Why do people think it's 'not real' if it's conducted primarily on a computer?
Before Everquest existed, I 'was somebody' online - ran a guild on a MUD (although not as big as yours), and eventually even ended up running the MUD itself. There were definitely some stretches where I'd often spend 16 hours a day on the computer.
But I've also 'been somebody' in real life too. I have a real job with real responsibilities and most of the people I work with I have met once, or no times at all, and interact with almost entirely via computer. I'm also the president of one national non-profit organization with a few thousand members I never see, and run another business with 30,000 customers I don't see either.
And I find that I often spend 16 hours a day on the computer.
Now, most people would consider my job, my non-profit, and my business to be 'real life', and I enjoy them. So why are people who enjoy spending 16 hours a day doing something else on the computer not doing 'real life'? I really can't think of anything that's much different between the 16 hours a day I spend playing networked computer games and the 16 hours a day I spend doing various forms of (enjoyable) work. And while you may have felt compelled to play more everquest because people were depending on you, how is that any different than me feeling compelled to go to work for the same reason?
Computer games are certainly no less productive than the time I've spent shooting pool at the bar. But somehow going out and shooting pool at the bar is OK while playing games at home is not - why? Also, why is someone who spends 16 hours a day reading books and/or watching TV considered to be doing 'real life'? All you're trading is a networked screen with a non-networked screen or page.
Playing on the computer a lot, in and of itself, isn't an addiction. It's only natural that you're going to do the things you enjoy doing as much as you can, and playing computer games isn't any different than reading or anything else, except people who do those other activities want to pretend their life is more meaningful than computer gamers I guess.
People need to understand what an addiction really is. If you are COMPELLED to do something so much that it interferes with your ability to pay your rent, feed yourself, or maintain relationships that are important to you, that's an addiction. If it consumes all of your free time, that's just recreation. And I think it's a tragedy to try and label someone an 'addict' just because of their prefered form of recreation.
Anyway, the time you spend on EQ was real life. And it wasn't because you were 'addicted', it's because you enjoyed it. Not playing anymore wasn't an addiction-ending event; you just stopped enjoying playing so you stopped playing. Simple as that.
Do you not have any idea how many American civil servants answer directly to the public, i.e. are up for election?
For any given citizen, 4 or 5 - city government rep, county government rep, state legislator rep and state senate rep. The 5th would be your mayor, if you have one.
Other than that, we're one choice shy of communism. We get two candidates to chosen for us to pick from instead of one.
But what if the 'Net's neutrality *is* compromised? Could this not spur the development of a new kind of communications network? It seems to me that there is not a great enough incentive for our civilization to make the next great leap in how communication is sent because we haven't been weaned from the nipple of the telcos.
We already made the leap.
Now we're talking about letting the telcos control and bastardize it.
I run two businesses where we have events at various places around the country. Every new location we go to is a different set of registration and taxing requirements. Complying with those regulations costs money, which then gets passed on to customers.
It is silly to have a 'I don't like them so wasted resources is ok as long as it's their wasted resources'. That's not the way the economy works. When you make it less expensive for businesses to operate, EVEN big businesses, those savings get passed on to the consumers. Or possibly those savings get invested into improving the business so it's more efficient in other ways. As an economy, we only get so much production every year - yes, we could let you have it your way, and create piles of regulations so that every business has to employ hundreds of people to make sure regulations are met, but then none of us would be able to eat because we'd all be working making sure regulations were met and there wouldn't be anybody left to grow food or drive the trucks to transport it.
Big business may be poor at distributing wealth, but forcing them to waste wealth meeting extra regulations that don't accomplish anything isn't the answer.
...the submitting user grants OSTG the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide
1) Post on Slashdot 2) Wait for someone to read Slashdot in Space 3) Profit!!!
Well, it's not a statement on who is right, merely that you can't allow your constitutional rights to be taken away just because you're not interested in that particular right, because then when the leadership changes, they'll make off with the rights you do want.
Exactly my point - OR have home schooling. Public education may be the cheapest/best way to get an education, justlike public roadways may be the cheapest/best way to get from place to place, but if oyu don't like the conditions of using them, you can always stay home.
Geez, am I the only one who sees this? The services I read about allowed you to BUY AN ORIGINAL COPY of the movie, and then because you also opted to PAY for their services they would MAKE you an edited copy while sometimes preserving and returning the untouched original. The decision that it's not OK for a service to make a copy to suit a customer's needs in that case is another step towards "licensing" content instead of OWNING it.
