I guess with all of the concerns about scoliosis in schools from kids carrying an outrageous number of books around with them that this might be a good idea. Hopefully the schoolls are trying for bottom of the line pieces who can pretty much run acrobat reader and works (you know spreadsheets and word processing). Really these things have little value beyond slightly more functional e-books.
Being that I was in middle school about six years ago, I can still recall that we didn't really do all that much that was very computer intensive. Most people tended to be physcially awkward (lots of tripping) and a fraile piece of equipment, especially an expensive and fragile piece of equipment is probalby not the best of ideas. Of course, if bully McJerk comes up to you and throws your bag on the ground before pounding the stuffing out of you for your lunch money, then your laptop will suffer a lot more than some textbooks will.
Again, I see this as a nice idea with a few flaws, but essentially it's good to be getting away from 100lbs children carrying 200lbs of books.
Well, zero tolerance. The thing here is that to an awful lot of people, and especially those who make the laws, hacking is hacking is hacking, who cares what someone says they were doing it for.
I can realy understand how someone could consider that they're doing a service for admins and all of that, but the point is that you are still breaking into a system and then turning around and saying, "hey, this is a security hole, you should fix it" is kind of like G. Guido coming down to your house, breaking in through a window with a golf-club and then saying, "Hey, I can break into your house, better listen to me or I'll do it again."
I'm sure that Adrian has some noble goals, but fundamentally when a company decides that they don't like people creeping into their system and then presses charages against those who do, it's their right to feel that their security was violated. Good luck to him really, but there are other ways you can help people protect their network security than by breaking into them.
There's probably some system where you can assign key words to your files and then throw them all around and just have quick search things, kind of like on Kazaa or whatever. You know, just have a field of possilbe searches and click on one, it brings up anyting with a keyword that matches.
Any way tha tyou do it things are going to take up more time. I really odn't save much e-mail, but you could probably just change the file name to add whatever thing you want it to show up with and use search protacols for it.
Crusing around the ESA's website was a bit of a joy trying to find their poll data. Specifically I was looking for where they obtained their information from, was it a random sampling. The only poll data that I could find (http://www.theesa.com/pressroom.html) said that quote...
The annual research was conducted by the Services Division of Ipsos-INsight for the IDSA (Interactive Digital Software Association). The study is the most in-depth and targeted survey of its kind, gathering data from more than 1,350 nationally representative households that have been identified as owning either or both a video game console or a personal computer used to run entertainment software>
At midnight that's the most indepth into the workings of this survey that we'll get. I would have to say that as far as measuring the appeal of games to women, it needs to be compared to actual population statistics in order to have any relevance.
The data is probably based on online user surveys or some other such nonsense. This didn't seem to be a poll based on the purchase of the game, it was based on actual game-play. So it was probably a form sent out to the registrant of a random set of games, someone should look into this.
So let's say that the average female lifespan is about 78. And women make up about 51% of the population, now, when comparing a group from 6-17 (11 years) with a group that ranges over about 60 years, doesn't really seem like the basis of any fair extrapolation. In all reality this is really a construction by someone to get across an idea that they have and make it appear to be an objective fact.
In addition, I really can't recall how often 6-10 year olds play video games, it may just be that I really don't know any, but I don't think it can be that many, you're primary market (especially the ones your pumping the M rated games to) would be about 12-17 or so.
Actually reading the article reveals that the answer to the title question would be a negative, as when you compare similar age groupings, boys still dominate the consumption and play areas. In the 6-17 range boys are doing 9% more gaming than girls and in the 18+ range, boys are doing 12% more gaming than women.
The lead of the article is Challenging the stereotype that video gaming is the domain of teenage boys, an industry group on Tuesday reported that more women over 18 than young boys are playing games and the average age of players has risen to 29. Now, let's make a logical conclusion, the United States of America has a population of 18+ that far exceeds the 6-17 range, thanks in part to the baby boom and the fact that the secondary boom (which was more in spending than in population) is now moving into the 18+ range.
The survey was compiled from gamer data, not from the general population of the United States. You are taking a section of the population (gamers) and seperating them into four units (women and men, over and under 18) and then comparing two dissimilar segments (in relation to size) and trying to draw a conclusion.
