Plus, Europe doesn't have a bunch of competing cell phone standards to deal with. It's much easier to equip planes with cell-tower equivalents when you only have to do GSM. An American carrier that wanted to provide all its customers with cell service would have to support a couple of extra signal types, presumably making it more expensive.
So if you're flying from North America to Asia and want to watch DVDs, you have to carry six or seven spare batteries? I'll take a power plug in my seat, thanks. Trying to carry enough spares would probably get you arrested at the gate.
Your evidence of this is where exactly? The DRM-free tunes are going to be available next month (it's right there in the summary) and there are thus as yet absolutely no hard numbers from which to draw a conclusion about what people will or won't do. Any speculation about the reaction to this once it's actually available is just that, speculation.
I for one will be happy to hand Apple a bunch of cash the day they actually launch this, regardless of what you think I'm likely to do.
The question is, if YouTube had been available back then, would those protesters have been as ready to hit the streets and get beaten when there was another avenue available to get mass attention? The situation has changed, so that might have some effect on people's actions.
Also, assuming you're talking about the Vietnam War protests in the US, there was a military draft back then. Many of the protesters were literally fighting for their own lives -- if they didn't go out and get beaten by the police, they faced the prospects of going out and getting killed or maimed in southeast Asia. I suspect you'd see protests get a lot more serious in a big hurry if the draft were reinstated to send people over to Iraq.
Likewise, a "war on terror" would end if less people were afraid.
Which is probably why the proponents of the war on terror so often overhype the dangers of terrorism -- keeps everyone nice and scared.
(I'm about 100 times more worried about dying in a traffic accident than getting even a scratch from anything remotely related to terrorism, so I guess they've failed in my case.)
What the hell difference does it make whether Clinton did it? Are you saying that the proper standard for Republican conduct is, "If Clinton did it, it's cool?" If Clinton does bad thing X and Bush also does bad thing X, it's bad and they should both be called on it.
To be consistent, you should turn your logic around. If Bush does something Clinton was criticized for and isn't himself criticized, does that mean the critics were wrong before and it was okay when Clinton did it?
The kneejerk Republican "But Clinton did it too!" response to any accusation of wrongdoing is pretty baffling to me. Last I heard the Republicans didn't consider Clinton a paragon of virtue, so why is it somehow okay to stoop to his level?
(And no, I am not a Democrat. They are a bunch of spineless gasbags as far as I'm concerned. But at least they don't have nearly the finger-pointing reflex the Republicans do, this obsessive need to make every problem someone else's fault.)
Don't feed the trolls. Don't feed the trolls. Don't feed the... ah, crap.
The current controversy is because firing US Attorneys en masse in the middle of a President's term is unprecedented. Lots of presidents appoint new attorneys when they take office. If you think Clinton is getting a free pass, here's a brain twister for you: Bush did the same thing when he took office, and nobody said a thing about it. If it's really "it's okay if Clinton does it, but not Bush!" then why didn't anyone complain then? Maybe because what's happening now isn't the same thing?
Dateline as in the show on NBC? As in NBC of NBC/Universal? As in Universal Music Group, RIAA member? It would be naive to expect them to report on their own wrongdoing.
A nearly amusing attempt at mocking satire, but it's based on a flawed premise. If you look at the Wikipedia page I provided, you'll see that it's anything but a recent practice. That page cites many instances (including, I might point out, one example from "Hamlet," hardly an incoherent piece of writing!)
It's not even particularly clear to me that it's accelerating. It might look that way but I think it's equally likely that the nouns that were widely verbed in the past are now accepted as pure verbs, so we don't consider them examples of verbing any more. A few examples: "gas," "stock," "mail," and "fuel." Look up the etymology of each of those and you'll see they all started out as nouns. Look them up in the stodgiest modern dictionary you can find and you'll see they are all accepted as verbs now.
I don't believe there's really any good way to measure the amount of verbing that happened in the past, and without that measurement, how can one make any assertion about the practice becoming more frequent? (If you have a reference to any hard numbers, e.g. from historical surveys of literature, that indicate verbing has become more common over time, please prove me wrong.)
Mastery of English (or any other language) means wisely using all the linguistic tools at one's disposal. Verbing is one of them. Like any tool, it can be used well or poorly. But even used poorly, it is not at all the same thing as ignoring well-established rules of grammar, punctuation, or spelling; it is, rather, part of the well-established rules of English grammar.
Ever notice that left-wingers tend to say "terrorism" and right-wingers tend to say "the terrorists?" I find that pretty interesting -- there are exceptions but it seems to be generally pretty true.
