If you recall, when Harmonix allowed users to import songs from Rock Band 1 to Rock Band 2, they charged $5 to compensate the labels for "expanded use".
While it's not mentioned, somehow I think it's more their role in this deal than Apple's. The other thing they want (and get) from this, is a way to measure to how many customers who previously bought DRMed music find this important (enough to pay $.30 for anyway)
The last function is corruption/election rigging firewalling.
Imagine there's a corrupt governor in, oh, let's say Illinois. The governor decides that dead people, dogs, cats, and goldfish need the vote and has decided they all need to make the same choice -- they're very grateful for their suffrage after all. In the electoral college system, the only votes the governor can bring to the table are Illinois, while in a popular system, he could alter the entire outcome through his rigging.
Also, when there's a close election, you only have to do recounts in close states. Florida was a mess, but imagine how much worse a NATIONAL recount would've been. I don't think there's enough gov't officials in the US to supervise that.
Lastly, because of the firewall effect, states can have more independent election processes from other states since, at best, they're only altering the results from their states, not at a national level, which was their right to begin with.
Well, considering it's the first release from a member of the best-selling music group of ALL TIME, I'd consider it news. I'd assume if this "experiment" goes well, he'd be very likely to do the same with the rest of his catalog.
The ability to download DRM free Beatles would proclaim the end of DRM music forever and finally kill the CD. Not just artists from EMI and whatnot. (I'm sorry, but if you're charging the price for a CD and giving me lesser quality, I'm going to go out and buy the CD.)
Seriously, there's no "free" alternative. He did a great job considering you can preview it in Windows/Mac and Linux. The only other thing he could do is stream an mp3, but that's more easy to capture and you couldn't do controls embedded into the site itself.
I feel like an important part of art -- especially music -- is to have some control over its use at sanctioned events/places. Think of your favorite song/artist. If GW Bush wanted to use that song as his campaign song, wouldn't you feel as though the artist were somehow endorsing that campaign? Or if BMW decided to use the song in one of their car ads, isn't the song endorsing their product?
In the same way the above are pay-for-play, the artist has to explicitly give up the right for his/her work to be used in this way. If the army wants to use a song during a large military funeral, they'd need permission from the artist. How is this any different? I can't imagine anyone (other than Toby Keith) wants their music associated with state-sponsored torture.
I'm really really hoping you're being sarcastic or don't believe what you're saying.
While time is wasted on DRM, it's a game...it's as much a waste of time as commercials on TV. Or if you consider games and TV wastes of time to begin with, you should stop committing suicide.
Go play outside Timmy and let the adults handle the world's real problems.
Actually, you'd save after every "major" revision...you know when you hit "undo" in MS Word and it thinks something needs to be undone (which is still something that escapes emacs...really every character I type I have to undo one by one?) Also, save on application exit.
I actually write software with very expensive user data (i.e. the users of our software are paid more than the developers of it are...and I don't work in India;)) and we allow the user to choose between this and manually managing saving (since also, the data saved may be read by other applications and saving it allows them to "see" the same data the user is editing).
Why yes actually. I've spent the past 5 years living in one of the largest 5 cities in the US. I've also lived in more rural parts of the country as well. Whenever there's been a disturbance nearby, they've actually been pretty prompt.
If the cops aren't showing up, maybe it's incompetence rather than a problem with the idea as a whole.
It'll be a great day in the world when there's no genocide, starvation, or actual torture and we can call DRM evil. Until then, I think "mildly annoying" might be more appropriate.
The essential problem with gun ownership is that you need them in rural areas but they're undesirable in urban areas coupled with the fact that people drive.
Let's say you live in Wyoming and Dick Cheney comes over with a gun. You know he's not there to shoot quail, but probably to shoot Quayle (i.e. Dan). You could call the cops but they won't be there for a good hour since the nearest police station is so far away. Honestly, what are people expected to do? Especially the elderly?
In NYC, you have a situation where anything happens and a cop can be there in minutes (granted someone actually calls the police) so using a gun is probably not the ideal circumstance since it's a bit more heavy handed than necessary.
That said, people are going to drive. You can't keep guns out of cities due to that nor can you keep guns out of rural areas since they're needed. But guns don't kill people. Kids who play Doom do.
