You list about 10 disadvantages in your question. Why not focus on your advantages instead?
- You have 2-3 days off per week (Great time to exercise!) - You work in an office (Every one I've been to has a fridge/microwave that can be used to store healthy foods). - You probably have a lot of down time at work (Why not do push ups or run around? I used to think this would look silly in the office until I realized that being fat looks far sillier and letting others determine my success was foolish.
I bet you could list a lot more yourself, like maybe you really enjoy playing a certain sport
You will NEVER be succeed with your current attitude.
Basically dividends, and stock buy-backs which are effectively the same thing
Stock buy backs help sellers of the company (they are the ones who actually get the money). Dividends help holders of the company. As an example to this point, consider all the companies that were buying back shares pre-crash. Clearly they paid more than they needed to (on average, on the order of 40%), so the only people who gained were sellers. If instead they paid dividends, the holders could have spent the money however they wanted. If that spending lost money, at least it was the holders fault.
Just because US tax code has made investors prefer one (worse, IMO) system over the other doesn't mean they are the same.
No, you are wrong, because you can't see the whole picture. Let's use your own argument against any capitalist business.
Business X isn't out to maximize your well being, they are out to maximize their profits. Ideally, they would sell you the biggest bunch of crap for the most money possible. In other words, they want to make it a giant scam, taking your money but providing nothing.
And you'd be completely right. Except there are other businesses in the industry, and if a company sells crap for a lot of money, someone else will move in and sell better stuff for cheaper. It's the same way with insurance: the free market works.
Now there are clearly problems with health insurance in this country (for one, your employer often provides it, leaving you little choice, i.e. not a "free market" situation). But deriding the entire insurance industry as a scam is off base.
Speech is only considered libel if the content is known to be false. So, Bethesda would have to prove that the ESRB knew that the content was added by a 3rd party.
huh? The guy got a job out of it, so it was hardly a waste of time.
I was entertained as well, so your argument fails on that count as well. There is more to that inning than the ball through Buckner's legs. I doubt that animation existed in the game anyway.
I posted this previously, but Stanford was named after Leland Stanford Jr., the son of the robber baron. Junior died of typhoid fever and the University is a rememberance to him.
Actually, Stanford is named after Leland Stanford Jr., who died of typhoid. The university was meant as a rememberence to him. A better story about the elder Leland Stanford's career and naming is the student body's attempt to have the school be the "Robber barrons"
Halo - The anti-US bias here is CLEAR. The US would have taken this event hands down because X-Box is far more popular in the US than anywhere else. But for some reason there was no team event? So Korea gets its free gold event, but the US doesn't. That sure seems fair.
US won Halo...
Counterstrike - AGREED. This is the #1 tournament game in the world. But why no team competition? CS requires teamwork more than almost any other game.
As mentioned previously, CS was a team competition.
StarCraft - SC is over 5 years old, and almost noone plays it anymore. It has no business being in this tournament. Big suprise, the Koreans won this event, I heard this game is HUGE over there. This event was obviously just thrown in to give Korea a free event.
Actually starcraft is huge everywhere outside of the US. Don't believe me? Check out the World Game Tour which has over 75,000 members (and korea is only #3 in terms of games and players, although they are clearly the best), or Team Liquid which gives reports of the Korean leagues to an english-speaking audience.
I think the real problem with Slayers_'Boxer" was that he was just too arrogant or too busy to just play the qualifiers.
I think he was protesting. But despite that the qualifers involved an online-ladder followed by LAN-based games, so it much more time consuming to qualify from Korea than any other country. Other countries either have prelim locations followed by a final (2 days) or online tournament (not a ladder!) followed by a tournament.
There is no doubt that korea is still the best gaming nation. Foreign nations were able to take 2nd (Germany) and 3rd (Canada) because of korea's bad organization. First off, they denied the two-time defending champion (Lim Yo Hwan, Slayers_`Boxer`) an automatic bid, which they had given him previously. They then ran the qualifers as best-of-1 with no losers bracket. Because of this and inherent randomness/map imbalance, many of the favorites from korea were eliminated early and only one of the qualifing players was ranked in the top 10 in Korea. This allowed Germany to pick up some points in Starcraft that they wouldn't have won otherwise.
But what about the fact that it doesn't solve the problem? This is presumably to stop terrorism, yet a significant number of terrorists are not part of any database, which is required for something like this to work. Seems just like a waste of money to me.
Though i have heard, that blizzard must prosecute now, or they aren't able to prosecute pirates/cd-key removal later on. This true?
Not exactely. They can always prosecute for copyright infringement, but they must prosecute if they believe their trademark (battle.net) is being infringed (which I believe they are also claiming).
They talk a little bit about their legal troubles too, and even sheepishly admit that perhaps talking to a lawyer earlier in the process would have been a good idea.
Damn, I should have known going to slashdot for legal advice was a bad idea!
Slashdot Mirror
You list about 10 disadvantages in your question. Why not focus on your advantages instead?
- You have 2-3 days off per week (Great time to exercise!)
- You work in an office (Every one I've been to has a fridge/microwave that can be used to store healthy foods).
- You probably have a lot of down time at work (Why not do push ups or run around? I used to think this would look silly in the office until I realized that being fat looks far sillier and letting others determine my success was foolish.
I bet you could list a lot more yourself, like maybe you really enjoy playing a certain sport
You will NEVER be succeed with your current attitude.
