6 rovers could be put on Mars for a small fraction of what the currently debated health care bills are going to cost. The $700 billion stimulus package could have put 2800 rovers on Mars. It would likely have been just as economically beneficial too. Think of how much science based education and jobs THAT would have created.
If writers collected payment up front, and moved on once they'd done their work and gotten paid as agreed, there'd be no need for infringement lawsuits, no royalties or licensing restrictions.
MANY writers (and other artists) would be happy with that arrangement. In fact, a lot of them work under that arrangement now. Ever hear of a book contract? It's a risk/reward ratio. You can either choose to take a small compensation for your work, but know for a fact you'll get it, no matter how well it sells, or you can opt for royalty payments, but may have to wait years to get the full value out of the work.
Sometimes, the pay up front model just isn't realistic. SOMEONE has to fork over the large sum of money for the artist to get paid. Either you have to collect all the orders up front, or someone has to gamble on the outcome and hope to recoup the cost later. In that event, we're right back to royalty payments, instead now it's not an artist getting paid. It's not someone who has both an emotional AND financial attachment to the project. It's going to be a soulless corporation, the only goal of which is to maximize the potential profit. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't really help the problem for which you implied that up-front payments were supposed to solve. The corporation can very well carry on the infringement lawsuits itself.
Return of the Living Dead had a similar message at the beginning of the film. So did Blair Witch project. These were clearly fiction. Well.. I say that. I did actually know someone who was convinced that the Blair Witch events actually happened, even going so far to say that the actors who were doing the talkshow circuit were just lookalikes... but he really was an idiot, so I guess that should be expected.
We have cities that are below sea level, right at it, or barely above it. They all cope (except perhaps during the occasional hurricane.
Think of how many well populated cities in 1900 are gone or all but gone today. For many reasons, economical, environmental, etc, cities will grow or decline. Think of every town that had to be uprooted and moved because we built a lake. Moving a bit inland over a 100 year period isn't going to be a big problem.
There's a difference between closed and deactivated. Close the account to prevent changes. Delete the email in question. Fire the account back up.. The process will take a few days, sure, but closing the account doesn't help matters anyway, as they'd also be destroying much of the evidence in the process.
Of course they could have mail intercepted. This happens all the time, and it's a LOT easier. US mail follows a process and takes days to reach its intended (or in this case unintended) destination. A letter or package can be intercepted at any number of points in the process, right up to the carrier who delivers it. Nobody needs to revoke or change your home mailing address to accomplish this.
As annoying and unfair it might seem to be to the email account holder, there ARE times when things like this are necessary. Note all the things that went right here though. Google wouldn't just up and hand it over without a court order. The judge wouldn't honor the request to keep the order sealed. And as unlikely as it seems, it's important to the customers of the bank to know to what extent their data has been compromised. If they can remove the document and determine that it had never been opened, the breech can be considered contained. If it WAS opened, although the account owner would hardly be considered responsible, the bank's customers need to know that there's a highly unlikely, but possible chance that their data is out in the wild and they need to perform whatever damage control is necessary. The account holder will also have opportunities to collect damages of his own due to the bank's actions. Had Google just complied without the court order, it would have been difficult to determine which party is responsible for the disconnection of the account. Now there's no question.
So, while the bank was able to temporarily have someone's email account disconnected, they did so at the cost of opening themselves up to a great deal of legal liability. Like it or not, this IS the way the system is supposed to work.
I don't think sphinx was really intended to be used for transcribing audio, but to respond to a short set of specific voice commands. Last time I played with it was back in 2002... It worked great with my voice, and other male voices, but the first time I was demonstrating it to a girl, it went nuts. Must be some difference in tone or inflection or something.
It's sad but true. I was thinking the same thing hearing it. But lets face it, we're not marketing to the computer savvy users. We're marketing to the user that takes his computer to Geek Squad every time he gets a virus... which is frequently. The problem here, is while the ads will likely have their intended effect on that market, it also means we'll be introducing a bunch of people who are still getting over that whole CDROM/cupholder thing to an operating system that might be just a BIT more complicated than the one they've spent the better part of the last 15 years getting used to. The hope here shouldn't be that every clueless moron starts using Linux, but that developers will see the marketing campaigns as a motivation to invest in Linux development.
