Just to take the contrary position: Say you were to put your money into a bank, and it turned out the bank's preferred method of security is to leave the money in piles out on the floor. Obviously, it gets stolen. While in the strictest sense, it's a case of one person committing one crime, only a fool would say the bank was not partially at fault, since their policies made the theft so attractive.
An extreme case to be sure, but I wanted to illustrate the point. A business has to take reasonable safeguards for their product *AND* make sure they have a viable business model. When the entire world is clamoring for lower prices on music\movies, with the customers being fully aware that these products can be obtained far more cheaply (or for free), then the media conglomerates are inviting piracy by refusing to respond to the market.
And that's what it all boils down to. The world is moving towards digital distribution, and the media companies are doing everything in their power to try to stop that from happening. They are refusing to update their business model for a new generation. This SHOULD be death for a company. Instead, they have grown so large that they simply attempt to outlaw the new technology that threatens their 1950s mentality.
Now, personally I think pirates who *profit* off their wares are scum that deserve to be locked up. BUT, that does not mean that the media companies are in any way blameless. The world is changing; they refuse to - and this is the result.
In my experience, most people who are zealous fans of the book (myself included, I'll add, for the sake of removing any pretext of impartiality) are ones who read it when they themselves were children. If not quite as young as Ender, at least in their early teens. I think it's on that level that the themes of the book really resonate. Ender's manipulation by his elders being the major one, of course, but also in the subplots of Val and Peter. His psychological dissection of Peter, for example, was excellent and gave quite a bit of insight to anyone who'd ever been bullied by someone like him. (this is in contrast to the chariacture Peter became by the end of the Ender Saga)
Also, and I'm reaching a bit further here, Ender's Game first came out JUST as computer networks starting coming to the fore. I would suggest that, at least as much as Neuromancer, it influenced the way people, especially younger readers, thought about the potential power of networks. At the time I read it (early 90s) I was heavily involved in online bulletin boards myself, and even more than Ender's story, the Val\Peter subplot rang true with everything I was doing online. I was not, of course, actually influencing the course of governments - but I was influential in a smaller circle none the less. I've often wondered how many people who would later turn into internet demagogues got their inspiration from Ender's Game.
The original Ender's Game book has more than enough material in it to support a movie. (as someone else commented, the original Ender's War short story alone could make for a movie) I don't know why they're roping Ender's Shadow into this UNLESS someone in the studio doesn't trust them to be able to adapt the book and make it work. Perhaps they realize a writer accustomed to writing spectacles is probably not going to be that good with detailed character work. Or perhaps they fear that they won't find an actor who'll be able to capture Ender and make his story, alone, compelling enough. Either way, I see the inclusion of Shadow as a way for them to be lazy. Instead of focusing on the character of Ender, they can have a half-dozen running subplots and keep the audience "entertained" that way. My hopes for this project have definitely sunk a couple notches.
Since the Shadow books are told from Bean's point of view, of course he'll be critical of Ender's actions. I thought the entire point of Shadow was that, while Bean was technically smarter and more competent, he utterly lacked the people skills necessary to get the job done. Ender succeeded for the reason he was selected in the first place - his combination of Peter's ruthlessness AND Val's empathy. He had to be *balanced* in these things to win, and Bean would have failed in the end just as Val or Peter would have. What I took away from the book was that it emphasized even more Ender's flawed humanity and how, ultimately, those flaws were needed instead of simple machine-like perfection.
Don't forget, BTW, that while Bean had awesome deductive powers, he could also get off on wildly incorrect tangents precisely because he was too self-reliant. Unwilling to really trust any source outside of his own head, he lacked any real "reality check," and that too would have likely proven fatal had he been the child chosen.
