Re:But will they be cheaper?
on
Dell Linux Details
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So Grandma presses the button and pays $20. From her perspective, what else could she do? OK, but does she do this for every pay-ware app installed?
Let's assume that the developers make $20 off of a purchased app. We can't assume 100% sales. Let's just say that it's 50%. I think that's a more than generous number. So, the developers cannot afford to pay more than $10 per computer to put their app on it, without losing money ( and this is a year later, after the subscription has run out).
So you knock $10 off of the cost of the computer.
Now, do all of the pre-installed apps get purchased? No. they might buy one or two, but they won't buy all five. So you might assume 50% sales on anti-virus, but you can't assume %50 percent sales on Yet Another media player, and even less for the third app, etc. Also, the more the software costs, the less sales there are, therefore the less you can afford to pay Dell to pre-install it.
I mean, so realistically, how much could be knocked off of the price of a computer? $50 max?
I am starting to think that these apps are value-added -- it's something that Dell pays (however little, multiplied by the number of units) for, to create a better experience for the user, over and above new purchased from other vendors. I really doubt now that developers pay Dell to have their stuff pre-installed.
I am glad that the developers have mentioned that they wanted to get away from the click-fest model of gameplay and move more towards commanding groups. I love starcraft, but the micromanaging of individual units is the part that I hate the most. I would rather just have some kind of 'build order' that functions like a script. My units get busy creating the town, and then I create groups and assign missions. When things get hairy, I step in and micromanage. Meanwhile other objectives and missions take place on their own.
I always thought that the races should be more differentiated by their building and scout types. As it stands in SC, Terrans and Protoss are basically cloned in terms of their buildings and workers. You have a base, and you have workers. You build another building for different types of warriors. Zerg are a little different as far as workers becoming buildings and larvae becoming warriors, but the building tech tree is basically the same.
Zerg should be more swarming, with less individual AI and abilities. Just mass numbers. Protoss should be slow and powerful, with a few large, lumbering ships. The humans should be a patchwork of different unit types working together in mixed groups.
I always looked at it like this. What would each race want to do, and how would it help their perceptions?
What would Protoss want to do? Fill the screen with Pylons. It would be cool if Pylons had a synergistic effect, where two or more pylons covered a greater range than an individual pylon. The Protoss objective, then, would be to arrange pylons so that they would provide cross-coverage with all of your buildings. Protoss could see inside the energy field of any pylon on the screen. The greater the synergistic energy field, the greater the sight range.
The Zerg would want to fill the screen with creep. Connected creep would provide map sight throughout the connection.
Humans would be the most micromanaged, but the most flexible. They can build anywhere, they don't need pylons or creep. However, they would also have the most limited sight.
I've got a Dell Inspiron 9400 which I believe is the E1705 (depending on market) and tried the Ubuntu 7.04 live cd.
Everything worked perfectly with no extra effort...
I'm not sure what else anyone can want. More stories like these.
Re:But will they be cheaper?
on
Dell Linux Details
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Seriously, how much can each craplet defray the cost of a new computer?
I don't know what the numbers are, but I would bet there is at least 1,000 installs for every eventual purchase of an app. If you paid $5 to have your app pre-installed, that would be $5,000 dollars before you got your first $79.99 sale.
The actual amount that each app brings down the cost of a laptop has got to be in the cents range.
I've spent a year in Finland, and, as an American, I have to agree with you. Although the 'competitive kid' culture varies by region, it is an American phenomenon. I think it also has to do with our competitive corporate culture ( I've heard that Europeans companies think that American companies are dysfunctional workplaces ) and our 15 minutes of fame syndrome. There seems to be a culture of mental illness in our country, and our institutions are generated by it and also feed back into it.
In our market, MS is the sole provider of a usable Windows API. Couldn't you adapt that statement to just about any other OS? Not really. If there were another OS that could provide the Windows API along side MS Windows, it wouldn't be the sole provider. Or maybe that's what you mean by adapting the statement.
More to the point, there is no competing OS that can run all Windows API programs. To use the car analogy, any car or truck from any major manufacturer works like any other car or truck from any other major manufacturer. The motor vehicle is commodified -- you can basically buy the same 'thing' from any competing manufacturer.
