And this is news how? So far in any production and manufacturing scenarios development is a minor cost (with Pharma and Biotech being exceptions, thanks FDA for securing yourself a minimum of 500 million in trial costs...)
The VAST MAJORITY of product development costs are lower then their lifetime manufacturing costs, administration, advertising, litigation, and maintenance. Hell most companies I would wager spend more on their legal department then R&D these days. I know 3 folks who, as a full time job, do nothing but search the patent stack to make sure no 'pending' projects are "at risk". (Offical job titles are "Patent Risk Analysts" apparently)
Why is this surprising? Remember that the web sites fall under advertising. Yeah Blizzard.com, Warcraft.com, EA.com, etc all fall under advertising expenses. So would the billable hours to the art department. "Hey we need to update the warcraft site for the new expansion. We have 1200 hours of art dept work in the project plan. What cost center? Advertising Dept, got it. 1200 hours to AVT0001 at $$$ and since we use the same DB as the 2112 and Bnet projects we'll need at least 40 hours of admin work to those cost centers..."
Here are some things that fall under advertising that you may forget: Expo booths and event sponsorship (PAX, GDC, etc.) Team Sponsorships (NASCAR is a great example) Business Cards Swag (Pens, Pencils, jackets, Post-It like stuff) Print Ads Online Ads Radio Ads Event Sponsorship (plays, etc.) Web Sites
Now just stop and think about that last one... Yeah let it stew for a minute...
Yeah, Holy Crap no kidding for costs there. Download that newest demo... How much bandwidth, servers, etc.
Last I heard, as an example, many MMOs per shard hardware requirements are dwarfed by their own web sites!
The fact this comes as a suprise and the comments that followed really worry me that kids might not have a clue how business works.
The value of the dollar is lost, the fundamental understanding of basic business principles is endangered.
Because the water will be cooler then ambient air temperature you will get condensation and risk water damage to components. In addition even without high levels of moisture where you are risking drips you still risk enough condensation for mildew. Just think of what your shower generates for mildew... With that much pipe your PC(s) will not be able to warm the water enough to bring it to ambient temperature...
I worked with a guy at a particular defense contractor who, while on company time and on company assets, wrote a decent short story. I was published and her got some cash out of it. His bosses caught wind and trying to "claim" the work as the companies since it was on company time and conpany assets. Apparently (IANAL) though there is this thing called RELEVANCY that factors into this. Since his employers had nothing to do with literary endevors they didn't have a claim to the work, it was irrelivant to his job. For instance jotting down a new formula for a soda on a company provided post-it note while at work doesn't give your employer ownership of that unless they somehow deal in... well... soda.
You are not a slave and your employer doesn't own you, nor do they own your imagination. As long as what you do personally doesn't involve your work there is a resonable barrier between the two. I haven't heard of someone coming up with a great recipe for BBQ while working at a Ford plant and having Ford try and claim ownership. I think the judge would throw them out on their ear.
However I fear that we might end up slaves all too quickly if we don't raise hell on issues like this. It's already getting so far that former employers can sue you if you go work for a competitor without a non-compete agreement.
Slavery comes in many forms besides whips and chains...
"The hype of the technology is inversely proportional to the quality of the story. For if the quality of the story is greater then the quality of the technology is stands to reason that the studio, director, producers, and industry would HYPE the BEST part of the film."
So regardless of how good the film is overall we can see, plainly that the technology of the film is more important then the story. The story thusly must come in second place. Not to imply that it will suck, just, that we know the content of the film comes in second place compared to the technology used to make the film.
Thus the 44th Law taken from a sign on 44th street near where I used to live. The sign read:
"People hype their best qualities in hopes of hiding their worst qualities..."
So they yank the copyrighted images of "The New Age Savior" but the Bush covers and Regan covers remain... Odd... "Why so one-sided" in this take down. Doesn't the White House also tend to previous presidents or just "their own".
Once again we see that the road to civil war is paved in hipocracy and decite. The Democrats and Republicans will tear this nation apart, masked as diversity and globalization, all the while the elites pillage it for what wealth is left then sailing off to their masters on shores afar leaving behind the wreckage... All they need to do is keep us 'serfs' fighting one another long enough for them to bleed us dry...
I wrote a short story years ago in high school on that very topic.
Here is a quote from a character Lenos Vicar explaining why astromech droid don't get voice modules.
"Voice module? Bah first off each division's astromechs have their own "Blip" codes to prevent audables being picked up on atmospheric ops. (My assumption is in a future that technologically advanced listening device should be pretty damn good) But the key reason is bonding... Last thing we want is our pilots getting attached to the little shits. Their disposable. I can't count the number of Empire high court bueracrats that get attached to their bulter droids. Last thing I need is some cry-baby getting all wet over his co-pilot getting shot."
all this discussion still hinges on some weird idea that people have a right to privacy... you never have....
The US Consitution tell what the government can and cannot do but there has never been a "Right to Privacy" in public spaces. If that were the case then you could have sex in the middle of rush hour in your car because it would be a "private space." This isn't the case. RF tags or your hair cut, just as easily "viewable" in a public space. You don't even have a right to privacy in your own home per-say. You have the right to private property and as such can prevent someone from entering your home. Even "peeping tom" laws have their limit.
