The argument that the government is bought off with lobbyists is not an argument for stronger corporations. It's an argument for stronger government.
Alternatively, you could be advocating a weaker corporation, one with fewer rights and more obligations. This does not immediately lead to stronger government, just a government stronger than corporations.
Wal-Mart might be highly efficient at moving products, but it only does so because it makes more money that way. I can only imagine that FEMA is likely going to have to pay, license, or otherwise benefit Wal-Mart in some way in order to make use of Wal-Mart's expertise in this area. Keep in mind, too, that Wal-Mart doesn't offer this fancy logistical system to anyone else, on the idea that it can help everyone. They use this system of theirs as a competitive advantage and leverage it to squeeze out competitors that enter their arena.
The only reason Wal-Mart, or any other corporation, does any philanthropic work at all is because it either a) gives them good press and makes people want to support that corporation or b) allows them to keep more of the money they make through tax deductions or some other accounting move. Should we be happy that they gave anything at all? I guess so. Should we honor them as some great aid to society? If they didn't give just to give (providing the money and NOT taking any benefit, credit, or publicity for it), then their motivation to give is probably not for you but for them.
With regards to Wal-Mart's use of weather monitoring and inventory adjustments, I'm totally sure they do that for your benefit, and not because they also get to sell you that product at a profit.
You think there are a lot of these havens around that have lots of staff there? Perhaps they have some staff, but I find that unlikely. I remember listening to a report at some point about offshore corporate tax havens. From that report, they commented that some of these offshore offices had addresses that (perhaps) the companies paid for, but were otherwise abandoned and empty. What jobs went overseas for that? I'm sure, half the time, these shadow companies are literally that. Some guy in the US that says 'How can I get away with keeping more of my money? Oh! I can create this dummy (virtual) corporation that has the assets, is registered with a foreign government, and license them to me for cheap!' And, since it's all accounting slight-of-hand, the only thing that's required is proof that that dummy corporation actually exist (is chartered SOMEWHERE).
I think you're smoking crack if you believe that a person earning $35k/year gross paid $4938 in taxes. At a point not to distant in my past, I made around that figure gross income. However, after deductions are taken into the equation, my actual taxable income was closer to $13k, and my tax burden a scant quarter of the figure you quoted. In order to pay nearly $5k in tax, your gross income needs to be closer to $60k, be single without children, and do nothing terribly interesting with your money.
So what you're saying is you're attacking the GP's posting about the subject's health based on the the notion that they attended the same church together, using a doctor's opinion about how religion is supposed to cause epilepsy? Did you even preview what you wrote before you hit submit?
I can do some back-of-the-napkin statistics about how many people who attend church (lots) and how many people have epilepsy (probably not lots) and theorize that, while there may be a way to induce a seizure in someone, simply going to church is not a reliable test to determine whether or not someone has epilepsy. If it were, I'm sure our cases if epilepsy would probably include far more people than it does now.
You may not like religion, but at least come to the table with a real argument, some facts or something, before making such an attack.
Almost seems like Sony shot themselves in the foot with that one then. Selling loss leaders may be great if people do what you want and pick up the overpriced supplies to 'keep it running'. However, in selling loss leaders, you as the company accept the risk that someone might become inventive and buy that item not to do what you want them to but to simply have that device. It's a risk. The alternative is a higher device cost (covers cost of the device by itself) and lower priced games (possibly move more units).
I'm no fan of loss leaders myself, as I think they are a subversive way to get more profit for a particular product line.
I don't dispute wholesale prices aren't retail, and yes, the delineation in terminology between retailer and publisher was not probably clear. However, how does the 'fixed costs' for developing a game differ in any way from the 'fixed costs' for developing a new car, or airplane, or computer? Sure, much of your cost in buying those physical artifacts is the cost to produce it, but also included in that cost is the cost to develop it and, of course, profit. Resale markets for computers and cars and even probably airplanes exist, and there isn't a whole lot those original manufacturers can do to stop it. Software publishers have a different take, apparently. They feel that it's their right to make one-time-use keys and content in order to devalue the resale market and encourage more people to buy new.
There are, of course, other options they can do.
- They can raise the wholesale price as you suggest. One other additional market changes are likely to occur too: Gamestop and other used game resellers will increase their sale price (and perhaps their offer price for those games). This would keep the price difference relatively the same. Since companies are greedy and want to make as much money as they can, that follow up market change is likely to occur.
- They can make games that people want to keep around (replay value). Those games that people want to play again later are less likely to wind up at Gamestop. This removes the used game market all together as there are no used games to buy, everyone is keeping them.
