn many of the things that we consider important today, but which were of little importance in his time and place? If not, then why do people keep asserting that the reverse is true? Why do journalists continue to base their gleeful articles about how much more was expected of the students of yesteryear on flawed assumptions? Perhaps some people are too intent upon making a point to bother considering the proper questions.
Which damns the modern student with faint praise in my eyes.
It used to be that you were expected to be literate after completing Grade School in the 8th Grade. Now all these new fangled education theories have come in with this result. God help you if you point out that the educational techniques of pre 1900 were far more effective than post 2001.
but then, the purpose of educational theories since 1900 has not been to create a responsible independant thinking citizen. It has been to create whatever citizen was desirable at the time, be it a willing worker, or a willing consumer. The end result is that we are now reaching the end of the rope.
Teaching professionals advocate throwing Money at the problem, sort of like in the IBM commercials. When the problem is as ineffective technique. But the teachers are illiterate as well. No wonder some people throw their hands up and go for home schooling, or other solutions.
The automotive industry routinely carries parts for ten years. This ten year horizon has driven computers makers crazy.
There was an article cited on Slash about the horrors of of this from the design side when automakers brought up their system requirements.
So from this viewpoint, I would probably go for the ten year boundary on hardware and software, even though many software makers would like it to be as short as possible.
Heck, Symantec has dropped support for many of their more recent products for a variety of reasons
Apparently there is a common belief among English speaking players that most non-English speakers are gold farmers and are only playing for commercial gain.
heck, what's stopping them from grouping together and planning things on their own server, then forming their own chinese horde to over-run the servers?
Things like the difference between the left mouse button and right mouse button. (primary and secondary click, secondary click = menus, etc) Which everyone one knows, but not really, not for true beginners.
Lots of visuals, with just one concept covered per page.
Strangely enough the cartoon floppy disk character pointing at important things actually improves the effectiveness of the text for beginners, instead of using a simple highlighted arrow in the picture.
The Boston police have been known to use smoot markers to indicate accident locations on the bridge. Apparently Smoot's experience as a unit of measurement led to a life-long career; he eventually became Chairman of the Board of the American National Standards Institute, and later President of the International Organization for Standardization.
ACM Queue interviews Hotmail engineer Phil Smoot on how they manage more than 10,000 servers spread around the globe.
This apparently appeared in "People Weekly", April 24, 1989, v. 31, p. 93+
Harvard Bridge spans the Charles River linking Boston and Cambridge. In 1958 Lambda Chi Alpha took 5' 7" MIT freshman pledge Oliver R. Smoot, Jr. and rolled him head over heels the entire length of the bridge. Every ten smoots they calibrated the bridge, painting marks. The bridge was found to be exactly 364.4 smoots plus an ear. Successive pledge classes repainted the markings.
In 1987 the Mass. Dept. of Public Works decided the concrete of the bridge was due for replacement. They had no plans for smoot preservation. The Boston Press tracked down Oliver R. Smoot, Jr. who was then age 48, and executive vice president of Computer and Business Equipment Manufactures Association in Washington D. C. He had no plans of being reused for new markings.
The Mass. Metropolitan District Commission, the government body in charge of the bridge went on record in support of smoots. They stated, "We recognize the smoots' role in local history. That's not to mean that the agency encourages graffiti painting. But smoots aren't just any kind of graffiti. They're smoots! If commemorative plaques and markers are not installed by the state once the bridge work is done, then we'll see that it's done."
Stephen Smoot, a son of Oliver R. Smoot, Jr, was then age 21 and attending MIT was ready to redo the smoot measurements, although he was 5'11", so everything would be off.
There are a couple of pictures of Oliver R. Smoot, of MIT students ready to redo measurements with Stephen Smoot, and of a plaque that reads:
"This plaque place in honor of THE SMOOT which joined the angstrom, meter and light year as standards of length, when in October 1958 the span of this bridge was measured, using the body of Oliver Reed Smoot, M.I.T. '62 and found to be precisely 364.4 smoots and one ear. Commemorated at out 25th reunion June 6, 1987 M.I.T. Class of 1962"
Another clipping states that the Mass. Dept. of Public Works gave two Smooted sections of sidewalk to the MIT museum at a ceremony. Continental Construction Company of Cambridge also agreed to make the new concrete sidewalk slabs 5' 7" long to coincide with the Smoots, instead of the usual 6' increments.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
pretty much covers privacy, since you can't violate privacy without viloating something in the above, not at least without twisting the meaning and intent of the words.
well, while there are plenty of houses out there, that guy in Ohio hit the Today show right after Thanksgiving (warning, IE required), and he had to turn things off because of the traffic going into his cul-de-sac created problems. That said, his work was the best coordinated of many shows out there. Compared to others on Google Video, his work is muchbetter.
The real geeks of this sort of thing hang out at Planet Christmas
he wants to get some ID on the two martian teanagers who have it up on cider blocks, and who have been scavaging it for parts for their own geek project.
let's face it. This is something that you would do, if a bit of alien technology came crashing down out of the skies.
