And yet even when amazon sells MP3s albums extremely cheap without any DRM, can be played on any device, you can download again anywhere on earth you still have people getting that same music illegally.
Over the holidays amazon had some very good albums on sale for $5 and I still see people illegally downloading those same songs.
I have seen the same argument. People even pirated the THQ games in the humble bundle when you could get all of them for $6 after they had just blown more than that on coffee at Starbucks and decided that the games where still too expensive.
I just no longer accept that argument of if you make it cheap, easy, no DRM etc etc it will cause people to stop taking it without paying. Even if you price it at $.10 people still take it. If enough people are not willing to pay for games then games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim won't be made since there would be no profit in it.
That is absolutely true. The problem is that software is not delivering on all those things, it just promises all of those things.
For a real engineering profession you have the whole sign off system and if someone wants something done for a song and to do everything you don't sign off on it. If they try to get around that sign off there are some pretty serious legal consequences to that.
For programmers there is no legal way to say that the manpower involved is not sufficient to deliver the required quality. They will just be fired and replaced. Without programmers having some level of authority and the responsibility that goes with that you won't really see software getting better since there is no real incentive for it.
Look at some of the break in stats, 50% of windows break ins last year where form Java and IE made up about 3% yet Microsoft and IE are still blamed for all the security problems. Why should Java or Flash really try to do much better if the average person is not going to blame them or making purchasing decisions based on that anyways?
If you are a programming for Oracle and you say that X design is dangerous and you won't do it you will be fired. If you are a chemical engineer and you say a certain reactor design is dangerous it will be fixed or it won't get used. That is the real difference and that is what programmers need to have also.
Yeah that part is pretty sad but is also looks like it is self correcting. It is easier to outsource programmers that plumbers for instance and that is being done. This is driving down prices for programmers.
It usually makes for very boring news so it is not covered very much except in things like trade journals. However real engineers are sued for design flaws when they don't do things correctly.
The laws acknowledge that no matter what there is always a chance of failure. If you did the work and can show that the odds of failure are.001% and the system still fails it will be investigated but as long as you are correct it is likely nothing will happen since rare events do happen.
However if you falsify the work, falsify the calculations, end up with calculations that are far off of reality then you can and are held liable in many cases.
If a structural engineer signs off on that without doing the actual calculations to show it is safe and that project is investigated they will lose their license.
How about all the people that support these actions?
When you buy a product that is made in China you also support these policies. You can't just say that the businesses are bad without also saying that the people that support them are bad also.
For scientists and engineers the rule is that unless a system specifies something and it is not required for the system to operate then it is not present. So since salt is not specified nor any other substance the water is assumed to be pure.
To balance it out they will support the creation of killbots to make wars a very clean thing for them. They will just sent out hordes of killbots and very soon the way will be over....
They won't be worried if a country does not like their rules or plays by the same rules since they will just send in the bots to kill them.
How you solve math problems in the real world in a group is NOT how you solve math problems in a group in a school. In a school you have a lot of people that don't want to do the work, have not done any of the prep work to understand even the basics of how to do it, they spend most of the time chatting on other subjects etc.
When I have solved math and engineering problems in the real world it was not even remotely like that. People are professional, they come to the groups prepared and they work in the problem at hand.
I am a chemical engineering student and in many classes people either slack off and don't do the work or they do a very poor job and I have to redo it anyways since they won't really try very hard.
My worst quiz grade of any class was a group quiz. The people in the group just kept chatting and I never could answer the questions on the quit because people would ask me how to solve a problem every few seconds before they got distracted and talked about other stuff.
My general view for group work is that you give the work ahead of time, everyone works on it and then you meet to go over the work and correct any discrepancies. That way everyone knows how to do it, everyone has time to do it an the meetings are more productive.
What I have found is that is almost always the way it works in business. I have been working for the last 10 years and have only recently returned to school and even though chemical engineering is supposed to be on the hardest degrees and I am in a very good school overall I am not finding it very hard but most of the students act like it is still highschool.
Until software engineers have the same kind of code of ethics and sign offs that other engineers have I don't think they are really engineers.
Right now if you are a software engineer and you say no to something you are very likely to be fired. If you are a chemical engineer and you tell your boss no for something then they can't do it without some pretty severe legal consequences and if they fire you the consequences are even more severe.
I do stuff with magic and sneaking. I especially like using magic to set creatures up to die. Things like putting down traps and then blasting them and having them run into the spell.