Back when there was only DOS, there were several DOSes out there that could do everything you could do with DOS. There was competition. Nowadays, there really isn't any other OS out there than can provide the environment that Windows does. There are emulators, but they aren't complete. The Windows API has not been commodified yet.
Monopoly or no monopoly, there was NOTHING preventing OEMs from simply buying Windows licenses at the normal OEM prices (which are still much, much lower than retail prices). You are missing the point. Monopoly has *everything* to do with it. In a free market, the market decides the *price* of a good, based on competition. Because MS has a monopoly, they alone can decide what the OEM price for their product is. It doesn't matter if you can choose not to buy. If you can't buy from someone else ( and no, MacOS and Linux do not count, because they are not the same product), you're not in a free market.
A free market has competition. If I'm selling apples, I have to compete with anybody else who sells apples. If I charge too much, either at retail or wholesale prices, nobody will buy from me. My prices will be determined by the market, not by me.
Say, however, I own all of the apple orchards, or the government has decreed that only I can sell apples. That means that I can charge whatever I want, because I'm not competing with anybody else. In those cases, I have a monopoly. You have to pay what I want, and you have no bargaining power or alternative source for apples.
Microsoft has a monopoly and there are no fair deals in a monopolized market.
Linux is not competition. People buy Windows to run Windows programs. Linux cannot provide the Windows API adequately enough to run Windows programs, therefore it does not compete with Windows.
Because the contract was negotiated by a monopoly. You don't have a choice when you're dealing with a monopoly. It's not a free market scenario, because there is no competition.
In a free market, you can say, "I don't like the terms your offering me; change them or I will go with the other guy." In a monopolized market, you either get it *at their price* or you don't. There is no negotiation or exchange. It's a dictation of the terms. In our market, MS is the sole provider of a usable Windows API.
Also, they left in the unlinked link data. I don't mind that it shows the stock symbol, but then it says "news -- people". These must have been links in the copied text.
From the article:
You were fired because your projects failed and somebody had to be fired.
That's how things are done. It was just business. Or more accurately, "Projects you were working on failed, and you were the junior member. So you were let go."
Just try to explain the machinations of the world without being overly emotional, blaming your former colleagues, or talking bad about your former employer. Don't seem like somebody whose got a chip on their shoulder and the whole world's against them.
We all want our lives to be meaningful and make sense. We all want justice in the cosmic sense, rather than witnessing scapegoating. However, for most people, the workplace is not the place to find meaning or justice. In an interview, you have to pass yourself off as someone who isn't emotionally attached to their work. Someone who could be layed off without erasing the HR database. Someone who could fire other people and not lose sleep. Someone who just comes in reliably, gets their shit done, and doesn't engage in politics. Just do what you need to do to get through the interview, and don't worry about afterwards right now. The best way to find another job is to have a job in the first place.
He also seemed to be asking the difference between a web site and a message board. That might be a little nuanced even for the computer-using non-expert.
So you're not allowed to discriminate because you're a landlord? You can discriminate based on finance. You can require a deposit, or do a credit check. But you cannot refuse to rent to ( and these are just examples, not a complete list), young people, single moms, blacks, fraternity brother, women, Jews, Catholics, Asians, Muslims, gays, etc. We used to have a problem here in the US with certain religious and racial groups not being treated fairly. Equality laws are the only things that seemed to have changed that.
Some guy comes to look around with needle marks up his arm and swastikas tattooed on his forehead. You can't discriminate because someone takes insulin injections for diabetes or wears a Buddhist symbol on their forehead.
He says he's not going to pay any rent... You can refuse him.
just rip out the carpets, steal your white goods and leave a dump in the porch You can refuse him, or demand a large deposit.
... and you just have to hand over the keys? Not at all.
You Americans have some weird laws. We do. However, I think this housing discrimination laws are great. Otherwise we'd have poor ghettos.
Or a more realistic one: The landlord is black and the tenant is a white separatist. You can't discriminate on the basis of belief or 'creed', no matter what your own identity is. ( Is that really realistic? Why would a white separatist want to rent from a non-white? You're not living together anyway; I don't know if a white separatist would necessarily have a problem with it.) If he threatens you, that's a different matter. A credible threat is a crime.
