Can't speak for other countries, but over here we don't use ladders anymore. Instead we simply have a stick large enough to reach the 3rd(4th) floor from the ground;-)
There's 2 ways for game companies to react to fan projects. Either they go all foam-at-the-mouth and bust out the lawyers or they give the fan a hearty slap on the back and a job offer.;-)
Hmm... Does a statistic that Christians are more likely to be convicted prove that they are more likely to commit crimes? Or just more likely to be charged? Or perhaps more likely to confess?/I>
You forgot the best one...more likely to be stupid enough to get caught;-)
Please help me understand what is sick and twisted about "Don't have sex outside of marriage (which, if modeled after biblical ideals, will provide a warm, loving environment for childhood), and if you do and make a baby, give the baby up for adoption rather than kill it."?
Providing basic information about the way human reproductive system works does not equal giving permission to have sex outside of marriage.
Refusing to provide said information or even deliberately misinforming has been *proven* to increase the transmission of STD's and the occurances of unplanned pregnancies.
Wallow in your delusions all you like, the hard facts are against you. Teenagers *will* have sex. Making it impossible for them to do so without causing pregnancies will *not* stop them. Not informing them just how you get pregnant in the first place will only make it worse.
Furthermore who put the 9 unelected Supreme Court Oligarchs in charge? Certainly not the constitution - it gave to the SCOTUS no power to nullify laws passed by Congress and signed by the Executive. If they so chose the Congress & President could simply ignore the Supreme Court and continue enforcing the laws they passed.
So congress passes a law limiting free speech, the executive signs it.
Is it the job of the SCOTUS to strike down the law as unconstitutional, yes or no?
What this really shows is that empathy and as a result morality really are evolutionary constructs, that creationists are WRONG when they claim that it takes an invisible sky daddy to be moral.
In reality, the truth is far worse. Creationists have looked deep inside their soul and realized that without their sky daddy, they'd be out there right now stealing your food, raping your houses and burning your daughters.
So please, stop trying to prove them wrong, it'll be better for all of us in the long run. Just keep them far, far away from any institutes of learning...
I'm trying to convey information to you. The expression on your face tells me you're confused, or angry, or distracted. I adapt my form of communication to better suit your current emotional state. End result = we both win.
Intellectual and emotional prowess go hand in hand. For some shining examples of what happens when there is a significant difference between the two, simply keep reading this website;-)
I have personally been bothered in The Netherlands by security personnel on two occassions and have been asked to delete a photograph by two plainclothes policemen after taking a photo which had one of them in it.
You keep posting AC in this thread so you probably won't notice you got a reply, but if you do, care to provide some citations for all of your allegations?
As for these 2 specific examples:
- Define bothered? What were the circumstances? What were you doing? - Asking to have a photograph deleted is a perfectly legitimate request. I could ask you to do the same thing and you'd have to comply, most people just don't bother.
As for surveillance societies...the netherlands is already so much further down that slope than the UK, most people just either don't know or they don't care. Instead they protest by voting for Wilders, who would most likely jump at the chance to sign ACTA.
Ah, but apart from acting skills it's not so much intelligence that's required in the movie/theatre world, it's social skills. And I'm not talking about solid regular social skills but the ability to stab your competitors in the back while they do the same to you and still come out of it smiling and acting like friends. Brown-nosing is a big part of it as well. Really, it's not intelligence, you need to have strong social skills coupled with "management personality" (meaning: willing to climb to the top by using the bodies of your foes as a staircase).
And this is different from the business world how exactly?
There are two ways to run wire or pipes. Method one is to go to the property owners over whose land you wish to run the pipe and negotiate a right of way to allow you to run your wire or pipe over/under their land. The other is to go to a local or state government and get them to use eminent domain to obtain the right of way for you.
If you're going to use eminent domain anyway, who not go with a proven formula and separate the hardware from the information that flows over it?
Force the franchise holder to lease the lines at pre-established prices so that anyone who wants to set up a competing service can do so. It works. It's been done.
Has the Netherlands outlawed this fee, or do Netherlanders just accept this fee as a fact of life?
No fees involved. You see, in order to make a free market actually *work*, occasionally you have to bitchslap an entire industry into submission.
The bankcard I get from my bank costs 1,25 Euro's per year and allows the use of ATM's anywhere in Europe and a number of other countries as well. It also comes with the gadget needed for secure internet banking. Conditions are similar for all the other banks that operate around here. The cheaper(free) version only allows withdrawals without a fee at every bank in the netherlands.
How would you switch if the offending company were a monopoly, such as the local electric power company or (in a case like this) the only bank with ATMs in your town?
Good grief, are you telling me in the US ATM's are actually tied to a specific bank? I can stick my card in any machine across europe secure in the knowledge that it'll happily spit out money. What's next, you're gonna tell me you guys still use cheques as well? Or go to the bank in person to handle business?