MS will end up changing it so that the icon is right handed instead of left handed, and then claim it was their idea all along, issuing trademarks and enforcement lawsuits as they go along.
They'll find some way to make it evil, or claim ownership. It's in their genes.
Of course, murphy's law says that if so, they will replenish at a rate at a rate matching our correct consumption divided by 2. Meaning we will still be up the creek without a paddle.
Is it true that we are overdue for a reversal in the polarity of the Earths magnetic field? Would this be a Bad Thing for us humans if it happened soon?
It's all a russian plot to take over the world
Actually, if it recall correctly, predictions are that, if a pole shift were to happened, it would created a period of turbulent/chaotic magnetic field configurations. You would get lots of transient and shifting polarities across the entire planet. Scientists believe that the process would take hundreds of years. Even so, this could really screw up animals like migratory birds, etc. It also would effect cancer and mutation rates.
Slashdot Mirror
But it is okay to gut the American economy by taking manufacturing and technology jobs, and exporting them overseas?
But this position is criticised as protectionism. Sure, in a world with a limitation of certain resources, let everyone come in and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, because everyone one wants a goose dinner. sheesh.
Bottom line: Don't kill the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs. AKA the Tragedy of the Commons.
This, tied in with things like China's long policy of tying the Yuan to the Dollar,(recently changed), led to a flood of resources out of the USA into China, a fine gift of the American people at their own expense. Heck, the situation even made it as a commentary by JibJab, although from another side of the ledger.
(sigh)
>>>>>>>>
Perfect the system we have here and, as in the case of East and West Berlin, the people will vote with their feet.
Which is why the USA has a border problem with Mexico. Not that they want to go to China. Like anything, it's the lure of the perceived "easy life". And in the USA, there is an alarmingly large section of the population who think they deserve the Paris Hilton LifeStyle(TM). Not that they should work for it, but that they deserve it.
There are lots of things that can be considered human rights, but the Paris Hilton LifeStyle(TM) is not one of them.
Sounds like they need something like a gold (or precious metal of your choice) rush, along with the politics hoardes like Ghengis Khan or the quivalent can bring.
I can remember the horror of a party walking into a favorite town and bar after a few months in the wilderness, only to discover the place had been over taken by dwarves (and all dwarves look alike you know) due to a mithral rush. Making, incidentally, their hard won hoard of gold and silver worth the equivalent of a hoard of copper and tin due to the rampant inflation. Did I mention there were too many dwarves?
Basically you are talking about changes in the game where the political climate is not at all static. And remember, a boss is not always killed siitng beside her/his hoard of magic and money. Maybe he is just in town for a visit. My favorite dungeons to run in the day were games where what the players did would setup the troubles they ran into later.
Example, low level players break into a hidden door in a hillside, exposing a long hidden complex. The door is such that they can't close it shut, and have to leave it open while they go to town a week travel away. They, of course, forget to hide it. This permits other things to get in while they are in town, and eventually allows other things to get out. This changes the balance of power, and things start to happen, because they do not know what they opened up in the first place, etc. When the war starts they know why certain things happened that everyone else is wondering about. Of course, folks tend to keep their mouth shut. and it rolls down hill from there.
It is easy to engineer something like this for a small group in a custom dungeon, but obviously more difficult to pull off in a custom world with many many players. If you have large raids into a city, you would thing the bosses would take proactive action against a raiding group or two, to make an example of some, just as a warning to others. That would make life interesting.
This probably also applies to the corporate sponsors of bills like the proposed law regarding analog hole who seem to be employing curious tactics, which if you think of it is merely an effort to protect the intellectgual property. With typical bad results. And which will provoke a strong reaction in some quarters once it becomes well known.
I know we should try to be rational. Sometimes this is hard to do.
This is easily accomplished doing something instead of averaging scores for different elements of game play. You work instead by multiplying them together. A came that score three perfect tens ends up with 1000 in this system, while 3 sevens gives you 343 for a score, and 3 eights gives you a score of 512. In a 4 star system, 5 scores of 4 give you 1024, while 5 scores of three stars gives you 243 as total. 5 score of 3.5 stars gives you 525 and change.
but then, the purpose of educational theories since 1900 has not been to create a responsible independant thinking citizen. It has been to create whatever citizen was desirable at the time, be it a willing worker, or a willing consumer. The end result is that we are now reaching the end of the rope.
Teaching professionals advocate throwing Money at the problem, sort of like in the IBM commercials. When the problem is as ineffective technique. But the teachers are illiterate as well. No wonder some people throw their hands up and go for home schooling, or other solutions.
Link to Windows Automotive news item
Slashdot: Dealing with Outdated Automotive Software?
Both are interesting for different reasons
There was an article cited on Slash about the horrors of of this from the design side when automakers brought up their system requirements.
So from this viewpoint, I would probably go for the ten year boundary on hardware and software, even though many software makers would like it to be as short as possible.
Heck, Symantec has dropped support for many of their more recent products for a variety of reasons
heck, what's stopping them from grouping together and planning things on their own server, then forming their own chinese horde to over-run the servers?
yes, this is supposed to be a joke, but ....