Or: The landlord has previously targeted poor families that have a problem finding accommodation; and offered higher quality accommodation than they would normally receive. Now they have to let anyone in... They have to let "anyone" in who can pay, no matter what.
...including the time-served "rehabilitated" paedophile and his friend that got off a charge of selling narcotics to minors on a technicality (let say the officer sneezed reading the Miranda rights... things like that seem to cancel out justice over the pond). Here in the US, our idea of justice is based on inalienable human rights. Cops don't get to violate your rights; nobody does.
I'm not sure if you can discriminate based on someone's criminal record or legal history, but I don't think you can. You can do a credit check, or demand a deposit, to see if they are able to pay. I think that's the only discrimination you can do.
> The problem is you keep talking about a single port city, but sea levels are *global*. If sea levels
> rise, that affects all port cities everywhere. There's no rising sea level scenario where you're only
> talking about one city.
Do you really believe all the major port cities in the world are built at exactly the same elevation? I will just say that if I understand you correctly, I find this position untenable to the point of absurdity.
I never said that all port cities are built at the same level. You are misunderstanding me.
What I said was *port cities* would be affect by rising sea levels. Remember, sea levels are global. Ocean ports, by definition, are at sea level. If rising sea levels inundate ports, this would happen all over the world, and all port cities would be dealing with the inundation of the ports!
All that meltwater is going somewhere, but the oceans aren't rising much.
Alright, that's fine. I've said I don't know whether sea levels are rising, or how fast they are rising, the effects of global warming and its causes. But in the article I referenced earlier, the port city of Helsinki is planning on dealing with rising sea levels in the next 100 years -- despite the fact that they the land of Finland is rising. And if the Finns are correct, and there will be rising sea levels, it won't be just Helsinki dealing with it.
All of which is neither here nor there to my primary argument. Even assuming the meltwater immediately stops going anywhere except directly into rising ocean levels, the change would still be quite gradual.
Could you re-state your primary argument? For conversation sake, all I'm talking about is sea levels rising fast enough to inundate ports, and the effects of that. And by definition, it would be a global issue.
> Okay, but is it enough time to move *all* port operations of every major port city, all around the world?
If it's enough time for one city, why would it not be enough time for another?
Like I've explained before, sea levels are global. Ocean ports are at sea level, by definion. If sea levels rise enough to swamp one port, they swamp *all* ports, all over the world. This means rebuilding of *all* ports *all around the world*, which means scarcer and more expensive materials, on top of the fact that inundated ports can't ship stuff around the world.
> What about the intense competition for construction equipment and building material.
Yes, prices would increase. This would be most noticeable in the cost of new housing.
And rebuilding a flooded port. Which everyone would be trying to do at the same time, because, again, sea levels are global and if one ocean port goes, they all go.
> What about the fact that we couldn't ship anything in or out of these sea-logged ports?
What, you think the port industries would wait until it became impossible to ship anything before they did anything about it?
But they would have to deal with the reality of when to migrate. How soon do you migrate a perfectly good port? When exactly will it be unusable? 10 years? 50 years? 600 years? What if you migrate a port, and nothing happens to the old location? You've totally wasted money, so there is an incentive to wait as long as possible. What if you've waited to long? Well, you can't use the port, because it's underwater. And if you've lost a port because of rising sea levels, and they are continuing to rise, where do you build a new one? You have to build it on sea level. How long would the new one be good for? It would be extremely difficult to get the timing right.
Industries exist to make money, man. If the sea level rises enough inches that goods cannot be shipped in or out of a certain port at high tide, 10% of the day, something would be done about it, LONG before it got to the point where nothing could be shipped at all.
If it's a landlord who won't be living with the person 'selecting' a tenant, then yes, it would. If it's another roommate or co-habitator, then I don't think so.
I think the ruling says that you can look for however you want for a roommate. But you can't run a service that helps landlords discriminate. So if it was only potential roommates reading and posting, fine. But if landlords are using the service to discriminate, you have to stop helping them.