Oh, and before you ask, there are no fees involved in withdrawing from a different machine. Not that I ever need to since I can pay for pretty much anything with my bank card anyway. The only thing cash is still usefull for is tipping a specific waiter(who then tosses the cash into a company-wide pot anyway) and maybe at some really small fast-food joints.
It costs money. A lot of it. Running multiple identical cables to your door, just for the sake of competition, is not efficient nor practical, and it's not going to happen for good reason. Deregulation just means that the people who own the one or two cables that do exist are free to rape you for all you can reasonably give them, and give you as little as they want in return. We are ALREADY seeing this happen, so don't go claiming it is somehow not the case.
And yet somehow other countries have fixed this exact problem. Now I am fully aware the US is suffering from a massive case of Not Invented Here syndrome, but would it really hurt to look around once in a while?
*Force* the corps that own the cables to allow competitors to lease the lines. They've had a nice taxpayer-funded ride up till now, now make them face the music.
Of course first you'll have to get rid of all the corporate whores you "elected"...that might be a wee bit harder.
My theory: wags who want to irrationally bash Microsoft bring it up so they have something to argue with when they can't think of anything better.
Actually, there is a group of people on this planet who pay quite a lot of attention to the shape and size of objects that will be placed in the living room. Outside of Slashdot, there are known as women and some of us share our living rooms with them, hence making the dimensions of a console an issue.
Was there a 3rd party candidate for presidency who was running on a platform which included "Don't do anything to enforce intellectual property rights?" And if so, is the reason they didn't get elected -really- because they weren't with one of the two parties?
Is it even possible for a candidate, any candidate, to run without a budget of at least a couple hundred million? And if not, is it any surprise that the choices you get can be quickly summarized as corporate whores A through D?
And the owners of that business would all be criminally liable as well, and could face criminal charges of say manslaughter if their pollution killed someone. Sounds like a lot more accountability then the current system provides. I haven't heard of anyone charged with the deaths of the gulf oil rig workers.
Ehmm, under what laws exactly? If you deregulate everything, then under what set of rules do you determine how to hold a company responsible?
The libertarianists assume that the company will be punished because its potential customers will go elsewhere. They conveniently ascribe to human beings certain characteristics to fulfill their fairytale, similar to an economic model that sounded wonderful in theory as well.
The irony is that both communism and libertarianism are based on the assumption that all human beings act in a certain fashion, completely ignoring the wide variety of human behaviour. Why would someone in Idaho give a shit if the company that makes his cheap plastic tools has poisoned every child downriver somewhere on the other side of the country? Reality tells us he won't, or there would be few companies left...
Very insightful. As someone in his early 40's I can honestly say most of the 'kids' I encouter know very little of the low level details of how things work behind the scenes. Their depth of knowledge is often severely lacking. There are exceptions of course but by and large that's what I've encountered.
As someone in his early 30's I can honestly say most of the folk I meet that work in IT(or claim they do), regardless of age, know very little of the low level details. Heck, half of the time I can't help but wonder how on earth they got their well-paying jobs to begin with.
How ignorant to you have to be to be proud of your ignorance?
Depends, really. Every last one of us is ignorant about a lot of subjects, and we celebrate that ignorance all the time by espousing that these particular subjects are less important than the ones (we think) we do have knowledge about. Just look around right here on Slashdot;-)
Little anecdote: in the Netherlands a number of us want to build a second nuclear powerplant. Obviously greenpeace is opposed to this, so they staged a protest by climbing up the old city hall(medieval building) and raising a giant flag. Then they sat there for a couple of hours.
You know what this stunt got them? A 3 line article in the newspaper featuring a comment from a local police officer who in passing by had commented on the fact that they had attached themselves to the same hooks we used to hang convicted prostitutes.
Do you get the gist from the article that the aforementioned environmentalists were in any way being taken seriously? They get 2 lines and a curt dismissal, nothing more. kdawson then went out of his way to include only those first 2 lines, knowing full well there's a group of Slashdotians who will start foaming at the mouth when they read it.
The real environmentalists have several political parties which they can choose from that can influence policy. The nutcases stand on the sidelines and are mostly ignored until they get dangerous, at which time we have them removed by the local authorities.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't speak for other countries, but over here we don't use ladders anymore. Instead we simply have a stick large enough to reach the 3rd(4th) floor from the ground ;-)
There's 2 ways for game companies to react to fan projects. Either they go all foam-at-the-mouth and bust out the lawyers or they give the fan a hearty slap on the back and a job offer. ;-)
Hmm... Does a statistic that Christians are more likely to be convicted prove that they are more likely to commit crimes? Or just more likely to be charged? Or perhaps more likely to confess?/I>
You forgot the best one...more likely to be stupid enough to get caught ;-)
Please help me understand what is sick and twisted about "Don't have sex outside of marriage (which, if modeled after biblical ideals, will provide a warm, loving environment for childhood), and if you do and make a baby, give the baby up for adoption rather than kill it."?