All right, let me be coherent for a second. Essentially what I'm trying to say is that the article is stating the obvious that out of the whole, a larger group will make up a greater percentage. What they needed to do was say, We poled 242 kids under 18, now 220 of those are boys, that's right 91% of gamers under 18 are boys. Now, we polled 806 adults, 3 times the number of kids that we polled. Now, the poll seems to have some mathematical problems based on it's 3% error (because 21+26+38+12 equals 97) and when we factor in the percentages for adults we get that out of the total there were 273 women (rounded up) and 377 men (rounded down), added together this is 650. In this group, 58% of gamers are men and 42% are women, almost a 20 point disparity. Overall men make up 66% of the gaming population.
Now, throw this all out because this survey is trash in regards to following an actual trend as to what gender is growing in game consumption. A real survey would need to be truly blind and poll even non-games to get a good sense of what is going on and see the actual percentages of the entire population which has a larger game following per capita. It's far too late to makes sense.
This is another bit of that gray goo syndrome, to think that little tiny robots can take apart molecules or atoms and rebuild them as something totally different. Apparently they've seen a few too many bad movies and didn't stay awake long enough in physics class, because it is' awfully hard to move around atoms with any precision at all.
I'm babbling now and I'm going to stop. Like any sort of technology it's going to have a few bugs in the beginning, but it's doubtful they'll eat the planet and turn it into a lump of aluminum.
All right, since when are we all so sick that the first things people think about when we talk about a kid's toy are the ways we can subvert it to our lecherous and or insane desires.
I remember, back when I was a kid, the best thing we had in talking things was the Jurrasic Park playset, all it would say for five days was, "Jurrasic Park Compound Secured" and then a light would flash. God damned, I barely even got new toys, I just got a bunch of modeling clay and pretended that they were new toys. Parents, I urge you, modeling clay is cheap (but a little messy) and it lets your children express their creativity. Don't just buy them a toy because it can do your parenting for you (and don't use television or computers for the same thing) because that's how the evil robots will take over the planet.
On a more serious note, I think that interactive toys are a nice touch, but I always thought that the point of getting toys was to make up your own adventures and envision how everything played out with a physical aid and your imagination. And yes, when I was younger (okay, like seven years ago) I did play with sticks and dirt, it's good stuff.
And to mention a little off topic thing, stellar SAT scores don't get you in everywhere, trust me on this one. Knowing a lot of people and having money on the otherhand, works wonders in the US system.
Yeah, as a US student who applied to several schools, McGill was my very top choice, but since I didn't get in I ended up deciding for UMASS Amherst anyhow since I didn't want to be saddled with a huge amount of debt for an education I could get on the cheap. Plus going to school in Canada (beyond being cheaper, like a little more than what I'm paying cheaper) also makes it easier to avoid fighting in world war III on the side of the Axis of Weasels.
Yeah, it is nice to have a balance in government between one group and another, that way the whack jobs in one group can't force the whack jobs in another to do anything they don't want to.
The biggest problem that I ever found was that the US constitution is "We the people hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by god with certain inalienable rights" those of life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. But then again we only apply it to Americans and other white first world nationals, despite the fact that the clear intention is for all human beings. Holding people without trials and calling enemey soldiers (despite the level of douchebaggery they might have been involved in during Afghanistan, Taliban fighters were still soldiers for a government that the US gave a bunch of money to for the 'War on Drugs', I mean, we called Nazi soldiers what they were even though they were massacring everyone who wasn't a white person of germanic descent left and right) enemy combatants just so you don't have to treat them like human beings.
That kind of treatment only makes us stoop down to their level. After all, just because we don't hitnk that they're deserving of inalienable rights doesn't mean that we're right, after all the Taliban didn't think that women had any rights and look where that got them.{end rant)
My biggest problem with game journalism is when these rags go on to say that a certain game is the next best thing since sliced bread. We all recall Daikatana, don't we, yeah, that was supposed to be the greatest thing ever, and when it came out eighty-five years later, it wasn't even a half-way decent game for the time they had started it at.
My criticism about game journalism is the same that I have about other entertainment journalism, 90% of it is whoring out to get to talk to famous people, get into cool places, and get free stuff. Seriously, any game can be someone's game of the year, does that mean that it's any good, no. I just want to see people say, this is what game X is. The controls work like this, and the feel of the game is like this... Don't hype it to me, don't say that Casino Tycoon is the best videogame ever, because if it sucks (and it did) then you just look like a slut. Yes, have passion for what you're writing about, but try to remember that people aren't reading this to hear you pimp something out, or to slash through your malodorous prose. They're reading your rag so that they can figure out what they might want to sink $60 into for the month.