Uhm, since when is charging someone money to make them a 2nd copy of a copywritten work fair use? That's the DEFINITION of copyright infringement! The 'service' paid for one copy of the movie and then sold two copies.
If I buy a DVD, and I make a copy of it that has portions removed for my personal use, that's fair use. If I give you a DVD and $X, and you give me back two DVDs, or I just pay you for one DVD and a little extra and you give me 2 DVDs, that's a $250,000 fine and 5 years in prison.
A long time ago, white people went over to africa and bought black people from other black people who had captured those unlucky souls from different tribes or whatever. This isn't a crime against individuals, this is a crime against a society. We deprived Africa of critical labor, and that theft should be redressed.
Many people suggest that appropriate reparations would be giving decendents of slaves free passage back to Africa. I don't think this is sufficient - us white folk got to live in the US *AND* have slaves, so it's only fair that former slaves get the same.
So I believe the only fair solution is to send any decendents of slaves back to Africa, *AND* give each slave decendent who elects to go back 3 rednecks. One redneck to make up for the slave we originally took, and two for 150 years of interest.
There will always be a new "fast". I wonder, does anybody think althletes are faster, stronger and more powerful than, say athletes of 2000 to 4000 years ago?
Absolutely. Better nutrition, better medical care, better training equipment, better understanding of training regimens...
While it is true that schools have in loco parentis powers those powers do NOT supersede my rights, authority, and responsibility as a parent.
Nobody has the right to be present or bring objects onto another person's property without permission of that property owner.
The school has the right to determine who, and what, is allowed to be on school property. If the school can ban cell phones from their property entirely (They can) then they can also decide to ban them, unless you agree that if you bring a cell phone to school you agree to have it searched.
It's the same thing with DUI/DWI in most states - you need a license to be able to operat a motor vehicle. The state has the right to deny you that license. And the state thus also has the right to only give you a license if you agree that you can be 'searched' for alcohol consumption if you are operating a motor vehicle. If you don't agree, most states give you the same penalty as if you'd had a DUI.
You sound like another 'my rights are more important than everyone else's rights' selfish american parent. You're the same people who ruin little league games. Your rights must be balenced against the rights of others. Specifically, your right to contact your kid whenever you want is secondary to the rights of all the other kids to get an education.
Creating technology is a good thing and why we shouldn't we take advantage of it? It can be useful, fun or just interesting. If people want cellphones for whatever reason, why not? I can think of many reasons why having a cellphone is better than not having one. I don't see why people should have to justify it though. If someone else wants a cellphone they should be allowed to ahve one as long as they aren't breaking any laws, or in this case, school rules (such as turning them off during the classes).
But there are appropriate places to use technology. You wouldn't let a student park their car in home room, right? Or use their car to leave campus between classes?
The school is in solid ground here. If they have the right to ban cell phones entirely (they do) then they have the right to only allow them at the school if they are allowed to search them. IF you don't agree to allowint the school to search your cell phone, don't bring it to school.
I consider the time I spent in music in high school and college to have been very useful to me, though I don't think they've earned me a dime.
If you want to talk about useless, let's get rid of sports.
I consider the time I spent in sports in high school and college to have been very useful to me, though I don't think they've earned me a dime.
If you want to talk about useless, let's get rid of music. It's insane how much money is cranked into music. I don't have a problem with after school music activities, but seeing schools that don't have enough teachers or classrooms, but waste them on useless full-time music teachers and band classes and band rooms really bugs me.
Now, I don't actually believe that - I firmly believe activities are important, and you should provide as many activities that students are interested in as possible. But to suggest music good sports bad is just assaninely selfish. My wife sucks at sports and is good at music and did music in HS and college. I suck at sports AND music, but did to sports in HS and college, as well as things like student government and various geek activities. High schools should offer all of those.
Now, it may be a little silly to spend millions of extra dollars on a FOOTBALL STADIUM, but next to big infrastructure like that, music and art are the MOST expensive activities to maintain, because they are the only ones that usually get classes-for-credt and full time staff and full-time, during-the-day facilities. The people who coach sports and other activities are usually regular teachers who work outside of school hours for a small salary stipend. Music and art programs usually get full time staff who do just that.
But, if a school is in financial straights, the first thing to go should be any expensive sports captial investments. The SECOND thing to go should be music and art, since you can save the most money there with the least impact (compared to canning other things).