(don't take this as uncritical praise of Card, BTW. He seems to have a long history of taking a good idea and then running it deep into the ground. I was disappointed in Shadow Puppets and, while I haven't read Shadow of the Giant yet, I have a sinking feeling that he'll end up torpedoing the series by the end, just as he did the "Ender Saga")
You can't pin Titan AE on Whedon. He was brought in towards the end, basically as a script doctor. Everything witty that made it into the final film was his contribution. (the intelligent guard, Planet Bob, etc) But he didn't have any real creative control over the plot \ characters \ big picture.
Similarly, his Alien Resurrection started out as a pretty good script, which then slowly got turned to crap by Fox "creative decisions," a steadily declining budget, and an insane director. (plus one of the worst decisions in creature design of all time)
Well, he was nice enough not to deliberately target\humiliate me, if that's what you mean. After a little practice, I usually got 2nd place and beat the computer players.
Actually, what makes SSBM brilliant is that, in my opinion, it strikes the absolute best balance between dexterity and button-mashing. You're right... a noobie CAN do pretty well just mashing the buttons. And that's the point. Hell, I learned the game (actually the N64 SSB) while playing against someone who was an absolute God at it. If not for its noob-friendliness, I wouldn't have played more than a few rounds. However, there is a lot of complexity there to be discovered for those who work at it.
This mainly comes from the insanely varied cast of characters. Yes, there are a few "clones," that's pretty much unavoidable. However, no fighting game I've played has allowed for such incredibly different sorts of characters onscreen at once. Get, say, Kirby, Link, Donkey Kong, and Game & Watch in one match, and it's hard to believe they're all part of the same fighting system.
And as far as the unresponsiveness, that I don't get. Were you perhaps only playing very massive characters? Weight \ mass factors heavily into the physics. Characters like Bowser and DK are going to feel very sluggish whereas, say, Fox or Pikachu move much more quickly. And even then, it's a deliberate design element that some moves are slower to activate than others, and require a degree of anticipation to use. This really just adds to the complexity.
I think the telling thing is that Empire was not written nor directed by George Lucas; credit there to Brackett & Kasdan and Kershner respectively.
More than that, Lucas had virtually no input into the creation of ESB at all. He spent the vast majority of the shoot in California, doing Executive Producery stuff, while all the primary filming happened in England. Reportedly, he really disliked a lot of what Kirshner was doing, but was pretty much powerless to stop it. (and these things, of course, we'd later identify as what made ESB good)
If you haven't read it, I'd recommend the book "Empire Building" by Garry Jenkins. It's a rather warts-and-all look at the making the of the trilogy, and it specifically does not deify Lucas, as everything else written on the subject often does.
The Plame case is different for a very important reason: The very act of revealing her name was, itself, a crime. A crime to which the ONLY witnesses were journalists. And because, as defined by our federal laws, that crime was in fact Treason.
In that situation, a journo does not necessarily have the same protections. Imagine, for example, if a journalist accompanied a catburgler on a run, then wrote an article about the crime. Do you seriously believe that both the journo and the burgler could get off scot free, if only the writer claims "protected source?"
Clearly not. It would be insane to suggest otherwise. And it's the same thing in the Plame case.
A few *states* like California have specific laws on the books shielding journos, but there's no Federal law to that effect. It's more a compromise built upon case law - generally, courts respect the journalists' right to protect their sources, but it's NOT an absolute right if the journo is sitting on information vital to a case, which the police have no other way of obtaining.
This Apple \ California case COULD be murkier, since breaking an NDA is a civil infraction, except California has a law on the books specifically shielding journalists in almost all situations. Therefore, THIS Apple case *is* about blogging because, had it been an LA Times writer, Apple would have no case at all. CA Law says they cannot get the information. However, a judge has specifically ruled that the law in question does not apply BECAUSE online webzines are, in his opinion, not actually journalists.
And that's why this ruling is about blogging far more than source protection.
I can vouch for the parent; my fiancee has virtually no stereo perception and functions just fine, even driving.