World's highest per-student spending rates, and yet our teachers can't afford to make photocopies. How the hell did we get here?
Well, there were budget cuts, so they hired a budget cut expert for each school district who recommended the soaring school budgets were due to high and unnecessary material costs, but this first had to be backed up by a second expert, who also recommended cutting recess as a way to increase student productivity.
Both of these experts cost a mere $150k a year for their priceless advice and the second even agreed to have his pay subsidized by the makers of Ritalin.
With experts such as these it MUST be the teachers who are ineffective!
I was talking about sex to begin with...bitter much?;)
Contrary to popular belief, most women want to be friends with the people with whom they have sex.
There's the girls who date the asshole, and they're just hopeless...like the smart guys who date the good looking moron thinking she'll grow a brain.
Nerdy guys are just pathetic though. You can tell when they're looking for pussy a mile away and they'll go on about working for Bioware for 20 minutes before they realize you're just not that interested.
In my experience, there's different types of girls, just like there are guys. If you want cheerleaders, then yes, you probably want to be a jock. But there's more girls in music, dance, political groups, and theater than there ever were in cheerleading (at least in both my HS and college) and they tend to look for different qualities: ability to intelligently carry on a conversation not related to D&D, emotional support, and well, being interesting.
It's unfortunate that so many nerds tend to take the approach that just because you're good at math, you can't play violin (Einstein) or jazz saxophone (Alan Greenspan's went to Julliard for jazz sax before giving it up and going into economics). Randall Munroe is a good contemporary example.
I'd venture if more nerds dropped the attitude of being into technology at the expense of all other interests, they'd probably have an easier time socially.
I was unaware bears and humans were attempting genocide on one another -- can you let me know when this happened? I was very surprised to hear the bears were doing this -- I thought they ate honey and stole picnic baskets all day.
A larger issue, I suppose, would be the uniquely human capacity to completely exterminate a species. Even in our early days, we show great promise at genocide.
There's only 2 potential issues I can think of, both of which are predicated on it being widespread. A few cloned individuals wouldn't hamper a society, but were it to be become reasonably widespread, it could become a status symbol, like a pure-bred dog.
After this, we'd lose diversity. By its very nature, cloning introduces a non-genetically new breeder to the gene pool. It'll be like the royal family all over again. The second issue, is that if cloning became widespread, human evolution would stop (again, lack of diversity).
The largest difference between cloning and test tube babies, would again, be original genetic source material.
These implications may seem sci-fi, but we are talking about cloning;)
(Again, as a caveat, if cloning were as widespread as "test tube babies" are now, I think you're correct in your assessment)
I think you're right in the question you're asking.
When I was first applying for jobs (circa 2000), I saw places that asked for 15 years experience with Java. Which hadn't existed for 15 years. My point is that both old and new developers may have the same number of years experience with the tools/languages, since the tools have only been around so long (how relevant is Windows 3.11 experience?)
Also, the very fact you're getting responses from vague to enlightened shows your interview question is effective. You're not hiring everyone; the purpose of a good interview question IS to find the enlightened and hire them!
While this is subjective, I have to argue against it. It is true that the first 50-60 levels of WoW are definitely repetitive....
Last I checked, the game had a 80 level limit. Meaning 60/80 is somewhere around 3/4s of the game being repetitive (or half if you believe there's a lot of content post level cap). And every level I get, I wish for some light at the end of the tunnel;)
In the late 1960s Cleese, Idle, and Chapman were at the peak of their ability
You may be right about Idle (whose last big project was the hilarious, but milking it Holy Grail Musical) and Chapman, but I think Cleese did his best work later. I thought A Fish Called Wanda was actually Cleese's best work (late 80's). He managed to create the same ironic, dry, juxtaposition into a coherent -- but always hilarious -- storyline (the latter is something Python never managed to do...every movie felt like a series of sketches strung together with an overall theme...or sometimes without one entirely.)
I also notice you don't include Terry Gilliam, who went into the more surrealist bent post-Python with works like 12 Monkeys or the dystopian comedy Brazil.
