>> If you think that they'd be too corrupt, you must bear in mind that a business is not immune to lawsuits the same way the government is.
The only recourse you offer to corruption or fraud is a lawsuit. Left unsaid is the slow sway of public opinion from the media.
We already had those things. We've had lawsuits over pollution and over fraud. We've had public opinion shift on issues such as meat inspection, and police protection.
We decided that, as a whole, we don't like responses that are reactive, not proactive. Rarely do reactive solutions actually punish those responsible for the original "crime." A company can pollute the local waters for 30 years without any public knowledge, then deny it or fight it in court for 20 more. In the meantime, the founder has retired or died, and his children (who have the profit from the crime) had nothing to do with it and can't be held responsible for it.
When Libertarians come up with proactive solutions to such problems, you might be taken seriously. Until then you are a fringe group that doesn't want to pay for the benefits that you enjoy. (And yes, you enjoy them. You don't have brain damage from the lead in your childhood drinking water, do you? A lawsuit by your parents wouldn't have fixed your brain damage, but regulation might have prevented it.)
And "took the initiative in creating" and "inventing" are most certainly differnt. Nikola Tesla discovered/invented AC power distribution, but George Westinghouse took the initiative in creating the power grid, by providing the money for it. Al Gore's role was more like Westinghouse's, in that he worked to secure funding for the internet and similar projects in the 80s when no one else really cared about them.
Nearly new ones? They are way way expensive. Older ones, though, can be had for much less.
We have a Galahad and a Friendship 7, from 1969 and 1962, respectively. The first we bought at an auction in Tennessee for $75 in 2000; the second I paid $150 for in Texas last year. (The market seems to be cheapest on the East Coast; auctions around here from places like Super Auctions are too expensive.
That's not true, and you know it. You named two journalists that have ethical issues and/or have made very public mistakes recently. The parent poster named two more.
How many journalists are there? Thousands or more. Certainly not "most".
I can name more "hackers" that have broken a law* than that, and yet I wouldn't assume that all "hackers" are slimiest bunch of pond scum out there.
* and I mean the good laws, like those against stealing credit card numbers, not just more controverial laws like the DMCA
Aye, the companies knew full well that asbestos was bad for you long before it was public knowledge - just like the tobacco companies and their products. And, after it was public knowledge, they continued to work with it anyway.
My grandfather died from lung cancer after working for years with asbestos. I have no love for anyone who made money off that business.
(Could my grandfather have done something else? He had his own business once, but wouldn't deal with the kickbacks required for construction contracts, and lost it. Does anyone else care? No, but don't reply that he could have quit and found another job. He had a family to feed.)
>>> Then at the end, the companion lays dying with the secondary character(s) around, then suddenly, we see the regeneration effect, and s/he changes into a new form.
'Rose..? Is that you?' 'Yes... But please, call me... Doctor.'
*Cue badass Dr Who theme*
----
I think half the audience would assume that the Doctor some how took possession of his companion's body, and is using it to regenerate again. Not that this is bad - but it might require us to reexamine his motives for always keeping other people around...
No, PearPC could and should get a permanent injuction preventing Maui X-Stream from distributing PearPC's copyrighted works.
Furthermore, PearPC could receive 100% of any revenue Maui X-Stream has received for CherryOS.
However, no law says that PearPC can claim ownership of code that Maui X-Stream did, in fact, write (if there is any). If that were true, then the first time a line of SCO or MS code is found in Linux, SCO or MS would claim the entire operating system. Same for AT&T code in BISD, or vice-versa. Very messy.
If they are available to you, just visit the right theaters. My sister was in town to vist this past weekend, and we took her to a movie at the drafthouse. She was amazed that, before the movie began, there was no Coca Cola slideshow with stupid trivia and ads. Instead, there were funny/interesting film clips from old old TV, movies, and ads. (In this case, they were 1950s clips of robots, as the movie was, well, Robots.)
When the movie started, they showed 3-4 film previews, then started the film.
Last week my wife and I went to a Muppet Movie singalong. Before that film they played music from the Muppet albums while showing old TV show clips. (The host was one of the Mr. Sinus guys and his wife, and he had some games before the movie.)
Remember, they are getting money not just for the movie prices, but also for the dinner. They recognize that they don't need to bombard us with ads, and we appreciate that by only seeing movies there.
