"The US State Department is VERY aggressive at making sure..."
"Its an ugly system, but living so close the the US (and being so similar) its necessary to give some market niches breathing room."
Chicken, meet egg.
NO. The difference is that many countries are trying to preserve elements of their own culture. The US is using diplomacy and trade to EXTEND their own culture. I have no problems with numerous film/music/tv imports coming into the US and failing miserably -- survival of the fittest. Hollywood has alot of money, and also attracts alot of foreign talent; I don't have a problem with that eiter. What I have problems with the US dictacting to other countries how they should regulate their media, based on their own commercial interests. We're not talking even talking about tariffs on US media; the US invokes various levels of trade sanctions if a country subsidizes their own arts & culture. THIS is ridiculous.
Given nipple-gate, the FCC, and reality TV, the US has no moral authority to dictate cultural expression abroad!
Your comments are legitimate. But you also need to consider that one of the US' greatest exports is its media -- music, books, magazines, movies. The US State Department is VERY aggressive at making sure all of its trading partners have open markets to US product. Unfortunately most of the rest of the world doesn't consider culture = product. When there's a KFC 100' from the base of the pyramids, I think the world has just become a slightly less interesting place.
In canada we have an anachronistic, painful, paternalistic system called CANCON (canadian content) which mandates various %s of broadcast media/sales must be Canadian originating. Its an ugly system, but living so close the the US (and being so similar) its necessary to give some market niches breathing room. In music, alot of groups get a good starting base in Canada and then go onto larger fame, unlike 30-40 years ago when Joni Mitchell and Neil Young HAD to go to the US if they wanted to pursue music.
I think the bigger issue is that with the US national media being so insular, that when (many) americans travel abroad they're not appreciative of the differences between themselves and others. Its not that US is better or France is better, its that France does things differently and that's okay too.
And for the record, I've seen Canadians act like drunken idiots abroad and make me cringe, and German tourists are a species unto themselves.
I regret to inform you that your patent "A Method for Doing Stuff with Things" (#52418761) is a derivative of my patent "Doing Stuff" (#000002), and as such the subjects you to a usage fee. Please contact my attorneys to negotiate the terms of your personal bankruptcy.
Re:Sheep, Wolves, Sheepdogs
on
School Bans 'Tag'
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
That was perhaps the worst possible analogy I've ever heard. My criticism would start with the premise that the analogy is self-serving, as the Colonel obviously has a vested interest in his power stemming from his military command.
I think the fucking & assholes analogy from Team America: World Police is a more legitimate world view IMHO.
For those of you who think sheepdogs are important, I ask you the following -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.
A few reasons. Europe is mainly 'full' -- its landmass is less than that of the US IIRC, or darn near close...they have 700+ million, the US just hit 300. Alot of central Europe is mountain region remember, they just don't have the wide open plains like north america.
Also, Europe is comprised of very old, mature set of societies. Less social and economic mobility; all the land is owned and in use. The US still has large amounts space and sparsely populated cities. The rustbelt has a negative population growth for example.
Finally, I think the social objectives are a bit different. Speaking in very broad terms, most European societies are not as materalistic. There's alot of negatives to materialism as a motivator, but it does give your economy a very powerful engine. This creates oppportunity, which in turn attracts immigrants.
Re:Deleted Scenes from the Interview
on
Ballmer Sounds Off
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Ingnoring your little pantomime, Ballmer's point is legitimate -- even 'user created' content is a HUGE liability on the website. A World of Warcraft video w/ a soundtrack from a current music album, populated with soundbits from TV shows... lawyers no longer need viagra.
Youtube is a very, very young company...just like it took the RIAA a few years to realise what Napster was, I'm sure the MPAA is having closed door sessions today to figure out how to litigate/shut this down.
In the land of the DCMA, laws banning online gambling, the RIAA and MPAA, this is a huge legal disaster waiting to happen. I'm supportive of Google pushing the envelope, but I think they have overreached on this acquisition. Their first major mistake IMHO.
In fairness, Microsoft has ALWAYS wanted to go to a subscription model. They want an ongoing revenue stream.
I remember Gates talking about subscription servicesvs one-time licensing long before the internet came along. The question has always been how to make this great leap, without orphaning or crippling their existing install base business. Ironically their greatest threat (the internet) will become their greatest enabler.