I was wondering the same thing. Guild wars has been pretty profitable (and I enjoyed it...until they stopped coming out with new content and no one was in any of the lowbie areas).
They've already pushed the beta to not be this year ('08). I know one thing, I'm signed up as soon as they start it....until then I've started WoW.
Wouldn't that be agnostic cinema since gnosis is Greek for knowledge, whereas lack of knowledge is represented in its negation (agnostic)?
The Gnostics were a group of early Christians who believed the god of the old testament was evil (especially for imprisoning spirits in bodies), but the good god periodically sent messengers to free us from him, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden or Jesus. Unfortunately, after the mainstream Christians were done being persecuted, they decided they rather liked the other side of the racket and persecuted the Gnostics nearly to extinction...stuff like the dead sea scrolls survived though.
Some say though, that the Gnostics spirits are still restless and inhabit the bodies of the undead....
I'm almost 5 years out of school now and got degrees in both CS and Philosophy. In my humble opinion, there's a lot of intersection between the two, especially in regard to philosophy of the mind, but the really interesting part, I think, is how it helps me in my day to day work.
No, I'm not discussing the Critique of Pure Reason, espousing empiricism, or wondering if I really am just dreaming.
What I learned from my other major was discursive thinking: dissecting an idea to see what it means and what its ramifications are and how to deal with having more than one way to do it (TM) by choosing the best one.
Philosophy, for me, was all about discussion, so I'd had years of practice putting ideas up on the white board, understanding them, and maybe shooting them down years before I ever joined my first programming team.
(That, and being able to write incomprehensible comments vis a vis the English challenged folk with whom I sometimes work;))
Theodore Roosevelt, Abe Lincoln, FDR, George Washington.
Charisma on its own is a horrible ideal, just like pursuing wealth for its own sake. But democratic ideals combined with charisma is a great combination...just like a great job with great pay.
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If you recall, when Harmonix allowed users to import songs from Rock Band 1 to Rock Band 2, they charged $5 to compensate the labels for "expanded use".
While it's not mentioned, somehow I think it's more their role in this deal than Apple's. The other thing they want (and get) from this, is a way to measure to how many customers who previously bought DRMed music find this important (enough to pay $.30 for anyway)
The last function is corruption/election rigging firewalling.
Imagine there's a corrupt governor in, oh, let's say Illinois. The governor decides that dead people, dogs, cats, and goldfish need the vote and has decided they all need to make the same choice -- they're very grateful for their suffrage after all. In the electoral college system, the only votes the governor can bring to the table are Illinois, while in a popular system, he could alter the entire outcome through his rigging.
Also, when there's a close election, you only have to do recounts in close states. Florida was a mess, but imagine how much worse a NATIONAL recount would've been. I don't think there's enough gov't officials in the US to supervise that.
Lastly, because of the firewall effect, states can have more independent election processes from other states since, at best, they're only altering the results from their states, not at a national level, which was their right to begin with.
Well, considering it's the first release from a member of the best-selling music group of ALL TIME, I'd consider it news. I'd assume if this "experiment" goes well, he'd be very likely to do the same with the rest of his catalog.
The ability to download DRM free Beatles would proclaim the end of DRM music forever and finally kill the CD. Not just artists from EMI and whatnot. (I'm sorry, but if you're charging the price for a CD and giving me lesser quality, I'm going to go out and buy the CD.)
You'd prefer...silverlight?
Seriously, there's no "free" alternative. He did a great job considering you can preview it in Windows/Mac and Linux. The only other thing he could do is stream an mp3, but that's more easy to capture and you couldn't do controls embedded into the site itself.
I feel like an important part of art -- especially music -- is to have some control over its use at sanctioned events/places. Think of your favorite song/artist. If GW Bush wanted to use that song as his campaign song, wouldn't you feel as though the artist were somehow endorsing that campaign? Or if BMW decided to use the song in one of their car ads, isn't the song endorsing their product?
In the same way the above are pay-for-play, the artist has to explicitly give up the right for his/her work to be used in this way. If the army wants to use a song during a large military funeral, they'd need permission from the artist. How is this any different? I can't imagine anyone (other than Toby Keith) wants their music associated with state-sponsored torture.
