By coincidence, tonight's NBC news ran a story about surge in US buying of small cars. With gas prices hovering at $3/gal, dealerships can't keep Honda Civics (the regular gas ones, not even the hybrids) in stock. One dealer had 9 on his lot that were all sold and he had pre-sold most of his next shipment.
Of course manufacturers will adjust, but it takes time. If it is bad at $3/gal, what will it be like at $5/gal?
Nobody else is going to have small hybrids on the market next year, the Prius and the Civic-hybrid are all there is. I think there may be some hybrid SUVs ready, but those are not going to get 40mpg+. Honda and Toyta, or their dealerships, are going to charge what people are willing to pay. And unless they are already planning on the demand surge that will accompany $5/gal gas, they are not going to have enough supply if/when that happens.
One of the assumptions that you made there is that the price of gas would stay the same for the next 9.61 years. If it is $5/gal next summer and higher each year after that how fast can you "pay off" the extra cost of the hybrid?
One of the reasons to buy a hybrid, or a diesel now is that if the price continues to rise quickley, the demand for hybrids and diesels and subsequently their price will rise. A new prius or a Golf TDI might cost less now than a used one will next year.
I think you underestimate the importance of open standards. OpenDocument format makes this time around different than the previous attempts to kill MS Office. After Massachusetts drove a stake in the ground saying "letting MS own (and change) the format of all of our information is a Bad Thing" and after they demonstrate that migration to another solution is possible, other states will follow suit. Schools may also follow, but that is another discussion.
Then Corporations then have an easier time justifying it. They don't like the MS upgrade treadmill either, or the threat of a BSA audit. They don't like paying more than they have to for licenses. With Office 12 coming out they are going to have to retrain either way. Since others have paved the way they are not out there alone taking a risk in leaving MS. Why stay with MS?
Once StarOffice reaches critical mass, driven by the OpenDocument standard, there will be little reason for anyone to stay with MS.
"I think you'll find that for most people, DVD's are "good enough". Heck, most people don't even have HDTVs to take advantage of a higher resolution picture."
I think you'll find the HD displays and HD content drive the demand for each other. IF I buy a new HDTV that does 1080p, I'm not going to be happy with regular old DVDs that only play 480p. I'll also want to get digital cable or satellite with the HD channels (instead of the $8 basic cable I'm using)And I'll probably quit playing games on my computer and buy a new console to play games in HD on the big screen.
And the reverse is true. I'm less inclined to buy and HDTV because there is not yet one agreed-upon and well-supported HD format for disc, my phone company hasn't yet pulled fiber to my home to compete with the cable company and drive the price down, and there is not yet a game console that looks as good as my computer with 1024x768 on a 19" screen.
These format wars hurt everyone because people like me don't want to buy the wrong thing, so we don't buy anything. And speaking of format wars, another reason I don't want to buy and HDTV is that I don't want to get caught on the wrong side of DVI vs. HDMI. DVI is less encumbered by copy-protection crap, which means I want it, but it also means that the movie-studios want it to be phased out. So perhaps those new HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players will not support DVI at full resolution as part of their protection measures? Sure, thats gonna piss off some HDTV owners, but the studios seem to be able to dictate whatever they want right now.
Actually, my old tech guru COULD explain to you how the cotton gin, steam locomotion, internal-combustion engine (diesel or gas, 1-stroke, 2-stroke, flathead, hybrid-electric, etc.) electricity (generation, storage, communication etc.) electronics (digital, analog, AC or DC, vacuum tubes, transistors, ICs, SiGe, TTL, LVTTL, ECL, PECL, 10GbE, etc.) telephone, over-the-air broadcasting (FM, AM, HAM, VHF, UHF, or HDTV) And he was at the leading edge of making fiber-optics really work, while at the same time he preferred to program in FORTH.
Exporting US culture is a pretty important part of the US economy and, less- tangibley, our politics. It is actually really important for the future of our country that Chinese and Indian people want to listen to Snoop-Dogg on their iPod and drink a Pepsi or a Coke and wear Levi's or Wrangler's or FUBU and Nike or Sketcher and watch Baywatch or The Dukes of Hazzard. And the Movies and Music are a really important part of that. It influences what the world thinks of the US.