So what then does roommates.com have to do with any of this? My understanding is that the issue that court decided on was whether it was okay to help landlords used roommates.com to discriminate, and if because if was marketed as roommate-finding site, and not a occupant- or tenant-finding site, it qualified for a "safe harbor" provision. The court decided that it doesn't matter what the site was intended by anyone to be used for; practicing housing discrimination with this website is still wrong. You can't do it just because you're doing it on a website.
Put another way, say I sell screwdrivers. The vast majority of people use my screwdrivers to fix things by driving in screws. But if some people use my screwdrivers to break into cars, should I be insulated from the lawsuits of car owners who were the victims of theft? Selling screwdrivers are not covered by housing discrimination laws. The example you site doesn't count here. Personally, I don't think it's okay that a bar be held responsible for a drunkard they sold drinks to when they go out and wreck private property. But that's not housing discrimination. If you are discriminating on would-be tenants because of gender or orientation, that's wrong.
Nobody is disputing that what the landlords did was illegal. What's at issue is whether we can ask if roommates.com did anything wrong. I guess the issue is that you're not allowed to help landlords discriminate. Even if you don't know that you're doing it I guess.
It's okay to discriminate if you're living with the person, or your another renter. However, it's not okay for a landlord to decide they don't want to rent to gays, or unwed mothers, or young men who might tear the place up.
What the court ruled is that it's not okay for a *landlord*, who is not living with the people, to discriminate on the basis of religion, race, creed, ethnicity, gender, etc. etc. So they are saying using an online roommate-finding website does not make it okay for a landlord to discriminate.
The difference arises when people are using the site in ways other than for "finding roommates" or "building a household", no matter what the site says about what you are supposed to do with it.
So yeah, if you are an 18 year old girl looking for housing in a new city where you will be attending college, go a head and discriminate against creepy 36 year old guys. You're allowed to decide who you want to live with
However, if you are a landlord, and you don't want to rent to first-time renters, gays, unmarried couples, blacks, or a group of 20 year old frat boys, you are no longer "finding roommates" or "creating a household", you are doing housing discrimination. That's wrong, disallowed or illegal, no matter if you are using interviews, walk-throughs, or online websites to do it. I think the only discrimination you can do is the ability of the tenant to pay. You do this with deposits or credit checks and co-signatories.
I don't find it goofy at all. Makes perfect sense to me.
There has been a lot of talk about more immersive storylines in games lately. Arguably, it's immersive storylines along with great gameplay that made Blizzards Warcraft and Starcraft series so popular. When you care about the characters and the story, it's easier to tune out the repetative aspects of gameplay. Nobody wants to go through the motions of building yet another base, but if it's the last hope of your little group, it might not be such a bother.
The problem is that stories are a *re-telling* of past events. You can't tell a story beforehand. Read up on narrative theory if you want to understand this. I began to understand it when I took a screenwriting class. Any really good story, whether it's a fish story, an anecdote about your day, a classic novel, a cutscene, or a good movie, has a good narrative structure.
So what is the narrative structure? It's the three part act. First of all, you have a protagonist, the character that we identify with. He's living in his normal, everyday world. That's act one. We get enough background to understand who he is and the world as he sees it. Imagine Luke as an adopted son of moisture farmers. Then, some event happens where the hero can't get back to his normal, everyday life. This is the beginning of the second act. Luke's Aunt and Uncle are killed, so he can't continue living under their house. He either has to take over the family business, or hook up with weird old Ben Kenobi and whatever madness he's chasing. Either way, it's a big change, and tomorrow is going to be totally different from this morning.
So in the second act, the hero starts to confront some of the challenges he faces in his new life. Eventually, there is a 'showdown', where the hero encounters the antagonist, the final, major obstacle preventing him from obtaining a new status quo. In Luke's case it was hooking up with the rebel alliance and beginning his Jedi path. His new 'everyday life' was becoming a pilot for the rebellion and a serious Jedi student.
Star wars is a little cosmic in scope, so let me relate it to an everyday anecdote. You call your buddy at 6 PM and tell him what happened to you that day. You got up to drive to work. Everyday, normal situation. On the way, you get in an accident which wrecks your car. Suddenly, you're in the second act. This isn't a normal day, and you can't just go back to driving to work. You have to figure out a new status quo. You face various obstacles -- dealing with the other jerk who hit you, dealing with your insurance, getting a rental call, dealing with your arsehole boss who might fire you. You overcome these various obstacles, get your rental car, and then it's a new status quo -- driving your rental car to work, shopping for a new car in the evenings.