So, take your pansy art/music elitism and blow it out your ass. Just because the jocks took your lunch money in high school doesn't make your activity superior. (My wife, to this day, shares the same anti-sports bias that you do because the sports people were mean to the art/music/drama people in high school. Of course, she gets mad when I point out that the artsy people probably would have made fun of any rednecks that tried to be in the play. Or that the rednecks couldn't afford instruments.)
Amazon is 3x more expensive than eBay for me.
on
eBay Bans Google Payments
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· Score: 3, Informative
What really sucks they set the shipping rates charged to the customer, keep part of what they charge the customer, and on top of that, take a commission out of the shipping reimbursement as well!
For example, a customer selects expidited shipping, amazon charges them $7.83 for it. They then reimburse the seller $4.99 - AND charge a commission on that, so you ACTUALLY only get $4.24. Then they charge an additional 15% + $1. So when I sell a $20 item, the customer pays $27.83 to get it, and I get $19.82, BUT still have to pay for expidited shipping, so I pocket $15.77.
If I sold the same item on eBay w/Paypal for $20 and charged the same $7.83 for S&H (eBay lets you set it for whatever you want, within reason, and doesn't charge you a commission on it), by the time I paid eBay, PayPal, AND the USPS, I'd have $21.27 left.
Even ignoring shipping, with Amazon I get $19.82 of the $27.83 charged to the customer (Amazon got 29%) and with eBay I get $25.32 (eBay got 9%).
That's three times as much of the customer's money going lost to Amazon as is lost to eBay. It's worse when you factor in that paypal gives you free delivery confirmation too.
I was out to dinner with a new girlfriend and she was wearing a rather sexy, backless plunging top, which of course meant she wasn't wearing a bra. About midway through dinner she dropped her knife on the floor and when she bent over to pick it up... well...
Let's just say she could have used better support.
Slashdot Mirror
Fine, you win, you were an addict.
Why do people think it's 'not real' if it's conducted primarily on a computer?
Before Everquest existed, I 'was somebody' online - ran a guild on a MUD (although not as big as yours), and eventually even ended up running the MUD itself. There were definitely some stretches where I'd often spend 16 hours a day on the computer.
But I've also 'been somebody' in real life too. I have a real job with real responsibilities and most of the people I work with I have met once, or no times at all, and interact with almost entirely via computer. I'm also the president of one national non-profit organization with a few thousand members I never see, and run another business with 30,000 customers I don't see either.
And I find that I often spend 16 hours a day on the computer.
Now, most people would consider my job, my non-profit, and my business to be 'real life', and I enjoy them. So why are people who enjoy spending 16 hours a day doing something else on the computer not doing 'real life'? I really can't think of anything that's much different between the 16 hours a day I spend playing networked computer games and the 16 hours a day I spend doing various forms of (enjoyable) work. And while you may have felt compelled to play more everquest because people were depending on you, how is that any different than me feeling compelled to go to work for the same reason?
Computer games are certainly no less productive than the time I've spent shooting pool at the bar. But somehow going out and shooting pool at the bar is OK while playing games at home is not - why? Also, why is someone who spends 16 hours a day reading books and/or watching TV considered to be doing 'real life'? All you're trading is a networked screen with a non-networked screen or page.
Playing on the computer a lot, in and of itself, isn't an addiction. It's only natural that you're going to do the things you enjoy doing as much as you can, and playing computer games isn't any different than reading or anything else, except people who do those other activities want to pretend their life is more meaningful than computer gamers I guess.
People need to understand what an addiction really is. If you are COMPELLED to do something so much that it interferes with your ability to pay your rent, feed yourself, or maintain relationships that are important to you, that's an addiction. If it consumes all of your free time, that's just recreation. And I think it's a tragedy to try and label someone an 'addict' just because of their prefered form of recreation.
Anyway, the time you spend on EQ was real life. And it wasn't because you were 'addicted', it's because you enjoyed it. Not playing anymore wasn't an addiction-ending event; you just stopped enjoying playing so you stopped playing. Simple as that.
Americans are only responsible for the BREADTH of copyright law. The length is all the European's fault.
Do you not have any idea how many American civil servants answer directly to the public, i.e. are up for election?
For any given citizen, 4 or 5 - city government rep, county government rep, state legislator rep and state senate rep. The 5th would be your mayor, if you have one.
Other than that, we're one choice shy of communism. We get two candidates to chosen for us to pick from instead of one.
Mass-market CPU's are scalar. GPU's are vector.
Today's scalar CPU's are NOWHERE CLOSE to being fast enough to do a GPU's worth of vector math.
