Studies like this are why statistics should be part of high school.
Basically, any time you've got a sample less than 1500, disregard the study. There's too much drift, your p-numbers are all pretty much random, and it's just not good data or sound practice. (I meant fifteen hundred. That's a general baseline.)
Also, without qualifying bars the stats are meaningless.
When I moved in, I replaced the existing oil furnace with FAE. It cost about $5000, including the upgrade to the household wiring.
It costs about $750 a year to heat the house. It's hard to tell exactly because the bill includes heat, hot water, and all consumer devices. I base that on my winter usage - my summer usage.
Oil at the time cost $1200 a tank and would use about a tank and a half per year according to the neighbours. Oil increased drastically over the last five years, as you're no doubt aware. Let's assume an average of $2000 a year for oil heating.
So not only am I saving $1250 a year, I was able to reclaim the space taken by the chimney and oil tank as well as reduce my CO risk to 0.
Oh, I see what you're getting at. Punitive damages go to the wronged party. That's a matter of legal precedent. Logic has no basis in law.
If it doesn't go to the plantiff, then it has to go to a third party. Who would that be? The choices are a non-profit, a charity, or the state. Or, we could pitch the idea of punitve damages awarded against people and only enforce those damages against corporations.
No, you should have a proprietary client that uses a special protocol. It should be tied in to your globally-unique key, which upon first use adds your globally-unique MAC and CPU IDs to ensure that you are not selling the game to another user.
It should also be able to install other systems on your machine that track usage and report piracy.
The reason for punitive damages is to make it worse to get caught than if you'd bought it first.
Let's take the case of downloading music. Let's assume that any song can be purchased for $1. The actual damages awarded would be $1, because that's all the record company has lost. If the limit for your legal liability is $1, then why would you bother paying? The worst-case for you is that you would have to pay the $1. Best-case, you never get caught and then you never have to pay for it at all. Punitive damages punish you for trying to pull one over, and make it so that the risks of getting caught outweigh the benefits of getting away with it.
Now let's look at a Megacorp. They figure out that there's a 99.95% chance they can get away with charging an extra dollar a month for a service. If they get caught, all they have to do is pay back that dollar, which has been getting interest since they started charging the extra dollar. If they then have to pay punitive damages, I would suggest that they should have to pay back the dollar divided by their chance of getting caught. (In this case, $20) That makes it reasonable. Now, Megacorp doesn't give a fuck about $20 so you make it hurt them even more. You order them to pay back $200 per month or $2000 a month so they learn not to do it again. So the punitive damages have to take into account the resources of the person paying them as well.
That's our Privacy Office. It's against the law to violate someone's privacy up here. (You can look up details if you care, it's a close-enough 10-word summary.)
Our ISPs don't log where you've been, but they do log what IP they gave you at a given time. They can't snoop in your files.
Iran isn't a bad guy for wanting to use atomic power. Hell, the Americans haven't done a damned thing with it for YEARS. They're building coal plants, FFS. Every time you start to bring up using atomics, people shit a brick and bring up 3-mile and Chernobyl, which is roughly the same as bringing up the Hindenburg when talking about H2 or How Thag Died when talking about using fire.
Yeah, you've got a idealogical lunatic running the country (I think we've heard that joke before) but he'd be gone by now if the mass media didn't think that MJ's funeral was more important than protestors being gunned down by the Iranian goverment.
Seriously, wanting to persue peaceful nuclear power isn't an issue. Hell, if they wanted warheads they could just BUY them.
Although I do find it amusing the saying "lives by the sword, dies by the sword" still applies when talking about software attacks.
Interestingly, I don't pirate software although I have no problem downloading music.
I've got friends who have worked for major companies. It's like taking from them, so I wouldn't download software. I also have written software professionally, and it's stuff that gets used all over the world. For me, it's cool enough that I wrote that and that can never be taken away from me. (If we're still using it 2100, then there's a bug, but hey, I said it wouldn't work that long anyway.) I ended up losing that job in part because I called them out on their pirated software. They're bankrupt now.
I got paid for my work while I was there. I worked somewhat hard on it, but in truth I worked more clever than hard. I've done hard work. Software is not particularly hard work. Yes, it's mentally gruelling. Climbing up a tall structure in a harness and spending 10 hours inspecting while aloft is hard work. I didn't get paid a few cents for each copy of the software that went out. If that's your problem then you fucked up your business model, plain and simple. People will always pirate software and your failure to include those costs -- a very real cost of doing business in that field -- is akin to forgetting to include the cost of electricity.
Also, lots of people do a lot of unpaid overtime so your argument about working for free is invalid.
My brother is a professional musician. He's been on a few albums. The studios ripped him and his bandmates off by neglecting their end of the contract. The studio's response was "our lawyers are better and more expensive than anything you can afford, so we don't have to honour our end." They will sign to any terms at all and then simply not uphold their end of the bargain.