Now, what does this have to do with video games? Well, if you want to have a really good story, an immersive story, one that makes the players care about "what happens next", you have to *know in advance* the rest of the story. As a video game designer, you have to plan out a really good story, and implement it in gameplay and cutscenes. Obviously, this takes money and development time. Also, this limits the open-endedness of the game, since you have to build the story into the game *in advance*. Storytelling is a strong AI problem, so we aren't likely to get computer-generated stories in the near future.
The way to solve this is to make a totally player-controllable world. I don't mean where you are an all-powerful wizard and can do anything; but where you have much more freedom to build and invest in your world, over and above killing monsters and collecting treasures. You have to have time invested in the world. I'm talking about building a castle, controlling tax-paying towns, forging alliances with other players for protection, backstabbing them, negotiating with others, launching campaigns against more powerful threats. Introducing human relationships with investment in the virtual world into the game creates storytelling opportuni
Slashdot Mirror
Let's assume that the developers make $20 off of a purchased app. We can't assume 100% sales. Let's just say that it's 50%. I think that's a more than generous number. So, the developers cannot afford to pay more than $10 per computer to put their app on it, without losing money ( and this is a year later, after the subscription has run out).
So you knock $10 off of the cost of the computer.
Now, do all of the pre-installed apps get purchased? No. they might buy one or two, but they won't buy all five. So you might assume 50% sales on anti-virus, but you can't assume %50 percent sales on Yet Another media player, and even less for the third app, etc. Also, the more the software costs, the less sales there are, therefore the less you can afford to pay Dell to pre-install it.
I mean, so realistically, how much could be knocked off of the price of a computer? $50 max?
I am starting to think that these apps are value-added -- it's something that Dell pays (however little, multiplied by the number of units) for, to create a better experience for the user, over and above new purchased from other vendors. I really doubt now that developers pay Dell to have their stuff pre-installed.
I am glad that the developers have mentioned that they wanted to get away from the click-fest model of gameplay and move more towards commanding groups. I love starcraft, but the micromanaging of individual units is the part that I hate the most. I would rather just have some kind of 'build order' that functions like a script. My units get busy creating the town, and then I create groups and assign missions. When things get hairy, I step in and micromanage. Meanwhile other objectives and missions take place on their own.
I always thought that the races should be more differentiated by their building and scout types. As it stands in SC, Terrans and Protoss are basically cloned in terms of their buildings and workers. You have a base, and you have workers. You build another building for different types of warriors. Zerg are a little different as far as workers becoming buildings and larvae becoming warriors, but the building tech tree is basically the same.
Zerg should be more swarming, with less individual AI and abilities. Just mass numbers. Protoss should be slow and powerful, with a few large, lumbering ships. The humans should be a patchwork of different unit types working together in mixed groups.
I always looked at it like this. What would each race want to do, and how would it help their perceptions?
What would Protoss want to do? Fill the screen with Pylons. It would be cool if Pylons had a synergistic effect, where two or more pylons covered a greater range than an individual pylon. The Protoss objective, then, would be to arrange pylons so that they would provide cross-coverage with all of your buildings. Protoss could see inside the energy field of any pylon on the screen. The greater the synergistic energy field, the greater the sight range.
The Zerg would want to fill the screen with creep. Connected creep would provide map sight throughout the connection.
Humans would be the most micromanaged, but the most flexible. They can build anywhere, they don't need pylons or creep. However, they would also have the most limited sight.
Everything worked perfectly with no extra effort...
I'm not sure what else anyone can want. More stories like these.
Seriously, how much can each craplet defray the cost of a new computer?
I don't know what the numbers are, but I would bet there is at least 1,000 installs for every eventual purchase of an app. If you paid $5 to have your app pre-installed, that would be $5,000 dollars before you got your first $79.99 sale.
The actual amount that each app brings down the cost of a laptop has got to be in the cents range.
Uh, how would you hear from the person who had been murdered?