But what if the 'Net's neutrality *is* compromised? Could this not spur the development of a new kind of communications network? It seems to me that there is not a great enough incentive for our civilization to make the next great leap in how communication is sent because we haven't been weaned from the nipple of the telcos.
We already made the leap.
Now we're talking about letting the telcos control and bastardize it.
World War 2 was too hard for the Japanese. We should have just changed the graphics on the Spanish-American war and released that in Japan instead.
It won't work. The James Randi Educational Foundation has psychics on staff who have all forseen that the prize won't be claimed.
Apparently public school also failed to teach you that anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything.
Maybe he just has a naturally gregarious personality?
What about the extra burden on small businesses?
I run two businesses where we have events at various places around the country. Every new location we go to is a different set of registration and taxing requirements. Complying with those regulations costs money, which then gets passed on to customers.
It is silly to have a 'I don't like them so wasted resources is ok as long as it's their wasted resources'. That's not the way the economy works. When you make it less expensive for businesses to operate, EVEN big businesses, those savings get passed on to the consumers. Or possibly those savings get invested into improving the business so it's more efficient in other ways. As an economy, we only get so much production every year - yes, we could let you have it your way, and create piles of regulations so that every business has to employ hundreds of people to make sure regulations are met, but then none of us would be able to eat because we'd all be working making sure regulations were met and there wouldn't be anybody left to grow food or drive the trucks to transport it.
Big business may be poor at distributing wealth, but forcing them to waste wealth meeting extra regulations that don't accomplish anything isn't the answer.
...the submitting user grants OSTG the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide
1) Post on Slashdot
2) Wait for someone to read Slashdot in Space
3) Profit!!!
Well, it's not a statement on who is right, merely that you can't allow your constitutional rights to be taken away just because you're not interested in that particular right, because then when the leadership changes, they'll make off with the rights you do want.
There are many cases where the only thing worse than one regulation is 50 different sets of regulations.
What makes you only the south has rednecks? I live in Wisconsin. We've got 'em too.
In all seriousness, I have nothing against rednecks. They were just the group that best worked for the humor of the post.
Exactly my point - OR have home schooling. Public education may be the cheapest/best way to get an education, justlike public roadways may be the cheapest/best way to get from place to place, but if oyu don't like the conditions of using them, you can always stay home.
Geez, am I the only one who sees this? The services I read about allowed you to BUY AN ORIGINAL COPY of the movie, and then because you also opted to PAY for their services they would MAKE you an edited copy while sometimes preserving and returning the untouched original. The decision that it's not OK for a service to make a copy to suit a customer's needs in that case is another step towards "licensing" content instead of OWNING it.
Uhm, since when is charging someone money to make them a 2nd copy of a copywritten work fair use? That's the DEFINITION of copyright infringement! The 'service' paid for one copy of the movie and then sold two copies.
If I buy a DVD, and I make a copy of it that has portions removed for my personal use, that's fair use. If I give you a DVD and $X, and you give me back two DVDs, or I just pay you for one DVD and a little extra and you give me 2 DVDs, that's a $250,000 fine and 5 years in prison.
A long time ago, white people went over to africa and bought black people from other black people who had captured those unlucky souls from different tribes or whatever. This isn't a crime against individuals, this is a crime against a society. We deprived Africa of critical labor, and that theft should be redressed.
Many people suggest that appropriate reparations would be giving decendents of slaves free passage back to Africa. I don't think this is sufficient - us white folk got to live in the US *AND* have slaves, so it's only fair that former slaves get the same.
So I believe the only fair solution is to send any decendents of slaves back to Africa, *AND* give each slave decendent who elects to go back 3 rednecks. One redneck to make up for the slave we originally took, and two for 150 years of interest.
There will always be a new "fast". I wonder, does anybody think althletes are faster, stronger and more powerful than, say athletes of 2000 to 4000 years ago?
Absolutely. Better nutrition, better medical care, better training equipment, better understanding of training regimens...
Probably the same number of states where it's mandatory for kids to go to public school.
I've got 1200 emails about Viagra - I'm not involved in cock-pills.
And Jennings has 1200 emails about the airplane, proving Google's position that he was not involved!
While it is true that schools have in loco parentis powers those powers do NOT supersede my rights, authority, and responsibility as a parent.
Nobody has the right to be present or bring objects onto another person's property without permission of that property owner.