You miss a few big points, too. Not everyone that buys a used game would buy it new. AND the supply for used games is limited by those people willing to sell and the total volume sold. Gamestop simply can't place orders for 500 copies of a game if only 5 people walk in and want to sell it, no matter how low the price is. That ultimately leads to a limitation on how much money Gamestop can make on any particular game.
If Gamestop is buying a single copy of a game once and selling multiple copies of that game, then I would suspect that Gamestop would be violating Copyright law and should get sued by the publishers. If, however, you mean that Gamestop is seeing the same copy of a game get traded back in to them multiple times, so what? That seems to me that Gamestop as a business is adding value to a discount/used game market, and they're getting their cut to maintain their business. Also, if gamers are buying that game, playing it through, and selling it back, then it doesn't seem to me like they're taking a up whole lot of the publisher's resources (hosted services, etc).
I mean, seriously. This kind of resale market happens in a number of industries, software is not the first nor is it to be the last. The only thing that seems to be different to me is that software publishers CAN double dip by creating one-time-use components. Any other physical artifact can always be sold again.
What math are you doing where you take funds paid to the original developer ($60) and give it to another entity. Follow the logic there.
Gamer starts with $60 to buy a new game.
Gamer buys game from retailer for full price $60. Gamer sells game to Gamestop for $30.
At this point, retailer has $60, Gamer has $30, Gamestop has -$30 (They PAID to get that copy). Net total? $60. The money moved from the Gamer to the original retailer.
New gamer has $55 to buy a game. Gamestop sells game to new gamer for $55.
Retailer has $60, Gamer has $30, Gamestop now has $25, New gamer has $0. See how this goes?
Gamestop doesn't steal from the pocket of the original retailer. Gamestop is making money on being a discount reseller of games. You can argue all day whether or not Gamestop adds value to the game market by selling for only $5 under the original retail price. Gamestop does NOT make twice what the original retailer makes.
What the developers of these games are griefing about is that they see that extra $55 and they want it instead of sharing it with someone else like Gamestop. They are providing one-time 'DLC' (though how can it be downloadable if it's already on the install media?) in order to entice people to buy the original game from them and cut Gamestop out of the loop. That's all fine and all until the point at which they start short-changing games in favor of making it complete via DLC or locking the sale of a game to an online account ala Steam. At that point, they're directly attacking the doctrine of first sale.
What developers often fail to account for is the idea that, with $30, the first Gamer is likely to supplement that with another $30 and buy another new game (the behavior is already there) for a 'discount' to them ($90 out-of-pocket spent for 2 new games instead of $120). They also fail to account for the idea that perhaps the second gamer would not have paid full price for the game in the first place. I know there are many games, such as L4D, that I didn't feel justified the $50 price tag, but when it came down to $35, that was perfectly acceptable.
Depending on how an Insurance company qualifies it, a prenatal procedure could be either for the mother's care or for the child's care. When I had a child, I had to call in advance to get the hospital stay pre-approved (or if I recall, within 24 hours after, maybe). Otherwise, they would deny it. On the day of my child's birth, I was suprised to see a gamut of charges, some tied to my wife's care and some to my child's. It makes a little sense when you think about it, but it was a bit unexpected to see that breakdown happen during one event.
We 'unfortunately' had the child delivered by c-section, so the date was known. If the date is not known (natural, off-schedule delivery), how do you get the birth date registered with the insurance prior to the child receiving care on their birth day?
Sounds to me like the insurance carrier/company was nitpicking and failing to keep a suitable window open for the addition of the child to the plan.
While I would tend to agree with you on URL references being invalid in 3 months or the life of a software product, whichever is sooner, literary references are often useful for archived references. Book references (including those used in writing papers or when used in citations) often require that you indicate the year of copyright. Subsequent editions (second, third editions, etc) will bear different copyright dates and should be obvious when locating a later version of a book. Whether or not the original is obtainable may be in question, but the reference and structure of identification of publications tends to be fairly standard and work over time.
How do you recover from a bomb blowing up in midair? How does height help you if the plane is split in two, or explodes in a fireball? Does 'staying in your seat' as an order somehow prevent someone from setting off a bomb, from their seat, like the Christmas Day attempt was being done? An hour is a very very long time to go without doing anything. What exactly are you supposed to do for that hour? Treating people this way is akin to treating them like prisoners. Since these people, 99.9% of them, are paying customers, can you tell me why one would subject themselves to such aggravation?
Security theater is more than inconvenience. When it offers you no real security and presents the idea that something is being done, you relax your guard without being any safer. This presents the same opportunities for attack as before, except now you're once more complacent to the idea of it and blind to the attempt.
All the people here posting are in support of the officials? That's funny, because I don't support what the officials did, and I post here. Does that not make me part of all people on Slashdot?