I'm really really hoping you're being sarcastic or don't believe what you're saying.
While time is wasted on DRM, it's a game...it's as much a waste of time as commercials on TV. Or if you consider games and TV wastes of time to begin with, you should stop committing suicide.
Go play outside Timmy and let the adults handle the world's real problems.
Actually, you'd save after every "major" revision...you know when you hit "undo" in MS Word and it thinks something needs to be undone (which is still something that escapes emacs...really every character I type I have to undo one by one?) Also, save on application exit.
I actually write software with very expensive user data (i.e. the users of our software are paid more than the developers of it are...and I don't work in India;)) and we allow the user to choose between this and manually managing saving (since also, the data saved may be read by other applications and saving it allows them to "see" the same data the user is editing).
Why yes actually. I've spent the past 5 years living in one of the largest 5 cities in the US. I've also lived in more rural parts of the country as well. Whenever there's been a disturbance nearby, they've actually been pretty prompt.
If the cops aren't showing up, maybe it's incompetence rather than a problem with the idea as a whole.
It's evil.
It'll be a great day in the world when there's no genocide, starvation, or actual torture and we can call DRM evil. Until then, I think "mildly annoying" might be more appropriate.
The essential problem with gun ownership is that you need them in rural areas but they're undesirable in urban areas coupled with the fact that people drive.
Let's say you live in Wyoming and Dick Cheney comes over with a gun. You know he's not there to shoot quail, but probably to shoot Quayle (i.e. Dan). You could call the cops but they won't be there for a good hour since the nearest police station is so far away. Honestly, what are people expected to do? Especially the elderly?
In NYC, you have a situation where anything happens and a cop can be there in minutes (granted someone actually calls the police) so using a gun is probably not the ideal circumstance since it's a bit more heavy handed than necessary.
That said, people are going to drive. You can't keep guns out of cities due to that nor can you keep guns out of rural areas since they're needed. But guns don't kill people. Kids who play Doom do.
Since they can't rely on aged muscles or frail bones like younger men/women....
Because young people rely on aged muscles and frail bones...?
World's highest per-student spending rates, and yet our teachers can't afford to make photocopies. How the hell did we get here?
Well, there were budget cuts, so they hired a budget cut expert for each school district who recommended the soaring school budgets were due to high and unnecessary material costs, but this first had to be backed up by a second expert, who also recommended cutting recess as a way to increase student productivity.
Both of these experts cost a mere $150k a year for their priceless advice and the second even agreed to have his pay subsidized by the makers of Ritalin.
With experts such as these it MUST be the teachers who are ineffective!
They have been saying to use protection for YEARS now.
And yet, AIDs is still an epidemic.
I was talking about sex to begin with...bitter much?;)
Contrary to popular belief, most women want to be friends with the people with whom they have sex.
There's the girls who date the asshole, and they're just hopeless...like the smart guys who date the good looking moron thinking she'll grow a brain.
Nerdy guys are just pathetic though. You can tell when they're looking for pussy a mile away and they'll go on about working for Bioware for 20 minutes before they realize you're just not that interested.
In my experience, there's different types of girls, just like there are guys. If you want cheerleaders, then yes, you probably want to be a jock. But there's more girls in music, dance, political groups, and theater than there ever were in cheerleading (at least in both my HS and college) and they tend to look for different qualities: ability to intelligently carry on a conversation not related to D&D, emotional support, and well, being interesting.
It's unfortunate that so many nerds tend to take the approach that just because you're good at math, you can't play violin (Einstein) or jazz saxophone (Alan Greenspan's went to Julliard for jazz sax before giving it up and going into economics). Randall Munroe is a good contemporary example.
I'd venture if more nerds dropped the attitude of being into technology at the expense of all other interests, they'd probably have an easier time socially.
I was unaware bears and humans were attempting genocide on one another -- can you let me know when this happened? I was very surprised to hear the bears were doing this -- I thought they ate honey and stole picnic baskets all day.
A larger issue, I suppose, would be the uniquely human capacity to completely exterminate a species. Even in our early days, we show great promise at genocide.