If the RIAA and/or MPAA are allowed to kill their competition in the US, they will drive the innovation off-shore, and possibly make themselves obsolete.
We don't want the Chinese and Indians watching each other's movies and listening to each other's music. We want them craving all things American.
"Once it becomes legal to create human beings to kill them the society has legalized ghouls."
But isn't it already legal to fertilize more eggs than are needed/used (create life) and dispose of the leftovers (kill that life)? The difference I see is that if the cells are harvested the death is for a purpose (or on purpose if you care to spin it that way) while the disposal of leftovers is because they have no purpose. But where does that leave us?
And I am NOT argueing for harvesting embrionic stem cells, I'm just looking for a logically consistant reason not to.
And it is this pride that blinds them to their ignorance that I find amusing. I admire your "can-do" attitude but I'm quite confident that you could not do my job competantly after a month of study.
And even if you are just proffering flamebait, I'll try to give you an intelligent answer. Some time ago I read of a scientific study that found that the people who performed the worst at a task were also the most likely to overestimate their abilities. And this trend covered all kinds of skills, from singing to spelling to technical things. It seems obvious after the result is known but when you don't know anything about a topic, you don't realize how much you don't know. People who know enough to be competant realize how much they don't know. And the top people also know how much they have mastered and what they don't know. But the least capable are blissfully unaware of their limitations.
And not to stray too far from the original subject, but the very next day I heard of another study that found that the ONLY trait that business executives had more of than the general populace is confidence. They aren't smarter.
Now putting these two things together: executives are confident, and the least capable are the most likely to be over-confident; I think there may be a correlation between least-capable and executive, which explains pointy-haired bosses everywhere.
However, I would say that I believe that the pecentage of people who understand business is higher for people with a Batchellor's degree in business compared to engineering.
"If you were smart, you would be the one doing the science and calling the shots."
It has been my experience that very, very few engineers actually understand business. I'm not going to defend The Suits, I'm just saying that as a person with a Business degree who works as a technical designer (PCB's to be precise) I have often been amused by engineers who offer naive opinions of what is going on in the business or what the managers should do in a way that makes it clear that they don't grasp all the fundamental concepts. And whats more, I'd have to teach them the terms first before I could even begin to explain why they were wrong.
See, just being smart or having common sense or mastering something that is really hard, doesn't mean you can just pick up something else you don't understand and figure it out. Not without the fundamentals.
So to extend the metaphor, did they A)figure out what the notes were and replay them or B) sample the original.
If it is as dougxray asserts above and they never touched or saw an Altera mask, then it is A and I have to reverse my opinion. Setting the music metaphor aside, if they figured out what the mask has to look like given the verilog code as an in and the resulting data as an out, then that sounds like a clean reverse-engineering. And making a derivative customization of your own workalike mask using the verilog input is just plain clever.
What I want to know is: is it titanium colored? Or is it titanium? Frankly, I wish truth-in-advertising laws would crack down companies who attatch the "titanium" name to something that has no actual titanium in it. But I fear it will be come as diluted as "gold" and "silver."
I don't understand how Clear Logic would legally get ahold of an Altera chip mask set. But it seems pretty clear to me that if they are modifying Altera artwork, then they are not reverse-engineering, they are making a derivative work. Looks like the judgement is correct.
I think you have a valid concern. Repetitive motion particulary at your wrist is a bad thing.
But I'd sure like to try the controller out first. Depending on the type of game, I can imagine that moving the conroller with your shoulder and elbow which are larger muscles, and not having any resistance against you might be VERY comfortable. This might be the controller that arthritics and wiley Atari veterans can use. The reviewer seemed to feel like the games used very natural motions.
I didn't assume that people with more experience have more skill, I said it was more likely. As a parent who has not yet raised teenagers, I think the average parent who HAS raised teenagers is going to know more about it than I do. Really bad parents won't, but most will.
So are you saying there is no correlation between parenting experience and parenting skill?
Because I would think that a person with more parenting experience than myself is more likely than not going to know more about it and have a more valuable opinion. I think your reply that x+y I think the notion that we were all kids once so we all equally knowledgeable about parenting is not logical.
Same question for you, have you raised 2 or more children to adulthood successfully?