They may have had a legal right to do what they did, but I think they made a bad call.
You cannot commit a crime unless you perform an act that has been determined illegal. Really, is that so hard to understand? Even law enforcement, in performing drug and prostitution stings, must wait until the act has been committed (transaction made) in order to make an arrest. Even in this specific case, the police are not going to charge her with a crime. There is no crime to charge her with! She had no drawings, no plans, no detailed strategy with which she was to implement her plot. Just some speech up on Facebook which could either be ranting, a joke, or a threat.
Besides, one only need to compare this case to the protests going on about the health care reform. There have been clearly violent threats to the President's life (Thomas Jefferson's quote about the Tree of Liberty and the protester wearing or carrying a gun), and yet no arrests were made there, nor was anyone hurt (thankfully). No one was even detained for expressing these opinions, which is a thankful sign that at least sometimes free speech still exists even if it is in bad taste.
By going after people for expressing opinion, even violent opinion, you are prosecuting people for what they are thinking (thought crimes). How you don't understand this is just amazing to me.
Good will and a well thought out argument can turn an irate non-paying customer into a happy paying customer. Treating people like dirt and failing to give them any sort of respect is what generates this ill will in the first place. Ill will, resentment, anger, and distrust do not make for good long term relationships. This is especially true when you're betting that you can make a game fun for people to continue to pay you on a regular basis to play it. You need that relationship to be good, so the customer will pay you more later.
Does that make more sense why it would be worth it to do some PR to people playing (but not paying for) your game? After all, isn't that what advertising is anyways, a PR campaign to potential paying customers?
Last I looked, the average individual paid taxes on their gross income (minus some allowed non-taxable withholdings). How is this different? It certainly wouldn't be very wise to go with taxes on profit, because then a corporation would have an incentive to bump up costs in some way shape or form in order to control what is listed as profit. I'm no accountant, but I'm sure they can probably work that and still provide incentives to investors as well.
When you use different terms for different groups of people, you set the stage for something close, but not quite. It imparts a measure of control to those that define the terms and the rules. With 'marriages' and 'civil unions' as terms in use, I can now say that married couples can have this right, but fail to grant it to civil unions. This is a Very Bad Thing (tm). Either heterosexual couples need to give up the idea of 'Marriage' as a term they live by, or they can grant homosexual couples the same privilege and allow them to use the same term.
You might think that is just a terminology mismatch, but terminology is very very very important in the legal word. A corporation is a person with respect to the law, even though that term 'person' would never be applied to a corporation in the every day world. Laws must be carefully worded to avoid granting rights to all legal persons if the intent is to apply them only to a flesh-and-blood person. Since this whole debate is surrounding the legal implications of a union between two individuals, the terminology used must be considered.
The gay community is aware of this Separate but Equal idea, and they're pushing to use the same legal definition so that they cannot be segregated as they know has been done in the past. This is not stupidity on their part, this is a fair bit of wisdom based on the historical behavior of this society. So far, I haven't heard (possibly through simple ignorance) of any locale that has implemented civil unions for homosexual couples granting 100% of the same rights as those heterosexual couples that have been married.
If you feel compelled to prove me wrong, please also look for the frequency which that occurs. A one-off place that does it would not be sufficient proof that it was implemented properly everywhere.
Except, that we know the environment of one such case affected the environment of another, which is why they could not close the wormhole...because a blackhole was in the alternate gates envrionment...seriously though I think so far they have been pretty cool with coming up with ways of explaining such things especially things like mythology.
Thing about a black hole causing a disruption in the wormhole is that you're almost merging two of the same types of phenomenon. A Stargate warps space-time in order to bridge the gap between them. A black hole also significantly distorts space-time in the area around it. It is conceivable that when these two distortions interact that the wormhole itself is affected by the result. However, this does not need to break the idea that a resistive barrier is present to stop particles that are not under a constant motive force from bridging the barrier.
They could create a sort of tubbing that pierces the event horizons protective layer, and let the hole in the tube sticking through both sides fillup the air they need...but then again this is just a show, and not real life, so maybe there are x * x reasons for not being able to!
You're thinking misses a problem here. A tube between the ends would not open up a window, as you're thinking it would. Instead, the tube would be cut in half with the event horizon occupying the middle of it as well as surrounding it. Additionally, it's been described in a few episodes (One in the Atlantis series is one I can recall easily) that there is a safety mechanism to transfer items 'in whole'. If you're not fully within the event horizon, it will not transfer you to the remote gate. A tube used as you describe will not have gone completely within the event horizon, and would not be showing out the other side. Even in the Stargate SG-1 series when O'Neil was after some tech thieves, when he was 'holding the gate open' by keeping his arm within the remote side, it did not remain on the originating side of the wormhole. It is a nice thought, but precedent has been established that this would not work.