Ever see a carnival that takes in several city streets and blocks traffic for the duration? It depends on the city, but most cities will, for the right price, allow companies, or even private citizens to purchase the rights to have exclusive control over specific public facilities or resources for a short period of time. It's usually not cost effective to do so, and you're therefore not likely to see a great deal of it. The only example I know of with real numbers would be the First Saturday sale in Dallas, TX. I don't even know if it's still there, but back in the mid 90's when I was a vendor there for a few months, I asked about it. For a few public parking lots and to block one street in Dallas on a Saturday, they paid $5000 for a 24 hour permit. And yes, you can rent cops.. in uniforms... with cars, for pretty much anything you want.
The real question isn't how they could do such a thing, but why they would even bother. I never thought of a group of interns going to a Harry Potter movie as being an event worthy of a police escort, let alone requiring one.
His comment about sending people to the FAQ strikes home a bit. I'm sure I'm guilty of doing exactly this, and I try to be more personal with those who might be showing an interest for journalistic purposes, when several hundred people a day ask the exact same question, I'm going to redirect their page directly to the FAQ. Occasionally people do get hacked off about that, and for much the same reasons the author just described. They want a "personal" answer instead of one I decided to write for a general audience. But if you ask me the same exact question as everyone else, how is my response going to be any more or less personal if I type it out verbatim each and every time it's asked?
To be fair, I only do that when I have a pre-canned direct answer to a direct question. I also send them directly to the exact FAQ entry that answers their question, and not to the top level of the FAQ itself. And if they do happen to ask a question that calls for a deeper, more meaningful answer than the FAQ can provide, I will happily spell it out. This applies to everyone, not just reporters. Of course, anyone identifying themselves as a reporter will get the personal treatment anyway, and it's silly to do otherwise unless you suspect a malicious intent on their part, but that's USUALLY not the case.
Another tip when dealing with reporters: True, don't treat them like they're stupid or completely devoid of any knowledge of the subject they're trying to cover (even if they are). However, there's still a good chance that all of their subject matter about you and your project will be confined to the interview itself. You might gloss over or completely ignore a topic that is obvious to you, and the end result could be misinterpreted by the reporter. To use open source as an example, imagine if you think the reporter understands the basic concepts behind open source software, but he has no clue that you require a computer to run it. Of course, you don't want to make that assumption, but it's helpful to at least slip in any helpful information that might get overlooked. Even tech support people will still ask if the computer is plugged in.
One last bit, if the focus of an article is about a website, and your website is family friendly, make sure you check the family-friendly nature of all sites you link to. Newspaper editors, at the last minute, with no warning, like to put in huge bold CYA warnings about the "inappropriate" nature of sites that yours links to. This could cause others to misjudge the nature of YOUR site as a result.
That will give you a tax number you can provide for all these services that seem to require one. Also, if the corporation's identity somehow gets stolen, well, you just trash it and get a new one. It's not the cheapest option available, but it will at least keep your personal information private.
It might take 15 years to get a new power plant built, but it will take 15 years to convert the majority of cars to electric... assuming that everyone does it... which they will not. You're also forgetting the fact that as more cars go electric, the demand for gas will drop, causing the price to drop, which means fewer people will buy electric,.... Eventually we'll reach a happy equilibrium, but don't be too shocked if you discover that we've pretty much already reached it. It will likely be many decades before a significant majority of cars are electric. By then, you can have your nuclear power plants built. Of course, you still have to find someone who wants one in their backyard.
And don't forget the entire purpose of the patent in the first place... to provide the patent holder a limited duration monopoly on the products described by the patent. By suing, they can force twitter to shut down, or at least force them into a licensing agreement which will eliminate them as a competitor.
Now, whether twitter actually IS a potential competitor, or whether the patent should have been granted in the first place, are completely different issues.
Lets face it, the idea to sell rocks to people to keep as pets was, on the face of it, a pretty bad idea. Nevertheless, millions were made doing so. On the other hand, I'm sure there are many great ideas that fail miserably, due to any number of reasons. And sometimes, people will implement really stupid ideas and throw a lot of money at it, and... it just goes nowhere. Divx... well, anything Circuit city has done lately actually.
The simple fact of it is, nobody is going to steal your ideas. Ideas aren't really worth anything by themselves. If you flesh an idea out, you might get lucky and sell it to someone, but even then, if there's not a reasonably proven revenue source behind it, even that is unlikely.