I'm not here to debate privacy, I am here to simply state this entire discussion, topic, hinges on a concept that we have not made, through law, into a "Right". Until you get a consitiutional amendment defining privacy as a right, we are just spinning our wheels here...
Your electromagentic emissions are open and public broadcasts, at the very least would fall under the FCC. Can't wait till they can monitor brain waves at 30 yards so we can punish you for mental harrasment based on what you think! Sooo close I can hear the goose stepping Gattica engineered Pre-crime teams marching through the streets punishing you on what you think.. damn pre-terrorist, pre-rapists, pre-murderers!
"Where have you been? Never mind we know where you've been!"
Sorry your card doesn't work here at Mc Fatties. You have exceeded your governement regulated amount of fast food... In addition that $200 dollars you took out of the ATM at the strip club will also incur a 30% pleasure tax on the withdrawl. You non-essential trip to the club will also incurred a 15 cent per mile entertainment travel surcharge based on the Federal Road Tax program since the route taken was not registered under your Google Road Plan account for work, basic essentials, or volunteer routes. Please note that carrying alcohol or tabacco products in your vechile is subject to the local "Vice Transportation" surcharge on all county roads.
Lawyers have a resposibility to ensure the legitimacy of a case prior to taking it. Period. They risk disbarment as well as court penalties. They are required to do that already, the schools mearly do not stress it anymore.
The police have always had discretion on arrest. The district attourney has always had discretion to prosecute. The judge has always had the discretion to toss out the case.
There has always been, and always be checks along the way in criminal as well as civil cases.
The schools are not stressing that enough anymore.
Everyone along the path judges the merit of a case, the lawyers are ignoring their requirement in the name of money.
"Freedom of Speech does not imply Freedom from Consequence"
You are free to do damn near anything. We do not have pre-crime cops yet... yet...
But a private citizen also has the freedom to litigate, challenge, and defend their name, integrity, and honor.
The Constitution places limits on government, not it's citizens. Christian publishers are well and clear to refuse to publish anti-christian works. That is censorship, but the private world is free to do so. Any parent who has uttered to a 10 year old "you are too young to watch that" has engaged in censorship.
Right or wrong, the ability to challenge peoples statements is a fundamental freedom just as well as the accusation they challenge.
The problem is the inequality in civil court of haves vs have-nots. Justice is blind because she can weigh gold easy enough.
The solution is to start scoring lawyers to ensure they are doing due dilligence in ensuring a case is valid before taking it and reprimanding them when they abuse the courts. If there is in fact mold in the apartment the lawyer should simply say, "you have no case. Clean the mold..."
The problem is there is always some lawyer with no principle that will take the case and use the courts as an extortion tool. Hell the MAFIAA is built on legal shakedowns....
The actual inspiration was the end of the "Blob" with the weird preacher guy having a bit of it in a jar. The whole idea of something assumed to be beign or tiny emerging and becoming a massive problem.
A kid, who knows no better, ends up ressurecting the MCP. The MCP could easily, once connected to the Internet, manage a complete corporation on his own. The theme I was looking to explore was the opposite interaction much like the Matrix touched on, what happens when the opposite is pursued, the virtual world and entities encroaching on the physical world. Skynet wanted to destroy humans, the MCP wants to rule them.
The second theme was the amount of power those that develop and implement standard have and the potential abuse (RFID tags as an example) and how it could easily cripple the world if abused(remember the last "Escape from whatever" movie when Snake activates the blackout).
The third was to explore Flynn and the concept that the AI we saw in the old movie was too far ahead of it's time forcing Flynn, perhaps out of guilt, to scuttle the technology.
The original script points I had was based loosely on the Tron 2 game also but I wanted to put a big rift between Allan and Flynn after her death and Allan's son's experience was the catalyst for Flynn locking up the AI projects. Part of the character development I wanted was to put Mrs. Gilbert and her husband in the same movie with Gilbert as Flynn's replacement and a side story of Allan and her building a relationship through the process.
The ultimate conclusion was left unresolved for a Tron MMO I wanted to follow up with in which Encom was deploying AI scripts (the player's in-game characters) to re-take computer systems across the world moving through a "map" of hundreds of systems fighting the MCP and Virus factions (reclaiming then trying to hold a system from re-infection.) In the MMO Flynn is outraged by Allan's use of the AI scripts, especially the use of the digitizer to send in user agents into the system as well.
The MMO would then be retired with the last day offering a final seige against the MCP.
Richard Garriot may not have set out to build a work that shaped Secular Humanism into a religion and then explore that dynamic but in Ultima, the hero journeys from obscure champion to a messianic prophet of Lord British's secular religion. Culminating in Ultima 7, the black gate we see the dynamic play out between the Fellowship vs. Lord British and the Avatar.
You start out with Mondain and Minax with their sites outside of Britannia, then Exodus activates and begins it's development. Blackthorne, the gargoyles, and the great transition and rise of the Avatar. The the house of cards begins to fall apart, the rise of the Fellowship, the coming of the Guardian, and the fall of the Avatar (depending on how you look at that last piece of crap)
Oh give me 3 weeks and I'll give you 12 scripts for a reboot. Knock knock, Garriot & EA I'll do it, give me the go ahead!
Premise: The MCP is sold to a young kid at an electronics fair. Playing a game of chess the MCP (fitting on an old tape reel) the MCP says he can improve the game if the young boy, Inserts a disk from another program. After a few minutes the graphics improve in the game.