I also have many mods installed that add a bunch of other interesting spells. They are not really more powerful but you can use them in creative ways.
Strangely enough I love Skyrim on the PC and I play it using a 360 controller. I find it very relaxing to play that game with a controller. It works well and plays well.
I think I have about 70 mods installed for the game including the DLC released so far.
If your system is a computer model when you predict the future you have to predict it based on various events you predict. If different events occur and you put those events in instead of what you guessed would happen and your model products the correct outcome then the model does work.
No model is going to be accurate if you don't guess that a volcano is going to erupt. It is certainly completely okay to plug new data into existing models and run the simulation to check the result against reality.
The problem would be if the simulation comes up with the wrong outcome given the correct data.
My view is that our primary solution should be things like insulation. We throw away about half of all the power we generate do to poor insulation. Not just insulation on houses, apartments etc but also on things like refrigerators, freezers, ovens etc.
So long as we throw away half the power that means we need to generate twice as much. If we did a better job of insulating it would not only make alternative power more viable it would also dramatically cut CO2 emissions from having to burn less fossil fuels for the power we need.
The next thing we should be concentrating on is greater efficiency. Those new nanopolymer lights are looking pretty impressive and we need more technology like that. We also need devices to use less standby power and if possible just turn entirely off.
Power generation is pretty far down my list of solutions. If we try to solve all the problems directly with renewable energy it A won't work B will cost a fortune C create a LOT of pollution make all those turbines, solar panels etc
Nuclear power plants are currently our best bet for generating power and those are what we should be building to replace fossil fuel systems but the other options are FAR more important.
Actually mobile browsers are not the most advanced. Chrome and Firefox for the desktop are definitely more advanced than their mobile counterparts. The gap is fairly small at least usually.
I am not sure about the union part but it absolutely should have engineer type signoffs. Just like other things require a certified engineer to sign off on something (with legal consequences) but also prevents businesses from just going ahead and doing stuff anyways.
However to go along with this would be the required education and certification to actually do the work to make sure the signoff is correct. I doubt that many people actually understand the work you have to do to become a certified engineer.
At the very least you should have to pass a test like the FE exam and later the PE exam if you want that signoff capability for IT. You should have to take appropriate courses also. You would also have to get the laws changed so that operations required that signoff.
Vitamin D3 is a fat soluble vitamin. It is also toxic in higher quantities and since it is fat soluble the excess is not flushed from your system like you get with vitamin C.
You can have some D3 but people that take those 5000IU capsules every day are idiots and are heading for some major damage in their bodies. If you get no sunlight at all, don't drink milk, eat dairy products like yogurt, or other stuff fortified with vitamin D then some amount would be useful. However if you are outside in the sun for even 30 minutes that is enough.
Mostly the seasonal flu vaccine is not very effective because of guessing. It is better than nothing at all but still a guess. They can immunize against 3 or so strains of the flu, if you are hit with one of those strains you are probably okay, if not you are going to get sick.
Didn't those same workers vote several times previously to give back some pay and benefits to keep the company alive and the C level positions promptly gave that to themselves as bonuses? Hadn't executive pay and bonuses skyrocketed during the time the company was failing and workers where giving up a lot?
Why is there any reason to believe that giving up yet again would change anything? If you give up every time the company wants more you are a slave not a employee.
That is why I think it is safer to hit the bus than head off the road. If you hit the bus you will do no real damage to the bus. You will total your vehicle but you will probably live.
You will probably also do less damage than if you plowed over the bridge since then you would not do damage to a bridge that would need more expensive repairs.
I would just let it hit the bus. I have been in buses a few times during accidents with cars. At most the buses would rock about a inch while the cars where pretty badly trashed.
A bus is a FAR safer thing to hit both for yourself and the occupants of the bus than going of a bridge.
We can build robots to use minimal force required to stop the attacks. However bombing a wedding would involve killing many classified as non-hostile in order to kill a few hostiles. That would be forbidden for a robot. They could use individual targeted attacks so long as the odds of harming someone else is sufficiently low (we would have to figure out what a good percentage is) but not wide area attacks.
Slashdot Mirror
And yet even when amazon sells MP3s albums extremely cheap without any DRM, can be played on any device, you can download again anywhere on earth you still have people getting that same music illegally.
Over the holidays amazon had some very good albums on sale for $5 and I still see people illegally downloading those same songs.