The school has the right to determine who, and what, is allowed to be on school property. If the school can ban cell phones from their property entirely (They can) then they can also decide to ban them, unless you agree that if you bring a cell phone to school you agree to have it searched.
It's the same thing with DUI/DWI in most states - you need a license to be able to operat a motor vehicle. The state has the right to deny you that license. And the state thus also has the right to only give you a license if you agree that you can be 'searched' for alcohol consumption if you are operating a motor vehicle. If you don't agree, most states give you the same penalty as if you'd had a DUI.
You sound like another 'my rights are more important than everyone else's rights' selfish american parent. You're the same people who ruin little league games. Your rights must be balenced against the rights of others. Specifically, your right to contact your kid whenever you want is secondary to the rights of all the other kids to get an education.
Creating technology is a good thing and why we shouldn't we take advantage of it? It can be useful, fun or just interesting. If people want cellphones for whatever reason, why not? I can think of many reasons why having a cellphone is better than not having one. I don't see why people should have to justify it though. If someone else wants a cellphone they should be allowed to ahve one as long as they aren't breaking any laws, or in this case, school rules (such as turning them off during the classes).
But there are appropriate places to use technology. You wouldn't let a student park their car in home room, right? Or use their car to leave campus between classes?
The school is in solid ground here. If they have the right to ban cell phones entirely (they do) then they have the right to only allow them at the school if they are allowed to search them. IF you don't agree to allowint the school to search your cell phone, don't bring it to school.
I consider the time I spent in music in high school and college to have been very useful to me, though I don't think they've earned me a dime.
If you want to talk about useless, let's get rid of sports.
I consider the time I spent in sports in high school and college to have been very useful to me, though I don't think they've earned me a dime.
If you want to talk about useless, let's get rid of music. It's insane how much money is cranked into music. I don't have a problem with after school music activities, but seeing schools that don't have enough teachers or classrooms, but waste them on useless full-time music teachers and band classes and band rooms really bugs me.
Now, I don't actually believe that - I firmly believe activities are important, and you should provide as many activities that students are interested in as possible. But to suggest music good sports bad is just assaninely selfish. My wife sucks at sports and is good at music and did music in HS and college. I suck at sports AND music, but did to sports in HS and college, as well as things like student government and various geek activities. High schools should offer all of those.
Now, it may be a little silly to spend millions of extra dollars on a FOOTBALL STADIUM, but next to big infrastructure like that, music and art are the MOST expensive activities to maintain, because they are the only ones that usually get classes-for-credt and full time staff and full-time, during-the-day facilities. The people who coach sports and other activities are usually regular teachers who work outside of school hours for a small salary stipend. Music and art programs usually get full time staff who do just that.
But, if a school is in financial straights, the first thing to go should be any expensive sports captial investments. The SECOND thing to go should be music and art, since you can save the most money there with the least impact (compared to canning other things).
So, take your pansy art/music elitism and blow it out your ass. Just because the jocks took your lunch money in high school doesn't make your activity superior. (My wife, to this day, shares the same anti-sports bias that you do because the sports people were mean to the art/music/drama people in high school. Of course, she gets mad when I point out that the artsy people probably would have made fun of any rednecks that tried to be in the play. Or that the rednecks couldn't afford instruments.)
What really sucks they set the shipping rates charged to the customer, keep part of what they charge the customer, and on top of that, take a commission out of the shipping reimbursement as well!
For example, a customer selects expidited shipping, amazon charges them $7.83 for it. They then reimburse the seller $4.99 - AND charge a commission on that, so you ACTUALLY only get $4.24. Then they charge an additional 15% + $1. So when I sell a $20 item, the customer pays $27.83 to get it, and I get $19.82, BUT still have to pay for expidited shipping, so I pocket $15.77.
If I sold the same item on eBay w/Paypal for $20 and charged the same $7.83 for S&H (eBay lets you set it for whatever you want, within reason, and doesn't charge you a commission on it), by the time I paid eBay, PayPal, AND the USPS, I'd have $21.27 left.
Even ignoring shipping, with Amazon I get $19.82 of the $27.83 charged to the customer (Amazon got 29%) and with eBay I get $25.32 (eBay got 9%).
That's three times as much of the customer's money going lost to Amazon as is lost to eBay. It's worse when you factor in that paypal gives you free delivery confirmation too.
I was out to dinner with a new girlfriend and she was wearing a rather sexy, backless plunging top, which of course meant she wasn't wearing a bra. About midway through dinner she dropped her knife on the floor and when she bent over to pick it up... well...
Let's just say she could have used better support.