My company is using MS Project Web and MS Outlook Web to a large extent, and I am very impressed. How come we're all happy to use gmail, google maps, google calendar, etc but not a web version of MS word, MS outlook, or MS Project? There will always be a practical need to local installations and local software, but a centralised produtivity app model has tremendous advantages.
He's thrown softballs to Bill O'Reilly and that Afghan Hound Lookalike Ann Coulter, even though you KNOW he's ready to annihilate them with a small burst of logical discourse 101. His interview segments are very soft fluff; if they weren't, no one would ever go on his show. Remember Rosie O'Donnell? Not my cup-o-tea, but she had a highly rated talk show UNTIL she ambushed Tom Selleck on the topic of gun control. After that she couldn't book any guests, and her show suffered... it was doom.
If Bush had shown up for an interview before his 2nd term, he too would probably have gotten a soft interview. Now there's just too much baggage to let him off; he barely shows up in public for fear of being subpoenaed and/or indicted I suspect.
Our bank has experimented, and is running some production systems on grid infrastructure (Sun to be specific).
Some learnings:
1. Software licensing is your biggest enemy. Oracle in particular is evil in this regard, but every vendor fears grid computing since it doesn't conform to their pricing models and gives you more bang for the buck. Investigate the consequences of grid at the earliest opportunity.
2. By linking numerous apps to a pool of servers, you've just complicated your software currency lifecycle tremendously. You don't now have to upgrade one O/S, you have to upgrade 10 or 100 simultaneously. And EVERY APP IN THE POOL has to be ready for the O/S upgrade too.
3. Your infrastructure costs go towards networking, storage, and monitoring. Your operations staff needs to be aware of every app utilising the grid now, not just their pool of servers running single applications.
Find your greyframers in the organisation and tap their knowledge. They've been working with LPARS before you were born most likely, and know how to work/coordinate in a virtualised environment.
Use grid as an extended cluster for like-services. Don't mix different workloads on the grid as it gets confusing to manage. Watch your licensing implications at all times -- be prepared to walk away from vendors that don't want to play nicely.
IMHO i'm not convinced grid computing is much better than standard N-tier architectures. The labour to learn + setup + maintain a well run grid is not always returned in $ value. The sad fact is that developers and operations staff are expensive, hardware is cheap. Grid saves you h/w costs, which isn't our biggest worry. If grid becomes EASIER to manage than stand-alone servers (again, not convinced) it will return on its promise.
Toronto is growing at a rate of ~100,000 people per year based on 2005 statistics. I'm not sure if this applies to the Greater Toronto Area or Toronto proper, but its still a heck of alot of people. its showing the strain on its infrastructure now, since most of hte major highways and public transit date back to the 1970s.
Frankly as a 3rd generation Torontonian, I prefered a smaller city that 'worked'. Everyone raves about the economic boom that growth introduces, aren't we so lucky, etc. But now we get wall-to-wall traffic, increasing crime, waste disposal problems, strain on social programs (e.g. 100,000 new immigrants per annum who more than likely come in at the bottom of the social/economic system), and a watering down of a sense of nationality.
Certainly the negative population trends in Detroit and Buffalo have disturbing consequences as well...just wanted to point out rapid growth isn't a panacea of benefits.
Perhaps if Canada would let us dump our wheat and other produce on Canada, we would let them dump their lumber on us. I wonder why Barnes and Noble and Borders don't open stores in Canada.
Both are legitimate gripes and I agree with you -- Chapters/Indigo is a virtual monopoly, and both our countries heavily subsidize agriculture for political gain. Its a major gripe that 3rd world nations can't develop their economies, since most basic economies start agrarian based. In both of these cases, however, I'd argue Canada and the US are both guilty of protecting domestic agriculture and manufacutring/retail industries. Both are exempt from NAFTA for the most part too.
If not for Canadian protectionism, you Canadians wouldn't be paying so much for tomotoes. It's really the consumer that loses out. I would love to build a house for less by using cheap Canadian lumber too. What happens is both governments put into place laws that protect certain industries at the expense of their own consumers.
Agree completely.
Now if we could only get Canada to pay their fair share for medical drug research, instead of pleasing poverty and having a government monopoly negotiate third-world pity-pricing for drugs.