Oddly enough, though I went to a public school, one I considered to be very good, I would have a hard time supporting a monopoly of the public education system over education. This stems from one driving factor. If there is only one place to go for your education, and that education is all the same, then wouldn't it be so easy to tweak the curriculum in order to subtly exclude a lesson that teaches something important? It wasn't until I got out in the world, and read an interesting post on here that I even learned that there had been armed rebellions of any significance within the US after the civil war.
I doubt that it was omitted from my teachings intentionally and I might have simply forgotten it was taught to me (history was not my strongest subject), but with a monopoly on education and the willingness of some people to believe authority without question makes a monopoly on education a dangerous thing in my mind.
Also, to note, if you fail to receive your rebate and have copies of all documents you sent in, you can also file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.
I accidentally overpaid Comcast once. They got the payment in 2 days, cashed, and I couldn't stop payment realizing it within half a day of it being sent. I had called and called Comcast saying "Refund me, when will it arrive back?" 2 months pass and, while I'm sure the timing is 'coincidental', a day or two after I filed a complaint with the BBB, I both received my refund in the mail and received an email from a Comcast rep asking me how they could be of assistance.
I've heard other stories of this working as well, so while this is anecdotal evidence, it does seem to be replicated.
I also reject the way religion is being taught in churches: it's one-way communication with endless repetition of a very small set of events that supposedly took place and that would NOT pass scrutiny in this day and age. Immaculate conception, uh-huh. How about a DNA test first?:-)
Because I'm sure someone's probably mentioned this already, the idea of linguistic drift through time and translation gives rise to this particular debate. Does our current version of Jesus' birth mean that he was born from a woman that had never had sex before (our definition of virgin) or that he was born of a maiden (the older definitions of the words used in previous translations).
I seem to recall there being a law stating that no information may be collected from a under 13 years of age. It's called the Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). I don't know much more about what the software is asking, and whom it is asking, but it seems to me they're treading dangerous ground by doing this kind of thing.
As with all forms of pain, it is merely a symptom of a bigger problem. Pain is a signal that something is wrong, be it broken bone or upset stomach. In this case, we feel pain empathetically with the suffering of animals. Perhaps it isn't that we should simply make the pain go away, but rather address the cause of that suffering. This isn't about getting people to become vegan, because that is unrealistic and unwise. However, the source of pain isn't the slaughter of the animals, as that is probably fairly quick. It is the housing of these animals through their life. Kept in small pens, force fed antibiotics in order to keep from catching disease as they stand in their own excrement, these animals have the worst living conditions of any creature I've heard of, even worse than our most vile criminals.
Fix this cause, and perhaps the problems it is causing will cease.
A vaccination provides you protection against getting the virus. It is not guaranteed protection, but it is better than your chances if you were to come across it without that protection. This is not equivalent to a cure. A cure is a remedy provided to you in order to remove an existing infection from you. Once you have been infected, a vaccination is typically no longer effective, whereas a cure is.
Also to note, not all viruses mutate particularly rapidly, as like the influenza virus. Some, like Chicken Pox, tend to be fairly steady so that a single regiment of the vaccine is sufficient to prevent you from being infected your entire life. Others, as you note influenza, should be had every year because the rate of mutation is that quick.
Frankly, it has been my experience that if you truly know what you're doing, you can generally carry a bigger price tag for your work. You spend less time doing it, and can do more, or at least more complex. Someone that is cheaper generally doesn't know quite as much, so spends longer to do it, and doesn't have the experience already built up not to screw it up in the process. That experience is a big benefit. There are of course exceptions for those that know what they're doing selling themselves cheaply, but I don't think that's typical.
Having worked at a manufacturing facility once already, supporting their IT Ops, I fail to see why a 'highly paid employee in training' is a negative. IT is often sent to training, and I would hazard a guess that they're often paid more than the assembler on the floor. In my particular case, assemblers were also sent to training in order to assert the value of Standard Work. This would enhance effectiveness of the assemblers by simplifying and streamlining the process and empowering them to make suggestions as to how the process could be done more efficiently. Considering this plant was always falling behind on their quota due to inefficiencies, having workers that know how to speed up the process is of significant value, and that means more money for the company.
Also, a manufacturing method that requires fewer workers doesn't mean that jobs will always be cut. Perhaps a second production line will be opened instead, allowing the factory to produce more with their highly paid, highly trained workforce? Other factors, such as penny pinching and trying to get employees to do more with less often set up the scenario where strikes would happen, or employees feel disgruntled and leave for other opportunities.
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The argument that the government is bought off with lobbyists is not an argument for stronger corporations. It's an argument for stronger government.