It also works just fine on Dish Network DVRs, if you own the right models of their DVR hardware.
TiVo might be great an all, yadda yadda, but I can burn DVDs of shows that have been encoded ONCE, by Dish Network, before they were broadcast to me. My DVR stores them without change, I can extract them without change, I can edit them using MPEG editing software, which only reencodes frames around cuts (typically black screen), and I can burn them without change.
>>> And if they have my DNA on file, that's just as likely to mean they can eliminate me as a suspect as it is to mean they declare me one....
Incorrect. If your DNA is not on file, you would have to be involved somehow with the case to be considered a suspect. (Did you know the victim, live near them, work near them. Did you have a motive?)
If your DNA is on file, you could be matched to cases across the country. (DNA profiling as used today is not precise; false hits happen.) False hits are unlikely, but the likelihood goes up as the number of samples go up. If a false match is a 1-in-a-million shot, then with the US population cataloged you would have 260 false matches every time. If nothing else, they would probably check your flight records to see if you happened to travel near the victim at the wrong time. In other words - you would be a suspect until excluded.
I'm not saying whether this is good or bad. I'm just saying that, contrary to your claim, having your DNA on file makes it MORE likely you'd be considered a suspect in a crime, not EQUALLY likely.
My wife and I have been talking about it. We'd buy mac minis if the video card could handle World of Warcraft.
I just had to upgrade my PC as the old one killed itself, but my wife is planning to hold out until July - September timeframe. That is when we expect the next generation mini to release, hopefully with a better video card.
I won't ask if anyone has "information" about upcoming mac mini releases, since I don't want to be sued! =) But, based on past products, does anyone know how soon Apple traditionally releases follow-on products?
*grin* Yes, I hoped that a few people would chuckle at that. But on rare occasions insight does happen to everyone, now matter how hard they try to avoid it.
>> On the one hand you quote the letter of the law ("To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;") but in the same breath discount the "spirit" of the law ("I don't care what Congress or the Supreme Court says right now.")
Nonsense. Congress and the courts have already tossed out the spirit of the law. I do not discount it but embrace it.
>> Too bad there's nearly a century of case law that says you're wrong.
As I already said, the whole century of case law is wrong. We had almost two centuries of case law that said blacks were less than whites, and we tossed all that out. We have a century of case law that says corporations are people, and all that is wrong, too.
I'm not arguing at all whether copyright infringement is illegal. I'm just saying that there are shades of grey between the black and white extremes. Your parent post said there were none; hence your post was incorrect.
One downside of public domain is that it doesn't nothing to avoid the implication of plagiarism.
What if I write something truly insightful in one of these posts? Then, later, I use the same words in a speech when I'm running for some government office?
If I release the text into the public domain, others can take those words and reuse them without any credit required. I could take Tom Sawyer and republish the novel without listing the author at all; neither he nor his descendents have any rights to the book.
But, if I reuse the words later in another context, I could be accused of plagiarism. It might be difficult to prove that I was the original author of text that had been passed around through the public domain for X years. By retaining copyright on my posts, I can force those that wish to quote them to attribute them to me.
(This did happen. Someone from a public domain advocacy website wanted to use quotes from one of my slashdot posts on his site. But he had released all text on his site into the public domain. I had to decline unless he could change his license, not because I care where my words were used, but because I care that they be attributed to me./shrug)
>> Here's the situation, and it's not a shade of grey as you imply: copyright infringement is either good for all or bad for all, you can't pick specific instances where it's good for some and bad for some.
Not true. Any item created within the past 28 years could be covered by copyright as it was envisioned by the writers of the constitution - 14 years with a single renewal of 14 years.
Any item that is currently copyrighted and has been so since 1925 violates the Constitution "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
I don't care what Congress or the Supreme Court says right now. It's ok to disagree with the law, and in this case the law as currently written is wrong.
Thus, just from that argument there are two types of copyright infringement - that done with items that are protected for a reasonable time, and that done with items protected for an unreasonable time. Here already are two options where it can be good or can be bad.
Now you might argue that the law is the law, and if you disagree with it you can change the law but you can't ignore the law. If you do, though, you are getting into those shades of grey that you claim don't exist.
I too have no problems with either of those pages, and I just upgraded to 1.01 from 1.0 about 30 seconds ago, without clearing any caches or deleting any files at all.