Sorry, I disagree here. Canada pays fair share for medical research. Its just we didn't extend patent protection to the drug companies in a progressive fashion since the 1950s. Its still only around 10-20 years before we allow the manufacture of generic alternatives. It should be noted that the drug companies do not HAVE to import their patents/brands/drugs to Canada, but they choose to do so knowing that they'll be subject to much more lenient patent protection. The market is still good enough.
Our healthcare industries vary greatly, we're public and the US is private. But our drug laws are the same, barring the lengths acceptable for patents.
As a Canadian, we've learned the hard way that free trade = americans trade for free. Numerous appeals panels over the past decade have consecutively proven that Canada does not unfairly subsidize our softwood lumber, yet there's a huge tariff imposed at the border. We won all the appeals, and guess what? US policy is basically 'you can't make us stop'. WTO takes years (decades?) to allow for counter-duties and tariffs, which essentially peanlises your own citizens for unfair trade practices.
So while American lumber continues to destroy spotted owl habitat, all the cheap + BETTER QUALITY lumber (words of the US housing industry, not mine) remains unharvested. Congrats american consumer - you lose too!
The US always has, and always will, be a big bully on the global economic scene. The question now is whether that advantage trickles down to the american consumer, or if the new robber barons can re-establish their hoovervilles.
Now imagine a company with 100% engineers, which spend 5% of their time doing 'management' , it would still work and turn out a product, see google and apple.
Please just keep telling yourself this. Google currently has 100+ postings in the US for 'manager' positions -- product management, account management, project management. Surprisingly none of these positions have 'degree or certification in engineering' as a prerequisite. Oh, as Steve Jobs only has 1 semester of college education, i don't think he meets your 10+ years of engineering education that you suggest.
(Roughly) Quoting Heinlein -- "If a society produces only artists instead of plumbers merely because art is of higher value, the society will have neither good art nor good plumbing."
There's are lots and lots (and lots) of well eductated, moderate, intelligent posters on Slashdot (no its true!) who realise their rights are being progressively infringed upon, and taken away. But unfortunately the sheeple populating a good chunk of the US still provides your president with ~ 30% approval rating. Its scary the % of the population willing to give the great leader (tm) a blank cheque in terms of executive power.
I can only equate the last ~ 5 years of political discourse in the US as the preliminary (being generous here) steps toward fascism. I suspect Bush's use of the completely inaccurate terminology of "Islamo-fascism" as being an attempt to disuade people from the true nature of fascism, being pro-industry and anti-citizen in nature.
I really hope the US wakes up in time for the NEXT presidential election -- if that ever comes. Should another terrorist attack take place shortly before the next election, I can see an extended set of executive powers being granted to the sitting president, at which point my suspicions will be fulfilled.
Name a game or hobby where accomplishments and/or collecting stuff is not related to social standing.
You can't. Its impossible. Any manner of social endeavour has in some way or another can be measured competitively. This slam against computer games for levelling or loot collection is BS, and always has been.
Part of the appeal of an MMORPG is that there is no specific end-game per-se. Hardcore uber players have turned the raid instances into the 'end game', but its not necessarily what Blizzard intended. What can a L60 do in Wow?
Rep grind with various factions.
Battlegrounds -- faction rep, PvP rank/honour.
Raid instances.
Crafting professions (aka "The Auction House game").
And of course, you can skip all of those like I did and start another alt -- different race, different faction, different zones. IMHO the tiered questing is Wow's greatest strenght, coupled with rest bonus for inactive characters.
I played Baldur's Gate II to finish the game. I play WoW for the experience, knowing there's always going to be something new around the corner. The online social aspect is a huge benefit too.
legal rule through popular vote results in tyranny of the majority. your penalties are excessively harsh too, for an activity that does no physical harm to another human being.
i agree with your principle, however, of some form of penalty for frivolous patents. Perhaps a ban on filing future patents for a period of time?
a patent review would be a good start. a faster expiry on patents would also be beneficial.
EXACTLY. I was trying to figure out how knowing the default ATM code would help. I've been doing alot of testing with Diebold and NCR ATMs lately and all (okay, most) of the transactions for a bank need to be approved, ONLINE. A valid card with a valid account attached needs to be used. So you can either be blindingly stupid and withdraw 20s instead of 5s on your OWN account, or rip of someone else's debit/credit card, in which case you'd also need their PIN, which is the SERIOUS crime.
