...but jailing people left and right certainly isn't working on drug use...why do they think it will work here?
Just some thoughts you inspired...
The return on investment in the drug arena is a big motivator for people to remain involved. Consider the users... they are either looking for an altering experience or just a fix to keep them satisfied. For those who are addicted, it becomes a necessity. Users of some drugs may become impaired or apathetic about the punishment due to the altering effects of said drugs. Those involved in the industry have the potential of becoming rich.
Sharing mp3's, software, or movies doesn't really offer that ROI to the people involved... which means you have a situation of great potential risk for no reward save the potential esteem of peers... unless you are selling your booty, in which case you are a real pirate... arrrrrrrrg.
This is an excellent reply showing factually that the bust is responsible for a number of people in our field losing revenue. Sure, maybe the AC Parent above loses money to IP theft, but that doesn't make him a hero and it doesn't make Mudcathi a villain for pointing that out.
Moderation is a responsibility, not a tool to silence opinions you disagree with. Whoever marked Parent as Flamebait needs to remember that.
I feel that it should be legal for me to snort coke off a hooker's ass while driving a stolen Humvee at 80 mph through a church parking lot. For the children
I love you... both for myself, and for the children.
I guess I'm just that old. Maybe it's time we write a validator that takes cross-browser code into consideration...
Let's talk about "Valid". Valid in this sense means that it conforms to a printed standard with absolutely no deviations whatsoever. That's bullshit, for starters.
If a browser does not recognize markup, it is disregarded. So, as a browser sees it, this code may be perfectly valid. Maybe not so for a textbook course on grading only the source, but hey... you get what you pay for.
Anyone remember the actual Browser War? You know, when table tags were new? Remember when they came up with background colors for pages, or better yet the background image? What a revolution!... and then there was a schism in html coding. The big contenders (Netscape & IE) were hurriedly adding features to their browsers before they were included in an HTML standard in order to gain market share. Beyond that, if one camp's method became the standard, the other camp would not adhere to it but would keep their method of markup. Of course, the word "standard" then didn't seem to carry as much weight as now. That's probably why there were so many issues. [Blink tag, hello? Now there's a blink CSS that works in mozilla yet not in IE.]
Look at the first few 3.2 "errors" for starters:
No type allowed when designating an RSS feed? (Isn't that an anachronism?)
No topmargin, leftmargin, marginwidth, marginheight... come on. If you didn't have that back in the day you didn't start rendering at the top left of either IE or NN.
Bgcolor? Face? NOBR? Come on. Maybe this looks like a foreign language to those of you who haven't been in the field forever, but you need to have a drink and loosen up. Browsers don't care. Your bandwidth is not being soaked up with the occasional cross-browser code snippet.
I realize that now we have a legion of designers who believe that if the page doesn't look right the browser needs to be updated to properly implement CSS. Great, I won't be holding my breath. The CSS Level 1 standard has been around forever and it STILL hasn't been 100% implemented across browsers.
Even now, there are ppl in boardrooms who get upset if their multimillion dollar projects don't look and function the same in IE6 and NN4. That's right, NN4, because one of their clients somewhere hasn't upgraded for a while. Go ahead and prance in there to explain degrading gracefully to them. I'm sure they'll be very interested.
Some prefer to just have the music playing in the background while they continue using the computer for other things (coding, etc) in the foreground... why render your system useless aside from being a video jukebox?
I am pleased to see another company stand up for its customers.
OT -- FYI: Charter upped everyone's speed to 2mbps except the lowest rung of service and eliminated everything between. Check out their new package structure on their website.
The ulterior motive? SBC, Verizon, et. al. are lowering the cost of DSL. The cable companies are upping their bandwidth instead of lowering prices in hopes of competing. There was an article on it last week. Comcast is offering 3mbps, Charter only went up to 2...
The cable providers don't want to lower their costs, and the phone companies can't compete on bandwidth because of the limitations on DSL related to distance from COs, etc., etc... so it comes down to whether you want blazing speed or affordable high speed, and of course the ongoing drama of what is available where...
Let's take a DVD of The Matrix for example. I paid to see this movie at the theatres X amount of times. The production costs of the movie have been paid back and much profit has been made. I purchase the DVD when it comes out for X amount of money, which was probably around $20-25US. Did it cost them even remotely near that price to mass produce the DVDs and packaging? No.
So, didn't we already pay the multiple-viewings fee when we bought that DVD?
Sure, there are the movies that are not released in theatres, but they are an exception, not the rule...