However, I do not pollute this computer with Flash or Shockwave or similar programs. Since the parent poster talks about Flash, perhaps the problem is similar? Does ABC use Flash on the pages? (No, I didn't bother to look myself. It doesn't crash for me.)
>> Just have the IRS enable us submit the tax forms electronically without any middlemen for starters.
They do this already. Well, they still redirect through middlemen, but it is completely free. (This is new as of this year.) It only works if you have a certain set of income|income type|deductions|etc. but this covers most of the population. Why have the IRS develop it if they can convince third parties to give it away instead?
Let's say you are a mechanic, and you find an problem with a particular brand of car that could cause it to explode when, say, it was hit from behind.
Let's say you tell the automotive manufacturer about it, and he claims that your research was flawed and there was no problem, or he just says "ok we'll look at it" and does nothing for four years.
Let's say that, after those four years, you start reading stories of people dying "mysterious" in explosions during crashes in those cars. You tell the vendor again, but again they deny that their problem is causing the deaths, and they even deny that you contacted them about the problem four years before.
Do you continue to keep quiet, and let people die because telling the public about the problem would be "unprofessional"?
Would you have told the public after giving the manufacturer a month to find a fix, so everyone would know about the problem and could participate in the recall?
Would you have told the public as soon as you found the problem, so people could choose to not use the car while a fix was being designed?
What do YOU think is the professional thing to do?
As our Anonymous Coward friend says, STERN Pinball is still producing games. You are correct that Williams, who was the only one at the time, shut down. Since then, though, others have stepped up. Illinois Pinball Company (which doesn't appear to have a website) bought the rights to all the WMS games, and supposedly plans to rerelease some of them at some point.
Good points. I disagree with point 1, because I feel that there are some uses for wifi that are appropriate for a town government: *wifi access in libraries *wifi access blanketing the town for the police and rescue services
It could be that the cheapest way a city can get a wifi network set up for their police and ambulance services is to build it themselves. (Private systems are not *always* cheaper.) Once the system is in place, would it not make sense to allow the citizens who paid for it an opportunity to use it, provided bandwidth was always available for its primary function? Remember that we aren't talking about high bandwidth connections. Most people could be limited to modem speeds, leaving plenty of bandwidth to the city with even the smallest of network connections.
I agree with your point 2. The state has no business in the wifi business. Let each city put it up to a vote. If the majority wants it, they get it. If not, they don't. If there is any business at the state level, it would be to require cities to hold a public vote rather than slip in via other methods.
Clearly we need an award for "circling the earth in a nonstop solo flight" for each possible maximum altitude, perhaps in 10 m increments to make verification easier.
This way, there's still lots of new records to make! I wonder who will be first to circle the earth in a nonstop solo flight while never rising more than 50 m over sea (or land) level?
Dupe from yesterday, so be sure to check out those comments, too. Though to be fair, yesterday's was posted under the Apple section sso many not everyone saw it.
Talking about MMORPGs, often what players want is -even- distribution, not -random- distribution.
Consider, for example, collect quests in EverQuest's Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion. In these quests the group must travel into a dungeon and collect X# of a certain item, which dropped -randomly- off mobs, before the timer expired. There were many more mobs than there were items, which caused the problem. In some cases, players could clear the first half of a dungeon without getting more than a few items, while all the items were clustered on the last mobs in the dungeon.
Under the definition of random, this is just fine. However, compared to kill X# mob quests, this sucked. If your group knows it can kill 65 mobs in a hour, would you rather take a quest to kill 50 mobs, or a quest to collect 20 items, where the number of mobs you have to kill varies from 20 (not likely) to 95?
To fix this problem, SoE modified the distribution of items in collect quests to be -evenly- distributed, with only minor random variation. Now, for example, to collect 20 items it takes between 40-60 kills, compared to 20-95 before, because the even distribution ensures that all parts of the dungeon hold some number of items. This makes the quest compare better with kill X quests, and makes the party happier.
Slashdot Mirror
>> If you think that they'd be too corrupt, you must bear in mind that a business is not immune to lawsuits the same way the government is.
The only recourse you offer to corruption or fraud is a lawsuit. Left unsaid is the slow sway of public opinion from the media.