That's because the people who did the program probably find Angelina Jolie much more attractive. It's good that those of us who can spell have gotten beyond phrenology, then again since when has the government ever cared about using psuedo-science to scare people. You could just tell someone that you have a computer program that reverse engineers (coment to earlier comment), the shape and form of their skull and then uses 'state of the art' (in 1844) phrenological techniques to determine whether or not they have a murderous temperment. This could be like the next lie detector, except you don't even have to posses any actual equipment just a few nice x-rays of some skulls.
Seriously, the only technology that helps the government overstep its bounds is technology that's given some sort of mythic power by the pop culture to doing something that is in all reality just a load of bull. The best way to keep our privacy is to stop talking about it on these boards and talk to the people on the street who keep saying that they'd feel safer from terrorist threats if the government could know more about us than ourselves. Come on folks, let's get out there and initiate voter referendums to reinforce actual democratic ideals, like free speech, and the ability to whack off without the government knowing the rough mass of your ejaculate (okay, that was way too far, I apologize).
The first poor thing is that the admin won't be uncomfortalbe with all of his people being spied on (let alone all of the end users that threaten him with death).
The second is the assumption that the Admin is unaware that a cracked copy of software is being used, seriously all of this stuff costs well into the ridiculous range and there are more than a few companies who just say to hell with it all and let's just pretend like our lone copy is a site lease. Then they have to go through all sorts of trouble like pretending they care and making sure it doesn't happen the next time around.
Yeah, because being able to reconstruct what someone looked like from using only the skull would so help people invade your privacy. You know, if that skull that you have sitting on your desktop is really of your grandmother like you claim. Really, this is probably the most ridiculous idea that I've ever heard. The only way this can be used is if they have a skull, and then the only application is for identification, for you know, terrible airline tragedies where people's skin has been burned all the way off and their teeth knocked out from their skull.
It is really this paranoid conspiracy ideology that demeans from many of the more rational arguments that exist for civil liberties advocates.
IN the little bit of afterword, they mentioned pre-paid creidt cards. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that basically a debit card (pulling from checking or savins or whatever), or just like a normal gift card.
Wow, thanks sister state the obvious, I wouldn't have knonw tha thad I knot been looking at the same page in the dictionary that you had been. The u's were there as part of an affectation by the english court to seem more French (and those not like the serfs). The puritans came across the pond, said, those u's are stupid and promptly got rid of them.
My personal preference for spelling is flavour, colour, honour, etc. not that anyone really cares but if we want to talk about which more closely resembles puritanical english, then we would have to go with color, honor, flavor, because in all senses the u that gets thrown in is simply an affectation from French. If it saves a few milliseconds and bits then by all means.
Did you ever notice who the highest paid people in companies are, people whose salaries frequently equal that of a dozen or so employees (and more)?
Then did you ever notice that while all of these things get outsourced, the corporate management structure doesn't go with it?
What skills do US corporate dictators have that foreign ones do not? I'm sure tha tthe Chinese would be far better at keeping large groups of people disciplined in a hierarchicial order and getting the products out and all of that as their American counterparts.
After all, remeber, nothing is ever really about the bottom line. It's about what's lining the rich guy's pocket.
China has a large and well educated population that is increasingly moving toward High Tech items, because other countires (such as Taiwan) have traditionally dominated these markets and have kept pries rather high. Using cheaper (criminally, but that's editorializing) labor they can bring to market a cheaper product (of similar quality). Heck, even software jobs are moving to south east Asia and the Indian subcontinent, in an airing of Talk of the Nation a few weeks ago, they were discussing the high levels of education and low cost of workers for fields from mechanical engineering, to software design and tech support in foreign countries, especially since the incerasing wiredness of the world and these countries in particular makes it easier (and more cost effective) than ever.
I think that in the next few years there will be an even greater outsourcing of these sorts of projects. India and Bangladesh are typically cheaper markets then China to work in, and we can probably look forward to those countries entering into these markets.
Now for my editorial, because I have to have it (you can stop reading if you'd like). with the US job market as tight as it is right now, it is a major ethical dillema to be outsourcing High paying jobs to countires where the worker that would make $60,000 a year here, makes $5,000 over there. It puts the US economy in grave danger of collapsing in on itself as these lucrative jobs are removed and th emarket has to return to a service and agricultural based economy (the latter of which is becoming a smaller employer but larger business by the year). In all hopes this would see the rise in the standards of living for the average person in China, Micronesia, wherever, but it doesn't seem like the transition would be quick as workers there would have to get it in their heads that they deserrve that amount of money. (To sum, it's like an emerging basketball trend, American players (on the whole) have no actual proficiency with teh sport (though they have a great deal of raw physical talent), and eastern European players do. This means an increasing influx of Eastern European players until they become complacent in their position and the Americans learn to play the game (with little things like passing, and team work)).