The subject is just a joke, but seriously, your statement could basically be reduced to "Don't allow the people to create the infrastructure for a public network, there is already a company there who would take their money"...
If it is owned by the people, and its use is determined by the people, and it is regulated by the will of the people, it is only a monopoly of the people.
The only control issue may be that the majority of the people may have a different view than the minority, like that doesn't happen every day... but that is what educating the masses on issues before voting is all about.
And it isn't about coupling the provided service with governement control, it is about building the infrastructure. Services can be provided by 3rd party vendors and the community would have the advantage because they own the infrastructure. Cable/Telco company A charges too much, start accepting bids from companies B, C, and D. Bye bye, company A. Just because the LOCAL govt collects the funds as if it were a municipal utility does not mean the govt is actually doing the footwork. They should collect the money and pay the 3rd party, always looking to get the best deal for the community, by vote.
it does look and feel natural FOR A ROBOT
on
Robots!
·
· Score: 1
Doesn't look and feel natural? Let's see -- it looks like a robot and feels like a robot. AH, is it that it doesn't look and feel organic?
Take a look at some of the robots out there now. Insects, Canines, Egg-shaped, Humanoid, etc, etc. Hardly a fridge moving around the room?
We can hardly make it think, but we can make it process information in a particular fashion. We can build it bodies, though currently they are not disguised as humans. Maybe you're looking for more of a flesh-encased cyborg?
A household robot would not even use GPS. GPS has no data on obstacles, home furnishings, or even the lay of the land. Expect collision sensors and imagine them like a bat's sonar chirp/hearing system.
If they have and use bio-weapons at this time they will lose out on the opposition to war within the U.N., kind of like shooting one's self in the foot.
I didn't read the responses to your comment, so sorry if I repeat anything.
I would be more sympathetic to the companies who deem their information sacred if my email address and personal info weren't already harvested from the web and used to send tons of "opt-out" spam.
Ironically, I don't think putting a Terms of Use statement on my sig forbidding this practice would either prevent it from happening or help me win a court-case against interlopers.
It isn't like any of this is new, it is only in the news because now it is a Corporation getting shafted instead of John Q. Public.
Again, the post was a specific response to the post it replied to, using GIVENs from the specific message to which it replied. What is it about basic hypothetical calculations that are so difficult for ppl to understand?
There is no pharmaceutical company on the planet that has 8-10% of the population taking its $1500/month drug for life. HOLY GOD, MAN, VITAMIN PILLS DON'T HAVE THAT KIND OF MARKET PENETRATION!
Even if you were correct, as long as only 8% of the population at any given time is taking the drug for 1 total year, the figures are accurate (and still a low estimate). If person A takes it for 6 months, person B for 3, person C for 2 and person D for 1, that's still a year.
BTW, I'm not talking about this particular drug, I'm talking about all of them in general. The post this replies to was talking about pharmaceuticals in general, not this one drug. Kill off the infection and you don't need to take this particular medicine any longer, and yet that has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the post.
A month long course of, say Prozac, will run $150-$250 (1/10 of your low estimate), and has barely 2 million prescribees (again about 1/10th of your low estimate).
Prozac is not a newer drug, it is widely used, there are a great number of generics and substitutes, and it is NOT EVEN COMPARABLE to the drug used in the example given by the post this replied to regarding a $15.00 pill which costs $0.12 to produce. All of this is clearly stated in the post.
WTF is there not to understand? 250,000 prescribees for 2 pills that yield $14.88 more per pill to buy than to produce taken twice daily for a year. It's called MATH. You take the GIVEN information and work with it to yield a RESULT. All parts of the computation are clearly labeled. Look at the post it replied to, that's where the given manufacturing cost vs. purchase cost are derived. The rest of the inputs are clearly labeled.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod Parent Up.
The article doesn't specify where profit goes aside from the measly 1% to the World Wildlife Fund... did the taxpayers vote on that?
All profit should either go toward future research grants, or the program should be released in the public domain.
While there is a Columbia College, this article refers to The University of Missouri in Columbia, MO... a.k.a. Mizzou.
Just an FYI: There were cylons who looked/acted as humans in an episode of BSG:1980 -- The Night the Cylons Landed.
Granted, the story moves about only 1 accompanied by a Centurion, but there were at least 2 seen in the episode.
I have, in the pursuit of happiness, shared information with the people I have come into...
I have also claimed to be a photographer and a film producer.*
woof.
*These falsehoods were included for context.