I'm not saying having default ATM passwords in the open is good, just that its not a panacea of crime this Slashdot headline suggests.
Because "iPod" is a perfectly intuitive brandname? Even 'walkman' doesn't make much sense, although I guess you can walk and you are a membmer of mankind when listening to music.
Because if you want to have an intergrated solution, allowing users to download music straight into the player, you'll need a DRM solution. Apple would rather NOT have DRM in their iPods, but the labels won't distribute via iTunes without it.
Of course, a recent study suggested only 10-15% of iPods are populated with iTunes downloads. So the integrated solution is not an absolute necessity to being successful in this space. I think ipods are more successful due to a) well engineered, b) highly usable, and c) good advertising. But Microsoft doesn't want to leave any stone unturned, they're fighting uphill here.
Frankly, I didn't realise that 10% of the iPod user base was stupid enough to buy overpriced music via iTunes. I figured it was just useful as a podcast aggregator, but then again the Home Shopping Network is profitable too.:/
Tolkien was a notorious procrastinator, leaving pieces of his work alone for 20 or 30 years at a time before picking it back up.
JRR specifically left his son Christopher in charge of his estate after his death to continue, finish, and document his lifetime's work. The Silmarillion was an early compilation, based on his father's outlines, of a variety of tales -- the Tale of Hurin is mentioned as one of those texts. IIRC, JRR specifically tasked his son with completing the Silmarillion.
Christopher Tolkien has been exceedingly honest in his attempts, documenting divergences and inconsistencies with his father's intentions, and getting help (Guy Kay) when possible. He also doesn't present it as his own work, its usually "JRR Tolkien, edited by Christopher" etc. The Tale of Hurin will clearly be presented as a 'best effort' recovery from notes and incomplete texts.
Given the choice of a) no material, or b) Christopher's best interpretation of the material, I'll take 'b' every time. If you want to see butchered work after an author's demise, look to Robert E Howard's Conan stories, or the latest 'additions' to the Dune series.
Slashdot Mirror
We aren't even a real country anyways.
"The US State Department is VERY aggressive at making sure..." "Its an ugly system, but living so close the the US (and being so similar) its necessary to give some market niches breathing room."
Chicken, meet egg.
NO. The difference is that many countries are trying to preserve elements of their own culture. The US is using diplomacy and trade to EXTEND their own culture. I have no problems with numerous film/music/tv imports coming into the US and failing miserably -- survival of the fittest. Hollywood has alot of money, and also attracts alot of foreign talent; I don't have a problem with that eiter. What I have problems with the US dictacting to other countries how they should regulate their media, based on their own commercial interests. We're not talking even talking about tariffs on US media; the US invokes various levels of trade sanctions if a country subsidizes their own arts & culture. THIS is ridiculous.
Given nipple-gate, the FCC, and reality TV, the US has no moral authority to dictate cultural expression abroad!
Millions of additional turkeys/goose will now lose their lives thanks to Blizzard's incompetence.
PETA is going to open a can of whoopass.
Your comments are legitimate. But you also need to consider that one of the US' greatest exports is its media -- music, books, magazines, movies. The US State Department is VERY aggressive at making sure all of its trading partners have open markets to US product. Unfortunately most of the rest of the world doesn't consider culture = product. When there's a KFC 100' from the base of the pyramids, I think the world has just become a slightly less interesting place.
In canada we have an anachronistic, painful, paternalistic system called CANCON (canadian content) which mandates various %s of broadcast media/sales must be Canadian originating. Its an ugly system, but living so close the the US (and being so similar) its necessary to give some market niches breathing room. In music, alot of groups get a good starting base in Canada and then go onto larger fame, unlike 30-40 years ago when Joni Mitchell and Neil Young HAD to go to the US if they wanted to pursue music.
I think the bigger issue is that with the US national media being so insular, that when (many) americans travel abroad they're not appreciative of the differences between themselves and others. Its not that US is better or France is better, its that France does things differently and that's okay too.
And for the record, I've seen Canadians act like drunken idiots abroad and make me cringe, and German tourists are a species unto themselves.
I regret to inform you that your patent "A Method for Doing Stuff with Things" (#52418761) is a derivative of my patent "Doing Stuff" (#000002), and as such the subjects you to a usage fee. Please contact my attorneys to negotiate the terms of your personal bankruptcy.