Humans, really, don't have very good stereo perception at all. You just believe that our depth perception is due to it. But lighting and shadows play AT LEAST as much a role as the binocular vision does. Have you ever noticed when you're driving in the city at night, all lights \ billboards \ etc past about 20 meters out don't really have much depth to them? There ya go. (exact distance depending on your acuity, but still, you can really tell the limits of our vision at night)
Absolutely. I'm glad I'm not the only person who sees this.
Your average consumer does NOT care about "higher resolution." At least not by itself.
DVD was so successful because it was an evolution beyond VHS is pretty much every way possible. Better picture, better sound, more convenient, easier-to-use, and of course, Extras.
Here, what do the HD formats really give you? Better picture. That's it. Oh, and I suppose the ability to watch Return of the King without having to disc swap, but that's not a huge draw either. And having just shelled out quite a lot of money over the last few years upgrading their video collection to DVD, the average member of the public is not going to be willing to do it again just for the sake of having versions of the movies that (theoretically) will look better on a really expensive TV that they neither have nor can afford.
I think you're deliberately oversimplifying, but in case you're not, the short version is that most of them would certainly LIKE to be getting royalties from all that file-sharing, but most don't consider it to actually be *hurting* them in a significant way.
IE, they're not believing the RIAA crap that 1,000 downloads actually equates to 1,000 lost sales.
It gets better. The thing was created over the course of more than 2 years. The artwork and programming in the early chapters seems clunky, especially today when cinematic Flash animations are pretty standard. As the series went on, it got increasingly better, and the second half is pretty much non-stop excellence. The biggest problem is it takes too long to get going. The first half of the series really should have only been the first third. Ultimately, though, it's quite rewarding if you have the patience to get through the early episodes.
You know, I've decided all of these "anti piracy" measures have started actually affecting how corporate minds think in places like Microsoft and the RIAA. They're looking at piracy like the US government seems to look at terrorism. There are X pirates out there, and if we can just make them stop, then everything will be hunky-dory and sales will increase a thousandfold.
This, of course, is nonsense.
They are asking "How can we stop piracy?" when what they NEED to be asking is "How can we increase sales?" These aren't equivilent questions in the least, but they seem to believe they are. We all read that story about piracy in Russia. If a single $15 CD costs approximately 1/4 of an average citizen's weekly pay there, there is simply no way in hell they're going to be paying $200 for MS Office. EVER. Doesn't matter how frigging cheap you make the computers, even if you give them away in very large cereal boxes, the people are NOT going to spend half their month's paycheck on a piece of software.
This will not hold true in ANY scenario. Ballmer & Friends appear to believe that if they eliminate piracy, copies of Office will fly off the shelves. Even if they did manage to make a copy of Office which was 100% unpiratable (for the sake of argument), that wouldn't spur sales any. The people would just start pirating some other piece of software, or use OOo.
The *only* rational solution to the problem is to drop software prices. The ONLY one. No other solution has the potential to actually increase software sales. (which certainly should be their goal, unless they've given up on actual profit in their eternal search for scapegoats) Yet that's the one measure Ballmer says they will NOT implement.
Interesting, huh?
My theory, incidentally, is that Microsoft is terrified of these hypothetical localized copies of their software leaking into the mainstream and selling at a discount. That's why their cheap XP-lite is so crippled. It doesn't HAVE to be, but they're so protective of their market share that they're unwilling to risk it in any way, even at the potential benefit of even more markets.
Either that or, as I said, they've become so focused on pirates that they've forgotten to actually do business in the meantime.
Yes, but in theory, merely filing first isn't proof that an idea is unobvious. It just means you're the first person to happen to come across and solve a certain problem. When LCDs first came out, it was inevitable that folks would want to make them brighter. If everyone stumbles upon the same basic solution, then that DOES mean the solution was obvious - the patenter was merely the first to find an obvious thing. That doesn't make it patent-worthy.
In other words: A) Figuring out how to make an LCD screen: pretty unobvious.
B)Thinking to stick a mirror behind it to increase light going outwards: Very obvious.