Where you succeed, is by taking 10 or 20 ideas, and implementing all of them. Now you have a reasonable chance that 1 or 2 of them might result in something successful and make some money. NOW people may try to steal that idea. Hopefully, they'll first try to buy it from you.
What schools did you go to?? 20+ years ago when I was in school, Intelligent design had no place... in fact, the only religious references I can even remember were the secular Xmas parties and my senior year when we studied Dante for a few weeks.
Science was science. Evolution as a concept was pretty much a fully agreed upon fact even back then. So we want to have an argument whether the first amino acids came together as random chance, or if some higher power had something to do with it. WHO CARES!
There might be no going back, but honestly, I couldn't get enough of the Sierra "Quest" games at the time. I was even trying to use what limited programming skill I had at the time to make my own. I LOVED those games and I kept playing them years after they were obsolete. I was also playing DOOM and DOOM 2 well into the current decade. I wouldn't expect a younger gamer to want to play the older games, no more than I would want to play Pong. However, I think the love and appreciation for the games that are available at any given time surpasses mere acceptance.
One major difference between the games then and the games now, is that there used to be a lot more of them that I actually had any interest in playing. Many of them I played clear through too, usually without an easily obtainable hint or cheat guide. Now, I'm waiting for the next halflife release and starcraft 2. And I've been waiting for a while. Beyond that, there's really nothing I'm all that interested in. Of course, I'm older now too... less time for games.
Ummm.. no it wasn't. The spike in 08 was due entirely to supply and demand market conditions. People needed more oil than we had available, so the price went up until the right number of people quit buying and the supply and demand equaled each other.
Then when the overall economy really started tanking, and demand dropped off a cliff as a result, so did the price. Yes, the oil companies made a lot of money during that time, but it wasn't a situation they had a lot of control over. If they tried selling it for less, they would quickly sell out, and then have no product to sell until the next shipment. Ever wonder why gas stations frequently had no gas during that time period?
I'm not saying speculation didn't have a part to play in the whole process, and it could have accounted for 20 to 30 cents of each gallon of gas, but speculation actually helps keep the prices stable, otherwise you'd have gas prices vary by 30 cents every day all over the map. Can you imagine THAT nightmare?
And, for my last gripe.... how exactly are windfarms supposed to reduce foreign oil anyway? Except in rare and usually emergency situations, we don't use oil based fuels for our power grid. A wind farm might cut down on the use of coal, which is great for environmental purposes, but if your car runs on gas, we're still going to need oil.
Although there has been mumbles about the RIAA and the likes targeting USENET over the years, they tend to just ignore it. Several reasons:
1. As simple as it is to use, there's usually still a process involved in finding and getting stuff. It might require 3 clicks instead of one, and that can frustrate some people.
2. You have to be patient to find stuff. The good news is, if you can see it there, it's very likely there, and it's very likely legitimate, and if it's not, there will be a dozen reply posts screaming about it being fake or corrupted. The bad news, of course, is that if it's not there.... you'll have to wait. You can put in a request of course, but if you're looking for something ancient and obscure, it might take a while before it shows up.
3. It's harder to catch infringers. With a torrent, or any other P2P application, all the RIAA has to do is set up a fake client, and start recording every peer that connects to a specific known pirated copy of something. Since, by default, everyone downloading something via BT is also uploading it, they can claim both downloading and distribution for every connection, even if nobody finishes downloading the file. With USENET, only ONE person will upload something, and from that point on it is hosted on public news servers. The only way to obtain a list of those who downloaded the files would be to get the owner of the newsserver to fork over transfer logs... if they even keep them in any useful format. Most of the major servers are owned by large corporate ISPs... who can afford expensive lawyers, and if the ISP in question could hide behind the common carrier defense, it wouldn't be worth the expense to go after them.
4. And the most important reason... hardly anyone is using it. At least, compared to the number of people that torrent, and emule, and kazaa. There are much bigger fish to fry, so why make a big deal about it, ultimately providing free advertising to yet another source of pirated material to a public that knows virtually nothing about it?
So yeah, for the moment, USENET is safe. When all the AOL'ers come back screaming "ME TOO!" again, I'll start to worry.
Then the publishers can attempt to refine their advertising in such a way that it doesn't inadvertantly promote the used video game market.
Publishers can also refine the OEM contract agreements with the Gamestops of the world to attempt to discourage used game resales in exchange for a larger profit margin on new titles.