Training makes you (slightly) experienced, not smart or talented. A third-rate programmer with a zillion technical certifications and a degree is still a third-rate programmer. There are companies out there -- I know, because I work for one -- which are happy to hire people straight out of college, or even during college, as long as they're quick learners, highly self-motivated, have personalities that mesh with the rest of the team's, and are capable, creative problem-solvers. Training does not impart any of those things.
Which isn't to say it's useless, but there seems to be this fiction that training can somehow cause one to be qualified for any job on the planet. You can take physics classes all your life and still not be Stephen Hawking.
Thanks! That's the best laugh I've had all week. I'd say "meh, I've been called worse," but I'm not sure that's actually true. In any event, you must have missed the parts where I said "the law needs to be changed post haste" and "they are as within their rights as they are in other cases" (which is an entirely different thing than saying they're within their rights in any absolute sense.)
You might want to do a quick search through people's posting history before launching into the ad-hominem attacks. In my case, let's just say ifI'manRIAAtroll,I'mnotverygoodatmyjob!
As for the guy sharing or not sharing files, all I have to go on is his claim. Or actually, a secondhand report of his claim. People claim false things all the time when they think they'll get into trouble. Maybe he's innocent, maybe he's not; I can't know that for sure. My point is simply that his disability is not automatic proof that he's telling the truth.
(By the way, I think you're doing great work for the public good. Keep it up!)
RTFA, the guy in this case is half paralyzed, do you think he is spending a lot of time sitting at his computer downloading Christina Aguilera or something?
If I were half paralyzed and unemployed, I'd probably be in front of my computer most of the day. (Hell, I already am, and I'm physically able to get up whenever I want.) Doesn't seem like that outlandish a possibility to me.
Not saying he's guilty, of course, just that his condition isn't grounds for automatic dismissal of the case the way the story seems to imply.
Having a stroke and/or receiving disability payments renders one incapable of copyright infringement? Does the BitTorrent client refuse to install if it detects a Social Security check in the vicinity?
Being disabled isn't evidence of innocence, unless the disability is such that one is incapable of even using a computer. If the guy broke the law, he broke the law. I happen to think the law sucks and needs to be changed post haste, but it sucks for everyone, not just stroke victims and the handicapped.
In short, the RIAA is as within its rights here as it is in any of its other cases.
None of the current PS3 titles interest me enough to make me want to go buy the console. As soon as there are a few games I want to play, I'll go buy one. Doesn't get much simpler than that, and I imagine I'm not alone.
In particular, it's not about the price. Sure, if the price is lower by the time there are some games I like, I won't complain, but even if the price were $100 I probably still wouldn't buy one now -- I'd have a $100 box with no games I wanted to play, not much of an improvement over a $600 box with no games I want to play.
I've defended Google's China policy, but it seems like they're just flat-out in the wrong on this one (assuming, that is, that we're getting the whole story here.) I am having a very hard time seeing what greater good is served here. In China they are withholding information their users want. Not great but they are at least servicing the users' requests, just not as fully as one would prefer. Here they are giving out information their users presumably expected to remain private, in direct opposition to their users' intentions. Bad Google.
What about the original "Adventure" (aka "Colossal Cave") by, if memory serves, Crowther and Woods? Nothing wrong with "Zork" but it wasn't the first of its genre.
Huh, that's funny, I thought there were a bunch of technical types in, say, Silicon Valley and Boston. I must just not be seeing the rabid conservatism of those places.
As a political moderate I have to say I find that statement of yours pretty idiotic. You say "engineering requires hard work" and imply (but don't have the guts to come out and say) that laziness is a liberal trait.
One could just as easily counter that "innovation requires independent thought" and thus is unlikely to come from conservative types, since conservatism implies adhering to past ideas (that's kind of the whole definition of the word, right?) Equally ridiculous but if you look at the political tendencies of areas where technical innovation is actually happening around the world, it's at least somewhat rooted in actual reality.
FFXII had more sidequests than just the clan hunting, though that's obviously the biggest one. There was the "track down the escaped cockatrices" quest, the "cure the sick patient in the desert" quest, creating sunstones, helping out the sisters on the airships, talking the viera in Rabanastre into becoming a warrior, uncovering a bunch of hidden Espers (some of which are actually powerful enough to be useful in combat late in the game), tracking down the bottles of rare liquor in Bhujerba, assembling the four fragments of the medallion (never did finish that one), and a second set of hunts from the guys in the hunters' camp on the beach. Oh, plus a fishing game and a footrace. Those are the ones I found when I was playing; there are probably more.