A short interlude of the boy progressively adding new disks and features as the MCP grows more complex. Then he finally plugs it in to the Internet...
10 years later.
The young boy, now a leader in industry running a CPU manufacture seals the deal on a government mandated contract for a microprocessor that will provide comprehensive inventory control and management. It's a hit, every company signs on to use it with one exception. Encom...
Meanwhile a well funded group of terrorists are emerging across the world tightening their grip on key infrastructure. Encom employees are also apparently targets...
The boy enters the office. The MCP speaks... You are no longer of use to me... Dillinger shoots the kid in the back...
Suddenly the MCP using a backdoor in the CPU design effectively shuts the world down... The terrorists, the MCP... The same organization...
"When someone in the real world pushes me, I push back..."
Encom, the only company not to use the chip (through some creative legal manuvering) digs out the prohibited AI code that Flynn had shuttered years earlier...
Now a dual race begins, the real world must stop the MCP's living forces while Encom's team races against time deploying dozens of AI units outside the firewall with the trailer closing with the following command lines:
PROMPT: Compile Tron 2.0 ===> (bunch of autoconfig output) ===> Time to completion: 8:00 hours...
PROMPT: LOAD PROG: Laser Array 3 ===> ===> Laser at full power. ===> Target Locked... ===> Flynn? Is that you?
For it is said that in life our heart shall beat only so many times and our mortality forces us to cherish each beat. We strive to makes each beat of our heart count, to be worthwhile. Such then every breath should be accounted for, for mortality puts limits on how many times we can do any such task, however mundane.
Then let us pursue the craft of writing with such diligence for the intricacies of script forces the mind quiet and stills the errant while we forge a word well thought and penned such that we do not waste a single word written.
Re:Kids and Real Science don't mix
on
The Geek Atlas
·
· Score: 1
There are hundreds of thousands of applied science jobs that do allow you to get out of a cube and get your hands dirty
Reality check: there are BILLIONS of people on Earth. In the USA alone over 300,000,000. Even if there was 3 million of applied sciene jobs in the USA we are talking 1% of the population would have access to those jobs. I've sat with countless graduates both masters and PhD level education. It's hard enough to find work in the private sector with a PhD (much easier with a masters apparently) let alone get a job where you get to live outside a cubicle.
I can think just off the top of my head 4 Lockheed enginners here in MN that I've drank coffee with that in 15 years still have yet to get outside a cubicle in their field of work. They sit there for a decade HOPING someone above them retires for a chance to get promoted to a position that gets them out of the cubicle only to find the position given to an outside hire.
I can think of two Entemologists (sp) that wanted to travel the world looking for new species that now catalog samples in a windowless warehouse that get shipped in from Brazil.
That is real life and kids need to learn to deal with that reality earlier rather then later. They need to undesrtand that they'll likely spend 3/4th of their career as a cube jockey before they get that glory moment, if ever. Quite a few scientist have died before their moment of glory came to pass. They worked on because they had a passion for what they did based on reality.
A quote I am fond of is "I do what I do for posterity and with every stroke of the pen find joy in the preservation of knowledge." Kids will never, NEVER, understand that the way we present science to them today.
The dropout rates for engineers and hard science shows us that this "Science Camp" nonsense isn't working and the number of jobs out there in these fields means we need to weed out those who lack a passion for pursuit of knowledge, not adventure.
It's a waste of the kids time in college and a waste of the educators to have a lecture hall packed with 40 students where 30 of them will either change majors or drop out once reality sets in.
The real power of player driven investment and pre-orders is investor matching, which happens a lot in other industies.
Developer announces the game. Investor A comes up and says, "I'll chip in X if you can clear 60,000 pre-orders." Investor B comes in and says I'll match player donations. Investor C says, If you can get a contract with Wallmart to distribute the product I'll throw in Y dollars.
There are plenty of ways in which player driven investment could take form, I would wager leverage against traditional investment is more a likely avenue to pursue.
I thought about this process a few years ago. The concept of a player bond. You donate $20 and we give you a $20 credit on your first month's subscription (I was looking specifically at MMO development.) Donate $100 and get a $100 dollar credit against your subscription fees (so assuming $10 a month you would get 10 months free.)
Sadly checking with the IRS and SEC this is a paperwork nightmare and would eat most of the donations.
Kids and Real Science don't mix
on
The Geek Atlas
·
· Score: 1, Troll
Kids today don't need any more nonsense then they already get. Here is real science:
Get up in the morning. Drive to work. Sit in your cube. Spend 6 hours reading test results. Enter test results into spreadsheet. Spend an hour prepping results report. Send results to senior scientist. Go home. Repeat.
Not everyone gets to trudge around rain forests or go globe trotting looking for the next big thing. Most sit in cubicles crunching numbers. Hell not everyone even gets to be in the lab. I remember working with a PhD chemical engineer at SEARS when I was in high school. He left the field because sitting in a cubicle all day staring at rehometer readouts for a blown film line test drove him insaine. 10 years and he never set foot in a lab. The whole of his start in chemistry was hoping to be like his father who also was a chemist (Lots of beakers and burners and condensation tubes and crap with a lab coat). Things have changed now. Kids need to see that part. Deluding kids is not the answer. Science is now, more then ever, a business and the old days are gone.