I'm not arguing that parents shouldn't stop their children from playing San Andreas, and stop them from watching R movies when they are too young (or The Jerry Springer Show, for that matter.) I'm just saying that it seems like almost everyone I ever hear say something like "Jeez, parents, just...its not rocket science." isn't qualified to have an opinion.
IF your mother has successfully raised more than one child then I concede that she is qualified to render an opinion on parenting. (It is my observation that parents of one child tend to think that what worked for their child would work for all children, so obviously other parents are doing something wrong if they aren't getting the same results.)
If Jim Callahan and TheAxeMaster are the same person, then I'd like to point out that I correctly guessed that the person broadly blaming the parents is not in fact a parent, and wisdom from your mom doesn't qualify you as a parent. If they are not the same person, then your mom has nothing to do with TheAxeMaster's opinion.
First of all, the parents can't go after you with this law. They could sue you is civil court, but I can't imagine what grounds. It would have to be the State of California to use the law against you.
Second of all, if you are selling a download off of a website that is not located in California, and you are not operating your business in California, it might be difficult for California to subject you to its laws. I think you have a pretty good argument that the sale did not occur in California. Not that it wouldn't try, they have pulled that kind of crap before so it would be best to take some precautions.
"The sooner video game companies stop getting sued because stupid parents won't actually be parents and police what their children do, the sooner video game companies can spend less money defending shit like that and start making more games for less money."
This is a bad bill, no doubt about it. It accomplishes nothing.
On the other hand, I have two observations for you: 1) The people who say "It is really the parents' fault" and start giving out parental advice usually don't have kids, and have no idea what they are talking about. 2) Expensive games are not caused by anti-violence politics and lawsuits; they are caused by big publishers, limited shelf space, and whiz-bang customer expectations.
I think it is more likely that the retailers will just not sell anything that is determined to be violent. It probably doesn't make financial sense to take on the extra risk and the extra cost for the bit of money you'll get from those games.
People will have to buy the games by mail from someone who doesn't operate business in California.
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By coincidence, tonight's NBC news ran a story about surge in US buying of small cars. With gas prices hovering at $3/gal, dealerships can't keep Honda Civics (the regular gas ones, not even the hybrids) in stock. One dealer had 9 on his lot that were all sold and he had pre-sold most of his next shipment.
Of course manufacturers will adjust, but it takes time. If it is bad at $3/gal, what will it be like at $5/gal?
Nobody else is going to have small hybrids on the market next year, the Prius and the Civic-hybrid are all there is. I think there may be some hybrid SUVs ready, but those are not going to get 40mpg+. Honda and Toyta, or their dealerships, are going to charge what people are willing to pay. And unless they are already planning on the demand surge that will accompany $5/gal gas, they are not going to have enough supply if/when that happens.
One of the assumptions that you made there is that the price of gas would stay the same for the next 9.61 years. If it is $5/gal next summer and higher each year after that how fast can you "pay off" the extra cost of the hybrid?
One of the reasons to buy a hybrid, or a diesel now is that if the price continues to rise quickley, the demand for hybrids and diesels and subsequently their price will rise. A new prius or a Golf TDI might cost less now than a used one will next year.
I think you underestimate the importance of open standards. OpenDocument format makes this time around different than the previous attempts to kill MS Office. After Massachusetts drove a stake in the ground saying "letting MS own (and change) the format of all of our information is a Bad Thing" and after they demonstrate that migration to another solution is possible, other states will follow suit. Schools may also follow, but that is another discussion.
Then Corporations then have an easier time justifying it. They don't like the MS upgrade treadmill either, or the threat of a BSA audit. They don't like paying more than they have to for licenses. With Office 12 coming out they are going to have to retrain either way. Since others have paved the way they are not out there alone taking a risk in leaving MS. Why stay with MS?
Once StarOffice reaches critical mass, driven by the OpenDocument standard, there will be little reason for anyone to stay with MS.
"I think you'll find that for most people, DVD's are "good enough". Heck, most people don't even have HDTVs to take advantage of a higher resolution picture."
I think you'll find the HD displays and HD content drive the demand for each other. IF I buy a new HDTV that does 1080p, I'm not going to be happy with regular old DVDs that only play 480p. I'll also want to get digital cable or satellite with the HD channels (instead of the $8 basic cable I'm using)And I'll probably quit playing games on my computer and buy a new console to play games in HD on the big screen.