The only argument from the publishers that makes any sense is that from the support angle. Then again, what "support" do you provide for a video game, except perhaps replacing defective media? I'll let them have that one if they want. They don't have to provide free replacements for defective media that was purchased used. Instead, the buyer will just have to pony up the $2 media replacement and shipping cost themselves. Everyone happy now? Great.
He didn't say he bought them recently. However crappy they might be, there was probably a point where dropping a quarter apiece on a used copy made sense (especially if you had a player).
It's also possible that they're lazy, for much the same reason. They might be smart enough to be a competent member of the workforce, but they simply don't want to do the work. We like to think, of course, that laziness breeds innovation. That all of our favorite farm equipment was initially envisioned, developed, and used by some farmer who just frankly didn't like doing all that work.
On the other hand, however, we have the lazy person who figures he can work a full time job pushing heavy boxes around and make $400 a week, or he can steal ONE laptop, fence it off for half the price, and make that much in a couple hours. If the risk of incarceration isn't a sufficient motivation to not do it, there really isn't much stopping your potential thief.
So sure, he might be smart enough to realize that if he steals that laptop, he might get caught in any number of ways and go to jail for it, but some people really would rather be in jail than work for a living. It's sad, but true.
I suppose it depends on what the programmer is doing. A programmer that does little more than code web scripts that interface with previously coded databases.... yeah, they can probably manage to have a career doing that and not ever need to code a sorting algorithm, or do anything equally complicated. However, if you're tasked with writing a game, or a OCR scanner, or a natural language parser, fundamental concepts of "obsolete" functions such as sorting suddenly will become extremely important. Not so much because you're going to need to suddenly learn how to program a computer to sort a bunch of integers, but you might be faced with a multidimensional structure with millions of elements and need to come up with an efficient way to organize and access it... and previously coded "sort" algorithms aren't probably going to be of much help. You're going to want to have some idea of where to start.
Slashdot Mirror
6 rovers could be put on Mars for a small fraction of what the currently debated health care bills are going to cost. The $700 billion stimulus package could have put 2800 rovers on Mars. It would likely have been just as economically beneficial too. Think of how much science based education and jobs THAT would have created.
-Restil
If writers collected payment up front, and moved on once they'd done their work and gotten paid as agreed, there'd be no need for infringement lawsuits, no royalties or licensing restrictions.
MANY writers (and other artists) would be happy with that arrangement. In fact, a lot of them work under that arrangement now. Ever hear of a book contract? It's a risk/reward ratio. You can either choose to take a small compensation for your work, but know for a fact you'll get it, no matter how well it sells, or you can opt for royalty payments, but may have to wait years to get the full value out of the work.
Sometimes, the pay up front model just isn't realistic. SOMEONE has to fork over the large sum of money for the artist to get paid. Either you have to collect all the orders up front, or someone has to gamble on the outcome and hope to recoup the cost later. In that event, we're right back to royalty payments, instead now it's not an artist getting paid. It's not someone who has both an emotional AND financial attachment to the project. It's going to be a soulless corporation, the only goal of which is to maximize the potential profit. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't really help the problem for which you implied that up-front payments were supposed to solve. The corporation can very well carry on the infringement lawsuits itself.
-Restil
Return of the Living Dead had a similar message at the beginning of the film. So did Blair Witch project. These were clearly fiction. Well.. I say that. I did actually know someone who was convinced that the Blair Witch events actually happened, even going so far to say that the actors who were doing the talkshow circuit were just lookalikes... but he really was an idiot, so I guess that should be expected.
-Restil
We have cities that are below sea level, right at it, or barely above it. They all cope (except perhaps during the occasional hurricane.
Think of how many well populated cities in 1900 are gone or all but gone today. For many reasons, economical, environmental, etc, cities will grow or decline. Think of every town that had to be uprooted and moved because we built a lake. Moving a bit inland over a 100 year period isn't going to be a big problem.
-Restil
-Restil
There's a difference between closed and deactivated. Close the account to prevent changes. Delete the email in question. Fire the account back up.. The process will take a few days, sure, but closing the account doesn't help matters anyway, as they'd also be destroying much of the evidence in the process.
-Restil
I didn't see anything that said Google was forbidden from revealing the reason why the account was closed, should the customer inquire.