(yes, I know it's more complex than that, but it serves as an example)
I thought one of the requirements to be a valid patent is to be unobvious. Now, if, in the time from when they applied for the patent until now, THAT many companies have independently come up with the same basic solution as was patented... doesn't that by simple definition mean that the solution is, in fact, QUITE obvious?
It seems to me that aspect alone should defeat most "submarine" patents. Unless you can prove that they knowingly stole your idea, the scope of the lawsuit should automatically invalidate your patent.
But then, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm foolish enough to attempt to hold government bodies up to standards of common sense...
1) From a global perspective, the best outcome is a maximization of jobs and real wages.
And how many people ACTUALLY look from a global perspective? Sure, it's NICE to think that one day all economic barriers will be broken down - but there is NO ONE truly working towards it. Governments are by nature protectionist, and corporations don't give a damn about anything about selling the most widgets at the highest prices - which means buying labor cheap and then selling the gagets to richer countries. The idea that we can deliberately set about equalizing the money flow is laughable. It'll happen, eventually, over a long time. And not sooner.
2)If we were to restrict outsourcing of labor, other countries will may complain to the WTO resulting in sanctions.
I hate to ask this, but sanctions on WHAT? If they're so poor that it's attractive to offshore jobs to them, they probably aren't producing anything we need that badly.
And beyond that, even the WTO isn't so far gone as to say "Rich countries MUST export jobs to poor ones!" Products, yes; jobs, no.
3) Some companies need outsourcing to survive
Then they have already failed. If there is no way to improve the bottom line other than to slash payrolls, they're in deep trouble and almost certain to fall anyway.
Ok. Businesses are constantly in competition. They're all striving to produce (theoretically) better products at lower prices. This causes competition, the best product wins, the consumers win, blah blah rah rah.
Suddenly, globalization cheerleaders are saying that businesses HAVE to be allowed to ship jobs off to overseas countries because if they can manufacture their widgets for pennies on the dollar, that results in lower product prices and more consumer spending, etc etc.
And nevermind all the people that get laid off in the process.
So why the assumption that suddenly companies have to be able to shaft their workers if they want to stay competitive? Virtually all the history of manufacturing in the world is the history of innovative PROCESSES. From the printing press, to Henry Ford's assembly line, to Wal-Mart's inventory tracking. One company comes up with a really great new way of doing business, other companies in other fields pick up on it, and everybody REALLY wins.
It seems to me that allowing companies to outsource and offshore and cut wages whenever they please is a cheat. It's a bandage. No one learns anything, no new processes are invented, there is no ACTUAL progress.
There's just a competition to see who can stream the most money into the most poor countries, often, at the same time, propping up repressive governments *cough*china*cough* that are responsible for the huge poverty (and ergo, low manufacturing costs) in the first place.
For this reason, I have no problem with so-called "protectionist" policies at all. Instead of allowing business to take the quick, easy, and ultimately destructive path, they have to actually INNOVATE - as they have so many times in the past - and come up with new ways of doing business.
THAT, to my mind, is putting your faith in business.
Otherwise it's just allowing them to find creative new ways to reinvent feudalism.
I'm not even going to bother bitching about the Anakin thing. There's no point. But, I have found this page, which purports to show most of the changes in the DVD. (although, oddly, it DOESN'T show the new Anakin)
I just can't get worked up over this one. I mean, for gods' sake, it has MSNBC as part of the name, the branding, and even the URL! I have a hard time believing very many people would be so dense as to expect it to NOT favor MSNBC articles - that would be roughly like tuning into FOXNews in hopes of catching recaps of CNN.
Slashdot Mirror
An extreme case to be sure, but I wanted to illustrate the point. A business has to take reasonable safeguards for their product *AND* make sure they have a viable business model. When the entire world is clamoring for lower prices on music\movies, with the customers being fully aware that these products can be obtained far more cheaply (or for free), then the media conglomerates are inviting piracy by refusing to respond to the market.