We already had those things. We've had lawsuits over pollution and over fraud. We've had public opinion shift on issues such as meat inspection, and police protection.
We decided that, as a whole, we don't like responses that are reactive, not proactive. Rarely do reactive solutions actually punish those responsible for the original "crime." A company can pollute the local waters for 30 years without any public knowledge, then deny it or fight it in court for 20 more. In the meantime, the founder has retired or died, and his children (who have the profit from the crime) had nothing to do with it and can't be held responsible for it.
When Libertarians come up with proactive solutions to such problems, you might be taken seriously. Until then you are a fringe group that doesn't want to pay for the benefits that you enjoy. (And yes, you enjoy them. You don't have brain damage from the lead in your childhood drinking water, do you? A lawsuit by your parents wouldn't have fixed your brain damage, but regulation might have prevented it.)
No he didn't. That wasn't his choice of words at all. He said he "took the initiative in creating the internet."
Still a poor choice of words, but you are spouting the same falsehoods as you see on TV/Slashdot.
Snopes Article
And "took the initiative in creating" and "inventing" are most certainly differnt. Nikola Tesla discovered/invented AC power distribution, but George Westinghouse took the initiative in creating the power grid, by providing the money for it. Al Gore's role was more like Westinghouse's, in that he worked to secure funding for the internet and similar projects in the 80s when no one else really cared about them.
Nearly new ones? They are way way expensive. Older ones, though, can be had for much less.
We have a Galahad and a Friendship 7, from 1969 and 1962, respectively. The first we bought at an auction in Tennessee for $75 in 2000; the second I paid $150 for in Texas last year. (The market seems to be cheapest on the East Coast; auctions around here from places like Super Auctions are too expensive.
That's not true, and you know it. You named two journalists that have ethical issues and/or have made very public mistakes recently. The parent poster named two more.
How many journalists are there? Thousands or more. Certainly not "most".
I can name more "hackers" that have broken a law* than that, and yet I wouldn't assume that all "hackers" are slimiest bunch of pond scum out there.
* and I mean the good laws, like those against stealing credit card numbers, not just more controverial laws like the DMCA
Aye, the companies knew full well that asbestos was bad for you long before it was public knowledge - just like the tobacco companies and their products. And, after it was public knowledge, they continued to work with it anyway.
My grandfather died from lung cancer after working for years with asbestos. I have no love for anyone who made money off that business.
(Could my grandfather have done something else? He had his own business once, but wouldn't deal with the kickbacks required for construction contracts, and lost it. Does anyone else care? No, but don't reply that he could have quit and found another job. He had a family to feed.)
>>> Then at the end, the companion lays dying with the secondary character(s) around, then suddenly, we see the regeneration effect, and s/he changes into a new form.
'Rose..? Is that you?'
'Yes... But please, call me... Doctor.'
*Cue badass Dr Who theme*
----
I think half the audience would assume that the Doctor some how took possession of his companion's body, and is using it to regenerate again. Not that this is bad - but it might require us to reexamine his motives for always keeping other people around...
No, PearPC could and should get a permanent injuction preventing Maui X-Stream from distributing PearPC's copyrighted works.
Furthermore, PearPC could receive 100% of any revenue Maui X-Stream has received for CherryOS.
However, no law says that PearPC can claim ownership of code that Maui X-Stream did, in fact, write (if there is any). If that were true, then the first time a line of SCO or MS code is found in Linux, SCO or MS would claim the entire operating system. Same for AT&T code in BISD, or vice-versa. Very messy.
If they are available to you, just visit the right theaters. My sister was in town to vist this past weekend, and we took her to a movie at the drafthouse. She was amazed that, before the movie began, there was no Coca Cola slideshow with stupid trivia and ads. Instead, there were funny/interesting film clips from old old TV, movies, and ads. (In this case, they were 1950s clips of robots, as the movie was, well, Robots.)
When the movie started, they showed 3-4 film previews, then started the film.
Last week my wife and I went to a Muppet Movie singalong. Before that film they played music from the Muppet albums while showing old TV show clips. (The host was one of the Mr. Sinus guys and his wife, and he had some games before the movie.)
Remember, they are getting money not just for the movie prices, but also for the dinner. They recognize that they don't need to bombard us with ads, and we appreciate that by only seeing movies there.