-Restil
Of course they could have mail intercepted. This happens all the time, and it's a LOT easier. US mail follows a process and takes days to reach its intended (or in this case unintended) destination. A letter or package can be intercepted at any number of points in the process, right up to the carrier who delivers it. Nobody needs to revoke or change your home mailing address to accomplish this.
-Restil
As annoying and unfair it might seem to be to the email account holder, there ARE times when things like this are necessary. Note all the things that went right here though. Google wouldn't just up and hand it over without a court order. The judge wouldn't honor the request to keep the order sealed. And as unlikely as it seems, it's important to the customers of the bank to know to what extent their data has been compromised. If they can remove the document and determine that it had never been opened, the breech can be considered contained. If it WAS opened, although the account owner would hardly be considered responsible, the bank's customers need to know that there's a highly unlikely, but possible chance that their data is out in the wild and they need to perform whatever damage control is necessary. The account holder will also have opportunities to collect damages of his own due to the bank's actions. Had Google just complied without the court order, it would have been difficult to determine which party is responsible for the disconnection of the account. Now there's no question.
So, while the bank was able to temporarily have someone's email account disconnected, they did so at the cost of opening themselves up to a great deal of legal liability. Like it or not, this IS the way the system is supposed to work.
I don't think sphinx was really intended to be used for transcribing audio, but to respond to a short set of specific voice commands. Last time I played with it was back in 2002... It worked great with my voice, and other male voices, but the first time I was demonstrating it to a girl, it went nuts. Must be some difference in tone or inflection or something.
-Restil
It's sad but true. I was thinking the same thing hearing it. But lets face it, we're not marketing to the computer savvy users. We're marketing to the user that takes his computer to Geek Squad every time he gets a virus... which is frequently. The problem here, is while the ads will likely have their intended effect on that market, it also means we'll be introducing a bunch of people who are still getting over that whole CDROM/cupholder thing to an operating system that might be just a BIT more complicated than the one they've spent the better part of the last 15 years getting used to. The hope here shouldn't be that every clueless moron starts using Linux, but that developers will see the marketing campaigns as a motivation to invest in Linux development.
-Restil
Ever see a carnival that takes in several city streets and blocks traffic for the duration? It depends on the city, but most cities will, for the right price, allow companies, or even private citizens to purchase the rights to have exclusive control over specific public facilities or resources for a short period of time. It's usually not cost effective to do so, and you're therefore not likely to see a great deal of it. The only example I know of with real numbers would be the First Saturday sale in Dallas, TX. I don't even know if it's still there, but back in the mid 90's when I was a vendor there for a few months, I asked about it. For a few public parking lots and to block one street in Dallas on a Saturday, they paid $5000 for a 24 hour permit.
And yes, you can rent cops.. in uniforms... with cars, for pretty much anything you want.
The real question isn't how they could do such a thing, but why they would even bother. I never thought of a group of interns going to a Harry Potter movie as being an event worthy of a police escort, let alone requiring one.
-Restil
His comment about sending people to the FAQ strikes home a bit. I'm sure I'm guilty of doing exactly this, and I try to be more personal with those who might be showing an interest for journalistic purposes, when several hundred people a day ask the exact same question, I'm going to redirect their page directly to the FAQ. Occasionally people do get hacked off about that, and for much the same reasons the author just described. They want a "personal" answer instead of one I decided to write for a general audience. But if you ask me the same exact question as everyone else, how is my response going to be any more or less personal if I type it out verbatim each and every time it's asked?
To be fair, I only do that when I have a pre-canned direct answer to a direct question. I also send them directly to the exact FAQ entry that answers their question, and not to the top level of the FAQ itself. And if they do happen to ask a question that calls for a deeper, more meaningful answer than the FAQ can provide, I will happily spell it out. This applies to everyone, not just reporters. Of course, anyone identifying themselves as a reporter will get the personal treatment anyway, and it's silly to do otherwise unless you suspect a malicious intent on their part, but that's USUALLY not the case.
Another tip when dealing with reporters: True, don't treat them like they're stupid or completely devoid of any knowledge of the subject they're trying to cover (even if they are). However, there's still a good chance that all of their subject matter about you and your project will be confined to the interview itself. You might gloss over or completely ignore a topic that is obvious to you, and the end result could be misinterpreted by the reporter. To use open source as an example, imagine if you think the reporter understands the basic concepts behind open source software, but he has no clue that you require a computer to run it. Of course, you don't want to make that assumption, but it's helpful to at least slip in any helpful information that might get overlooked. Even tech support people will still ask if the computer is plugged in.