Alternatively, you could be advocating a weaker corporation, one with fewer rights and more obligations. This does not immediately lead to stronger government, just a government stronger than corporations.
Wal-Mart might be highly efficient at moving products, but it only does so because it makes more money that way. I can only imagine that FEMA is likely going to have to pay, license, or otherwise benefit Wal-Mart in some way in order to make use of Wal-Mart's expertise in this area. Keep in mind, too, that Wal-Mart doesn't offer this fancy logistical system to anyone else, on the idea that it can help everyone. They use this system of theirs as a competitive advantage and leverage it to squeeze out competitors that enter their arena.
The only reason Wal-Mart, or any other corporation, does any philanthropic work at all is because it either a) gives them good press and makes people want to support that corporation or b) allows them to keep more of the money they make through tax deductions or some other accounting move. Should we be happy that they gave anything at all? I guess so. Should we honor them as some great aid to society? If they didn't give just to give (providing the money and NOT taking any benefit, credit, or publicity for it), then their motivation to give is probably not for you but for them.
With regards to Wal-Mart's use of weather monitoring and inventory adjustments, I'm totally sure they do that for your benefit, and not because they also get to sell you that product at a profit.
You think there are a lot of these havens around that have lots of staff there? Perhaps they have some staff, but I find that unlikely. I remember listening to a report at some point about offshore corporate tax havens. From that report, they commented that some of these offshore offices had addresses that (perhaps) the companies paid for, but were otherwise abandoned and empty. What jobs went overseas for that? I'm sure, half the time, these shadow companies are literally that. Some guy in the US that says 'How can I get away with keeping more of my money? Oh! I can create this dummy (virtual) corporation that has the assets, is registered with a foreign government, and license them to me for cheap!' And, since it's all accounting slight-of-hand, the only thing that's required is proof that that dummy corporation actually exist (is chartered SOMEWHERE).
I think you're smoking crack if you believe that a person earning $35k/year gross paid $4938 in taxes. At a point not to distant in my past, I made around that figure gross income. However, after deductions are taken into the equation, my actual taxable income was closer to $13k, and my tax burden a scant quarter of the figure you quoted. In order to pay nearly $5k in tax, your gross income needs to be closer to $60k, be single without children, and do nothing terribly interesting with your money.
So what you're saying is you're attacking the GP's posting about the subject's health based on the the notion that they attended the same church together, using a doctor's opinion about how religion is supposed to cause epilepsy? Did you even preview what you wrote before you hit submit?
I can do some back-of-the-napkin statistics about how many people who attend church (lots) and how many people have epilepsy (probably not lots) and theorize that, while there may be a way to induce a seizure in someone, simply going to church is not a reliable test to determine whether or not someone has epilepsy. If it were, I'm sure our cases if epilepsy would probably include far more people than it does now.
You may not like religion, but at least come to the table with a real argument, some facts or something, before making such an attack.
Almost seems like Sony shot themselves in the foot with that one then. Selling loss leaders may be great if people do what you want and pick up the overpriced supplies to 'keep it running'. However, in selling loss leaders, you as the company accept the risk that someone might become inventive and buy that item not to do what you want them to but to simply have that device. It's a risk. The alternative is a higher device cost (covers cost of the device by itself) and lower priced games (possibly move more units).
I'm no fan of loss leaders myself, as I think they are a subversive way to get more profit for a particular product line.
I don't dispute wholesale prices aren't retail, and yes, the delineation in terminology between retailer and publisher was not probably clear. However, how does the 'fixed costs' for developing a game differ in any way from the 'fixed costs' for developing a new car, or airplane, or computer? Sure, much of your cost in buying those physical artifacts is the cost to produce it, but also included in that cost is the cost to develop it and, of course, profit. Resale markets for computers and cars and even probably airplanes exist, and there isn't a whole lot those original manufacturers can do to stop it. Software publishers have a different take, apparently. They feel that it's their right to make one-time-use keys and content in order to devalue the resale market and encourage more people to buy new.
There are, of course, other options they can do.
- They can raise the wholesale price as you suggest. One other additional market changes are likely to occur too: Gamestop and other used game resellers will increase their sale price (and perhaps their offer price for those games). This would keep the price difference relatively the same. Since companies are greedy and want to make as much money as they can, that follow up market change is likely to occur.
- They can make games that people want to keep around (replay value). Those games that people want to play again later are less likely to wind up at Gamestop. This removes the used game market all together as there are no used games to buy, everyone is keeping them.
You miss a few big points, too. Not everyone that buys a used game would buy it new. AND the supply for used games is limited by those people willing to sell and the total volume sold. Gamestop simply can't place orders for 500 copies of a game if only 5 people walk in and want to sell it, no matter how low the price is. That ultimately leads to a limitation on how much money Gamestop can make on any particular game.