And that's what it all boils down to. The world is moving towards digital distribution, and the media companies are doing everything in their power to try to stop that from happening. They are refusing to update their business model for a new generation. This SHOULD be death for a company. Instead, they have grown so large that they simply attempt to outlaw the new technology that threatens their 1950s mentality.
Now, personally I think pirates who *profit* off their wares are scum that deserve to be locked up. BUT, that does not mean that the media companies are in any way blameless. The world is changing; they refuse to - and this is the result.
Also, and I'm reaching a bit further here, Ender's Game first came out JUST as computer networks starting coming to the fore. I would suggest that, at least as much as Neuromancer, it influenced the way people, especially younger readers, thought about the potential power of networks. At the time I read it (early 90s) I was heavily involved in online bulletin boards myself, and even more than Ender's story, the Val\Peter subplot rang true with everything I was doing online. I was not, of course, actually influencing the course of governments - but I was influential in a smaller circle none the less. I've often wondered how many people who would later turn into internet demagogues got their inspiration from Ender's Game.
The original Ender's Game book has more than enough material in it to support a movie. (as someone else commented, the original Ender's War short story alone could make for a movie) I don't know why they're roping Ender's Shadow into this UNLESS someone in the studio doesn't trust them to be able to adapt the book and make it work. Perhaps they realize a writer accustomed to writing spectacles is probably not going to be that good with detailed character work. Or perhaps they fear that they won't find an actor who'll be able to capture Ender and make his story, alone, compelling enough. Either way, I see the inclusion of Shadow as a way for them to be lazy. Instead of focusing on the character of Ender, they can have a half-dozen running subplots and keep the audience "entertained" that way. My hopes for this project have definitely sunk a couple notches.
Don't forget, BTW, that while Bean had awesome deductive powers, he could also get off on wildly incorrect tangents precisely because he was too self-reliant. Unwilling to really trust any source outside of his own head, he lacked any real "reality check," and that too would have likely proven fatal had he been the child chosen.
(don't take this as uncritical praise of Card, BTW. He seems to have a long history of taking a good idea and then running it deep into the ground. I was disappointed in Shadow Puppets and, while I haven't read Shadow of the Giant yet, I have a sinking feeling that he'll end up torpedoing the series by the end, just as he did the "Ender Saga")
Similarly, his Alien Resurrection started out as a pretty good script, which then slowly got turned to crap by Fox "creative decisions," a steadily declining budget, and an insane director. (plus one of the worst decisions in creature design of all time)
Well, he was nice enough not to deliberately target\humiliate me, if that's what you mean. After a little practice, I usually got 2nd place and beat the computer players.
This mainly comes from the insanely varied cast of characters. Yes, there are a few "clones," that's pretty much unavoidable. However, no fighting game I've played has allowed for such incredibly different sorts of characters onscreen at once. Get, say, Kirby, Link, Donkey Kong, and Game & Watch in one match, and it's hard to believe they're all part of the same fighting system.
And as far as the unresponsiveness, that I don't get. Were you perhaps only playing very massive characters? Weight \ mass factors heavily into the physics. Characters like Bowser and DK are going to feel very sluggish whereas, say, Fox or Pikachu move much more quickly. And even then, it's a deliberate design element that some moves are slower to activate than others, and require a degree of anticipation to use. This really just adds to the complexity.
More than that, Lucas had virtually no input into the creation of ESB at all. He spent the vast majority of the shoot in California, doing Executive Producery stuff, while all the primary filming happened in England. Reportedly, he really disliked a lot of what Kirshner was doing, but was pretty much powerless to stop it. (and these things, of course, we'd later identify as what made ESB good)
If you haven't read it, I'd recommend the book "Empire Building" by Garry Jenkins. It's a rather warts-and-all look at the making the of the trilogy, and it specifically does not deify Lucas, as everything else written on the subject often does.
Brilliant, you've made my day. Thanks a bunch!