Not everyone gets to sit at an observatory looking for some celestial wonder.
Most live in Excel spreadsheets and databases.
Kids need some reality before they waste 4 years in college and countless $$$ pursuing their master's and PhD in a field they end up dropping out of once reality sets in.
We suffered enough thanks to Indy when that crap came out. "What do you mean I have to label everything and dig with a brush?!" Where is the "adventure". "What do you mean I don't get to go to Egypt?" I have to sit in a warehouse in Kentucky labeling stuff and making plaster casts?"
Enough "adventure" nonsense with the kids. They need to learn to value the aqusition of knowledge. Knowledge for knowledge's sake. We need people with a passion for real knowledge rather then just "The cool parts".
Please no more science camps. Show them a good helping of real work, stick them in a cube 3 days a week, 8-10 hours a pop.
Science is hard work. Kids need to see that. They don't need magic, they need reality.
Go ahead mod me troll I have karma to burn but we need to get our kids heads on straight.
How many kids want to be astronauts? doctors? pirates? ninjas? Astronomers? Give them a real taste of what it's like.
Want to be a doctor? Here, you get to go to doctor camp where you can spend 14 weeks a year defending yourself against malpractice suits. Hopeful astronomer? Here is a spreadsheet of gamma bursts from XM310203-01. Grab the data from the k:\orbitXM310203-01.xls and see if the gamma burst data shows if it correlates to Dr. Atworsts theory that there is a large object occluding the omission, possible an orbit. Also before heading home make sure you get Grant #44 and Grant #55 applications update for submission.
The horror stories I've seen over the years leads me every time to one factor: the reality of science and the marketing of science have grown so vast that the reailty of science is almost unknown until they get out into the private sector.
A: Score players by referral. Search for players using a threshold based on referrals. Just like filtering slashdot posts, filter players. Assholes quickly dissapear then
B: Scale content. Go into Molten Core solo, in a group, or a raid of 40. Just scale the content, number of drops, etc accordingly.
C: Provide players the tools needed to police their own. Griefers are the result of the player population (the masses) having no ability to deal with griefers on their own. Bounties as an in-game mechanism can go along way with dealing with griefers. Especially when there is a real penalty for dying when you have a bounty on your head.
Feature: Bounty - A player, once per day, can place a bounty of X gold on another player. For evey Y gold placed on the target upon death the target will lose 5% of their exp and will have to wait 1 hour for every Y gold before logging back in. Each time they die Y gold is removed from the bounty pool.
Y=1000 Gold
A player has a 5,000 bounty. Upon dying the player will be booted for 5 hours and lose 25% of their exp. The next time they log in the bounty pool is now at 4,000 bounty. Upon dying the player will be booted for 4 hours and lose 20% of their current exp. An so on and so on.
This assumes 1000 gold is a decent amount of cash in your game. This mechanism would go a long way to disciplining griefers. Can be used as a tool to grief? Yep, but pretty damn expensive tool to abuse.
"The safety of a offsite facility is inversely proportional to the height of the builds around it." - Population density tends to correlate to the height of building making these location statistically prone to issues..""The safety of offsite storage increase with distance from the source of the data"." - Environmental catastrophy, the further the distance from home the more likely to avoid the same catastrophy..""The cost of offsite storage increases with distance from the source of the data"."- Usually this is the result of shipping costs or fuel to get the backup from home to storage..""The convienence of offsite storage increases with distance from the source of the data"." - The closer the storage, the easier to drop tapes\disks off and to pick them up..""Never use offsite storage facilities near Denver Co. or damn near anywhere in the Dakotas."." - Primary nuclear targets. Simply not an option for risk..""Never store data in a city with a population greater then four times the median city size for your state nor in the state's capital city"." - While mirroring the first rule, the basis for this specific rule is in the event of calamity traffic in\out, power, riots, etc. All those population driven risks come into play. The larger the city the more risk involved. Now with terrorists factoring into risk analysis the larger cities are bigger targets.
and the last golden rule I offer:.""Just because you backup online doesn't absolve you from due dilligence on the physical location where that online backup ends up."." - Online backups aren't magical. 'Where does the data end up and how "safe" is that location?' are questions that still need to be asked.
Well they say life originated in water with high voltage. Couldn't this be just a pre-cellular organic construct? It seems rather uneventful in that case (beyond the fact we haven't seen it before).
With all the crap in the water I am more surprised we don't see this more often.
We finally get a shot at looking at pre-cellular life and all we do is label it, put it down, send it's offspring disproportionately to die in a war, insult it, then promptly hit it with a fire hose blast during a riot. This seems like a familiar formula for hating something...
Bunch of pre-cellular racists... probably gonna capture it and put it in a zoo...
Slashdot Mirror
And this is news how? So far in any production and manufacturing scenarios development is a minor cost (with Pharma and Biotech being exceptions, thanks FDA for securing yourself a minimum of 500 million in trial costs...)