That was perhaps the worst possible analogy I've ever heard. My criticism would start with the premise that the analogy is self-serving, as the Colonel obviously has a vested interest in his power stemming from his military command.
I think the fucking & assholes analogy from Team America: World Police is a more legitimate world view IMHO.
For those of you who think sheepdogs are important, I ask you the following -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.
A few reasons. Europe is mainly 'full' -- its landmass is less than that of the US IIRC, or darn near close...they have 700+ million, the US just hit 300. Alot of central Europe is mountain region remember, they just don't have the wide open plains like north america.
Also, Europe is comprised of very old, mature set of societies. Less social and economic mobility; all the land is owned and in use. The US still has large amounts space and sparsely populated cities. The rustbelt has a negative population growth for example.
Finally, I think the social objectives are a bit different. Speaking in very broad terms, most European societies are not as materalistic. There's alot of negatives to materialism as a motivator, but it does give your economy a very powerful engine. This creates oppportunity, which in turn attracts immigrants.
Ingnoring your little pantomime, Ballmer's point is legitimate -- even 'user created' content is a HUGE liability on the website. A World of Warcraft video w/ a soundtrack from a current music album, populated with soundbits from TV shows... lawyers no longer need viagra.
Youtube is a very, very young company...just like it took the RIAA a few years to realise what Napster was, I'm sure the MPAA is having closed door sessions today to figure out how to litigate/shut this down.
In the land of the DCMA, laws banning online gambling, the RIAA and MPAA, this is a huge legal disaster waiting to happen. I'm supportive of Google pushing the envelope, but I think they have overreached on this acquisition. Their first major mistake IMHO.
In fairness, Microsoft has ALWAYS wanted to go to a subscription model. They want an ongoing revenue stream.
I remember Gates talking about subscription servicesvs one-time licensing long before the internet came along. The question has always been how to make this great leap, without orphaning or crippling their existing install base business. Ironically their greatest threat (the internet) will become their greatest enabler.
My company is using MS Project Web and MS Outlook Web to a large extent, and I am very impressed. How come we're all happy to use gmail, google maps, google calendar, etc but not a web version of MS word, MS outlook, or MS Project? There will always be a practical need to local installations and local software, but a centralised produtivity app model has tremendous advantages.
He's thrown softballs to Bill O'Reilly and that Afghan Hound Lookalike Ann Coulter, even though you KNOW he's ready to annihilate them with a small burst of logical discourse 101. His interview segments are very soft fluff; if they weren't, no one would ever go on his show. Remember Rosie O'Donnell? Not my cup-o-tea, but she had a highly rated talk show UNTIL she ambushed Tom Selleck on the topic of gun control. After that she couldn't book any guests, and her show suffered... it was doom.
If Bush had shown up for an interview before his 2nd term, he too would probably have gotten a soft interview. Now there's just too much baggage to let him off; he barely shows up in public for fear of being subpoenaed and/or indicted I suspect.
Our bank has experimented, and is running some production systems on grid infrastructure (Sun to be specific).
Some learnings:
1. Software licensing is your biggest enemy. Oracle in particular is evil in this regard, but every vendor fears grid computing since it doesn't conform to their pricing models and gives you more bang for the buck. Investigate the consequences of grid at the earliest opportunity.
2. By linking numerous apps to a pool of servers, you've just complicated your software currency lifecycle tremendously. You don't now have to upgrade one O/S, you have to upgrade 10 or 100 simultaneously. And EVERY APP IN THE POOL has to be ready for the O/S upgrade too.
3. Your infrastructure costs go towards networking, storage, and monitoring. Your operations staff needs to be aware of every app utilising the grid now, not just their pool of servers running single applications.
Find your greyframers in the organisation and tap their knowledge. They've been working with LPARS before you were born most likely, and know how to work/coordinate in a virtualised environment.
Use grid as an extended cluster for like-services. Don't mix different workloads on the grid as it gets confusing to manage. Watch your licensing implications at all times -- be prepared to walk away from vendors that don't want to play nicely.
IMHO i'm not convinced grid computing is much better than standard N-tier architectures. The labour to learn + setup + maintain a well run grid is not always returned in $ value. The sad fact is that developers and operations staff are expensive, hardware is cheap. Grid saves you h/w costs, which isn't our biggest worry. If grid becomes EASIER to manage than stand-alone servers (again, not convinced) it will return on its promise.