Shouldn't it be, "Your Money or the 62-year-old man's life?" After all, it wasn't the cops who were in danger.
So when there was a consensus that the earth was the center of the solar system, the people who believed that were being scientific?
How about we use a solution that actually works?
Labeling doesn't.
Well you convinced me. Do you have any, uh, data to prove that?
Actually, I'm not even sure what you are trying to prove. From the grandparent:
The problem with electricity is that how much a device actually uses is pretty well hidden from the user
I'd think labeling is about the only solution to that...
Basically dividends, and stock buy-backs which are effectively the same thing
Stock buy backs help sellers of the company (they are the ones who actually get the money). Dividends help holders of the company. As an example to this point, consider all the companies that were buying back shares pre-crash. Clearly they paid more than they needed to (on average, on the order of 40%), so the only people who gained were sellers. If instead they paid dividends, the holders could have spent the money however they wanted. If that spending lost money, at least it was the holders fault.
Just because US tax code has made investors prefer one (worse, IMO) system over the other doesn't mean they are the same.
Mehran is great.
But there's so much more money to be made (by the lawyers!) to write new laws and defend them!
No, you are wrong, because you can't see the whole picture. Let's use your own argument against any capitalist business.
Business X isn't out to maximize your well being, they are out to maximize their profits. Ideally, they would sell you the biggest bunch of crap for the most money possible. In other words, they want to make it a giant scam, taking your money but providing nothing.
And you'd be completely right. Except there are other businesses in the industry, and if a company sells crap for a lot of money, someone else will move in and sell better stuff for cheaper. It's the same way with insurance: the free market works.
Now there are clearly problems with health insurance in this country (for one, your employer often provides it, leaving you little choice, i.e. not a "free market" situation). But deriding the entire insurance industry as a scam is off base.
Yahoo Finance (finance.yahoo.com) is also a leader.
it just means that you've got fewer responsibilities in your personal life and are a traitor to your own DNA.
What does this even mean?
Speech is only considered libel if the content is known to be false. So, Bethesda would have to prove that the ESRB knew that the content was added by a 3rd party.
huh? The guy got a job out of it, so it was hardly a waste of time.
I was entertained as well, so your argument fails on that count as well. There is more to that inning than the ball through Buckner's legs. I doubt that animation existed in the game anyway.
I posted this previously, but Stanford was named after Leland Stanford Jr., the son of the robber baron. Junior died of typhoid fever and the University is a rememberance to him.
how'd you find your way around?
he didn't go to class, silly.
Actually, Stanford is named after Leland Stanford Jr., who died of typhoid. The university was meant as a rememberence to him. A better story about the elder Leland Stanford's career and naming is the student body's attempt to have the school be the "Robber barrons"
Halo - The anti-US bias here is CLEAR. The US would have taken this event hands down because X-Box is far more popular in the US than anywhere else. But for some reason there was no team event? So Korea gets its free gold event, but the US doesn't. That sure seems fair.
US won Halo...
Counterstrike - AGREED. This is the #1 tournament game in the world. But why no team competition? CS requires teamwork more than almost any other game.
As mentioned previously, CS was a team competition.
StarCraft - SC is over 5 years old, and almost noone plays it anymore. It has no business being in this tournament. Big suprise, the Koreans won this event, I heard this game is HUGE over there. This event was obviously just thrown in to give Korea a free event.
Actually starcraft is huge everywhere outside of the US. Don't believe me? Check out the World Game Tour which has over 75,000 members (and korea is only #3 in terms of games and players, although they are clearly the best), or Team Liquid which gives reports of the Korean leagues to an english-speaking audience.
I think the real problem with Slayers_'Boxer" was that he was just too arrogant or too busy to just play the qualifiers.
I think he was protesting. But despite that the qualifers involved an online-ladder followed by LAN-based games, so it much more time consuming to qualify from Korea than any other country. Other countries either have prelim locations followed by a final (2 days) or online tournament (not a ladder!) followed by a tournament.
There is no doubt that korea is still the best gaming nation. Foreign nations were able to take 2nd (Germany) and 3rd (Canada) because of korea's bad organization. First off, they denied the two-time defending champion (Lim Yo Hwan, Slayers_`Boxer`) an automatic bid, which they had given him previously. They then ran the qualifers as best-of-1 with no losers bracket. Because of this and inherent randomness/map imbalance, many of the favorites from korea were eliminated early and only one of the qualifing players was ranked in the top 10 in Korea. This allowed Germany to pick up some points in Starcraft that they wouldn't have won otherwise.
But what about the fact that it doesn't solve the problem? This is presumably to stop terrorism, yet a significant number of terrorists are not part of any database, which is required for something like this to work. Seems just like a waste of money to me.
Though i have heard, that blizzard must prosecute now, or they aren't able to prosecute pirates/cd-key removal later on. This true?
Not exactely. They can always prosecute for copyright infringement, but they must prosecute if they believe their trademark (battle.net) is being infringed (which I believe they are also claiming).
They talk a little bit about their legal troubles too, and even sheepishly admit that perhaps talking to a lawyer earlier in the process would have been a good idea.
Damn, I should have known going to slashdot for legal advice was a bad idea!
Unfortunately, you do not have people who read your e-mail for you. Problem solved! (for the senators anyway).