The VAST MAJORITY of product development costs are lower then their lifetime manufacturing costs, administration, advertising, litigation, and maintenance. Hell most companies I would wager spend more on their legal department then R&D these days. I know 3 folks who, as a full time job, do nothing but search the patent stack to make sure no 'pending' projects are "at risk". (Offical job titles are "Patent Risk Analysts" apparently)
Why is this surprising? Remember that the web sites fall under advertising. Yeah Blizzard.com, Warcraft.com, EA.com, etc all fall under advertising expenses. So would the billable hours to the art department. "Hey we need to update the warcraft site for the new expansion. We have 1200 hours of art dept work in the project plan. What cost center? Advertising Dept, got it. 1200 hours to AVT0001 at $$$ and since we use the same DB as the 2112 and Bnet projects we'll need at least 40 hours of admin work to those cost centers..."
Here are some things that fall under advertising that you may forget:
Expo booths and event sponsorship (PAX, GDC, etc.)
Team Sponsorships (NASCAR is a great example)
Business Cards
Swag (Pens, Pencils, jackets, Post-It like stuff)
Print Ads
Online Ads
Radio Ads
Event Sponsorship (plays, etc.)
Web Sites
Now just stop and think about that last one... Yeah let it stew for a minute...
Yeah, Holy Crap no kidding for costs there. Download that newest demo... How much bandwidth, servers, etc.
Last I heard, as an example, many MMOs per shard hardware requirements are dwarfed by their own web sites!
The fact this comes as a suprise and the comments that followed really worry me that kids might not have a clue how business works.
The value of the dollar is lost, the fundamental understanding of basic business principles is endangered.
I am not a 'crop' to be havested. I am a person.
Because the water will be cooler then ambient air temperature you will get condensation and risk water damage to components. In addition even without high levels of moisture where you are risking drips you still risk enough condensation for mildew. Just think of what your shower generates for mildew... With that much pipe your PC(s) will not be able to warm the water enough to bring it to ambient temperature...
whoa totally pooched that second sentence: It was published and he got some cash out of it...
Damn I need more coffee...
I worked with a guy at a particular defense contractor who, while on company time and on company assets, wrote a decent short story. I was published and her got some cash out of it. His bosses caught wind and trying to "claim" the work as the companies since it was on company time and conpany assets. Apparently (IANAL) though there is this thing called RELEVANCY that factors into this. Since his employers had nothing to do with literary endevors they didn't have a claim to the work, it was irrelivant to his job. For instance jotting down a new formula for a soda on a company provided post-it note while at work doesn't give your employer ownership of that unless they somehow deal in ... well... soda.
You are not a slave and your employer doesn't own you, nor do they own your imagination. As long as what you do personally doesn't involve your work there is a resonable barrier between the two. I haven't heard of someone coming up with a great recipe for BBQ while working at a Ford plant and having Ford try and claim ownership. I think the judge would throw them out on their ear.
However I fear that we might end up slaves all too quickly if we don't raise hell on issues like this. It's already getting so far that former employers can sue you if you go work for a competitor without a non-compete agreement.
Slavery comes in many forms besides whips and chains...
"The hype of the technology is inversely proportional to the quality of the story. For if the quality of the story is greater then the quality of the technology is stands to reason that the studio, director, producers, and industry would HYPE the BEST part of the film."
So regardless of how good the film is overall we can see, plainly that the technology of the film is more important then the story. The story thusly must come in second place. Not to imply that it will suck, just, that we know the content of the film comes in second place compared to the technology used to make the film.
Thus the 44th Law taken from a sign on 44th street near where I used to live. The sign read:
"People hype their best qualities in hopes of hiding their worst qualities..."
So they yank the copyrighted images of "The New Age Savior" but the Bush covers and Regan covers remain... Odd... "Why so one-sided" in this take down. Doesn't the White House also tend to previous presidents or just "their own".
Once again we see that the road to civil war is paved in hipocracy and decite. The Democrats and Republicans will tear this nation apart, masked as diversity and globalization, all the while the elites pillage it for what wealth is left then sailing off to their masters on shores afar leaving behind the wreckage... All they need to do is keep us 'serfs' fighting one another long enough for them to bleed us dry...
I wrote a short story years ago in high school on that very topic.
Here is a quote from a character Lenos Vicar explaining why astromech droid don't get voice modules.
"Voice module? Bah first off each division's astromechs have their own "Blip" codes to prevent audables being picked up on atmospheric ops. (My assumption is in a future that technologically advanced listening device should be pretty damn good) But the key reason is bonding... Last thing we want is our pilots getting attached to the little shits. Their disposable. I can't count the number of Empire high court bueracrats that get attached to their bulter droids. Last thing I need is some cry-baby getting all wet over his co-pilot getting shot."
all this discussion still hinges on some weird idea that people have a right to privacy... you never have....
The US Consitution tell what the government can and cannot do but there has never been a "Right to Privacy" in public spaces. If that were the case then you could have sex in the middle of rush hour in your car because it would be a "private space." This isn't the case. RF tags or your hair cut, just as easily "viewable" in a public space. You don't even have a right to privacy in your own home per-say. You have the right to private property and as such can prevent someone from entering your home. Even "peeping tom" laws have their limit.
I'm not here to debate privacy, I am here to simply state this entire discussion, topic, hinges on a concept that we have not made, through law, into a "Right". Until you get a consitiutional amendment defining privacy as a right, we are just spinning our wheels here...
Your electromagentic emissions are open and public broadcasts, at the very least would fall under the FCC. Can't wait till they can monitor brain waves at 30 yards so we can punish you for mental harrasment based on what you think! Sooo close I can hear the goose stepping Gattica engineered Pre-crime teams marching through the streets punishing you on what you think.. damn pre-terrorist, pre-rapists, pre-murderers!