If Gamestop is buying a single copy of a game once and selling multiple copies of that game, then I would suspect that Gamestop would be violating Copyright law and should get sued by the publishers. If, however, you mean that Gamestop is seeing the same copy of a game get traded back in to them multiple times, so what? That seems to me that Gamestop as a business is adding value to a discount/used game market, and they're getting their cut to maintain their business. Also, if gamers are buying that game, playing it through, and selling it back, then it doesn't seem to me like they're taking a up whole lot of the publisher's resources (hosted services, etc).
I mean, seriously. This kind of resale market happens in a number of industries, software is not the first nor is it to be the last. The only thing that seems to be different to me is that software publishers CAN double dip by creating one-time-use components. Any other physical artifact can always be sold again.
What math are you doing where you take funds paid to the original developer ($60) and give it to another entity. Follow the logic there.
Gamer starts with $60 to buy a new game.
Gamer buys game from retailer for full price $60.
Gamer sells game to Gamestop for $30.
At this point, retailer has $60, Gamer has $30, Gamestop has -$30 (They PAID to get that copy). Net total? $60. The money moved from the Gamer to the original retailer.
New gamer has $55 to buy a game.
Gamestop sells game to new gamer for $55.
Retailer has $60, Gamer has $30, Gamestop now has $25, New gamer has $0. See how this goes?
Gamestop doesn't steal from the pocket of the original retailer. Gamestop is making money on being a discount reseller of games. You can argue all day whether or not Gamestop adds value to the game market by selling for only $5 under the original retail price. Gamestop does NOT make twice what the original retailer makes.
What the developers of these games are griefing about is that they see that extra $55 and they want it instead of sharing it with someone else like Gamestop. They are providing one-time 'DLC' (though how can it be downloadable if it's already on the install media?) in order to entice people to buy the original game from them and cut Gamestop out of the loop. That's all fine and all until the point at which they start short-changing games in favor of making it complete via DLC or locking the sale of a game to an online account ala Steam. At that point, they're directly attacking the doctrine of first sale.
What developers often fail to account for is the idea that, with $30, the first Gamer is likely to supplement that with another $30 and buy another new game (the behavior is already there) for a 'discount' to them ($90 out-of-pocket spent for 2 new games instead of $120). They also fail to account for the idea that perhaps the second gamer would not have paid full price for the game in the first place. I know there are many games, such as L4D, that I didn't feel justified the $50 price tag, but when it came down to $35, that was perfectly acceptable.
Depending on how an Insurance company qualifies it, a prenatal procedure could be either for the mother's care or for the child's care. When I had a child, I had to call in advance to get the hospital stay pre-approved (or if I recall, within 24 hours after, maybe). Otherwise, they would deny it. On the day of my child's birth, I was suprised to see a gamut of charges, some tied to my wife's care and some to my child's. It makes a little sense when you think about it, but it was a bit unexpected to see that breakdown happen during one event.
We 'unfortunately' had the child delivered by c-section, so the date was known. If the date is not known (natural, off-schedule delivery), how do you get the birth date registered with the insurance prior to the child receiving care on their birth day?
Sounds to me like the insurance carrier/company was nitpicking and failing to keep a suitable window open for the addition of the child to the plan.
While I would tend to agree with you on URL references being invalid in 3 months or the life of a software product, whichever is sooner, literary references are often useful for archived references. Book references (including those used in writing papers or when used in citations) often require that you indicate the year of copyright. Subsequent editions (second, third editions, etc) will bear different copyright dates and should be obvious when locating a later version of a book. Whether or not the original is obtainable may be in question, but the reference and structure of identification of publications tends to be fairly standard and work over time.
How do you recover from a bomb blowing up in midair? How does height help you if the plane is split in two, or explodes in a fireball? Does 'staying in your seat' as an order somehow prevent someone from setting off a bomb, from their seat, like the Christmas Day attempt was being done? An hour is a very very long time to go without doing anything. What exactly are you supposed to do for that hour? Treating people this way is akin to treating them like prisoners. Since these people, 99.9% of them, are paying customers, can you tell me why one would subject themselves to such aggravation?
Security theater is more than inconvenience. When it offers you no real security and presents the idea that something is being done, you relax your guard without being any safer. This presents the same opportunities for attack as before, except now you're once more complacent to the idea of it and blind to the attempt.
All the people here posting are in support of the officials? That's funny, because I don't support what the officials did, and I post here. Does that not make me part of all people on Slashdot?
They may have had a legal right to do what they did, but I think they made a bad call.
