The State is not supplying the pornography, it is supplying the internet access. Were the State to prevent access to certain sites it would then be interfering with or preventing speech.
Gotta say, I loved German bathrooms when I was there. I don't know why US bathroom stalls need the big gaps at the top and bottom and the large gaps on either side of the door. German bathrooms you're shut in there like a fortress, almost a floor to ceiling door and no gaps at the hinge or latch. Totally awesome. Which I guess a should expect from a place with better privacy protections in general. Also loved that people brought dogs into restaurants.
Japan had complicated rules for vehicles sold there that, in the view of US manufactures, made it impossible for foreign makes to profitably participate in the Japanese market.
Which is exactly why we should have created import restrictions and/or tariffs for the Japanese market in turn. Why should we give them free access to our country's market and not expect the same from them in turn. That's just lunacy.
I personally live with two folks who recently graduated from college, one an English major, and another a Business major. Both of them are employed but not in what they went to school for. Both are working part time service jobs with no or little benefits that barely give them enough money to make ends meet. Forget saving, or paying down debt.
So yes, technically they are employed, however it falls into the "just barely" category and their schooling has no relevance to their current jobs. Right now for them school is just a large pile of debt they're saddled with.
I watched this awhile ago, and while correct that fashion has no copyright, it does have trademark protection. By making trademark an essential part of the designs fashion has in many ways achieved very similar protections to if they had copyright. My wife's Coach purse has their C as a very intrinsic part of the design. You could not create the same purse without that trademark as part of the design. And if you created a purse using a similar C they could go after you for the trademark violation as your C is too close to the Coach C and could be seen as diluting their trademark which is a legal no-no. Integrating your trademwark into a design has sort of become a design constraint of the fashion industry by which they achieve IP protection. It's not quite as good as full copyright protection, but it does cover a lot.
There is no difference in the intrinsic value of the product. 2. Correct. You are close to a key Insight to reach the next level of understanding but not quite there yet; so let me help you out --> Value is multi-valued! i.e. Two different people can value the same thing differently; what is it "perceived" value then? The High, the Low, the Average? No, it is BOTH the low AND the high. It is a 1-to-many relationship, NOT a 1-to-1 relationship. THIS is the main factor on why [almost] all economic theories are doomed to fail -- they don't accurately model the relationship of value -- multi-valued, not single-valued.
This I have thought about a lot in the past and wholeheartedly agree with. I have items, like Neverwinter Nights, that looking back, given the hours and fun I had with that game that probably has closer to a value of $250-$300. I have expensive recumbent panniers that cost me $390. However, they have lasted me years thus far, have a lifetime warranty and I expect them to last years to come. These I would be willing to pay $1000 for given their actual utility and value. The problem of course is I don't know that before I purchase something. I can only guess if my $50 for a game will really pan out. As I've bought plenty of games for which it's a bad investment. So it's really difficult to parse out what the correct perceived value should be, even for myself at purchase time. I won't really know the value until several months down the road. At best I'm making an educated guess at purchase time, which I would say for a lot of items ends up being incorrect in some way.
And I'm pleased to see that someone managed to start justifying cheating within a handful of posts. When I read online gaming forums discussing cheating, it generally takes not more than six comments to find someone justifying cheating....
Context is important. I never cheat in online multiplayer and find it pathetic the people who do. To me playing multiplayer online is about challenging myself and my abilities, especially fps. Cheating degrades the experience for others and that's weak.
However, for single player campaigns like rpgs I don't see the problem with modding the game however I want. I'm generally not playing to challenge myself, I'm playing to enjoy the game and the story. I liked Icewind Dale but found it too difficult. So I modded my characters up and found it more enjoyable. Dragon Age, I didn't like the tactic slot limits, especially for mages, so I modded the game. It's single player so what's the harm if I want to enjoy the game how I want to enjoy it?
Starcraft ][ they apparently banned people for cheating in the single player campaign. I find that deplorable. What right of it is Blizzards to deny people access to all of Starcraft ][ because someone doesn't play single player the way Blizzard wants. I won't be buying future Blizzard games because of this.
On the other hand I probably won't buy further Battlefield games because of how little EA/Dice is doing about cheating in BF3 which is currently pretty rampant there.
Multiplayer, ban away, ban and burn them across all multiplayer games if you can. However, single player, that's completely nonsensical, because you are affecting no on else and only modifying your own enjoyment of the game.
So apparently BT has a patent on a multi-layered tree of if-then statements targeted at a particular implementation. That seems ridiculous, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
If hungry, go eat, if don't like eggs, try ham, if ham isn't your thing, then... and so on and so on.