I've spent a year in Finland, and, as an American, I have to agree with you. Although the 'competitive kid' culture varies by region, it is an American phenomenon. I think it also has to do with our competitive corporate culture ( I've heard that Europeans companies think that American companies are dysfunctional workplaces ) and our 15 minutes of fame syndrome. There seems to be a culture of mental illness in our country, and our institutions are generated by it and also feed back into it.
More to the point, there is no competing OS that can run all Windows API programs. To use the car analogy, any car or truck from any major manufacturer works like any other car or truck from any other major manufacturer. The motor vehicle is commodified -- you can basically buy the same 'thing' from any competing manufacturer.
Back when there was only DOS, there were several DOSes out there that could do everything you could do with DOS. There was competition. Nowadays, there really isn't any other OS out there than can provide the environment that Windows does. There are emulators, but they aren't complete. The Windows API has not been commodified yet.
A free market has competition. If I'm selling apples, I have to compete with anybody else who sells apples. If I charge too much, either at retail or wholesale prices, nobody will buy from me. My prices will be determined by the market, not by me.
Say, however, I own all of the apple orchards, or the government has decreed that only I can sell apples. That means that I can charge whatever I want, because I'm not competing with anybody else. In those cases, I have a monopoly. You have to pay what I want, and you have no bargaining power or alternative source for apples.
Microsoft has a monopoly and there are no fair deals in a monopolized market.
Fixed that for you.
How about listening to music, or TV, and having the computer interpreting it. I think a noise canceling microphone would take care of those problems.
Linux is not competition. People buy Windows to run Windows programs. Linux cannot provide the Windows API adequately enough to run Windows programs, therefore it does not compete with Windows.
Hey, release some of those test animations and let us decide how bad they look.
Because the contract was negotiated by a monopoly. You don't have a choice when you're dealing with a monopoly. It's not a free market scenario, because there is no competition.
In a free market, you can say, "I don't like the terms your offering me; change them or I will go with the other guy." In a monopolized market, you either get it *at their price* or you don't. There is no negotiation or exchange. It's a dictation of the terms. In our market, MS is the sole provider of a usable Windows API.
Forget that, what about the *editor*!?
Also, they left in the unlinked link data. I don't mind that it shows the stock symbol, but then it says "news -- people". These must have been links in the copied text.
Seriously, guys. Seriously.
That's how things are done. It was just business. Or more accurately, "Projects you were working on failed, and you were the junior member. So you were let go."
Just try to explain the machinations of the world without being overly emotional, blaming your former colleagues, or talking bad about your former employer. Don't seem like somebody whose got a chip on their shoulder and the whole world's against them.
We all want our lives to be meaningful and make sense. We all want justice in the cosmic sense, rather than witnessing scapegoating. However, for most people, the workplace is not the place to find meaning or justice. In an interview, you have to pass yourself off as someone who isn't emotionally attached to their work. Someone who could be layed off without erasing the HR database. Someone who could fire other people and not lose sleep. Someone who just comes in reliably, gets their shit done, and doesn't engage in politics. Just do what you need to do to get through the interview, and don't worry about afterwards right now. The best way to find another job is to have a job in the first place.
Your post is informative. Thanks!
He also seemed to be asking the difference between a web site and a message board. That might be a little nuanced even for the computer-using non-expert.
... and you just have to hand over the keys? Not at all. You Americans have some weird laws. We do. However, I think this housing discrimination laws are great. Otherwise we'd have poor ghettos. Or a more realistic one: The landlord is black and the tenant is a white separatist. You can't discriminate on the basis of belief or 'creed', no matter what your own identity is. ( Is that really realistic? Why would a white separatist want to rent from a non-white? You're not living together anyway; I don't know if a white separatist would necessarily have a problem with it.) If he threatens you, that's a different matter. A credible threat is a crime. Or: The landlord has previously targeted poor families that have a problem finding accommodation; and offered higher quality accommodation than they would normally receive. Now they have to let anyone in... They have to let "anyone" in who can pay, no matter what.
...including the time-served "rehabilitated" paedophile and his friend that got off a charge of selling narcotics to minors on a technicality (let say the officer sneezed reading the Miranda rightsI'm not sure if you can discriminate based on someone's criminal record or legal history, but I don't think you can. You can do a credit check, or demand a deposit, to see if they are able to pay. I think that's the only discrimination you can do.