"Where have you been? Never mind we know where you've been!"
Sorry your card doesn't work here at Mc Fatties. You have exceeded your governement regulated amount of fast food... In addition that $200 dollars you took out of the ATM at the strip club will also incur a 30% pleasure tax on the withdrawl. You non-essential trip to the club will also incurred a 15 cent per mile entertainment travel surcharge based on the Federal Road Tax program since the route taken was not registered under your Google Road Plan account for work, basic essentials, or volunteer routes. Please note that carrying alcohol or tabacco products in your vechile is subject to the local "Vice Transportation" surcharge on all county roads.
Lawyers have a resposibility to ensure the legitimacy of a case prior to taking it. Period. They risk disbarment as well as court penalties. They are required to do that already, the schools mearly do not stress it anymore.
The police have always had discretion on arrest.
The district attourney has always had discretion to prosecute.
The judge has always had the discretion to toss out the case.
There has always been, and always be checks along the way in criminal as well as civil cases.
The schools are not stressing that enough anymore.
Everyone along the path judges the merit of a case, the lawyers are ignoring their requirement in the name of money.
"Freedom of Speech does not imply Freedom from Consequence"
You are free to do damn near anything. We do not have pre-crime cops yet... yet...
But a private citizen also has the freedom to litigate, challenge, and defend their name, integrity, and honor.
The Constitution places limits on government, not it's citizens. Christian publishers are well and clear to refuse to publish anti-christian works. That is censorship, but the private world is free to do so. Any parent who has uttered to a 10 year old "you are too young to watch that" has engaged in censorship.
Right or wrong, the ability to challenge peoples statements is a fundamental freedom just as well as the accusation they challenge.
The problem is the inequality in civil court of haves vs have-nots. Justice is blind because she can weigh gold easy enough.
The solution is to start scoring lawyers to ensure they are doing due dilligence in ensuring a case is valid before taking it and reprimanding them when they abuse the courts. If there is in fact mold in the apartment the lawyer should simply say, "you have no case. Clean the mold..."
The problem is there is always some lawyer with no principle that will take the case and use the courts as an extortion tool. Hell the MAFIAA is built on legal shakedowns....
The actual inspiration was the end of the "Blob" with the weird preacher guy having a bit of it in a jar. The whole idea of something assumed to be beign or tiny emerging and becoming a massive problem.
A kid, who knows no better, ends up ressurecting the MCP. The MCP could easily, once connected to the Internet, manage a complete corporation on his own. The theme I was looking to explore was the opposite interaction much like the Matrix touched on, what happens when the opposite is pursued, the virtual world and entities encroaching on the physical world. Skynet wanted to destroy humans, the MCP wants to rule them.
The second theme was the amount of power those that develop and implement standard have and the potential abuse (RFID tags as an example) and how it could easily cripple the world if abused(remember the last "Escape from whatever" movie when Snake activates the blackout).
The third was to explore Flynn and the concept that the AI we saw in the old movie was too far ahead of it's time forcing Flynn, perhaps out of guilt, to scuttle the technology.
The original script points I had was based loosely on the Tron 2 game also but I wanted to put a big rift between Allan and Flynn after her death and Allan's son's experience was the catalyst for Flynn locking up the AI projects. Part of the character development I wanted was to put Mrs. Gilbert and her husband in the same movie with Gilbert as Flynn's replacement and a side story of Allan and her building a relationship through the process.
The ultimate conclusion was left unresolved for a Tron MMO I wanted to follow up with in which Encom was deploying AI scripts (the player's in-game characters) to re-take computer systems across the world moving through a "map" of hundreds of systems fighting the MCP and Virus factions (reclaiming then trying to hold a system from re-infection.) In the MMO Flynn is outraged by Allan's use of the AI scripts, especially the use of the digitizer to send in user agents into the system as well.
The MMO would then be retired with the last day offering a final seige against the MCP.
Hands down, Ultima.
Richard Garriot may not have set out to build a work that shaped Secular Humanism into a religion and then explore that dynamic but in Ultima, the hero journeys from obscure champion to a messianic prophet of Lord British's secular religion. Culminating in Ultima 7, the black gate we see the dynamic play out between the Fellowship vs. Lord British and the Avatar.
You start out with Mondain and Minax with their sites outside of Britannia, then Exodus activates and begins it's development. Blackthorne, the gargoyles, and the great transition and rise of the Avatar. The the house of cards begins to fall apart, the rise of the Fellowship, the coming of the Guardian, and the fall of the Avatar (depending on how you look at that last piece of crap)
Oh give me 3 weeks and I'll give you 12 scripts for a reboot. Knock knock, Garriot & EA I'll do it, give me the go ahead!
Premise: The MCP is sold to a young kid at an electronics fair. Playing a game of chess the MCP (fitting on an old tape reel) the MCP says he can improve the game if the young boy, Inserts a disk from another program. After a few minutes the graphics improve in the game.
A short interlude of the boy progressively adding new disks and features as the MCP grows more complex. Then he finally plugs it in to the Internet...
10 years later.
The young boy, now a leader in industry running a CPU manufacture seals the deal on a government mandated contract for a microprocessor that will provide comprehensive inventory control and management. It's a hit, every company signs on to use it with one exception. Encom...