And the reverse is true. I'm less inclined to buy and HDTV because there is not yet one agreed-upon and well-supported HD format for disc, my phone company hasn't yet pulled fiber to my home to compete with the cable company and drive the price down, and there is not yet a game console that looks as good as my computer with 1024x768 on a 19" screen.
These format wars hurt everyone because people like me don't want to buy the wrong thing, so we don't buy anything. And speaking of format wars, another reason I don't want to buy and HDTV is that I don't want to get caught on the wrong side of DVI vs. HDMI. DVI is less encumbered by copy-protection crap, which means I want it, but it also means that the movie-studios want it to be phased out. So perhaps those new HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players will not support DVI at full resolution as part of their protection measures? Sure, thats gonna piss off some HDTV owners, but the studios seem to be able to dictate whatever they want right now.
Actually, my old tech guru COULD explain to you how the cotton gin, steam locomotion, internal-combustion engine (diesel or gas, 1-stroke, 2-stroke, flathead, hybrid-electric, etc.) electricity (generation, storage, communication etc.) electronics (digital, analog, AC or DC, vacuum tubes, transistors, ICs, SiGe, TTL, LVTTL, ECL, PECL, 10GbE, etc.) telephone, over-the-air broadcasting (FM, AM, HAM, VHF, UHF, or HDTV) And he was at the leading edge of making fiber-optics really work, while at the same time he preferred to program in FORTH.
But me? I'm 35, I have no idea how radio works.
Exporting US culture is a pretty important part of the US economy and, less- tangibley, our politics. It is actually really important for the future of our country that Chinese and Indian people want to listen to Snoop-Dogg on their iPod and drink a Pepsi or a Coke and wear Levi's or Wrangler's or FUBU and Nike or Sketcher and watch Baywatch or The Dukes of Hazzard. And the Movies and Music are a really important part of that. It influences what the world thinks of the US.
If the RIAA and/or MPAA are allowed to kill their competition in the US, they will drive the innovation off-shore, and possibly make themselves obsolete.
We don't want the Chinese and Indians watching each other's movies and listening to each other's music. We want them craving all things American.
"Once it becomes legal to create human beings to kill them the society has legalized ghouls."
But isn't it already legal to fertilize more eggs than are needed/used (create life) and dispose of the leftovers (kill that life)? The difference I see is that if the cells are harvested the death is for a purpose (or on purpose if you care to spin it that way) while the disposal of leftovers is because they have no purpose. But where does that leave us?
And I am NOT argueing for harvesting embrionic stem cells, I'm just looking for a logically consistant reason not to.
And it is this pride that blinds them to their ignorance that I find amusing. I admire your "can-do" attitude but I'm quite confident that you could not do my job competantly after a month of study.
And even if you are just proffering flamebait, I'll try to give you an intelligent answer. Some time ago I read of a scientific study that found that the people who performed the worst at a task were also the most likely to overestimate their abilities. And this trend covered all kinds of skills, from singing to spelling to technical things. It seems obvious after the result is known but when you don't know anything about a topic, you don't realize how much you don't know. People who know enough to be competant realize how much they don't know. And the top people also know how much they have mastered and what they don't know. But the least capable are blissfully unaware of their limitations.
And not to stray too far from the original subject, but the very next day I heard of another study that found that the ONLY trait that business executives had more of than the general populace is confidence. They aren't smarter.
Now putting these two things together: executives are confident, and the least capable are the most likely to be over-confident; I think there may be a correlation between least-capable and executive, which explains pointy-haired bosses everywhere.
Like I said, I'm not going to defend The Suits.
However, I would say that I believe that the pecentage of people who understand business is higher for people with a Batchellor's degree in business compared to engineering.
"If you were smart, you would be the one doing the science and calling the shots."
It has been my experience that very, very few engineers actually understand business. I'm not going to defend The Suits, I'm just saying that as a person with a Business degree who works as a technical designer (PCB's to be precise) I have often been amused by engineers who offer naive opinions of what is going on in the business or what the managers should do in a way that makes it clear that they don't grasp all the fundamental concepts. And whats more, I'd have to teach them the terms first before I could even begin to explain why they were wrong.
See, just being smart or having common sense or mastering something that is really hard, doesn't mean you can just pick up something else you don't understand and figure it out. Not without the fundamentals.