Providing basic information about the way human reproductive system works does not equal giving permission to have sex outside of marriage.
Refusing to provide said information or even deliberately misinforming has been *proven* to increase the transmission of STD's and the occurances of unplanned pregnancies.
Wallow in your delusions all you like, the hard facts are against you. Teenagers *will* have sex. Making it impossible for them to do so without causing pregnancies will *not* stop them. Not informing them just how you get pregnant in the first place will only make it worse.
Furthermore who put the 9 unelected Supreme Court Oligarchs in charge? Certainly not the constitution - it gave to the SCOTUS no power to nullify laws passed by Congress and signed by the Executive. If they so chose the Congress & President could simply ignore the Supreme Court and continue enforcing the laws they passed.
So congress passes a law limiting free speech, the executive signs it.
Is it the job of the SCOTUS to strike down the law as unconstitutional, yes or no?
What this really shows is that empathy and as a result morality really are evolutionary constructs, that creationists are WRONG when they claim that it takes an invisible sky daddy to be moral.
In reality, the truth is far worse. Creationists have looked deep inside their soul and realized that without their sky daddy, they'd be out there right now stealing your food, raping your houses and burning your daughters.
So please, stop trying to prove them wrong, it'll be better for all of us in the long run. Just keep them far, far away from any institutes of learning...
I'm trying to convey information to you. The expression on your face tells me you're confused, or angry, or distracted. I adapt my form of communication to better suit your current emotional state. End result = we both win.
Intellectual and emotional prowess go hand in hand. For some shining examples of what happens when there is a significant difference between the two, simply keep reading this website ;-)
Ah, but you see, renting people in China is done to give you "face"...whereas in Amsterdam they give you "head".
Same concept, but something must have gotten lost in translation ;-)
I have personally been bothered in The Netherlands by security personnel on two occassions and have been asked to delete a photograph by two plainclothes policemen after taking a photo which had one of them in it.
You keep posting AC in this thread so you probably won't notice you got a reply, but if you do, care to provide some citations for all of your allegations?
As for these 2 specific examples:
- Define bothered? What were the circumstances? What were you doing?
- Asking to have a photograph deleted is a perfectly legitimate request. I could ask you to do the same thing and you'd have to comply, most people just don't bother.
As for surveillance societies...the netherlands is already so much further down that slope than the UK, most people just either don't know or they don't care. Instead they protest by voting for Wilders, who would most likely jump at the chance to sign ACTA.
Ah, but apart from acting skills it's not so much intelligence that's required in the movie/theatre world, it's social skills. And I'm not talking about solid regular social skills but the ability to stab your competitors in the back while they do the same to you and still come out of it smiling and acting like friends. Brown-nosing is a big part of it as well. Really, it's not intelligence, you need to have strong social skills coupled with "management personality" (meaning: willing to climb to the top by using the bodies of your foes as a staircase).
And this is different from the business world how exactly?
There are two ways to run wire or pipes. Method one is to go to the property owners over whose land you wish to run the pipe and negotiate a right of way to allow you to run your wire or pipe over/under their land. The other is to go to a local or state government and get them to use eminent domain to obtain the right of way for you.
If you're going to use eminent domain anyway, who not go with a proven formula and separate the hardware from the information that flows over it?
Force the franchise holder to lease the lines at pre-established prices so that anyone who wants to set up a competing service can do so. It works. It's been done.
Not only are they all american, they *all* have an agenda one way or the other.
I know this might incredible, but how about a news source that just provides...news?
Just a little bit more info, I found this little piece of legislation:
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/payments/crossborder/index_en.htm
Has the Netherlands outlawed this fee, or do Netherlanders just accept this fee as a fact of life?
No fees involved. You see, in order to make a free market actually *work*, occasionally you have to bitchslap an entire industry into submission.
The bankcard I get from my bank costs 1,25 Euro's per year and allows the use of ATM's anywhere in Europe and a number of other countries as well. It also comes with the gadget needed for secure internet banking. Conditions are similar for all the other banks that operate around here. The cheaper(free) version only allows withdrawals without a fee at every bank in the netherlands.
How would you switch if the offending company were a monopoly, such as the local electric power company or (in a case like this) the only bank with ATMs in your town?
Good grief, are you telling me in the US ATM's are actually tied to a specific bank? I can stick my card in any machine across europe secure in the knowledge that it'll happily spit out money. What's next, you're gonna tell me you guys still use cheques as well? Or go to the bank in person to handle business?
Oh, and before you ask, there are no fees involved in withdrawing from a different machine. Not that I ever need to since I can pay for pretty much anything with my bank card anyway. The only thing cash is still usefull for is tipping a specific waiter(who then tosses the cash into a company-wide pot anyway) and maybe at some really small fast-food joints.