Toronto is growing at a rate of ~100,000 people per year based on 2005 statistics. I'm not sure if this applies to the Greater Toronto Area or Toronto proper, but its still a heck of alot of people. its showing the strain on its infrastructure now, since most of hte major highways and public transit date back to the 1970s.
Frankly as a 3rd generation Torontonian, I prefered a smaller city that 'worked'. Everyone raves about the economic boom that growth introduces, aren't we so lucky, etc. But now we get wall-to-wall traffic, increasing crime, waste disposal problems, strain on social programs (e.g. 100,000 new immigrants per annum who more than likely come in at the bottom of the social/economic system), and a watering down of a sense of nationality.
Certainly the negative population trends in Detroit and Buffalo have disturbing consequences as well...just wanted to point out rapid growth isn't a panacea of benefits.
Perhaps if Canada would let us dump our wheat and other produce on Canada, we would let them dump their lumber on us. I wonder why Barnes and Noble and Borders don't open stores in Canada. Both are legitimate gripes and I agree with you -- Chapters/Indigo is a virtual monopoly, and both our countries heavily subsidize agriculture for political gain. Its a major gripe that 3rd world nations can't develop their economies, since most basic economies start agrarian based. In both of these cases, however, I'd argue Canada and the US are both guilty of protecting domestic agriculture and manufacutring/retail industries. Both are exempt from NAFTA for the most part too. If not for Canadian protectionism, you Canadians wouldn't be paying so much for tomotoes. It's really the consumer that loses out. I would love to build a house for less by using cheap Canadian lumber too. What happens is both governments put into place laws that protect certain industries at the expense of their own consumers. Agree completely. Now if we could only get Canada to pay their fair share for medical drug research, instead of pleasing poverty and having a government monopoly negotiate third-world pity-pricing for drugs. Sorry, I disagree here. Canada pays fair share for medical research. Its just we didn't extend patent protection to the drug companies in a progressive fashion since the 1950s. Its still only around 10-20 years before we allow the manufacture of generic alternatives. It should be noted that the drug companies do not HAVE to import their patents/brands/drugs to Canada, but they choose to do so knowing that they'll be subject to much more lenient patent protection. The market is still good enough. Our healthcare industries vary greatly, we're public and the US is private. But our drug laws are the same, barring the lengths acceptable for patents.
As a Canadian, we've learned the hard way that free trade = americans trade for free. Numerous appeals panels over the past decade have consecutively proven that Canada does not unfairly subsidize our softwood lumber, yet there's a huge tariff imposed at the border. We won all the appeals, and guess what? US policy is basically 'you can't make us stop'. WTO takes years (decades?) to allow for counter-duties and tariffs, which essentially peanlises your own citizens for unfair trade practices.
So while American lumber continues to destroy spotted owl habitat, all the cheap + BETTER QUALITY lumber (words of the US housing industry, not mine) remains unharvested. Congrats american consumer - you lose too!
The US always has, and always will, be a big bully on the global economic scene. The question now is whether that advantage trickles down to the american consumer, or if the new robber barons can re-establish their hoovervilles.
The only myth is that in a world were people live in extreme poverty a profit driven society is morally acceptable.
O...k.... then. As a newly enlightened member of the prolitereate I would like to subscribe to your newsletter -- I find your ideas intriguing.
Now imagine a company with 100% engineers, which spend 5% of their time doing 'management' , it would still work and turn out a product, see google and apple.
Please just keep telling yourself this. Google currently has 100+ postings in the US for 'manager' positions -- product management, account management, project management. Surprisingly none of these positions have 'degree or certification in engineering' as a prerequisite. Oh, as Steve Jobs only has 1 semester of college education, i don't think he meets your 10+ years of engineering education that you suggest.
(Roughly) Quoting Heinlein -- "If a society produces only artists instead of plumbers merely because art is of higher value, the society will have neither good art nor good plumbing."
There's are lots and lots (and lots) of well eductated, moderate, intelligent posters on Slashdot (no its true!) who realise their rights are being progressively infringed upon, and taken away. But unfortunately the sheeple populating a good chunk of the US still provides your president with ~ 30% approval rating. Its scary the % of the population willing to give the great leader (tm) a blank cheque in terms of executive power.