...but jailing people left and right certainly isn't working on drug use...why do they think it will work here?
Just some thoughts you inspired...
The return on investment in the drug arena is a big motivator for people to remain involved. Consider the users... they are either looking for an altering experience or just a fix to keep them satisfied. For those who are addicted, it becomes a necessity. Users of some drugs may become impaired or apathetic about the punishment due to the altering effects of said drugs. Those involved in the industry have the potential of becoming rich.
Sharing mp3's, software, or movies doesn't really offer that ROI to the people involved... which means you have a situation of great potential risk for no reward save the potential esteem of peers... unless you are selling your booty, in which case you are a real pirate... arrrrrrrrg.
This is an excellent reply showing factually that the bust is responsible for a number of people in our field losing revenue. Sure, maybe the AC Parent above loses money to IP theft, but that doesn't make him a hero and it doesn't make Mudcathi a villain for pointing that out.
Moderation is a responsibility, not a tool to silence opinions you disagree with. Whoever marked Parent as Flamebait needs to remember that.
For another touch of irony -- everyone is being directed to the 'official' Unofficial FAQ.
Now that's irony.
--
-SA1
Thank you for voicing that so succinctly.
I feel that it should be legal for me to snort coke off a hooker's ass while driving a stolen Humvee at 80 mph through a church parking lot. For the children
I love you... both for myself, and for the children.
I guess I'm just that old. Maybe it's time we write a validator that takes cross-browser code into consideration...
... and then there was a schism in html coding. The big contenders (Netscape & IE) were hurriedly adding features to their browsers before they were included in an HTML standard in order to gain market share. Beyond that, if one camp's method became the standard, the other camp would not adhere to it but would keep their method of markup. Of course, the word "standard" then didn't seem to carry as much weight as now. That's probably why there were so many issues. [Blink tag, hello? Now there's a blink CSS that works in mozilla yet not in IE.]
Let's talk about "Valid". Valid in this sense means that it conforms to a printed standard with absolutely no deviations whatsoever. That's bullshit, for starters.
If a browser does not recognize markup, it is disregarded. So, as a browser sees it, this code may be perfectly valid. Maybe not so for a textbook course on grading only the source, but hey... you get what you pay for.
Anyone remember the actual Browser War? You know, when table tags were new? Remember when they came up with background colors for pages, or better yet the background image? What a revolution!
Look at the first few 3.2 "errors" for starters:
No type allowed when designating an RSS feed? (Isn't that an anachronism?)
No topmargin, leftmargin, marginwidth, marginheight... come on. If you didn't have that back in the day you didn't start rendering at the top left of either IE or NN.
Bgcolor? Face? NOBR? Come on. Maybe this looks like a foreign language to those of you who haven't been in the field forever, but you need to have a drink and loosen up. Browsers don't care. Your bandwidth is not being soaked up with the occasional cross-browser code snippet.
I realize that now we have a legion of designers who believe that if the page doesn't look right the browser needs to be updated to properly implement CSS. Great, I won't be holding my breath. The CSS Level 1 standard has been around forever and it STILL hasn't been 100% implemented across browsers.
Even now, there are ppl in boardrooms who get upset if their multimillion dollar projects don't look and function the same in IE6 and NN4. That's right, NN4, because one of their clients somewhere hasn't upgraded for a while. Go ahead and prance in there to explain degrading gracefully to them. I'm sure they'll be very interested.
There seems to be some misunderstanding in this thread.
Please note that we are talking about the messenger service running under Windows, not the Windows Messenger IM program or web browser popup windows.
That's an interesting way of looking at things.
Some prefer to just have the music playing in the background while they continue using the computer for other things (coding, etc) in the foreground... why render your system useless aside from being a video jukebox?
so... now we can start saying "It's a geek thing. You wouldn't understand."
I am pleased to see another company stand up for its customers.
OT -- FYI:
Charter upped everyone's speed to 2mbps except the lowest rung of service and eliminated everything between. Check out their new package structure on their website.
The ulterior motive? SBC, Verizon, et. al. are lowering the cost of DSL. The cable companies are upping their bandwidth instead of lowering prices in hopes of competing. There was an article on it last week. Comcast is offering 3mbps, Charter only went up to 2...
The cable providers don't want to lower their costs, and the phone companies can't compete on bandwidth because of the limitations on DSL related to distance from COs, etc., etc... so it comes down to whether you want blazing speed or affordable high speed, and of course the ongoing drama of what is available where...