It also works just fine on Dish Network DVRs, if you own the right models of their DVR hardware.
TiVo might be great an all, yadda yadda, but I can burn DVDs of shows that have been encoded ONCE, by Dish Network, before they were broadcast to me. My DVR stores them without change, I can extract them without change, I can edit them using MPEG editing software, which only reencodes frames around cuts (typically black screen), and I can burn them without change.
>>> And if they have my DNA on file, that's just as likely to mean they can eliminate me as a suspect as it is to mean they declare me one....
Incorrect. If your DNA is not on file, you would have to be involved somehow with the case to be considered a suspect. (Did you know the victim, live near them, work near them. Did you have a motive?)
If your DNA is on file, you could be matched to cases across the country. (DNA profiling as used today is not precise; false hits happen.) False hits are unlikely, but the likelihood goes up as the number of samples go up. If a false match is a 1-in-a-million shot, then with the US population cataloged you would have 260 false matches every time. If nothing else, they would probably check your flight records to see if you happened to travel near the victim at the wrong time. In other words - you would be a suspect until excluded.
I'm not saying whether this is good or bad. I'm just saying that, contrary to your claim, having your DNA on file makes it MORE likely you'd be considered a suspect in a crime, not EQUALLY likely.
This looks interesting on false DNA matches.
My wife and I have been talking about it. We'd buy mac minis if the video card could handle World of Warcraft.
I just had to upgrade my PC as the old one killed itself, but my wife is planning to hold out until July - September timeframe. That is when we expect the next generation mini to release, hopefully with a better video card.
I won't ask if anyone has "information" about upcoming mac mini releases, since I don't want to be sued! =) But, based on past products, does anyone know how soon Apple traditionally releases follow-on products?
>> This would be more like telling a newspaper about the deficiency, and including the information that they had to be hit "from the rear".
Or publishing a book about it? Criminal!
*grin* Yes, I hoped that a few people would chuckle at that. But on rare occasions insight does happen to everyone, now matter how hard they try to avoid it.
>> On the one hand you quote the letter of the law ("To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;") but in the same breath discount the "spirit" of the law ("I don't care what Congress or the Supreme Court says right now.")
Nonsense. Congress and the courts have already tossed out the spirit of the law. I do not discount it but embrace it.
>> Too bad there's nearly a century of case law that says you're wrong.
As I already said, the whole century of case law is wrong. We had almost two centuries of case law that said blacks were less than whites, and we tossed all that out. We have a century of case law that says corporations are people, and all that is wrong, too.
I'm not arguing at all whether copyright infringement is illegal. I'm just saying that there are shades of grey between the black and white extremes. Your parent post said there were none; hence your post was incorrect.
One downside of public domain is that it doesn't nothing to avoid the implication of plagiarism.
/shrug)
What if I write something truly insightful in one of these posts? Then, later, I use the same words in a speech when I'm running for some government office?
If I release the text into the public domain, others can take those words and reuse them without any credit required. I could take Tom Sawyer and republish the novel without listing the author at all; neither he nor his descendents have any rights to the book.
But, if I reuse the words later in another context, I could be accused of plagiarism. It might be difficult to prove that I was the original author of text that had been passed around through the public domain for X years. By retaining copyright on my posts, I can force those that wish to quote them to attribute them to me.
(This did happen. Someone from a public domain advocacy website wanted to use quotes from one of my slashdot posts on his site. But he had released all text on his site into the public domain. I had to decline unless he could change his license, not because I care where my words were used, but because I care that they be attributed to me.
>> Here's the situation, and it's not a shade of grey as you imply: copyright infringement is either good for all or bad for all, you can't pick specific instances where it's good for some and bad for some.
Not true. Any item created within the past 28 years could be covered by copyright as it was envisioned by the writers of the constitution - 14 years with a single renewal of 14 years.
Any item that is currently copyrighted and has been so since 1925 violates the Constitution "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
I don't care what Congress or the Supreme Court says right now. It's ok to disagree with the law, and in this case the law as currently written is wrong.
Thus, just from that argument there are two types of copyright infringement - that done with items that are protected for a reasonable time, and that done with items protected for an unreasonable time. Here already are two options where it can be good or can be bad.
Now you might argue that the law is the law, and if you disagree with it you can change the law but you can't ignore the law. If you do, though, you are getting into those shades of grey that you claim don't exist.