One last bit, if the focus of an article is about a website, and your website is family friendly, make sure you check the family-friendly nature of all sites you link to. Newspaper editors, at the last minute, with no warning, like to put in huge bold CYA warnings about the "inappropriate" nature of sites that yours links to. This could cause others to misjudge the nature of YOUR site as a result.
-Restil
That will give you a tax number you can provide for all these services that seem to require one. Also, if the corporation's identity somehow gets stolen, well, you just trash it and get a new one. It's not the cheapest option available, but it will at least keep your personal information private.
Just an idea.
-Restil
It might take 15 years to get a new power plant built, but it will take 15 years to convert the majority of cars to electric... assuming that everyone does it... which they will not. You're also forgetting the fact that as more cars go electric, the demand for gas will drop, causing the price to drop, which means fewer people will buy electric,.... Eventually we'll reach a happy equilibrium, but don't be too shocked if you discover that we've pretty much already reached it. It will likely be many decades before a significant majority of cars are electric. By then, you can have your nuclear power plants built. Of course, you still have to find someone who wants one in their backyard.
-Restil
And don't forget the entire purpose of the patent in the first place... to provide the patent holder a limited duration monopoly on the products described by the patent. By suing, they can force twitter to shut down, or at least force them into a licensing agreement which will eliminate them as a competitor.
Now, whether twitter actually IS a potential competitor, or whether the patent should have been granted in the first place, are completely different issues.
-Restil
Lets face it, the idea to sell rocks to people to keep as pets was, on the face of it, a pretty bad idea. Nevertheless, millions were made doing so. On the other hand, I'm sure there are many great ideas that fail miserably, due to any number of reasons. And sometimes, people will implement really stupid ideas and throw a lot of money at it, and ... it just goes nowhere. Divx ... well, anything Circuit city has done lately actually.
The simple fact of it is, nobody is going to steal your ideas. Ideas aren't really worth anything by themselves. If you flesh an idea out, you might get lucky and sell it to someone, but even then, if there's not a reasonably proven revenue source behind it, even that is unlikely.
Where you succeed, is by taking 10 or 20 ideas, and implementing all of them. Now you have a reasonable chance that 1 or 2 of them might result in something successful and make some money. NOW people may try to steal that idea. Hopefully, they'll first try to buy it from you.
What schools did you go to?? 20+ years ago when I was in school, Intelligent design had no place... in fact, the only religious references I can even remember were the secular Xmas parties and my senior year when we studied Dante for a few weeks.
Science was science. Evolution as a concept was pretty much a fully agreed upon fact even back then. So we want to have an argument whether the first amino acids came together as random chance, or if some higher power had something to do with it. WHO CARES!
-Restil
There might be no going back, but honestly, I couldn't get enough of the Sierra "Quest" games at the time. I was even trying to use what limited programming skill I had at the time to make my own. I LOVED those games and I kept playing them years after they were obsolete. I was also playing DOOM and DOOM 2 well into the current decade. I wouldn't expect a younger gamer to want to play the older games, no more than I would want to play Pong. However, I think the love and appreciation for the games that are available at any given time surpasses mere acceptance.
One major difference between the games then and the games now, is that there used to be a lot more of them that I actually had any interest in playing. Many of them I played clear through too, usually without an easily obtainable hint or cheat guide. Now, I'm waiting for the next halflife release and starcraft 2. And I've been waiting for a while. Beyond that, there's really nothing I'm all that interested in. Of course, I'm older now too... less time for games.
-Restil
Ummm.. no it wasn't. The spike in 08 was due entirely to supply and demand market conditions. People needed more oil than we had available, so the price went up until the right number of people quit buying and the supply and demand equaled each other.
Then when the overall economy really started tanking, and demand dropped off a cliff as a result, so did the price. Yes, the oil companies made a lot of money during that time, but it wasn't a situation they had a lot of control over. If they tried selling it for less, they would quickly sell out, and then have no product to sell until the next shipment. Ever wonder why gas stations frequently had no gas during that time period?