Meanwhile a well funded group of terrorists are emerging across the world tightening their grip on key infrastructure. Encom employees are also apparently targets...
The boy enters the office. The MCP speaks... You are no longer of use to me... Dillinger shoots the kid in the back...
Suddenly the MCP using a backdoor in the CPU design effectively shuts the world down... The terrorists, the MCP... The same organization...
"When someone in the real world pushes me, I push back..."
Encom, the only company not to use the chip (through some creative legal manuvering) digs out the prohibited AI code that Flynn had shuttered years earlier...
Now a dual race begins, the real world must stop the MCP's living forces while Encom's team races against time deploying dozens of AI units outside the firewall with the trailer closing with the following command lines:
PROMPT: Compile Tron 2.0
===> (bunch of autoconfig output)
===> Time to completion: 8:00 hours...
PROMPT: LOAD PROG: Laser Array 3
===>
===> Laser at full power.
===> Target Locked...
===> Flynn? Is that you?
Darkness....
For it is said that in life our heart shall beat only so many times and our mortality forces us to cherish each beat. We strive to makes each beat of our heart count, to be worthwhile. Such then every breath should be accounted for, for mortality puts limits on how many times we can do any such task, however mundane.
Then let us pursue the craft of writing with such diligence for the intricacies of script forces the mind quiet and stills the errant while we forge a word well thought and penned such that we do not waste a single word written.
There are hundreds of thousands of applied science jobs that do allow you to get out of a cube and get your hands dirty
Reality check: there are BILLIONS of people on Earth. In the USA alone over 300,000,000. Even if there was 3 million of applied sciene jobs in the USA we are talking 1% of the population would have access to those jobs. I've sat with countless graduates both masters and PhD level education. It's hard enough to find work in the private sector with a PhD (much easier with a masters apparently) let alone get a job where you get to live outside a cubicle.
I can think just off the top of my head 4 Lockheed enginners here in MN that I've drank coffee with that in 15 years still have yet to get outside a cubicle in their field of work. They sit there for a decade HOPING someone above them retires for a chance to get promoted to a position that gets them out of the cubicle only to find the position given to an outside hire.
I can think of two Entemologists (sp) that wanted to travel the world looking for new species that now catalog samples in a windowless warehouse that get shipped in from Brazil.
That is real life and kids need to learn to deal with that reality earlier rather then later. They need to undesrtand that they'll likely spend 3/4th of their career as a cube jockey before they get that glory moment, if ever. Quite a few scientist have died before their moment of glory came to pass. They worked on because they had a passion for what they did based on reality.
A quote I am fond of is "I do what I do for posterity and with every stroke of the pen find joy in the preservation of knowledge." Kids will never, NEVER, understand that the way we present science to them today.
The dropout rates for engineers and hard science shows us that this "Science Camp" nonsense isn't working and the number of jobs out there in these fields means we need to weed out those who lack a passion for pursuit of knowledge, not adventure.
It's a waste of the kids time in college and a waste of the educators to have a lecture hall packed with 40 students where 30 of them will either change majors or drop out once reality sets in.
The real power of player driven investment and pre-orders is investor matching, which happens a lot in other industies.
Developer announces the game. Investor A comes up and says, "I'll chip in X if you can clear 60,000 pre-orders." Investor B comes in and says I'll match player donations. Investor C says, If you can get a contract with Wallmart to distribute the product I'll throw in Y dollars.
There are plenty of ways in which player driven investment could take form, I would wager leverage against traditional investment is more a likely avenue to pursue.
"A camel is a horse designed by comittee"
A simple but powerful quote.
I am fond of:
"Too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the soup."
Investors are not always partners, that's why investors have a board of directors to advocate for them.
I thought about this process a few years ago. The concept of a player bond. You donate $20 and we give you a $20 credit on your first month's subscription (I was looking specifically at MMO development.) Donate $100 and get a $100 dollar credit against your subscription fees (so assuming $10 a month you would get 10 months free.)
Sadly checking with the IRS and SEC this is a paperwork nightmare and would eat most of the donations.
Kids today don't need any more nonsense then they already get. Here is real science:
Get up in the morning.
Drive to work.
Sit in your cube.
Spend 6 hours reading test results.
Enter test results into spreadsheet.
Spend an hour prepping results report.
Send results to senior scientist.
Go home.
Repeat.
Not everyone gets to trudge around rain forests or go globe trotting looking for the next big thing. Most sit in cubicles crunching numbers. Hell not everyone even gets to be in the lab. I remember working with a PhD chemical engineer at SEARS when I was in high school. He left the field because sitting in a cubicle all day staring at rehometer readouts for a blown film line test drove him insaine. 10 years and he never set foot in a lab. The whole of his start in chemistry was hoping to be like his father who also was a chemist (Lots of beakers and burners and condensation tubes and crap with a lab coat). Things have changed now. Kids need to see that part. Deluding kids is not the answer. Science is now, more then ever, a business and the old days are gone.
Not everyone gets to sit at an observatory looking for some celestial wonder.
Most live in Excel spreadsheets and databases.
Kids need some reality before they waste 4 years in college and countless $$$ pursuing their master's and PhD in a field they end up dropping out of once reality sets in.