Ideally, (and I'm being naive) there is a way to protect American jobs while increasing (or ostensibly increasing) the standard of living in foreign countries. If the US government, or the AMerican consumer, would refuse to allow the sale of (or purchase) goods that were manufactured or generated by workers who were not treated equally to their American counterparts. Of course, in teh drive for cheap stuff there are no rules. [end]
The problem here is that many authors are in similar situations to recording artists, in that they are only seeing a slim percentage of the profits from their labors. The amount of books pushed out is very slim in comparison to the number of CDs sold, and unless you become the next great genre fiction writer (like TOm Clancy, or John Grisham or whatever your fancy is) then you're pretty much out of luck as far as the big millions come.
Put it on top that in the publishing industry books can be returned to the publisher, so the publisher can withold royalties to the author for the longest time stating that they are making sure that the books are not returned en masse causing a massive hit to the house. All the while, the publishing house is building up interest on the royalty payment that was supposed to go to the author.
I seee e-books as a positive solution for the industry; the middlemen are for the most part cut out, and the prospect of returning books is non-existent (after all there are no actual books, only large text files). Now the publisher has no excuse but to pay the author the money owed. Of course, I hate the way e-books work. Recently I read David Copperfield online (as it is easily availible having puhed far beyond copyright date, and even the Penguin Classics are up around ten bucks). I found myself printing out the pages most of the time, so I could carry them around and read them while lying in bed, lying on a couch, and lying in the tub. I suppose I should get an e-book reader, but it still precludes reading in the bath. [This segment brought to you by the commitern for Too Much Information]
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I guess with all of the concerns about scoliosis in schools from kids carrying an outrageous number of books around with them that this might be a good idea. Hopefully the schoolls are trying for bottom of the line pieces who can pretty much run acrobat reader and works (you know spreadsheets and word processing). Really these things have little value beyond slightly more functional e-books.
Being that I was in middle school about six years ago, I can still recall that we didn't really do all that much that was very computer intensive. Most people tended to be physcially awkward (lots of tripping) and a fraile piece of equipment, especially an expensive and fragile piece of equipment is probalby not the best of ideas. Of course, if bully McJerk comes up to you and throws your bag on the ground before pounding the stuffing out of you for your lunch money, then your laptop will suffer a lot more than some textbooks will.
Again, I see this as a nice idea with a few flaws, but essentially it's good to be getting away from 100lbs children carrying 200lbs of books.
Well, zero tolerance. The thing here is that to an awful lot of people, and especially those who make the laws, hacking is hacking is hacking, who cares what someone says they were doing it for.
I can realy understand how someone could consider that they're doing a service for admins and all of that, but the point is that you are still breaking into a system and then turning around and saying, "hey, this is a security hole, you should fix it" is kind of like G. Guido coming down to your house, breaking in through a window with a golf-club and then saying, "Hey, I can break into your house, better listen to me or I'll do it again."
I'm sure that Adrian has some noble goals, but fundamentally when a company decides that they don't like people creeping into their system and then presses charages against those who do, it's their right to feel that their security was violated. Good luck to him really, but there are other ways you can help people protect their network security than by breaking into them.
There's probably some system where you can assign key words to your files and then throw them all around and just have quick search things, kind of like on Kazaa or whatever. You know, just have a field of possilbe searches and click on one, it brings up anyting with a keyword that matches.
Any way tha tyou do it things are going to take up more time. I really odn't save much e-mail, but you could probably just change the file name to add whatever thing you want it to show up with and use search protacols for it.
Yeah that would be http://www.theesa.com/EF2003.pdf
At midnight that's the most indepth into the workings of this survey that we'll get. I would have to say that as far as measuring the appeal of games to women, it needs to be compared to actual population statistics in order to have any relevance.
The data is probably based on online user surveys or some other such nonsense. This didn't seem to be a poll based on the purchase of the game, it was based on actual game-play. So it was probably a form sent out to the registrant of a random set of games, someone should look into this.
This is the worst 'actual research data' that I've ever seen in my life then.