> The problem is you keep talking about a single port city, but sea levels are *global*. If sea levels > rise, that affects all port cities everywhere. There's no rising sea level scenario where you're only > talking about one city.
Do you really believe all the major port cities in the world are built at exactly the same elevation? I will just say that if I understand you correctly, I find this position untenable to the point of absurdity.
I never said that all port cities are built at the same level. You are misunderstanding me.
What I said was *port cities* would be affect by rising sea levels. Remember, sea levels are global. Ocean ports, by definition, are at sea level. If rising sea levels inundate ports, this would happen all over the world, and all port cities would be dealing with the inundation of the ports!
All that meltwater is going somewhere, but the oceans aren't rising much.
Alright, that's fine. I've said I don't know whether sea levels are rising, or how fast they are rising, the effects of global warming and its causes. But in the article I referenced earlier, the port city of Helsinki is planning on dealing with rising sea levels in the next 100 years -- despite the fact that they the land of Finland is rising. And if the Finns are correct, and there will be rising sea levels, it won't be just Helsinki dealing with it.
All of which is neither here nor there to my primary argument. Even assuming the meltwater immediately stops going anywhere except directly into rising ocean levels, the change would still be quite gradual.
Could you re-state your primary argument? For conversation sake, all I'm talking about is sea levels rising fast enough to inundate ports, and the effects of that. And by definition, it would be a global issue.
> Okay, but is it enough time to move *all* port operations of every major port city, all around the world?
If it's enough time for one city, why would it not be enough time for another?
Like I've explained before, sea levels are global. Ocean ports are at sea level, by definion. If sea levels rise enough to swamp one port, they swamp *all* ports, all over the world. This means rebuilding of *all* ports *all around the world*, which means scarcer and more expensive materials, on top of the fact that inundated ports can't ship stuff around the world.
> What about the intense competition for construction equipment and building material.
Yes, prices would increase. This would be most noticeable in the cost of new housing.
And rebuilding a flooded port. Which everyone would be trying to do at the same time, because, again, sea levels are global and if one ocean port goes, they all go.
> What about the fact that we couldn't ship anything in or out of these sea-logged ports?
What, you think the port industries would wait until it became impossible to ship anything before they did anything about it?
But they would have to deal with the reality of when to migrate. How soon do you migrate a perfectly good port? When exactly will it be unusable? 10 years? 50 years? 600 years? What if you migrate a port, and nothing happens to the old location? You've totally wasted money, so there is an incentive to wait as long as possible. What if you've waited to long? Well, you can't use the port, because it's underwater. And if you've lost a port because of rising sea levels, and they are continuing to rise, where do you build a new one? You have to build it on sea level. How long would the new one be good for? It would be extremely difficult to get the timing right.
Industries exist to make money, man. If the sea level rises enough inches that goods cannot be shipped in or out of a certain port at high tide, 10% of the day, something would be done about it, LONG before it got to the point where nothing could be shipped at all.
Yes, bu
If it's a landlord who won't be living with the person 'selecting' a tenant, then yes, it would. If it's another roommate or co-habitator, then I don't think so.
:)
I think the ruling says that you can look for however you want for a roommate. But you can't run a service that helps landlords discriminate. So if it was only potential roommates reading and posting, fine. But if landlords are using the service to discriminate, you have to stop helping them.
IANAL.
Put another way, say I sell screwdrivers. The vast majority of people use my screwdrivers to fix things by driving in screws. But if some people use my screwdrivers to break into cars, should I be insulated from the lawsuits of car owners who were the victims of theft? Selling screwdrivers are not covered by housing discrimination laws. The example you site doesn't count here. Personally, I don't think it's okay that a bar be held responsible for a drunkard they sold drinks to when they go out and wreck private property. But that's not housing discrimination. If you are discriminating on would-be tenants because of gender or orientation, that's wrong. Nobody is disputing that what the landlords did was illegal. What's at issue is whether we can ask if roommates.com did anything wrong. I guess the issue is that you're not allowed to help landlords discriminate. Even if you don't know that you're doing it I guess.
It's okay to discriminate if you're living with the person, or your another renter. However, it's not okay for a landlord to decide they don't want to rent to gays, or unwed mothers, or young men who might tear the place up.