Slashdot Mirror
Plus, Europe doesn't have a bunch of competing cell phone standards to deal with. It's much easier to equip planes with cell-tower equivalents when you only have to do GSM. An American carrier that wanted to provide all its customers with cell service would have to support a couple of extra signal types, presumably making it more expensive.
So if you're flying from North America to Asia and want to watch DVDs, you have to carry six or seven spare batteries? I'll take a power plug in my seat, thanks. Trying to carry enough spares would probably get you arrested at the gate.
Your evidence of this is where exactly? The DRM-free tunes are going to be available next month (it's right there in the summary) and there are thus as yet absolutely no hard numbers from which to draw a conclusion about what people will or won't do. Any speculation about the reaction to this once it's actually available is just that, speculation.
I for one will be happy to hand Apple a bunch of cash the day they actually launch this, regardless of what you think I'm likely to do.
The question is, if YouTube had been available back then, would those protesters have been as ready to hit the streets and get beaten when there was another avenue available to get mass attention? The situation has changed, so that might have some effect on people's actions.
Also, assuming you're talking about the Vietnam War protests in the US, there was a military draft back then. Many of the protesters were literally fighting for their own lives -- if they didn't go out and get beaten by the police, they faced the prospects of going out and getting killed or maimed in southeast Asia. I suspect you'd see protests get a lot more serious in a big hurry if the draft were reinstated to send people over to Iraq.
Which is probably why the proponents of the war on terror so often overhype the dangers of terrorism -- keeps everyone nice and scared.
(I'm about 100 times more worried about dying in a traffic accident than getting even a scratch from anything remotely related to terrorism, so I guess they've failed in my case.)
Try reading the summary again -- it does in fact say pretty clearly that the bill was introduced by a Liberal.
What the hell difference does it make whether Clinton did it? Are you saying that the proper standard for Republican conduct is, "If Clinton did it, it's cool?" If Clinton does bad thing X and Bush also does bad thing X, it's bad and they should both be called on it.
To be consistent, you should turn your logic around. If Bush does something Clinton was criticized for and isn't himself criticized, does that mean the critics were wrong before and it was okay when Clinton did it?
The kneejerk Republican "But Clinton did it too!" response to any accusation of wrongdoing is pretty baffling to me. Last I heard the Republicans didn't consider Clinton a paragon of virtue, so why is it somehow okay to stoop to his level?
(And no, I am not a Democrat. They are a bunch of spineless gasbags as far as I'm concerned. But at least they don't have nearly the finger-pointing reflex the Republicans do, this obsessive need to make every problem someone else's fault.)
Don't feed the trolls. Don't feed the trolls. Don't feed the... ah, crap.
The current controversy is because firing US Attorneys en masse in the middle of a President's term is unprecedented. Lots of presidents appoint new attorneys when they take office. If you think Clinton is getting a free pass, here's a brain twister for you: Bush did the same thing when he took office, and nobody said a thing about it. If it's really "it's okay if Clinton does it, but not Bush!" then why didn't anyone complain then? Maybe because what's happening now isn't the same thing?
Dateline as in the show on NBC? As in NBC of NBC/Universal? As in Universal Music Group, RIAA member? It would be naive to expect them to report on their own wrongdoing.
They can catch you doing the second, but not the first.
(Yet.)
A nearly amusing attempt at mocking satire, but it's based on a flawed premise. If you look at the Wikipedia page I provided, you'll see that it's anything but a recent practice. That page cites many instances (including, I might point out, one example from "Hamlet," hardly an incoherent piece of writing!)
It's not even particularly clear to me that it's accelerating. It might look that way but I think it's equally likely that the nouns that were widely verbed in the past are now accepted as pure verbs, so we don't consider them examples of verbing any more. A few examples: "gas," "stock," "mail," and "fuel." Look up the etymology of each of those and you'll see they all started out as nouns. Look them up in the stodgiest modern dictionary you can find and you'll see they are all accepted as verbs now.
I don't believe there's really any good way to measure the amount of verbing that happened in the past, and without that measurement, how can one make any assertion about the practice becoming more frequent? (If you have a reference to any hard numbers, e.g. from historical surveys of literature, that indicate verbing has become more common over time, please prove me wrong.)
Mastery of English (or any other language) means wisely using all the linguistic tools at one's disposal. Verbing is one of them. Like any tool, it can be used well or poorly. But even used poorly, it is not at all the same thing as ignoring well-established rules of grammar, punctuation, or spelling; it is, rather, part of the well-established rules of English grammar.
I'm normally a stickler for grammar but verbing is a pretty widely accepted practice in colloquial English.