Seriously though. If it's about getting the passion for the work back then create your own iPad or WP7 or Android app. May be you discover some of your mojo again.
I don't see any reason we should give Lucas any less than the complete and total control over his creations enjoyed by Homer, Shakespeare, and Bach. To afford him anything else would be tragic.
You're speaking of remakes which is not the same thing. If we possessed the language skills to actually read the Illiad that'd be great. However, short of learning an ancient language we have no choice as English speakers but to read a re-make or interpretation rather than the original.
If recording devices existed in the time of Shakespeare or Bach, I would bet dollars to donuts certain performances would be of such quality and caliber that some in society would want to preserve them as is, without change or re-interpretation.
If all you want is corporate spoon fed crap thrust into the public consciousness by a marketing budget, then by all means, 1 year copyright. Independent art of cultural significance will take longer than a year to even start to propagate through the system in most cases. Kurt Vonnegut was small potatoes until Cat's Cradle, then suddenly his back catalog became worth something to him. 1 year copyright would have meant a bunch of people with no skills other than a printing press would have made all the money and he most likely would not have been able to write full time and create a cultural legacy. I agree the current copyright is way way too long. But there are vast dangers to culture in going too anti-copyright as well.
Most often when it's cold and I have my gloves on. I end up using my nose to swipe and then tap a name to dial on my iPhone. What's annoying is I often have trouble hitting the speaker phone button after I dial. The iPhone sees my head as too close and turns off input to the screen.
Everything we did in high school physics was in metric. I'm an avid biker and that's all in metric. I have no problem handling and using metric. But it still sucks. Imperial measures by and large are based around what they are actually used to measure, compromised with how they scale to other measurements. Relevance and utility in daily life, to me, is the single most important factor for a system of measure.
The meter was originally designed to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the north pole to the equator That is, without a doubt, the single crappiest basis for a system of measure ever. It has absolutely no relevance to daily life. Tell me, when in my life am I going to need to measure anything approaching that distance?
What are the most common things for which I need a measure for length? Distance in a room or a person's height. For that, meters and centimeters suck. Foot and inches are grand. They are the proper combination of large and small units, scaled correctly to one another, to deliver a number that a human being can distinguish and make sense of for what they are measuring.
Pound is another good example. A kilo is simply too large and a gram too small. Most people care about measuring their own weight, and a more granulated measure such as the pound makes sense over the kilo. Same holds for Fahrenheit vs. Celsius. A human being can distinguish a smaller temperature change in their environment than what a single degree in Celsius measures. The more granulated Fahrenheit is more appropriate for this most common use case of wanting to know what the outside weather will "feel" like. Though 0 does makes more sense as a freezing point than 32.
All that being said, I would not find the conversion to metric difficult. My internal view would change to compensate and I'd grok it better over time. However, that will not change the fact that metric is disjointed from your average person's needs and perception of reality.
Wow, no one reads anything here anymore do they. How hard is it to click and follow a link? As someone stated below, the person was not trolling, they made a flippant comment, that I believe the majority of people wouldn't even find that offensive.
I addition he did buy the physical media, not virtual goods, as other non-article readers comment below. The problem is the game requires internet activation and association with an EA account. An EA account that they wrongfully banned.
Please, for the love of all things holy, RTFA before talking out your ass.
Thank you very much for the heads up. I haven't installed an older game on my relatively new win 7 x64 system. I will be keeping your post in mind if I consider it, and will be sure to check out online what drm harassment the game uses.
I was already on the fence given the bug ridden, overpriced mess that was Awakenings. They never properly patched the most egregious bugs that took all the equipment from a character you'd been playing 70+ hours. In addition they never bothered to release an updated mod pack so that modders could at least fix their mistakes. Probably because they didn't want to reveal the utter crappiness of their rushed coding practices for the expansion.
Anyhoo, given all the following: the requirement for internet activation and recheck every few days; the SecuROM sneak in they pulled; the $60 price tag; and the steam demo already had frustrating game breaking bugs, I'll be putting my money elsewhere.
Poor bioware. I miss the days when the did sixty nine different patches for Neverwinter Nights. That was product support!
Guess I'll have to keep looking forward to the Witcher II and CD Projeckt that doesn't cripple their games with DRM.
Show me some statistics that prove the "obvious" safety of a full and complete stop vs a 1-3mph (a walk basically) rolling stop. Telling me it's just obvious to you people should full stop doesn't cut it. Especially when the majority of people's driving habits show otherwise. Last time I checked this is supposed to be a democracy. So if the majority of folks roll stops then quite simply it should be legal behavior.