In that situation, a journo does not necessarily have the same protections. Imagine, for example, if a journalist accompanied a catburgler on a run, then wrote an article about the crime. Do you seriously believe that both the journo and the burgler could get off scot free, if only the writer claims "protected source?"
Clearly not. It would be insane to suggest otherwise. And it's the same thing in the Plame case.
A few *states* like California have specific laws on the books shielding journos, but there's no Federal law to that effect. It's more a compromise built upon case law - generally, courts respect the journalists' right to protect their sources, but it's NOT an absolute right if the journo is sitting on information vital to a case, which the police have no other way of obtaining.
This Apple \ California case COULD be murkier, since breaking an NDA is a civil infraction, except California has a law on the books specifically shielding journalists in almost all situations. Therefore, THIS Apple case *is* about blogging because, had it been an LA Times writer, Apple would have no case at all. CA Law says they cannot get the information. However, a judge has specifically ruled that the law in question does not apply BECAUSE online webzines are, in his opinion, not actually journalists.
And that's why this ruling is about blogging far more than source protection.
Humans, really, don't have very good stereo perception at all. You just believe that our depth perception is due to it. But lighting and shadows play AT LEAST as much a role as the binocular vision does. Have you ever noticed when you're driving in the city at night, all lights \ billboards \ etc past about 20 meters out don't really have much depth to them? There ya go. (exact distance depending on your acuity, but still, you can really tell the limits of our vision at night)
Your average consumer does NOT care about "higher resolution." At least not by itself.
DVD was so successful because it was an evolution beyond VHS is pretty much every way possible. Better picture, better sound, more convenient, easier-to-use, and of course, Extras.
Here, what do the HD formats really give you? Better picture. That's it. Oh, and I suppose the ability to watch Return of the King without having to disc swap, but that's not a huge draw either. And having just shelled out quite a lot of money over the last few years upgrading their video collection to DVD, the average member of the public is not going to be willing to do it again just for the sake of having versions of the movies that (theoretically) will look better on a really expensive TV that they neither have nor can afford.
IE, they're not believing the RIAA crap that 1,000 downloads actually equates to 1,000 lost sales.
It gets better. The thing was created over the course of more than 2 years. The artwork and programming in the early chapters seems clunky, especially today when cinematic Flash animations are pretty standard. As the series went on, it got increasingly better, and the second half is pretty much non-stop excellence. The biggest problem is it takes too long to get going. The first half of the series really should have only been the first third. Ultimately, though, it's quite rewarding if you have the patience to get through the early episodes.
This, of course, is nonsense.
They are asking "How can we stop piracy?" when what they NEED to be asking is "How can we increase sales?" These aren't equivilent questions in the least, but they seem to believe they are. We all read that story about piracy in Russia. If a single $15 CD costs approximately 1/4 of an average citizen's weekly pay there, there is simply no way in hell they're going to be paying $200 for MS Office. EVER. Doesn't matter how frigging cheap you make the computers, even if you give them away in very large cereal boxes, the people are NOT going to spend half their month's paycheck on a piece of software.
This will not hold true in ANY scenario. Ballmer & Friends appear to believe that if they eliminate piracy, copies of Office will fly off the shelves. Even if they did manage to make a copy of Office which was 100% unpiratable (for the sake of argument), that wouldn't spur sales any. The people would just start pirating some other piece of software, or use OOo.
The *only* rational solution to the problem is to drop software prices. The ONLY one. No other solution has the potential to actually increase software sales. (which certainly should be their goal, unless they've given up on actual profit in their eternal search for scapegoats) Yet that's the one measure Ballmer says they will NOT implement.
Interesting, huh?
My theory, incidentally, is that Microsoft is terrified of these hypothetical localized copies of their software leaking into the mainstream and selling at a discount. That's why their cheap XP-lite is so crippled. It doesn't HAVE to be, but they're so protective of their market share that they're unwilling to risk it in any way, even at the potential benefit of even more markets.