You cannot commit a crime unless you perform an act that has been determined illegal. Really, is that so hard to understand? Even law enforcement, in performing drug and prostitution stings, must wait until the act has been committed (transaction made) in order to make an arrest. Even in this specific case, the police are not going to charge her with a crime. There is no crime to charge her with! She had no drawings, no plans, no detailed strategy with which she was to implement her plot. Just some speech up on Facebook which could either be ranting, a joke, or a threat.
Besides, one only need to compare this case to the protests going on about the health care reform. There have been clearly violent threats to the President's life (Thomas Jefferson's quote about the Tree of Liberty and the protester wearing or carrying a gun), and yet no arrests were made there, nor was anyone hurt (thankfully). No one was even detained for expressing these opinions, which is a thankful sign that at least sometimes free speech still exists even if it is in bad taste.
By going after people for expressing opinion, even violent opinion, you are prosecuting people for what they are thinking (thought crimes). How you don't understand this is just amazing to me.
Good will and a well thought out argument can turn an irate non-paying customer into a happy paying customer. Treating people like dirt and failing to give them any sort of respect is what generates this ill will in the first place. Ill will, resentment, anger, and distrust do not make for good long term relationships. This is especially true when you're betting that you can make a game fun for people to continue to pay you on a regular basis to play it. You need that relationship to be good, so the customer will pay you more later.
Does that make more sense why it would be worth it to do some PR to people playing (but not paying for) your game? After all, isn't that what advertising is anyways, a PR campaign to potential paying customers?
Revenue.. gross income, right?
Last I looked, the average individual paid taxes on their gross income (minus some allowed non-taxable withholdings). How is this different? It certainly wouldn't be very wise to go with taxes on profit, because then a corporation would have an incentive to bump up costs in some way shape or form in order to control what is listed as profit. I'm no accountant, but I'm sure they can probably work that and still provide incentives to investors as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal
When you use different terms for different groups of people, you set the stage for something close, but not quite. It imparts a measure of control to those that define the terms and the rules. With 'marriages' and 'civil unions' as terms in use, I can now say that married couples can have this right, but fail to grant it to civil unions. This is a Very Bad Thing (tm). Either heterosexual couples need to give up the idea of 'Marriage' as a term they live by, or they can grant homosexual couples the same privilege and allow them to use the same term.
You might think that is just a terminology mismatch, but terminology is very very very important in the legal word. A corporation is a person with respect to the law, even though that term 'person' would never be applied to a corporation in the every day world. Laws must be carefully worded to avoid granting rights to all legal persons if the intent is to apply them only to a flesh-and-blood person. Since this whole debate is surrounding the legal implications of a union between two individuals, the terminology used must be considered.
The gay community is aware of this Separate but Equal idea, and they're pushing to use the same legal definition so that they cannot be segregated as they know has been done in the past. This is not stupidity on their part, this is a fair bit of wisdom based on the historical behavior of this society. So far, I haven't heard (possibly through simple ignorance) of any locale that has implemented civil unions for homosexual couples granting 100% of the same rights as those heterosexual couples that have been married.
If you feel compelled to prove me wrong, please also look for the frequency which that occurs. A one-off place that does it would not be sufficient proof that it was implemented properly everywhere.
Except, that we know the environment of one such case affected the environment of another, which is why they could not close the wormhole...because a blackhole was in the alternate gates envrionment ...seriously though I think so far they have been pretty cool with coming up with ways of explaining such things especially things like mythology.
Thing about a black hole causing a disruption in the wormhole is that you're almost merging two of the same types of phenomenon. A Stargate warps space-time in order to bridge the gap between them. A black hole also significantly distorts space-time in the area around it. It is conceivable that when these two distortions interact that the wormhole itself is affected by the result. However, this does not need to break the idea that a resistive barrier is present to stop particles that are not under a constant motive force from bridging the barrier.
They could create a sort of tubbing that pierces the event horizons protective layer, and let the hole in the tube sticking through both sides fillup the air they need...but then again this is just a show, and not real life, so maybe there are x * x reasons for not being able to!
You're thinking misses a problem here. A tube between the ends would not open up a window, as you're thinking it would. Instead, the tube would be cut in half with the event horizon occupying the middle of it as well as surrounding it. Additionally, it's been described in a few episodes (One in the Atlantis series is one I can recall easily) that there is a safety mechanism to transfer items 'in whole'. If you're not fully within the event horizon, it will not transfer you to the remote gate. A tube used as you describe will not have gone completely within the event horizon, and would not be showing out the other side. Even in the Stargate SG-1 series when O'Neil was after some tech thieves, when he was 'holding the gate open' by keeping his arm within the remote side, it did not remain on the originating side of the wormhole. It is a nice thought, but precedent has been established that this would not work.