We suffered enough thanks to Indy when that crap came out. "What do you mean I have to label everything and dig with a brush?!" Where is the "adventure". "What do you mean I don't get to go to Egypt?" I have to sit in a warehouse in Kentucky labeling stuff and making plaster casts?"
Enough "adventure" nonsense with the kids. They need to learn to value the aqusition of knowledge. Knowledge for knowledge's sake. We need people with a passion for real knowledge rather then just "The cool parts".
Please no more science camps. Show them a good helping of real work, stick them in a cube 3 days a week, 8-10 hours a pop.
Science is hard work. Kids need to see that. They don't need magic, they need reality.
Go ahead mod me troll I have karma to burn but we need to get our kids heads on straight.
How many kids want to be astronauts? doctors? pirates? ninjas? Astronomers? Give them a real taste of what it's like.
Want to be a doctor? Here, you get to go to doctor camp where you can spend 14 weeks a year defending yourself against malpractice suits. Hopeful astronomer? Here is a spreadsheet of gamma bursts from XM310203-01. Grab the data from the k:\orbitXM310203-01.xls and see if the gamma burst data shows if it correlates to Dr. Atworsts theory that there is a large object occluding the omission, possible an orbit. Also before heading home make sure you get Grant #44 and Grant #55 applications update for submission.
The horror stories I've seen over the years leads me every time to one factor: the reality of science and the marketing of science have grown so vast that the reailty of science is almost unknown until they get out into the private sector.
A: Score players by referral. Search for players using a threshold based on referrals. Just like filtering slashdot posts, filter players. Assholes quickly dissapear then
B: Scale content. Go into Molten Core solo, in a group, or a raid of 40. Just scale the content, number of drops, etc accordingly.
C: Provide players the tools needed to police their own. Griefers are the result of the player population (the masses) having no ability to deal with griefers on their own. Bounties as an in-game mechanism can go along way with dealing with griefers. Especially when there is a real penalty for dying when you have a bounty on your head.
Feature:
Bounty - A player, once per day, can place a bounty of X gold on another player. For evey Y gold placed on the target upon death the target will lose 5% of their exp and will have to wait 1 hour for every Y gold before logging back in. Each time they die Y gold is removed from the bounty pool.
Y=1000 Gold
A player has a 5,000 bounty. Upon dying the player will be booted for 5 hours and lose 25% of their exp. The next time they log in the bounty pool is now at 4,000 bounty. Upon dying the player will be booted for 4 hours and lose 20% of their current exp. An so on and so on.
This assumes 1000 gold is a decent amount of cash in your game. This mechanism would go a long way to disciplining griefers. Can be used as a tool to grief? Yep, but pretty damn expensive tool to abuse.
It is a reference to Kain's mark: "And he who would kill your shall be punished 40 fold..."
"The safety of a offsite facility is inversely proportional to the height of the builds around it." - Population density tends to correlate to the height of building making these location statistically prone to issues. .""The safety of offsite storage increase with distance from the source of the data"." - Environmental catastrophy, the further the distance from home the more likely to avoid the same catastrophy. .""The cost of offsite storage increases with distance from the source of the data"."- .""The convienence of offsite storage increases with distance from the source of the data"." - .""Never use offsite storage facilities near Denver Co. or damn near anywhere in the Dakotas."." - Primary nuclear targets. Simply not an option for risk. .""Never store data in a city with a population greater then four times the median city size for your state nor in the state's capital city"." - While mirroring the first rule, the basis for this specific rule is in the event of calamity traffic in\out, power, riots, etc. All those population driven risks come into play. The larger the city the more risk involved. Now with terrorists factoring into risk analysis the larger cities are bigger targets.
Usually this is the result of shipping costs or fuel to get the backup from home to storage.
The closer the storage, the easier to drop tapes\disks off and to pick them up.
and the last golden rule I offer: .""Just because you backup online doesn't absolve you from due dilligence on the physical location where that online backup ends up."." - Online backups aren't magical. 'Where does the data end up and how "safe" is that location?' are questions that still need to be asked.
Well they say life originated in water with high voltage. Couldn't this be just a pre-cellular organic construct? It seems rather uneventful in that case (beyond the fact we haven't seen it before).
With all the crap in the water I am more surprised we don't see this more often.
We finally get a shot at looking at pre-cellular life and all we do is label it, put it down, send it's offspring disproportionately to die in a war, insult it, then promptly hit it with a fire hose blast during a riot. This seems like a familiar formula for hating something...
Bunch of pre-cellular racists... probably gonna capture it and put it in a zoo...
MAFIAA: But sir we sold 4 million digital downloads and made 2 million in revenue from those downloads.
JUDGE: So your are saying you made about 50 cents each download right?
MAFIAA: Yes sir.
JUDGE: So we can roughly say the value of each download is 50 cents right?
MAFIAA: Yes sir.
JUDGE: So even if we get "Biblical" in damages of 40 fold we are looking at about $20 a track right?
MAFIAA: Errr well....
JUDGE: So for 24 tracks at $20 bucks each Jammie owes you about $480 bucks right?
MAFIAA: You have to take into account everyone that downloaded them.
JUDGE: Ok so lets say 10 people downloaded each one, that's about so that's about $4800 right?
MAFIAA: Sir that isn't enough!
JUDGE: How much is enough?
MAFIAA: IT'S NEVER ENOUGH!!! (Rips off the mask to reveal he's infact a tenticle demon!!)