Either that or, as I said, they've become so focused on pirates that they've forgotten to actually do business in the meantime.
In other words: A) Figuring out how to make an LCD screen: pretty unobvious.
B)Thinking to stick a mirror behind it to increase light going outwards: Very obvious.
(yes, I know it's more complex than that, but it serves as an example)
It seems to me that aspect alone should defeat most "submarine" patents. Unless you can prove that they knowingly stole your idea, the scope of the lawsuit should automatically invalidate your patent.
But then, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm foolish enough to attempt to hold government bodies up to standards of common sense...
Exactly. And if the catastrophe is so bad THAT won't help me, then I probably don't want to live through it.
A copy of the Bible, a copy of the Koran, tarot cards, a large pentacle, a feng shui chart, and several dozen pairs of underwear.
And how many people ACTUALLY look from a global perspective? Sure, it's NICE to think that one day all economic barriers will be broken down - but there is NO ONE truly working towards it. Governments are by nature protectionist, and corporations don't give a damn about anything about selling the most widgets at the highest prices - which means buying labor cheap and then selling the gagets to richer countries. The idea that we can deliberately set about equalizing the money flow is laughable. It'll happen, eventually, over a long time. And not sooner.
2)If we were to restrict outsourcing of labor, other countries will may complain to the WTO resulting in sanctions.
I hate to ask this, but sanctions on WHAT? If they're so poor that it's attractive to offshore jobs to them, they probably aren't producing anything we need that badly.
And beyond that, even the WTO isn't so far gone as to say "Rich countries MUST export jobs to poor ones!" Products, yes; jobs, no.
3) Some companies need outsourcing to survive
Then they have already failed. If there is no way to improve the bottom line other than to slash payrolls, they're in deep trouble and almost certain to fall anyway.
Suddenly, globalization cheerleaders are saying that businesses HAVE to be allowed to ship jobs off to overseas countries because if they can manufacture their widgets for pennies on the dollar, that results in lower product prices and more consumer spending, etc etc.
And nevermind all the people that get laid off in the process.
So why the assumption that suddenly companies have to be able to shaft their workers if they want to stay competitive? Virtually all the history of manufacturing in the world is the history of innovative PROCESSES. From the printing press, to Henry Ford's assembly line, to Wal-Mart's inventory tracking. One company comes up with a really great new way of doing business, other companies in other fields pick up on it, and everybody REALLY wins.
It seems to me that allowing companies to outsource and offshore and cut wages whenever they please is a cheat. It's a bandage. No one learns anything, no new processes are invented, there is no ACTUAL progress.
There's just a competition to see who can stream the most money into the most poor countries, often, at the same time, propping up repressive governments *cough*china*cough* that are responsible for the huge poverty (and ergo, low manufacturing costs) in the first place.
For this reason, I have no problem with so-called "protectionist" policies at all. Instead of allowing business to take the quick, easy, and ultimately destructive path, they have to actually INNOVATE - as they have so many times in the past - and come up with new ways of doing business. THAT, to my mind, is putting your faith in business.
Otherwise it's just allowing them to find creative new ways to reinvent feudalism.
http://perso.club-internet.fr/willow/Index.html
I wasn't sure how seriously to take it, but it seems to be corroborated by the article. (talking about having a better CG Jabba in ANH)
Not to mention, making it "release and forget?" Yay! Invincible autonomous robot predators! WHEEEE!
To quoth Jeff Goldblum: This is the worst idea in a long, sad history of bad ideas.
I just can't get worked up over this one. I mean, for gods' sake, it has MSNBC as part of the name, the branding, and even the URL! I have a hard time believing very many people would be so dense as to expect it to NOT favor MSNBC articles - that would be roughly like tuning into FOXNews in hopes of catching recaps of CNN.
And if you ban that, I'll just lay off some of my mid-level useless workers.
And if you try to ban THAT, you are way beyond what any judge could reasonably approve.