So I don't honour their end either. You can't steal stolen property.
What's really killing the music industry is the RIAA. Good bands get burned hard by their contracts and then don't get to make a second album.
There's no incentive to upgrade if the consumers are forced to pick from amongst X number of similarly-priced oligopoloies. I didn't spell that right, but I don't think most people know what that word means anyway so fuck it.
Anyway, in Canada there's not even that. I can get cable from Shaw or ADSL from Telus. Those are exactly all of my choices unless I want to go to dial-up.
I think the best way to portray a villian is with subtlety. That's how they're portrayed in Real Life, anyway.
A guy with an axe and a severed head is just a homicidal lunatic that likes lopping heads. He can be stopped with a handful of lead or a quick maser beam or a mutant power.
If the evil is an enourmous corporation or a government, how can you stop that? What could Superman do against BP or the RIAA?
Either it was human error, which can lead to jail time (or in some very rare cases execution) or the info wasn't Classified. As was pointed out elsewhere in this thread, military breaches carry different penalties than civilian ones. Chief among those is that security is enforced with lead-based penalties.
I could give you millions of pages detailing a warship. It would bore you halfway to death, unless you're absurdly interested in which cable connects which junction box on some class of warship. But wait, that's not all! In revision A the junction box was replaced with a slightly different box and the wires were changed to a slightly thicker cable! (When people ask what I do, I jokingly reply, "I could tell you, but then I'd have to wake you up.")
I've easily got access to a few TB of exceedingly detailed information on that sort of stuff. It would be embarassing if it ended up on wikileaks but other than having the public react with WTF HOW MUCH DID THIS COST TO DRAW the risk to National Security is nil. It would take a team of spies something like 10 years to figure out what all the drawings mean and then to interpret them. By that time the systems will be upgraded or the ships will be changed to "reef class".
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Studies like this are why statistics should be part of high school.
Basically, any time you've got a sample less than 1500, disregard the study. There's too much drift, your p-numbers are all pretty much random, and it's just not good data or sound practice. (I meant fifteen hundred. That's a general baseline.)
Also, without qualifying bars the stats are meaningless.
Yeah, because there aren't _any_ engineers, scientists, or biologists who would take a one-way-trip to Mars.
Hi, I have a forced-air electric furnace. (FAE)
When I moved in, I replaced the existing oil furnace with FAE. It cost about $5000, including the upgrade to the household wiring.
It costs about $750 a year to heat the house. It's hard to tell exactly because the bill includes heat, hot water, and all consumer devices. I base that on my winter usage - my summer usage.
Oil at the time cost $1200 a tank and would use about a tank and a half per year according to the neighbours. Oil increased drastically over the last five years, as you're no doubt aware. Let's assume an average of $2000 a year for oil heating.
So not only am I saving $1250 a year, I was able to reclaim the space taken by the chimney and oil tank as well as reduce my CO risk to 0.
It would be a puffin, Leroy.
It's okay, I got the reference.
I don't ever want to give Apple a fucking dollar.
I shouldn't be facing JAIL TIME for boycotting a store.
Their counter-argument is:
1. "See that 6-foot-deep hole"?
2. "Therefore, shut up. QED."
Oh, I see what you're getting at. Punitive damages go to the wronged party. That's a matter of legal precedent. Logic has no basis in law.
If it doesn't go to the plantiff, then it has to go to a third party. Who would that be? The choices are a non-profit, a charity, or the state. Or, we could pitch the idea of punitve damages awarded against people and only enforce those damages against corporations.
What was your book?
No, you should have a proprietary client that uses a special protocol. It should be tied in to your globally-unique key, which upon first use adds your globally-unique MAC and CPU IDs to ensure that you are not selling the game to another user.
It should also be able to install other systems on your machine that track usage and report piracy.
Nah, it should be an FTP client.
The reason for punitive damages is to make it worse to get caught than if you'd bought it first.
Let's take the case of downloading music. Let's assume that any song can be purchased for $1. The actual damages awarded would be $1, because that's all the record company has lost. If the limit for your legal liability is $1, then why would you bother paying? The worst-case for you is that you would have to pay the $1. Best-case, you never get caught and then you never have to pay for it at all. Punitive damages punish you for trying to pull one over, and make it so that the risks of getting caught outweigh the benefits of getting away with it.
Now let's look at a Megacorp. They figure out that there's a 99.95% chance they can get away with charging an extra dollar a month for a service. If they get caught, all they have to do is pay back that dollar, which has been getting interest since they started charging the extra dollar. If they then have to pay punitive damages, I would suggest that they should have to pay back the dollar divided by their chance of getting caught. (In this case, $20) That makes it reasonable. Now, Megacorp doesn't give a fuck about $20 so you make it hurt them even more. You order them to pay back $200 per month or $2000 a month so they learn not to do it again. So the punitive damages have to take into account the resources of the person paying them as well.