No, but I really hate The Terrorists.
Ever notice that left-wingers tend to say "terrorism" and right-wingers tend to say "the terrorists?" I find that pretty interesting -- there are exceptions but it seems to be generally pretty true.
Training makes you (slightly) experienced, not smart or talented. A third-rate programmer with a zillion technical certifications and a degree is still a third-rate programmer. There are companies out there -- I know, because I work for one -- which are happy to hire people straight out of college, or even during college, as long as they're quick learners, highly self-motivated, have personalities that mesh with the rest of the team's, and are capable, creative problem-solvers. Training does not impart any of those things.
Which isn't to say it's useless, but there seems to be this fiction that training can somehow cause one to be qualified for any job on the planet. You can take physics classes all your life and still not be Stephen Hawking.
Thanks! That's the best laugh I've had all week. I'd say "meh, I've been called worse," but I'm not sure that's actually true. In any event, you must have missed the parts where I said "the law needs to be changed post haste" and "they are as within their rights as they are in other cases" (which is an entirely different thing than saying they're within their rights in any absolute sense.)
You might want to do a quick search through people's posting history before launching into the ad-hominem attacks. In my case, let's just say if I'm an RIAA troll, I'm not very good at my job!
As for the guy sharing or not sharing files, all I have to go on is his claim. Or actually, a secondhand report of his claim. People claim false things all the time when they think they'll get into trouble. Maybe he's innocent, maybe he's not; I can't know that for sure. My point is simply that his disability is not automatic proof that he's telling the truth.
(By the way, I think you're doing great work for the public good. Keep it up!)
If I were half paralyzed and unemployed, I'd probably be in front of my computer most of the day. (Hell, I already am, and I'm physically able to get up whenever I want.) Doesn't seem like that outlandish a possibility to me.
Not saying he's guilty, of course, just that his condition isn't grounds for automatic dismissal of the case the way the story seems to imply.
Having a stroke and/or receiving disability payments renders one incapable of copyright infringement? Does the BitTorrent client refuse to install if it detects a Social Security check in the vicinity?
Being disabled isn't evidence of innocence, unless the disability is such that one is incapable of even using a computer. If the guy broke the law, he broke the law. I happen to think the law sucks and needs to be changed post haste, but it sucks for everyone, not just stroke victims and the handicapped.
In short, the RIAA is as within its rights here as it is in any of its other cases.
In particular, it's not about the price. Sure, if the price is lower by the time there are some games I like, I won't complain, but even if the price were $100 I probably still wouldn't buy one now -- I'd have a $100 box with no games I wanted to play, not much of an improvement over a $600 box with no games I want to play.
I've defended Google's China policy, but it seems like they're just flat-out in the wrong on this one (assuming, that is, that we're getting the whole story here.) I am having a very hard time seeing what greater good is served here. In China they are withholding information their users want. Not great but they are at least servicing the users' requests, just not as fully as one would prefer. Here they are giving out information their users presumably expected to remain private, in direct opposition to their users' intentions. Bad Google.
What about the original "Adventure" (aka "Colossal Cave") by, if memory serves, Crowther and Woods? Nothing wrong with "Zork" but it wasn't the first of its genre.
Do you have a pointer to a more statistically valid data set, then?
As a political moderate I have to say I find that statement of yours pretty idiotic. You say "engineering requires hard work" and imply (but don't have the guts to come out and say) that laziness is a liberal trait.
One could just as easily counter that "innovation requires independent thought" and thus is unlikely to come from conservative types, since conservatism implies adhering to past ideas (that's kind of the whole definition of the word, right?) Equally ridiculous but if you look at the political tendencies of areas where technical innovation is actually happening around the world, it's at least somewhat rooted in actual reality.
FFXII had more sidequests than just the clan hunting, though that's obviously the biggest one. There was the "track down the escaped cockatrices" quest, the "cure the sick patient in the desert" quest, creating sunstones, helping out the sisters on the airships, talking the viera in Rabanastre into becoming a warrior, uncovering a bunch of hidden Espers (some of which are actually powerful enough to be useful in combat late in the game), tracking down the bottles of rare liquor in Bhujerba, assembling the four fragments of the medallion (never did finish that one), and a second set of hunts from the guys in the hunters' camp on the beach. Oh, plus a fishing game and a footrace. Those are the ones I found when I was playing; there are probably more.
If by "California" you mean "the school board of the city of Oakland," then good point.
Ah, yes, he has an IMDB page detailing his appearances. So it looks like he got to live at least a tiny bit of that particular dream. Good for him!