Which all of the above is totally ridiculous because prior to the unibody, macbook pros had a FULL Dual-DVI port built into the machine. No stupid ass adapter to pay for and the graphics weren't the glitch fest they've become. My unibody macbook pro crashes a lot if I leave it running for too long hooked up to an external display. This never happened with my older macbook pro with a full port built into the machine itself.
So basically I got to pay for an inferior experience. I like Mac's, but man I hate the new DisplayPorts with a passion.
Did you actually read what he wrote? Washington is 9th in the State Business Tax Climate Index, as in 9th BEST, not 9th worst. And that's with the B&O tax. And the states around Washington are worse.
I've been dual booting my Mac into windows for some time to play games. Good to know I can stop doing so at least for some of the great games I play like L4D and L4D2.
I've always disliked the idea of steam, online login to validate, locking your games to an account so you can't resell, etc. But valve just keeps throwing in so many perks it's hard to fight all the great advantages Steam offers. It really is DRM done about as right as it can get.
They let you download games in perpetuity.
I don't have to carry around a bunch of install DVDs. As long as I have an internet connection I can install my games.
Great weekend deals.
Now every Steam game I've purchased I'll suddenly get the Mac version for free as well!
Are you really that gestapo? My mother is the IT person at a school as well so as her additional ad hoc computer help I'm well acquainted with what kids can be up to. Expel kids for installing software? Are you serious? First off, they are children we have an obligation to teach, not throw out to the dogs. Second if your security policy is so pathetic as to have a kid installing software cause serious problems with your machines and network it'd probably be you whom should be expelled.
We're supposed to be teaching kids independent thought and how to find the best way of doing things for themselves. Yet you think detention for not towing the line is appropriate? Makes sense so many of our schools suck if you're the administrative mentality that runs them.
I'm on Comcast and I've had intermittent connection resets with Google for weeks now. It happens when trying to run a simple text search, no video, nothing else, just get to Google. When the problem kicks in it's often so bad I simply can't use google for a few hours. Comcast is ass and this is only more fuel for switching our house to FiOS.
Slaps forehead. If getting to an arbitrary level cap is somehow a competitive advantage then ouch on the world in general. And even more ouch to the next poster for comparing the skill required to be a professional baseball player with the grinding tedium that is WoW and so many other MMORPGs. Brain numbing dedication to a cause should never be equated with actual skill or talent.
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The State is not supplying the pornography, it is supplying the internet access. Were the State to prevent access to certain sites it would then be interfering with or preventing speech.
You mean the same public funds the individual watching the porn paid for in the form of taxes.
Gotta say, I loved German bathrooms when I was there. I don't know why US bathroom stalls need the big gaps at the top and bottom and the large gaps on either side of the door. German bathrooms you're shut in there like a fortress, almost a floor to ceiling door and no gaps at the hinge or latch. Totally awesome. Which I guess a should expect from a place with better privacy protections in general. Also loved that people brought dogs into restaurants.
Japan had complicated rules for vehicles sold there that, in the view of US manufactures, made it impossible for foreign makes to profitably participate in the Japanese market.
Which is exactly why we should have created import restrictions and/or tariffs for the Japanese market in turn. Why should we give them free access to our country's market and not expect the same from them in turn. That's just lunacy.
I personally live with two folks who recently graduated from college, one an English major, and another a Business major. Both of them are employed but not in what they went to school for. Both are working part time service jobs with no or little benefits that barely give them enough money to make ends meet. Forget saving, or paying down debt.
So yes, technically they are employed, however it falls into the "just barely" category and their schooling has no relevance to their current jobs. Right now for them school is just a large pile of debt they're saddled with.
Interesting/Informative post, but you miss two key issues:
1. You ARE aware that the whole fashion industry has NO copyright and yet still continues to profit, right?
Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion's free culture
http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html
>
I watched this awhile ago, and while correct that fashion has no copyright, it does have trademark protection. By making trademark an essential part of the designs fashion has in many ways achieved very similar protections to if they had copyright. My wife's Coach purse has their C as a very intrinsic part of the design. You could not create the same purse without that trademark as part of the design. And if you created a purse using a similar C they could go after you for the trademark violation as your C is too close to the Coach C and could be seen as diluting their trademark which is a legal no-no. Integrating your trademwark into a design has sort of become a design constraint of the fashion industry by which they achieve IP protection. It's not quite as good as full copyright protection, but it does cover a lot.
There is no difference in the intrinsic value of the product.
2. Correct. You are close to a key Insight to reach the next level of understanding but not quite there yet; so let me help you out --> Value is multi-valued! i.e. Two different people can value the same thing differently; what is it "perceived" value then? The High, the Low, the Average? No, it is BOTH the low AND the high. It is a 1-to-many relationship, NOT a 1-to-1 relationship. THIS is the main factor on why [almost] all economic theories are doomed to fail -- they don't accurately model the relationship of value -- multi-valued, not single-valued.