Things like the difference between the left mouse button and right mouse button. (primary and secondary click, secondary click = menus, etc) Which everyone one knows, but not really, not for true beginners.
Lots of visuals, with just one concept covered per page.
Strangely enough the cartoon floppy disk character pointing at important things actually improves the effectiveness of the text for beginners, instead of using a simple highlighted arrow in the picture.
The Boston police have been known to use smoot markers to indicate accident locations on the bridge. Apparently Smoot's experience as a unit of measurement led to a life-long career; he eventually became Chairman of the Board of the American National Standards Institute, and later President of the International Organization for Standardization.
This apparently appeared in "People Weekly", April 24, 1989, v. 31, p. 93+
Harvard Bridge spans the Charles River linking Boston and Cambridge. In 1958 Lambda Chi Alpha took 5' 7" MIT freshman pledge Oliver R. Smoot, Jr. and rolled him head over heels the entire length of the bridge. Every ten smoots they calibrated the bridge, painting marks. The bridge was found to be exactly 364.4 smoots plus an ear. Successive pledge classes repainted the markings.
In 1987 the Mass. Dept. of Public Works decided the concrete of the bridge was due for replacement. They had no plans for smoot preservation. The Boston Press tracked down Oliver R. Smoot, Jr. who was then age 48, and executive vice president of Computer and Business Equipment Manufactures Association in Washington D. C. He had no plans of being reused for new markings.
The Mass. Metropolitan District Commission, the government body in charge of the bridge went on record in support of smoots. They stated, "We recognize the smoots' role in local history. That's not to mean that the agency encourages graffiti painting. But smoots aren't just any kind of graffiti. They're smoots! If commemorative plaques and markers are not installed by the state once the bridge work is done, then we'll see that it's done."
Stephen Smoot, a son of Oliver R. Smoot, Jr, was then age 21 and attending MIT was ready to redo the smoot measurements, although he was 5'11", so everything would be off.
There are a couple of pictures of Oliver R. Smoot, of MIT students ready to redo measurements with Stephen Smoot, and of a plaque that reads:
"This plaque place in honor of THE SMOOT which joined the angstrom, meter and light year as standards of length, when in October 1958 the span of this bridge was measured, using the body of Oliver Reed Smoot, M.I.T. '62 and found to be precisely 364.4 smoots and one ear. Commemorated at out 25th reunion June 6, 1987 M.I.T. Class of 1962"
Another clipping states that the Mass. Dept. of Public Works gave two Smooted sections of sidewalk to the MIT museum at a ceremony. Continental Construction Company of Cambridge also agreed to make the new concrete sidewalk slabs 5' 7" long to coincide with the Smoots, instead of the usual 6' increments.
I'm sure Phil still hears about this
Forth Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
pretty much covers privacy, since you can't violate privacy without viloating something in the above, not at least without twisting the meaning and intent of the words.
There's a higher resolution version which is part of a Miller's Lite beer commercial
The real geeks of this sort of thing hang out at Planet Christmas
The House has just passed a ONE month extension, vs the six month extension of the Senate. They now get to argue over a compromise. Although GWB has not been in the mood for compromise.
let's face it. This is something that you would do, if a bit of alien technology came crashing down out of the skies.
They'll find some way to make it evil, or claim ownership. It's in their genes.
Someone will try to apply this to the internet to regulate what you read.
the ascreen you read is an analog hole for information, y'know.
I am trying to be sarcastic, but I can see how the trend line is going.
Of course, murphy's law says that if so, they will replenish at a rate at a rate matching our correct consumption divided by 2. Meaning we will still be up the creek without a paddle.
"First, We kill all the lawyers"
the music industry has gotten so paranoid that free advertising is seen as a mortal threat.
a friend of mine who is in the business told me recently:
Oh, I love these "the big record companies are Satan" kind of posts.
All my friends at big record companies would vastly prefer this to be the case as opposed to the reality:
the big record companies don't have a clue and are scared they won't exist in ten years.
that last bit is interesting:
and are scared they won't exist in ten years.
Of course, the paranoia doesn't help, and still leaves us with the question of what would be a realistic business plan they could follow.
Then the anti-evolutionaries can be sued for patent infringement.
It's all a russian plot to take over the world
Actually, if it recall correctly, predictions are that, if a pole shift were to happened, it would created a period of turbulent/chaotic magnetic field configurations. You would get lots of transient and shifting polarities across the entire planet. Scientists believe that the process would take hundreds of years. Even so, this could really screw up animals like migratory birds, etc. It also would effect cancer and mutation rates.
Heck, NOVA even had a showon it.
that's right... he isnt.
managers are just jackasses and dont have a grip on reality.
The reason being that the vast majority of corporations would be classified as criminal psychopaths if they were human beings. There is even a big documentary/movie on this point.
It's self esteem via the destruction of others, vs self esteem via construction. In this regard it could be described as probably neurotic at best.
This starts to walk toward the philosophical problem of evil, and how it manifests in the real world. Pleasure from cruelty, etc.