I'm not saying speculation didn't have a part to play in the whole process, and it could have accounted for 20 to 30 cents of each gallon of gas, but speculation actually helps keep the prices stable, otherwise you'd have gas prices vary by 30 cents every day all over the map. Can you imagine THAT nightmare?
And, for my last gripe.... how exactly are windfarms supposed to reduce foreign oil anyway? Except in rare and usually emergency situations, we don't use oil based fuels for our power grid. A wind farm might cut down on the use of coal, which is great for environmental purposes, but if your car runs on gas, we're still going to need oil.
-Restil
It's been a while since ID released ANY game.
Although there has been mumbles about the RIAA and the likes targeting USENET over the years, they tend to just ignore it. Several reasons:
1. As simple as it is to use, there's usually still a process involved in finding and getting stuff. It might require 3 clicks instead of one, and that can frustrate some people.
2. You have to be patient to find stuff. The good news is, if you can see it there, it's very likely there, and it's very likely legitimate, and if it's not, there will be a dozen reply posts screaming about it being fake or corrupted. The bad news, of course, is that if it's not there.... you'll have to wait. You can put in a request of course, but if you're looking for something ancient and obscure, it might take a while before it shows up.
3. It's harder to catch infringers. With a torrent, or any other P2P application, all the RIAA has to do is set up a fake client, and start recording every peer that connects to a specific known pirated copy of something. Since, by default, everyone downloading something via BT is also uploading it, they can claim both downloading and distribution for every connection, even if nobody finishes downloading the file. With USENET, only ONE person will upload something, and from that point on it is hosted on public news servers. The only way to obtain a list of those who downloaded the files would be to get the owner of the newsserver to fork over transfer logs... if they even keep them in any useful format. Most of the major servers are owned by large corporate ISPs... who can afford expensive lawyers, and if the ISP in question could hide behind the common carrier defense, it wouldn't be worth the expense to go after them.
4. And the most important reason... hardly anyone is using it. At least, compared to the number of people that torrent, and emule, and kazaa. There are much bigger fish to fry, so why make a big deal about it, ultimately providing free advertising to yet another source of pirated material to a public that knows virtually nothing about it?
So yeah, for the moment, USENET is safe. When all the AOL'ers come back screaming "ME TOO!" again, I'll start to worry.
-Restil
Then the publishers can attempt to refine their advertising in such a way that it doesn't inadvertantly promote the used video game market.
Publishers can also refine the OEM contract agreements with the Gamestops of the world to attempt to discourage used game resales in exchange for a larger profit margin on new titles.
The only argument from the publishers that makes any sense is that from the support angle. Then again, what "support" do you provide for a video game, except perhaps replacing defective media? I'll let them have that one if they want. They don't have to provide free replacements for defective media that was purchased used. Instead, the buyer will just have to pony up the $2 media replacement and shipping cost themselves.
Everyone happy now? Great.
-Restil
He didn't say he bought them recently. However crappy they might be, there was probably a point where dropping a quarter apiece on a used copy made sense (especially if you had a player).
It's also possible that they're lazy, for much the same reason. They might be smart enough to be a competent member of the workforce, but they simply don't want to do the work. We like to think, of course, that laziness breeds innovation. That all of our favorite farm equipment was initially envisioned, developed, and used by some farmer who just frankly didn't like doing all that work.
On the other hand, however, we have the lazy person who figures he can work a full time job pushing heavy boxes around and make $400 a week, or he can steal ONE laptop, fence it off for half the price, and make that much in a couple hours. If the risk of incarceration isn't a sufficient
motivation to not do it, there really isn't much stopping your potential thief.
So sure, he might be smart enough to realize that if he steals that laptop, he might get caught in any number of ways and go to jail for it, but some people really would rather be in jail than work for a living. It's sad, but true.
-Restil
I suppose it depends on what the programmer is doing. A programmer that does little more than code web scripts that interface with previously coded databases.... yeah, they can probably manage to have a career doing that and not ever need to code a sorting algorithm, or do anything equally complicated. However, if you're tasked with writing a game, or a OCR scanner, or a natural language parser, fundamental concepts of "obsolete" functions such as sorting suddenly will become extremely important. Not so much because you're going to need to suddenly learn how to program a computer to sort a bunch of integers, but you might be faced with a multidimensional structure with millions of elements and need to come up with an efficient way to organize and access it... and previously coded "sort" algorithms aren't probably going to be of much help. You're going to want to have some idea of where to start.
-Restil