This I have thought about a lot in the past and wholeheartedly agree with. I have items, like Neverwinter Nights, that looking back, given the hours and fun I had with that game that probably has closer to a value of $250-$300. I have expensive recumbent panniers that cost me $390. However, they have lasted me years thus far, have a lifetime warranty and I expect them to last years to come. These I would be willing to pay $1000 for given their actual utility and value. The problem of course is I don't know that before I purchase something. I can only guess if my $50 for a game will really pan out. As I've bought plenty of games for which it's a bad investment. So it's really difficult to parse out what the correct perceived value should be, even for myself at purchase time. I won't really know the value until several months down the road. At best I'm making an educated guess at purchase time, which I would say for a lot of items ends up being incorrect in some way.
And I'm pleased to see that someone managed to start justifying cheating within a handful of posts. When I read online gaming forums discussing cheating, it generally takes not more than six comments to find someone justifying cheating....
Context is important. I never cheat in online multiplayer and find it pathetic the people who do. To me playing multiplayer online is about challenging myself and my abilities, especially fps. Cheating degrades the experience for others and that's weak.
However, for single player campaigns like rpgs I don't see the problem with modding the game however I want. I'm generally not playing to challenge myself, I'm playing to enjoy the game and the story. I liked Icewind Dale but found it too difficult. So I modded my characters up and found it more enjoyable. Dragon Age, I didn't like the tactic slot limits, especially for mages, so I modded the game. It's single player so what's the harm if I want to enjoy the game how I want to enjoy it?
Starcraft ][ they apparently banned people for cheating in the single player campaign. I find that deplorable. What right of it is Blizzards to deny people access to all of Starcraft ][ because someone doesn't play single player the way Blizzard wants. I won't be buying future Blizzard games because of this.
On the other hand I probably won't buy further Battlefield games because of how little EA/Dice is doing about cheating in BF3 which is currently pretty rampant there.
Multiplayer, ban away, ban and burn them across all multiplayer games if you can. However, single player, that's completely nonsensical, because you are affecting no on else and only modifying your own enjoyment of the game.
So apparently BT has a patent on a multi-layered tree of if-then statements targeted at a particular implementation. That seems ridiculous, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
If hungry, go eat, if don't like eggs, try ham, if ham isn't your thing, then... and so on and so on.
Seriously though. If it's about getting the passion for the work back then create your own iPad or WP7 or Android app. May be you discover some of your mojo again.
I don't see any reason we should give Lucas any less than the complete and total control over his creations enjoyed by Homer, Shakespeare, and Bach. To afford him anything else would be tragic.
You're speaking of remakes which is not the same thing. If we possessed the language skills to actually read the Illiad that'd be great. However, short of learning an ancient language we have no choice as English speakers but to read a re-make or interpretation rather than the original.
If recording devices existed in the time of Shakespeare or Bach, I would bet dollars to donuts certain performances would be of such quality and caliber that some in society would want to preserve them as is, without change or re-interpretation.
If all you want is corporate spoon fed crap thrust into the public consciousness by a marketing budget, then by all means, 1 year copyright. Independent art of cultural significance will take longer than a year to even start to propagate through the system in most cases. Kurt Vonnegut was small potatoes until Cat's Cradle, then suddenly his back catalog became worth something to him. 1 year copyright would have meant a bunch of people with no skills other than a printing press would have made all the money and he most likely would not have been able to write full time and create a cultural legacy. I agree the current copyright is way way too long. But there are vast dangers to culture in going too anti-copyright as well.
Most often when it's cold and I have my gloves on. I end up using my nose to swipe and then tap a name to dial on my iPhone. What's annoying is I often have trouble hitting the speaker phone button after I dial. The iPhone sees my head as too close and turns off input to the screen.
Everything we did in high school physics was in metric. I'm an avid biker and that's all in metric. I have no problem handling and using metric. But it still sucks. Imperial measures by and large are based around what they are actually used to measure, compromised with how they scale to other measurements. Relevance and utility in daily life, to me, is the single most important factor for a system of measure.
The meter was originally designed to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the north pole to the equator That is, without a doubt, the single crappiest basis for a system of measure ever. It has absolutely no relevance to daily life. Tell me, when in my life am I going to need to measure anything approaching that distance?
What are the most common things for which I need a measure for length? Distance in a room or a person's height. For that, meters and centimeters suck. Foot and inches are grand. They are the proper combination of large and small units, scaled correctly to one another, to deliver a number that a human being can distinguish and make sense of for what they are measuring.