So to extend the metaphor, did they A)figure out what the notes were and replay them or B) sample the original.
If it is as dougxray asserts above and they never touched or saw an Altera mask, then it is A and I have to reverse my opinion. Setting the music metaphor aside, if they figured out what the mask has to look like given the verilog code as an in and the resulting data as an out, then that sounds like a clean reverse-engineering. And making a derivative customization of your own workalike mask using the verilog input is just plain clever.
What I want to know is: is it titanium colored? Or is it titanium? Frankly, I wish truth-in-advertising laws would crack down companies who attatch the "titanium" name to something that has no actual titanium in it. But I fear it will be come as diluted as "gold" and "silver."
I don't understand how Clear Logic would legally get ahold of an Altera chip mask set. But it seems pretty clear to me that if they are modifying Altera artwork, then they are not reverse-engineering, they are making a derivative work. Looks like the judgement is correct.
I think you have a valid concern. Repetitive motion particulary at your wrist is a bad thing.
But I'd sure like to try the controller out first. Depending on the type of game, I can imagine that moving the conroller with your shoulder and elbow which are larger muscles, and not having any resistance against you might be VERY comfortable. This might be the controller that arthritics and wiley Atari veterans can use. The reviewer seemed to feel like the games used very natural motions.
I didn't assume that people with more experience have more skill, I said it was more likely. As a parent who has not yet raised teenagers, I think the average parent who HAS raised teenagers is going to know more about it than I do. Really bad parents won't, but most will.
So are you saying there is no correlation between parenting experience and parenting skill?
Because I would think that a person with more parenting experience than myself is more likely than not going to know more about it and have a more valuable opinion. I think your reply that x+y
I think the notion that we were all kids once so we all equally knowledgeable about parenting is not logical.
Same question for you, have you raised 2 or more children to adulthood successfully?
I'm not arguing that parents shouldn't stop their children from playing San Andreas, and stop them from watching R movies when they are too young (or The Jerry Springer Show, for that matter.) I'm just saying that it seems like almost everyone I ever hear say something like "Jeez, parents, just...its not rocket science." isn't qualified to have an opinion.
I have a theory I'm testing out, could you help me by answering one simple question?
Have you successfully raised two or more children?
My theory is that people who have don't dispense parenting advice in glib little phrases and hold forth that parenting is simple.
Yes, but the way the law is worded, they will have to be demon nazis or zombie nazis or something.
IF your mother has successfully raised more than one child then I concede that she is qualified to render an opinion on parenting. (It is my observation that parents of one child tend to think that what worked for their child would work for all children, so obviously other parents are doing something wrong if they aren't getting the same results.)
If Jim Callahan and TheAxeMaster are the same person, then I'd like to point out that I correctly guessed that the person broadly blaming the parents is not in fact a parent, and wisdom from your mom doesn't qualify you as a parent. If they are not the same person, then your mom has nothing to do with TheAxeMaster's opinion.
IANAL and this is not legal advice.
First of all, the parents can't go after you with this law. They could sue you is civil court, but I can't imagine what grounds. It would have to be the State of California to use the law against you.
Second of all, if you are selling a download off of a website that is not located in California, and you are not operating your business in California, it might be difficult for California to subject you to its laws. I think you have a pretty good argument that the sale did not occur in California. Not that it wouldn't try, they have pulled that kind of crap before so it would be best to take some precautions.
Oh dear, I hadn't thought of that angle. I guess the player can't portray a human either.
"The sooner video game companies stop getting sued because stupid parents won't actually be parents and police what their children do, the sooner video game companies can spend less money defending shit like that and start making more games for less money."
This is a bad bill, no doubt about it. It accomplishes nothing.
On the other hand, I have two observations for you: 1) The people who say "It is really the parents' fault" and start giving out parental advice usually don't have kids, and have no idea what they are talking about. 2) Expensive games are not caused by anti-violence politics and lawsuits; they are caused by big publishers, limited shelf space, and whiz-bang customer expectations.
I think it is more likely that the retailers will just not sell anything that is determined to be violent. It probably doesn't make financial sense to take on the extra risk and the extra cost for the bit of money you'll get from those games.
People will have to buy the games by mail from someone who doesn't operate business in California.