So let's say that the average female lifespan is about 78. And women make up about 51% of the population, now, when comparing a group from 6-17 (11 years) with a group that ranges over about 60 years, doesn't really seem like the basis of any fair extrapolation. In all reality this is really a construction by someone to get across an idea that they have and make it appear to be an objective fact.
In addition, I really can't recall how often 6-10 year olds play video games, it may just be that I really don't know any, but I don't think it can be that many, you're primary market (especially the ones your pumping the M rated games to) would be about 12-17 or so.
Actually reading the article reveals that the answer to the title question would be a negative, as when you compare similar age groupings, boys still dominate the consumption and play areas. In the 6-17 range boys are doing 9% more gaming than girls and in the 18+ range, boys are doing 12% more gaming than women.
The lead of the article is Challenging the stereotype that video gaming is the domain of teenage boys, an industry group on Tuesday reported that more women over 18 than young boys are playing games and the average age of players has risen to 29. Now, let's make a logical conclusion, the United States of America has a population of 18+ that far exceeds the 6-17 range, thanks in part to the baby boom and the fact that the secondary boom (which was more in spending than in population) is now moving into the 18+ range.
The survey was compiled from gamer data, not from the general population of the United States. You are taking a section of the population (gamers) and seperating them into four units (women and men, over and under 18) and then comparing two dissimilar segments (in relation to size) and trying to draw a conclusion.
All right, let me be coherent for a second. Essentially what I'm trying to say is that the article is stating the obvious that out of the whole, a larger group will make up a greater percentage. What they needed to do was say, We poled 242 kids under 18, now 220 of those are boys, that's right 91% of gamers under 18 are boys. Now, we polled 806 adults, 3 times the number of kids that we polled. Now, the poll seems to have some mathematical problems based on it's 3% error (because 21+26+38+12 equals 97) and when we factor in the percentages for adults we get that out of the total there were 273 women (rounded up) and 377 men (rounded down), added together this is 650. In this group, 58% of gamers are men and 42% are women, almost a 20 point disparity. Overall men make up 66% of the gaming population.
Now, throw this all out because this survey is trash in regards to following an actual trend as to what gender is growing in game consumption. A real survey would need to be truly blind and poll even non-games to get a good sense of what is going on and see the actual percentages of the entire population which has a larger game following per capita. It's far too late to makes sense.
This is another bit of that gray goo syndrome, to think that little tiny robots can take apart molecules or atoms and rebuild them as something totally different. Apparently they've seen a few too many bad movies and didn't stay awake long enough in physics class, because it is' awfully hard to move around atoms with any precision at all.
I'm babbling now and I'm going to stop. Like any sort of technology it's going to have a few bugs in the beginning, but it's doubtful they'll eat the planet and turn it into a lump of aluminum.
Hooray for the BBC, god damned do I love free stuff.
No, I love even more when it's paid for by UK taxpayers and an infinetesmally small portion of my donation to public television.
All right, since when are we all so sick that the first things people think about when we talk about a kid's toy are the ways we can subvert it to our lecherous and or insane desires.
I remember, back when I was a kid, the best thing we had in talking things was the Jurrasic Park playset, all it would say for five days was, "Jurrasic Park Compound Secured" and then a light would flash. God damned, I barely even got new toys, I just got a bunch of modeling clay and pretended that they were new toys. Parents, I urge you, modeling clay is cheap (but a little messy) and it lets your children express their creativity. Don't just buy them a toy because it can do your parenting for you (and don't use television or computers for the same thing) because that's how the evil robots will take over the planet.
On a more serious note, I think that interactive toys are a nice touch, but I always thought that the point of getting toys was to make up your own adventures and envision how everything played out with a physical aid and your imagination. And yes, when I was younger (okay, like seven years ago) I did play with sticks and dirt, it's good stuff.
And to mention a little off topic thing, stellar SAT scores don't get you in everywhere, trust me on this one. Knowing a lot of people and having money on the otherhand, works wonders in the US system.
Yeah, as a US student who applied to several schools, McGill was my very top choice, but since I didn't get in I ended up deciding for UMASS Amherst anyhow since I didn't want to be saddled with a huge amount of debt for an education I could get on the cheap. Plus going to school in Canada (beyond being cheaper, like a little more than what I'm paying cheaper) also makes it easier to avoid fighting in world war III on the side of the Axis of Weasels.