What the court ruled is that it's not okay for a *landlord*, who is not living with the people, to discriminate on the basis of religion, race, creed, ethnicity, gender, etc. etc. So they are saying using an online roommate-finding website does not make it okay for a landlord to discriminate.
The difference arises when people are using the site in ways other than for "finding roommates" or "building a household", no matter what the site says about what you are supposed to do with it.
So yeah, if you are an 18 year old girl looking for housing in a new city where you will be attending college, go a head and discriminate against creepy 36 year old guys. You're allowed to decide who you want to live with
However, if you are a landlord, and you don't want to rent to first-time renters, gays, unmarried couples, blacks, or a group of 20 year old frat boys, you are no longer "finding roommates" or "creating a household", you are doing housing discrimination. That's wrong, disallowed or illegal, no matter if you are using interviews, walk-throughs, or online websites to do it. I think the only discrimination you can do is the ability of the tenant to pay. You do this with deposits or credit checks and co-signatories.
I don't find it goofy at all. Makes perfect sense to me.
There has been a lot of talk about more immersive storylines in games lately. Arguably, it's immersive storylines along with great gameplay that made Blizzards Warcraft and Starcraft series so popular. When you care about the characters and the story, it's easier to tune out the repetative aspects of gameplay. Nobody wants to go through the motions of building yet another base, but if it's the last hope of your little group, it might not be such a bother.
The problem is that stories are a *re-telling* of past events. You can't tell a story beforehand. Read up on narrative theory if you want to understand this. I began to understand it when I took a screenwriting class. Any really good story, whether it's a fish story, an anecdote about your day, a classic novel, a cutscene, or a good movie, has a good narrative structure.
So what is the narrative structure? It's the three part act. First of all, you have a protagonist, the character that we identify with. He's living in his normal, everyday world. That's act one. We get enough background to understand who he is and the world as he sees it. Imagine Luke as an adopted son of moisture farmers. Then, some event happens where the hero can't get back to his normal, everyday life. This is the beginning of the second act. Luke's Aunt and Uncle are killed, so he can't continue living under their house. He either has to take over the family business, or hook up with weird old Ben Kenobi and whatever madness he's chasing. Either way, it's a big change, and tomorrow is going to be totally different from this morning.
So in the second act, the hero starts to confront some of the challenges he faces in his new life. Eventually, there is a 'showdown', where the hero encounters the antagonist, the final, major obstacle preventing him from obtaining a new status quo. In Luke's case it was hooking up with the rebel alliance and beginning his Jedi path. His new 'everyday life' was becoming a pilot for the rebellion and a serious Jedi student.
Star wars is a little cosmic in scope, so let me relate it to an everyday anecdote. You call your buddy at 6 PM and tell him what happened to you that day. You got up to drive to work. Everyday, normal situation. On the way, you get in an accident which wrecks your car. Suddenly, you're in the second act. This isn't a normal day, and you can't just go back to driving to work. You have to figure out a new status quo. You face various obstacles -- dealing with the other jerk who hit you, dealing with your insurance, getting a rental call, dealing with your arsehole boss who might fire you. You overcome these various obstacles, get your rental car, and then it's a new status quo -- driving your rental car to work, shopping for a new car in the evenings.
Now, what does this have to do with video games? Well, if you want to have a really good story, an immersive story, one that makes the players care about "what happens next", you have to *know in advance* the rest of the story. As a video game designer, you have to plan out a really good story, and implement it in gameplay and cutscenes. Obviously, this takes money and development time. Also, this limits the open-endedness of the game, since you have to build the story into the game *in advance*. Storytelling is a strong AI problem, so we aren't likely to get computer-generated stories in the near future.
The way to solve this is to make a totally player-controllable world. I don't mean where you are an all-powerful wizard and can do anything; but where you have much more freedom to build and invest in your world, over and above killing monsters and collecting treasures. You have to have time invested in the world. I'm talking about building a castle, controlling tax-paying towns, forging alliances with other players for protection, backstabbing them, negotiating with others, launching campaigns against more powerful threats. Introducing human relationships with investment in the virtual world into the game creates storytelling opportuni
}:(
There is your reward. Are you happy now?