I can only equate the last ~ 5 years of political discourse in the US as the preliminary (being generous here) steps toward fascism. I suspect Bush's use of the completely inaccurate terminology of "Islamo-fascism" as being an attempt to disuade people from the true nature of fascism, being pro-industry and anti-citizen in nature.
I really hope the US wakes up in time for the NEXT presidential election -- if that ever comes. Should another terrorist attack take place shortly before the next election, I can see an extended set of executive powers being granted to the sitting president, at which point my suspicions will be fulfilled.
Name a game or hobby where accomplishments and/or collecting stuff is not related to social standing.
You can't. Its impossible. Any manner of social endeavour has in some way or another can be measured competitively. This slam against computer games for levelling or loot collection is BS, and always has been.
Part of the appeal of an MMORPG is that there is no specific end-game per-se. Hardcore uber players have turned the raid instances into the 'end game', but its not necessarily what Blizzard intended. What can a L60 do in Wow?
Rep grind with various factions.
Battlegrounds -- faction rep, PvP rank/honour.
Raid instances.
Crafting professions (aka "The Auction House game").
And of course, you can skip all of those like I did and start another alt -- different race, different faction, different zones. IMHO the tiered questing is Wow's greatest strenght, coupled with rest bonus for inactive characters.
I played Baldur's Gate II to finish the game. I play WoW for the experience, knowing there's always going to be something new around the corner. The online social aspect is a huge benefit too.
legal rule through popular vote results in tyranny of the majority. your penalties are excessively harsh too, for an activity that does no physical harm to another human being.
i agree with your principle, however, of some form of penalty for frivolous patents. Perhaps a ban on filing future patents for a period of time?
a patent review would be a good start. a faster expiry on patents would also be beneficial.
EXACTLY. I was trying to figure out how knowing the default ATM code would help. I've been doing alot of testing with Diebold and NCR ATMs lately and all (okay, most) of the transactions for a bank need to be approved, ONLINE. A valid card with a valid account attached needs to be used. So you can either be blindingly stupid and withdraw 20s instead of 5s on your OWN account, or rip of someone else's debit/credit card, in which case you'd also need their PIN, which is the SERIOUS crime.
I'm not saying having default ATM passwords in the open is good, just that its not a panacea of crime this Slashdot headline suggests.
Because "iPod" is a perfectly intuitive brandname? Even 'walkman' doesn't make much sense, although I guess you can walk and you are a membmer of mankind when listening to music.
Because if you want to have an intergrated solution, allowing users to download music straight into the player, you'll need a DRM solution. Apple would rather NOT have DRM in their iPods, but the labels won't distribute via iTunes without it.
:/
Of course, a recent study suggested only 10-15% of iPods are populated with iTunes downloads. So the integrated solution is not an absolute necessity to being successful in this space. I think ipods are more successful due to a) well engineered, b) highly usable, and c) good advertising. But Microsoft doesn't want to leave any stone unturned, they're fighting uphill here.
Frankly, I didn't realise that 10% of the iPod user base was stupid enough to buy overpriced music via iTunes. I figured it was just useful as a podcast aggregator, but then again the Home Shopping Network is profitable too.
Tolkien was a notorious procrastinator, leaving pieces of his work alone for 20 or 30 years at a time before picking it back up.
JRR specifically left his son Christopher in charge of his estate after his death to continue, finish, and document his lifetime's work. The Silmarillion was an early compilation, based on his father's outlines, of a variety of tales -- the Tale of Hurin is mentioned as one of those texts. IIRC, JRR specifically tasked his son with completing the Silmarillion.
Christopher Tolkien has been exceedingly honest in his attempts, documenting divergences and inconsistencies with his father's intentions, and getting help (Guy Kay) when possible. He also doesn't present it as his own work, its usually "JRR Tolkien, edited by Christopher" etc. The Tale of Hurin will clearly be presented as a 'best effort' recovery from notes and incomplete texts.
Given the choice of a) no material, or b) Christopher's best interpretation of the material, I'll take 'b' every time. If you want to see butchered work after an author's demise, look to Robert E Howard's Conan stories, or the latest 'additions' to the Dune series.
"I believe that torture, nay, gruesome inquisition! and Guantanamo is TOO GOOD for these despicable insurgents"
I agree. We should force them to rely upon an HP Omnibook for their daily tasks.
If I have to suffer, I feel better knowing its a shared experience.