Pound is another good example. A kilo is simply too large and a gram too small. Most people care about measuring their own weight, and a more granulated measure such as the pound makes sense over the kilo. Same holds for Fahrenheit vs. Celsius. A human being can distinguish a smaller temperature change in their environment than what a single degree in Celsius measures. The more granulated Fahrenheit is more appropriate for this most common use case of wanting to know what the outside weather will "feel" like. Though 0 does makes more sense as a freezing point than 32.
All that being said, I would not find the conversion to metric difficult. My internal view would change to compensate and I'd grok it better over time. However, that will not change the fact that metric is disjointed from your average person's needs and perception of reality.
Giant douche or turd sandwich?
Wow, no one reads anything here anymore do they. How hard is it to click and follow a link? As someone stated below, the person was not trolling, they made a flippant comment, that I believe the majority of people wouldn't even find that offensive.
I addition he did buy the physical media, not virtual goods, as other non-article readers comment below. The problem is the game requires internet activation and association with an EA account. An EA account that they wrongfully banned.
Please, for the love of all things holy, RTFA before talking out your ass.
Thank you very much for the heads up. I haven't installed an older game on my relatively new win 7 x64 system. I will be keeping your post in mind if I consider it, and will be sure to check out online what drm harassment the game uses.
I was already on the fence given the bug ridden, overpriced mess that was Awakenings. They never properly patched the most egregious bugs that took all the equipment from a character you'd been playing 70+ hours. In addition they never bothered to release an updated mod pack so that modders could at least fix their mistakes. Probably because they didn't want to reveal the utter crappiness of their rushed coding practices for the expansion.
Anyhoo, given all the following: the requirement for internet activation and recheck every few days; the SecuROM sneak in they pulled; the $60 price tag; and the steam demo already had frustrating game breaking bugs, I'll be putting my money elsewhere.
Poor bioware. I miss the days when the did sixty nine different patches for Neverwinter Nights. That was product support!
Guess I'll have to keep looking forward to the Witcher II and CD Projeckt that doesn't cripple their games with DRM.
Show me some statistics that prove the "obvious" safety of a full and complete stop vs a 1-3mph (a walk basically) rolling stop. Telling me it's just obvious to you people should full stop doesn't cut it. Especially when the majority of people's driving habits show otherwise. Last time I checked this is supposed to be a democracy. So if the majority of folks roll stops then quite simply it should be legal behavior.
Which all of the above is totally ridiculous because prior to the unibody, macbook pros had a FULL Dual-DVI port built into the machine. No stupid ass adapter to pay for and the graphics weren't the glitch fest they've become. My unibody macbook pro crashes a lot if I leave it running for too long hooked up to an external display. This never happened with my older macbook pro with a full port built into the machine itself. So basically I got to pay for an inferior experience. I like Mac's, but man I hate the new DisplayPorts with a passion.
Did you actually read what he wrote? Washington is 9th in the State Business Tax Climate Index, as in 9th BEST, not 9th worst. And that's with the B&O tax. And the states around Washington are worse.
I've always disliked the idea of steam, online login to validate, locking your games to an account so you can't resell, etc. But valve just keeps throwing in so many perks it's hard to fight all the great advantages Steam offers. It really is DRM done about as right as it can get.
Kudos to Valve!
Are you really that gestapo? My mother is the IT person at a school as well so as her additional ad hoc computer help I'm well acquainted with what kids can be up to. Expel kids for installing software? Are you serious? First off, they are children we have an obligation to teach, not throw out to the dogs. Second if your security policy is so pathetic as to have a kid installing software cause serious problems with your machines and network it'd probably be you whom should be expelled. We're supposed to be teaching kids independent thought and how to find the best way of doing things for themselves. Yet you think detention for not towing the line is appropriate? Makes sense so many of our schools suck if you're the administrative mentality that runs them.
I'm on Comcast and I've had intermittent connection resets with Google for weeks now. It happens when trying to run a simple text search, no video, nothing else, just get to Google. When the problem kicks in it's often so bad I simply can't use google for a few hours. Comcast is ass and this is only more fuel for switching our house to FiOS.
Slaps forehead. If getting to an arbitrary level cap is somehow a competitive advantage then ouch on the world in general. And even more ouch to the next poster for comparing the skill required to be a professional baseball player with the grinding tedium that is WoW and so many other MMORPGs. Brain numbing dedication to a cause should never be equated with actual skill or talent.
You know if you take out meat packing and put torture back in it paints probably a disturbingly accurate picture of the CIA as a "torture" company.