It costs money. A lot of it. Running multiple identical cables to your door, just for the sake of competition, is not efficient nor practical, and it's not going to happen for good reason. Deregulation just means that the people who own the one or two cables that do exist are free to rape you for all you can reasonably give them, and give you as little as they want in return. We are ALREADY seeing this happen, so don't go claiming it is somehow not the case.
And yet somehow other countries have fixed this exact problem. Now I am fully aware the US is suffering from a massive case of Not Invented Here syndrome, but would it really hurt to look around once in a while?
*Force* the corps that own the cables to allow competitors to lease the lines. They've had a nice taxpayer-funded ride up till now, now make them face the music.
Of course first you'll have to get rid of all the corporate whores you "elected"...that might be a wee bit harder.
If I'd done that some pedantic jerk would have pointed out that the post I was replying to said run.
So the question is, whose company do you enjoy more? The fairer members of the opposite sex or the average slashdot jerk?
There's a probability of one that there's a nonempty subset of people who consistently express low levels of satisfaction.
Absolutely true. And you know what the best part is? You get to choose who you're going to displease ;-)
Neither China nor Russia proclaim themselves to the world to be beacons of freedom and equality.
The US put the bar for itself about as high as it'll go and is being called on it constantly. Unfair? Perhaps, but them's the stakes.
Then again, as John Oliver put it so nicely earlier this week, for a 3rd world country you're really doing quite well ;-)
"So, Lord Vader, what are we going to do tonight?"
"The same thing we do every night Pinky, try and blow up the world."
My theory: wags who want to irrationally bash Microsoft bring it up so they have something to argue with when they can't think of anything better.
Actually, there is a group of people on this planet who pay quite a lot of attention to the shape and size of objects that will be placed in the living room. Outside of Slashdot, there are known as women and some of us share our living rooms with them, hence making the dimensions of a console an issue.
Was there a 3rd party candidate for presidency who was running on a platform which included "Don't do anything to enforce intellectual property rights?" And if so, is the reason they didn't get elected -really- because they weren't with one of the two parties?
Is it even possible for a candidate, any candidate, to run without a budget of at least a couple hundred million? And if not, is it any surprise that the choices you get can be quickly summarized as corporate whores A through D?
And the owners of that business would all be criminally liable as well, and could face criminal charges of say manslaughter if their pollution killed someone. Sounds like a lot more accountability then the current system provides. I haven't heard of anyone charged with the deaths of the gulf oil rig workers.
Ehmm, under what laws exactly? If you deregulate everything, then under what set of rules do you determine how to hold a company responsible?
The libertarianists assume that the company will be punished because its potential customers will go elsewhere. They conveniently ascribe to human beings certain characteristics to fulfill their fairytale, similar to an economic model that sounded wonderful in theory as well.
The irony is that both communism and libertarianism are based on the assumption that all human beings act in a certain fashion, completely ignoring the wide variety of human behaviour. Why would someone in Idaho give a shit if the company that makes his cheap plastic tools has poisoned every child downriver somewhere on the other side of the country? Reality tells us he won't, or there would be few companies left...
Very insightful. As someone in his early 40's I can honestly say most of the 'kids' I encouter know very little of the low level details of how things work behind the scenes. Their depth of knowledge is often severely lacking. There are exceptions of course but by and large that's what I've encountered.
As someone in his early 30's I can honestly say most of the folk I meet that work in IT(or claim they do), regardless of age, know very little of the low level details. Heck, half of the time I can't help but wonder how on earth they got their well-paying jobs to begin with.
How ignorant to you have to be to be proud of your ignorance?
Depends, really. Every last one of us is ignorant about a lot of subjects, and we celebrate that ignorance all the time by espousing that these particular subjects are less important than the ones (we think) we do have knowledge about. Just look around right here on Slashdot ;-)
Yes, they are. And no, they are not powerful.
Little anecdote: in the Netherlands a number of us want to build a second nuclear powerplant. Obviously greenpeace is opposed to this, so they staged a protest by climbing up the old city hall(medieval building) and raising a giant flag. Then they sat there for a couple of hours.
You know what this stunt got them? A 3 line article in the newspaper featuring a comment from a local police officer who in passing by had commented on the fact that they had attached themselves to the same hooks we used to hang convicted prostitutes.
Do you get the gist from the article that the aforementioned environmentalists were in any way being taken seriously? They get 2 lines and a curt dismissal, nothing more. kdawson then went out of his way to include only those first 2 lines, knowing full well there's a group of Slashdotians who will start foaming at the mouth when they read it.
The real environmentalists have several political parties which they can choose from that can influence policy. The nutcases stand on the sidelines and are mostly ignored until they get dangerous, at which time we have them removed by the local authorities.