Right on, I have an IBM PS2 Model 30 with monitor and both still tick without a hitch. I love that old 286 :)
If you want to copy some of those old apple disks look into changing the drive speed... you have to open it up, but it should be do-able.
-s
Sad but true...
Let's take a DVD of The Matrix for example. I paid to see this movie at the theatres X amount of times. The production costs of the movie have been paid back and much profit has been made. I purchase the DVD when it comes out for X amount of money, which was probably around $20-25US. Did it cost them even remotely near that price to mass produce the DVDs and packaging? No.
So, didn't we already pay the multiple-viewings fee when we bought that DVD?
Sure, there are the movies that are not released in theatres, but they are an exception, not the rule...
Foo.
The subject is just a joke, but seriously, your statement could basically be reduced to "Don't allow the people to create the infrastructure for a public network, there is already a company there who would take their money" ...
If it is owned by the people, and its use is determined by the people, and it is regulated by the will of the people, it is only a monopoly of the people.
The only control issue may be that the majority of the people may have a different view than the minority, like that doesn't happen every day... but that is what educating the masses on issues before voting is all about.
And it isn't about coupling the provided service with governement control, it is about building the infrastructure. Services can be provided by 3rd party vendors and the community would have the advantage because they own the infrastructure. Cable/Telco company A charges too much, start accepting bids from companies B, C, and D. Bye bye, company A. Just because the LOCAL govt collects the funds as if it were a municipal utility does not mean the govt is actually doing the footwork. They should collect the money and pay the 3rd party, always looking to get the best deal for the community, by vote.
Doesn't look and feel natural? Let's see -- it looks like a robot and feels like a robot. AH, is it that it doesn't look and feel organic?
Take a look at some of the robots out there now. Insects, Canines, Egg-shaped, Humanoid, etc, etc. Hardly a fridge moving around the room?
We can hardly make it think, but we can make it process information in a particular fashion. We can build it bodies, though currently they are not disguised as humans. Maybe you're looking for more of a flesh-encased cyborg?
Give it some time.
A household robot would not even use GPS. GPS has no data on obstacles, home furnishings, or even the lay of the land. Expect collision sensors and imagine them like a bat's sonar chirp/hearing system.
If they have and use bio-weapons at this time they will lose out on the opposition to war within the U.N., kind of like shooting one's self in the foot.
I didn't read the responses to your comment, so sorry if I repeat anything.
I would be more sympathetic to the companies who deem their information sacred if my email address and personal info weren't already harvested from the web and used to send tons of "opt-out" spam.
Ironically, I don't think putting a Terms of Use statement on my sig forbidding this practice would either prevent it from happening or help me win a court-case against interlopers.
It isn't like any of this is new, it is only in the news because now it is a Corporation getting shafted instead of John Q. Public.
There is no sig, only ZUUL.
Again, the post was a specific response to the post it replied to, using GIVENs from the specific message to which it replied. What is it about basic hypothetical calculations that are so difficult for ppl to understand?
Pinkeye.
Screw that, I'll use checks.
There is no pharmaceutical company on the planet that has 8-10% of the population taking its $1500/month drug for life. HOLY GOD, MAN, VITAMIN PILLS DON'T HAVE THAT KIND OF MARKET PENETRATION!
Even if you were correct, as long as only 8% of the population at any given time is taking the drug for 1 total year, the figures are accurate (and still a low estimate). If person A takes it for 6 months, person B for 3, person C for 2 and person D for 1, that's still a year.
BTW, I'm not talking about this particular drug, I'm talking about all of them in general. The post this replies to was talking about pharmaceuticals in general, not this one drug. Kill off the infection and you don't need to take this particular medicine any longer, and yet that has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the post.
A month long course of, say Prozac, will run $150-$250 (1/10 of your low estimate), and has barely 2 million prescribees (again about 1/10th of your low estimate).
Prozac is not a newer drug, it is widely used, there are a great number of generics and substitutes, and it is NOT EVEN COMPARABLE to the drug used in the example given by the post this replied to regarding a $15.00 pill which costs $0.12 to produce. All of this is clearly stated in the post.
WTF is there not to understand? 250,000 prescribees for 2 pills that yield $14.88 more per pill to buy than to produce taken twice daily for a year. It's called MATH. You take the GIVEN information and work with it to yield a RESULT. All parts of the computation are clearly labeled. Look at the post it replied to, that's where the given manufacturing cost vs. purchase cost are derived. The rest of the inputs are clearly labeled.