I too have no problems with either of those pages, and I just upgraded to 1.01 from 1.0 about 30 seconds ago, without clearing any caches or deleting any files at all.
However, I do not pollute this computer with Flash or Shockwave or similar programs. Since the parent poster talks about Flash, perhaps the problem is similar? Does ABC use Flash on the pages? (No, I didn't bother to look myself. It doesn't crash for me.)
Isn't it:
3a Make LOTR Trilogy
3b Profit!
3c Sue New Line Cinema
3d Profit!
3c Make Hobbit
3e Profit!
>> Just have the IRS enable us submit the tax forms electronically without any middlemen for starters.
They do this already. Well, they still redirect through middlemen, but it is completely free. (This is new as of this year.) It only works if you have a certain set of income|income type|deductions|etc. but this covers most of the population. Why have the IRS develop it if they can convince third parties to give it away instead?
Let's say you are a mechanic, and you find an problem with a particular brand of car that could cause it to explode when, say, it was hit from behind.
Let's say you tell the automotive manufacturer about it, and he claims that your research was flawed and there was no problem, or he just says "ok we'll look at it" and does nothing for four years.
Let's say that, after those four years, you start reading stories of people dying "mysterious" in explosions during crashes in those cars. You tell the vendor again, but again they deny that their problem is causing the deaths, and they even deny that you contacted them about the problem four years before.
Do you continue to keep quiet, and let people die because telling the public about the problem would be "unprofessional"?
Would you have told the public after giving the manufacturer a month to find a fix, so everyone would know about the problem and could participate in the recall?
Would you have told the public as soon as you found the problem, so people could choose to not use the car while a fix was being designed?
What do YOU think is the professional thing to do?
As our Anonymous Coward friend says, STERN Pinball is still producing games. You are correct that Williams, who was the only one at the time, shut down. Since then, though, others have stepped up. Illinois Pinball Company (which doesn't appear to have a website) bought the rights to all the WMS games, and supposedly plans to rerelease some of them at some point.
Good points. I disagree with point 1, because I feel that there are some uses for wifi that are appropriate for a town government:
*wifi access in libraries
*wifi access blanketing the town for the police and rescue services
It could be that the cheapest way a city can get a wifi network set up for their police and ambulance services is to build it themselves. (Private systems are not *always* cheaper.) Once the system is in place, would it not make sense to allow the citizens who paid for it an opportunity to use it, provided bandwidth was always available for its primary function? Remember that we aren't talking about high bandwidth connections. Most people could be limited to modem speeds, leaving plenty of bandwidth to the city with even the smallest of network connections.
I agree with your point 2. The state has no business in the wifi business. Let each city put it up to a vote. If the majority wants it, they get it. If not, they don't. If there is any business at the state level, it would be to require cities to hold a public vote rather than slip in via other methods.
Clearly we need an award for "circling the earth in a nonstop solo flight" for each possible maximum altitude, perhaps in 10 m increments to make verification easier.
This way, there's still lots of new records to make! I wonder who will be first to circle the earth in a nonstop solo flight while never rising more than 50 m over sea (or land) level?
Dupe from yesterday, so be sure to check out those comments, too. Though to be fair, yesterday's was posted under the Apple section sso many not everyone saw it.
Talking about MMORPGs, often what players want is -even- distribution, not -random- distribution.
Consider, for example, collect quests in EverQuest's Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion. In these quests the group must travel into a dungeon and collect X# of a certain item, which dropped -randomly- off mobs, before the timer expired. There were many more mobs than there were items, which caused the problem. In some cases, players could clear the first half of a dungeon without getting more than a few items, while all the items were clustered on the last mobs in the dungeon.
Under the definition of random, this is just fine. However, compared to kill X# mob quests, this sucked. If your group knows it can kill 65 mobs in a hour, would you rather take a quest to kill 50 mobs, or a quest to collect 20 items, where the number of mobs you have to kill varies from 20 (not likely) to 95?
To fix this problem, SoE modified the distribution of items in collect quests to be -evenly- distributed, with only minor random variation. Now, for example, to collect 20 items it takes between 40-60 kills, compared to 20-95 before, because the even distribution ensures that all parts of the dungeon hold some number of items. This makes the quest compare better with kill X quests, and makes the party happier.