I have seen the same argument. People even pirated the THQ games in the humble bundle when you could get all of them for $6 after they had just blown more than that on coffee at Starbucks and decided that the games where still too expensive.
I just no longer accept that argument of if you make it cheap, easy, no DRM etc etc it will cause people to stop taking it without paying. Even if you price it at $.10 people still take it. If enough people are not willing to pay for games then games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim won't be made since there would be no profit in it.
That is absolutely true. The problem is that software is not delivering on all those things, it just promises all of those things.
For a real engineering profession you have the whole sign off system and if someone wants something done for a song and to do everything you don't sign off on it. If they try to get around that sign off there are some pretty serious legal consequences to that.
For programmers there is no legal way to say that the manpower involved is not sufficient to deliver the required quality. They will just be fired and replaced. Without programmers having some level of authority and the responsibility that goes with that you won't really see software getting better since there is no real incentive for it.
Look at some of the break in stats, 50% of windows break ins last year where form Java and IE made up about 3% yet Microsoft and IE are still blamed for all the security problems. Why should Java or Flash really try to do much better if the average person is not going to blame them or making purchasing decisions based on that anyways?
If you are a programming for Oracle and you say that X design is dangerous and you won't do it you will be fired.
If you are a chemical engineer and you say a certain reactor design is dangerous it will be fixed or it won't get used.
That is the real difference and that is what programmers need to have also.
Yeah that part is pretty sad but is also looks like it is self correcting. It is easier to outsource programmers that plumbers for instance and that is being done. This is driving down prices for programmers.
It usually makes for very boring news so it is not covered very much except in things like trade journals. However real engineers are sued for design flaws when they don't do things correctly.
The laws acknowledge that no matter what there is always a chance of failure. If you did the work and can show that the odds of failure are .001% and the system still fails it will be investigated but as long as you are correct it is likely nothing will happen since rare events do happen.
However if you falsify the work, falsify the calculations, end up with calculations that are far off of reality then you can and are held liable in many cases.
If a structural engineer signs off on that without doing the actual calculations to show it is safe and that project is investigated they will lose their license.
They will also end up with criminal liability.
This is why programming is not an engineering profession despite what many keep claiming.
Until they have the same standards as a mechanical, aerospace, chemical, etc engineers they are not really engineers.
How about all the people that support these actions?
When you buy a product that is made in China you also support these policies. You can't just say that the businesses are bad without also saying that the people that support them are bad also.
For scientists and engineers the rule is that unless a system specifies something and it is not required for the system to operate then it is not present.
So since salt is not specified nor any other substance the water is assumed to be pure.
To balance it out they will support the creation of killbots to make wars a very clean thing for them. They will just sent out hordes of killbots and very soon the way will be over....
They won't be worried if a country does not like their rules or plays by the same rules since they will just send in the bots to kill them.
How you solve math problems in the real world in a group is NOT how you solve math problems in a group in a school. In a school you have a lot of people that don't want to do the work, have not done any of the prep work to understand even the basics of how to do it, they spend most of the time chatting on other subjects etc.
When I have solved math and engineering problems in the real world it was not even remotely like that. People are professional, they come to the groups prepared and they work in the problem at hand.
I normally hate group work in my college classes.
I am a chemical engineering student and in many classes people either slack off and don't do the work or they do a very poor job and I have to redo it anyways since they won't really try very hard.
My worst quiz grade of any class was a group quiz. The people in the group just kept chatting and I never could answer the questions on the quit because people would ask me how to solve a problem every few seconds before they got distracted and talked about other stuff.
My general view for group work is that you give the work ahead of time, everyone works on it and then you meet to go over the work and correct any discrepancies. That way everyone knows how to do it, everyone has time to do it an the meetings are more productive.
What I have found is that is almost always the way it works in business. I have been working for the last 10 years and have only recently returned to school and even though chemical engineering is supposed to be on the hardest degrees and I am in a very good school overall I am not finding it very hard but most of the students act like it is still highschool.
Until software engineers have the same kind of code of ethics and sign offs that other engineers have I don't think they are really engineers.
Right now if you are a software engineer and you say no to something you are very likely to be fired. If you are a chemical engineer and you tell your boss no for something then they can't do it without some pretty severe legal consequences and if they fire you the consequences are even more severe.