There's only 2 potential issues I can think of, both of which are predicated on it being widespread. A few cloned individuals wouldn't hamper a society, but were it to be become reasonably widespread, it could become a status symbol, like a pure-bred dog.
After this, we'd lose diversity. By its very nature, cloning introduces a non-genetically new breeder to the gene pool. It'll be like the royal family all over again. The second issue, is that if cloning became widespread, human evolution would stop (again, lack of diversity).
The largest difference between cloning and test tube babies, would again, be original genetic source material.
These implications may seem sci-fi, but we are talking about cloning;)
(Again, as a caveat, if cloning were as widespread as "test tube babies" are now, I think you're correct in your assessment)
I think you're right in the question you're asking.
When I was first applying for jobs (circa 2000), I saw places that asked for 15 years experience with Java. Which hadn't existed for 15 years. My point is that both old and new developers may have the same number of years experience with the tools/languages, since the tools have only been around so long (how relevant is Windows 3.11 experience?)
Also, the very fact you're getting responses from vague to enlightened shows your interview question is effective. You're not hiring everyone; the purpose of a good interview question IS to find the enlightened and hire them!
I disagree with myth 2, but I think you do too:
Myth 2. WoW is a giant grind
While this is subjective, I have to argue against it. It is true that the first 50-60 levels of WoW are definitely repetitive....
Last I checked, the game had a 80 level limit. Meaning 60/80 is somewhere around 3/4s of the game being repetitive (or half if you believe there's a lot of content post level cap). And every level I get, I wish for some light at the end of the tunnel;)
In the late 1960s Cleese, Idle, and Chapman were at the peak of their ability
You may be right about Idle (whose last big project was the hilarious, but milking it Holy Grail Musical) and Chapman, but I think Cleese did his best work later. I thought A Fish Called Wanda was actually Cleese's best work (late 80's). He managed to create the same ironic, dry, juxtaposition into a coherent -- but always hilarious -- storyline (the latter is something Python never managed to do...every movie felt like a series of sketches strung together with an overall theme...or sometimes without one entirely.)
I also notice you don't include Terry Gilliam, who went into the more surrealist bent post-Python with works like 12 Monkeys or the dystopian comedy Brazil.
I was wondering the same thing. Guild wars has been pretty profitable (and I enjoyed it...until they stopped coming out with new content and no one was in any of the lowbie areas).
They've already pushed the beta to not be this year ('08). I know one thing, I'm signed up as soon as they start it. ...until then I've started WoW.
Wouldn't that be agnostic cinema since gnosis is Greek for knowledge, whereas lack of knowledge is represented in its negation (agnostic)?
The Gnostics were a group of early Christians who believed the god of the old testament was evil (especially for imprisoning spirits in bodies), but the good god periodically sent messengers to free us from him, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden or Jesus. Unfortunately, after the mainstream Christians were done being persecuted, they decided they rather liked the other side of the racket and persecuted the Gnostics nearly to extinction...stuff like the dead sea scrolls survived though.
Some say though, that the Gnostics spirits are still restless and inhabit the bodies of the undead....
I'm almost 5 years out of school now and got degrees in both CS and Philosophy. In my humble opinion, there's a lot of intersection between the two, especially in regard to philosophy of the mind, but the really interesting part, I think, is how it helps me in my day to day work.
No, I'm not discussing the Critique of Pure Reason, espousing empiricism, or wondering if I really am just dreaming.
What I learned from my other major was discursive thinking: dissecting an idea to see what it means and what its ramifications are and how to deal with having more than one way to do it (TM) by choosing the best one.
Philosophy, for me, was all about discussion, so I'd had years of practice putting ideas up on the white board, understanding them, and maybe shooting them down years before I ever joined my first programming team.
(That, and being able to write incomprehensible comments vis a vis the English challenged folk with whom I sometimes work;))
Since there's probably a lot of people who understand this article, allow me to translate:
Static stretch: +4 agility -1 strength. Decreases HP loss from "exercise" abilities. Lasts for 10 minutes.
Any questions?
Theodore Roosevelt, Abe Lincoln, FDR, George Washington.
Charisma on its own is a horrible ideal, just like pursuing wealth for its own sake. But democratic ideals combined with charisma is a great combination...just like a great job with great pay.