Oddly enough, though I went to a public school, one I considered to be very good, I would have a hard time supporting a monopoly of the public education system over education. This stems from one driving factor. If there is only one place to go for your education, and that education is all the same, then wouldn't it be so easy to tweak the curriculum in order to subtly exclude a lesson that teaches something important? It wasn't until I got out in the world, and read an interesting post on here that I even learned that there had been armed rebellions of any significance within the US after the civil war.
I doubt that it was omitted from my teachings intentionally and I might have simply forgotten it was taught to me (history was not my strongest subject), but with a monopoly on education and the willingness of some people to believe authority without question makes a monopoly on education a dangerous thing in my mind.
Also, to note, if you fail to receive your rebate and have copies of all documents you sent in, you can also file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.
I accidentally overpaid Comcast once. They got the payment in 2 days, cashed, and I couldn't stop payment realizing it within half a day of it being sent. I had called and called Comcast saying "Refund me, when will it arrive back?" 2 months pass and, while I'm sure the timing is 'coincidental', a day or two after I filed a complaint with the BBB, I both received my refund in the mail and received an email from a Comcast rep asking me how they could be of assistance.
I've heard other stories of this working as well, so while this is anecdotal evidence, it does seem to be replicated.
I also reject the way religion is being taught in churches: it's one-way communication with endless repetition of a very small set of events that supposedly took place and that would NOT pass scrutiny in this day and age. Immaculate conception, uh-huh. How about a DNA test first? :-)
Because I'm sure someone's probably mentioned this already, the idea of linguistic drift through time and translation gives rise to this particular debate. Does our current version of Jesus' birth mean that he was born from a woman that had never had sex before (our definition of virgin) or that he was born of a maiden (the older definitions of the words used in previous translations).
An interesting summary of the argument here.
Note: I'm not religious, I just like the analysis and history that seems to be completely ignored.
I seem to recall there being a law stating that no information may be collected from a under 13 years of age. It's called the Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). I don't know much more about what the software is asking, and whom it is asking, but it seems to me they're treading dangerous ground by doing this kind of thing.
As with all forms of pain, it is merely a symptom of a bigger problem. Pain is a signal that something is wrong, be it broken bone or upset stomach. In this case, we feel pain empathetically with the suffering of animals. Perhaps it isn't that we should simply make the pain go away, but rather address the cause of that suffering. This isn't about getting people to become vegan, because that is unrealistic and unwise. However, the source of pain isn't the slaughter of the animals, as that is probably fairly quick. It is the housing of these animals through their life. Kept in small pens, force fed antibiotics in order to keep from catching disease as they stand in their own excrement, these animals have the worst living conditions of any creature I've heard of, even worse than our most vile criminals.
Fix this cause, and perhaps the problems it is causing will cease.
A vaccination provides you protection against getting the virus. It is not guaranteed protection, but it is better than your chances if you were to come across it without that protection. This is not equivalent to a cure. A cure is a remedy provided to you in order to remove an existing infection from you. Once you have been infected, a vaccination is typically no longer effective, whereas a cure is.
Also to note, not all viruses mutate particularly rapidly, as like the influenza virus. Some, like Chicken Pox, tend to be fairly steady so that a single regiment of the vaccine is sufficient to prevent you from being infected your entire life. Others, as you note influenza, should be had every year because the rate of mutation is that quick.
That's an interesting slippery slope argument.
Frankly, it has been my experience that if you truly know what you're doing, you can generally carry a bigger price tag for your work. You spend less time doing it, and can do more, or at least more complex. Someone that is cheaper generally doesn't know quite as much, so spends longer to do it, and doesn't have the experience already built up not to screw it up in the process. That experience is a big benefit. There are of course exceptions for those that know what they're doing selling themselves cheaply, but I don't think that's typical.
Having worked at a manufacturing facility once already, supporting their IT Ops, I fail to see why a 'highly paid employee in training' is a negative. IT is often sent to training, and I would hazard a guess that they're often paid more than the assembler on the floor. In my particular case, assemblers were also sent to training in order to assert the value of Standard Work. This would enhance effectiveness of the assemblers by simplifying and streamlining the process and empowering them to make suggestions as to how the process could be done more efficiently. Considering this plant was always falling behind on their quota due to inefficiencies, having workers that know how to speed up the process is of significant value, and that means more money for the company.
Also, a manufacturing method that requires fewer workers doesn't mean that jobs will always be cut. Perhaps a second production line will be opened instead, allowing the factory to produce more with their highly paid, highly trained workforce? Other factors, such as penny pinching and trying to get employees to do more with less often set up the scenario where strikes would happen, or employees feel disgruntled and leave for other opportunities.