I do stuff with magic and sneaking. I especially like using magic to set creatures up to die. Things like putting down traps and then blasting them and having them run into the spell.
I also have many mods installed that add a bunch of other interesting spells. They are not really more powerful but you can use them in creative ways.
Strangely enough I love Skyrim on the PC and I play it using a 360 controller. I find it very relaxing to play that game with a controller. It works well and plays well.
I think I have about 70 mods installed for the game including the DLC released so far.
If your system is a computer model when you predict the future you have to predict it based on various events you predict. If different events occur and you put those events in instead of what you guessed would happen and your model products the correct outcome then the model does work.
No model is going to be accurate if you don't guess that a volcano is going to erupt. It is certainly completely okay to plug new data into existing models and run the simulation to check the result against reality.
The problem would be if the simulation comes up with the wrong outcome given the correct data.
My view is that our primary solution should be things like insulation. We throw away about half of all the power we generate do to poor insulation. Not just insulation on houses, apartments etc but also on things like refrigerators, freezers, ovens etc.
So long as we throw away half the power that means we need to generate twice as much. If we did a better job of insulating it would not only make alternative power more viable it would also dramatically cut CO2 emissions from having to burn less fossil fuels for the power we need.
The next thing we should be concentrating on is greater efficiency. Those new nanopolymer lights are looking pretty impressive and we need more technology like that. We also need devices to use less standby power and if possible just turn entirely off.
Power generation is pretty far down my list of solutions. If we try to solve all the problems directly with renewable energy it
A won't work
B will cost a fortune
C create a LOT of pollution make all those turbines, solar panels etc
Nuclear power plants are currently our best bet for generating power and those are what we should be building to replace fossil fuel systems but the other options are FAR more important.
Get the humble bundle and dungeon defenders for $6. I have had and continue to have a lot of fun with that game.
Actually mobile browsers are not the most advanced. Chrome and Firefox for the desktop are definitely more advanced than their mobile counterparts. The gap is fairly small at least usually.
IE ... well lets just kill that one already.
I am not sure about the union part but it absolutely should have engineer type signoffs. Just like other things require a certified engineer to sign off on something (with legal consequences) but also prevents businesses from just going ahead and doing stuff anyways.
However to go along with this would be the required education and certification to actually do the work to make sure the signoff is correct. I doubt that many people actually understand the work you have to do to become a certified engineer.
At the very least you should have to pass a test like the FE exam and later the PE exam if you want that signoff capability for IT. You should have to take appropriate courses also. You would also have to get the laws changed so that operations required that signoff.
Vitamin D3 is a fat soluble vitamin. It is also toxic in higher quantities and since it is fat soluble the excess is not flushed from your system like you get with vitamin C.
You can have some D3 but people that take those 5000IU capsules every day are idiots and are heading for some major damage in their bodies. If you get no sunlight at all, don't drink milk, eat dairy products like yogurt, or other stuff fortified with vitamin D then some amount would be useful. However if you are outside in the sun for even 30 minutes that is enough.
Mostly the seasonal flu vaccine is not very effective because of guessing. It is better than nothing at all but still a guess. They can immunize against 3 or so strains of the flu, if you are hit with one of those strains you are probably okay, if not you are going to get sick.
Didn't those same workers vote several times previously to give back some pay and benefits to keep the company alive and the C level positions promptly gave that to themselves as bonuses? Hadn't executive pay and bonuses skyrocketed during the time the company was failing and workers where giving up a lot?
Why is there any reason to believe that giving up yet again would change anything? If you give up every time the company wants more you are a slave not a employee.
Some of them I have seen showing up on DCUO since that games has been improving nicely.
That is why I think it is safer to hit the bus than head off the road. If you hit the bus you will do no real damage to the bus. You will total your vehicle but you will probably live.
You will probably also do less damage than if you plowed over the bridge since then you would not do damage to a bridge that would need more expensive repairs.
I would just let it hit the bus. I have been in buses a few times during accidents with cars. At most the buses would rock about a inch while the cars where pretty badly trashed.
A bus is a FAR safer thing to hit both for yourself and the occupants of the bus than going of a bridge.
We can build robots to use minimal force required to stop the attacks. However bombing a wedding would involve killing many classified as non-hostile in order to kill a few hostiles. That would be forbidden for a robot. They could use individual targeted attacks so long as the odds of harming someone else is sufficiently low (we would have to figure out what a good percentage is) but not wide area attacks.