That's our Privacy Office. It's against the law to violate someone's privacy up here. (You can look up details if you care, it's a close-enough 10-word summary.)
Our ISPs don't log where you've been, but they do log what IP they gave you at a given time. They can't snoop in your files.
Iran isn't a bad guy for wanting to use atomic power. Hell, the Americans haven't done a damned thing with it for YEARS. They're building coal plants, FFS. Every time you start to bring up using atomics, people shit a brick and bring up 3-mile and Chernobyl, which is roughly the same as bringing up the Hindenburg when talking about H2 or How Thag Died when talking about using fire.
Yeah, you've got a idealogical lunatic running the country (I think we've heard that joke before) but he'd be gone by now if the mass media didn't think that MJ's funeral was more important than protestors being gunned down by the Iranian goverment.
Seriously, wanting to persue peaceful nuclear power isn't an issue. Hell, if they wanted warheads they could just BUY them.
Although I do find it amusing the saying "lives by the sword, dies by the sword" still applies when talking about software attacks.
The Wii will play all Gamecube games BUT you have to buy the GC controllers. The ones that the Wii comes with will NOT play the GC games.
There's a GC slot along with 4 GC ports on the side of the Wii.
Interestingly, I don't pirate software although I have no problem downloading music.
I've got friends who have worked for major companies. It's like taking from them, so I wouldn't download software. I also have written software professionally, and it's stuff that gets used all over the world. For me, it's cool enough that I wrote that and that can never be taken away from me. (If we're still using it 2100, then there's a bug, but hey, I said it wouldn't work that long anyway.) I ended up losing that job in part because I called them out on their pirated software. They're bankrupt now.
I got paid for my work while I was there. I worked somewhat hard on it, but in truth I worked more clever than hard. I've done hard work. Software is not particularly hard work. Yes, it's mentally gruelling. Climbing up a tall structure in a harness and spending 10 hours inspecting while aloft is hard work. I didn't get paid a few cents for each copy of the software that went out. If that's your problem then you fucked up your business model, plain and simple. People will always pirate software and your failure to include those costs -- a very real cost of doing business in that field -- is akin to forgetting to include the cost of electricity.
Also, lots of people do a lot of unpaid overtime so your argument about working for free is invalid.
My brother is a professional musician. He's been on a few albums. The studios ripped him and his bandmates off by neglecting their end of the contract. The studio's response was "our lawyers are better and more expensive than anything you can afford, so we don't have to honour our end." They will sign to any terms at all and then simply not uphold their end of the bargain.
So I don't honour their end either. You can't steal stolen property.
What's really killing the music industry is the RIAA. Good bands get burned hard by their contracts and then don't get to make a second album.
Can you sharpen the edges?
I'd like to recommend "Star Maker" by Olaf Stapledon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Maker
If you can convince someone that they don't have to do the check, I would posit that's an effective bypass technique.
What if you get Cheetos in your eye?
There's no incentive to upgrade if the consumers are forced to pick from amongst X number of similarly-priced oligopoloies. I didn't spell that right, but I don't think most people know what that word means anyway so fuck it.
Anyway, in Canada there's not even that. I can get cable from Shaw or ADSL from Telus. Those are exactly all of my choices unless I want to go to dial-up.
Not for all definitions of "boring".
I think the best way to portray a villian is with subtlety. That's how they're portrayed in Real Life, anyway.
A guy with an axe and a severed head is just a homicidal lunatic that likes lopping heads. He can be stopped with a handful of lead or a quick maser beam or a mutant power.
If the evil is an enourmous corporation or a government, how can you stop that? What could Superman do against BP or the RIAA?
I carry a fire extinguisher with me at all times. It's a great conversation starter.
Biking, SCUBA diving, at the gym, etc.
The batteries are all made in the same factory in China. How the fuck are the day-shift batteries any different than the night-shift batteries?
Yeah, I know, slaves don't take shifts but you get the idea.
Either it was human error, which can lead to jail time (or in some very rare cases execution) or the info wasn't Classified. As was pointed out elsewhere in this thread, military breaches carry different penalties than civilian ones. Chief among those is that security is enforced with lead-based penalties.
I could give you millions of pages detailing a warship. It would bore you halfway to death, unless you're absurdly interested in which cable connects which junction box on some class of warship. But wait, that's not all! In revision A the junction box was replaced with a slightly different box and the wires were changed to a slightly thicker cable! (When people ask what I do, I jokingly reply, "I could tell you, but then I'd have to wake you up.")
I've easily got access to a few TB of exceedingly detailed information on that sort of stuff. It would be embarassing if it ended up on wikileaks but other than having the public react with WTF HOW MUCH DID THIS COST TO DRAW the risk to National Security is nil. It would take a team of spies something like 10 years to figure out what all the drawings mean and then to interpret them. By that time the systems will be upgraded or the ships will be changed to "reef class".
Uh, WTF is going on with the AC stalker?
No, really, WTF?