Yeah, it is nice to have a balance in government between one group and another, that way the whack jobs in one group can't force the whack jobs in another to do anything they don't want to.
The biggest problem that I ever found was that the US constitution is "We the people hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by god with certain inalienable rights" those of life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. But then again we only apply it to Americans and other white first world nationals, despite the fact that the clear intention is for all human beings. Holding people without trials and calling enemey soldiers (despite the level of douchebaggery they might have been involved in during Afghanistan, Taliban fighters were still soldiers for a government that the US gave a bunch of money to for the 'War on Drugs', I mean, we called Nazi soldiers what they were even though they were massacring everyone who wasn't a white person of germanic descent left and right) enemy combatants just so you don't have to treat them like human beings.
That kind of treatment only makes us stoop down to their level. After all, just because we don't hitnk that they're deserving of inalienable rights doesn't mean that we're right, after all the Taliban didn't think that women had any rights and look where that got them.{end rant)
My biggest problem with game journalism is when these rags go on to say that a certain game is the next best thing since sliced bread. We all recall Daikatana, don't we, yeah, that was supposed to be the greatest thing ever, and when it came out eighty-five years later, it wasn't even a half-way decent game for the time they had started it at.
My criticism about game journalism is the same that I have about other entertainment journalism, 90% of it is whoring out to get to talk to famous people, get into cool places, and get free stuff. Seriously, any game can be someone's game of the year, does that mean that it's any good, no. I just want to see people say, this is what game X is. The controls work like this, and the feel of the game is like this... Don't hype it to me, don't say that Casino Tycoon is the best videogame ever, because if it sucks (and it did) then you just look like a slut. Yes, have passion for what you're writing about, but try to remember that people aren't reading this to hear you pimp something out, or to slash through your malodorous prose. They're reading your rag so that they can figure out what they might want to sink $60 into for the month.
That's because the people who did the program probably find Angelina Jolie much more attractive. It's good that those of us who can spell have gotten beyond phrenology, then again since when has the government ever cared about using psuedo-science to scare people. You could just tell someone that you have a computer program that reverse engineers (coment to earlier comment), the shape and form of their skull and then uses 'state of the art' (in 1844) phrenological techniques to determine whether or not they have a murderous temperment. This could be like the next lie detector, except you don't even have to posses any actual equipment just a few nice x-rays of some skulls.
Seriously, the only technology that helps the government overstep its bounds is technology that's given some sort of mythic power by the pop culture to doing something that is in all reality just a load of bull. The best way to keep our privacy is to stop talking about it on these boards and talk to the people on the street who keep saying that they'd feel safer from terrorist threats if the government could know more about us than ourselves. Come on folks, let's get out there and initiate voter referendums to reinforce actual democratic ideals, like free speech, and the ability to whack off without the government knowing the rough mass of your ejaculate (okay, that was way too far, I apologize).
The first poor thing is that the admin won't be uncomfortalbe with all of his people being spied on (let alone all of the end users that threaten him with death).
The second is the assumption that the Admin is unaware that a cracked copy of software is being used, seriously all of this stuff costs well into the ridiculous range and there are more than a few companies who just say to hell with it all and let's just pretend like our lone copy is a site lease. Then they have to go through all sorts of trouble like pretending they care and making sure it doesn't happen the next time around.
Yeah, because being able to reconstruct what someone looked like from using only the skull would so help people invade your privacy. You know, if that skull that you have sitting on your desktop is really of your grandmother like you claim. Really, this is probably the most ridiculous idea that I've ever heard. The only way this can be used is if they have a skull, and then the only application is for identification, for you know, terrible airline tragedies where people's skin has been burned all the way off and their teeth knocked out from their skull.
It is really this paranoid conspiracy ideology that demeans from many of the more rational arguments that exist for civil liberties advocates.
IN the little bit of afterword, they mentioned pre-paid creidt cards. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that basically a debit card (pulling from checking or savins or whatever), or just like a normal gift card.
Wow, thanks sister state the obvious, I wouldn't have knonw tha thad I knot been looking at the same page in the dictionary that you had been. The u's were there as part of an affectation by the english court to seem more French (and those not like the serfs). The puritans came across the pond, said, those u's are stupid and promptly got rid of them.
My personal preference for spelling is flavour, colour, honour, etc. not that anyone really cares but if we want to talk about which more closely resembles puritanical english, then we would have to go with color, honor, flavor, because in all senses the u that gets thrown in is simply an affectation from French. If it saves a few milliseconds and bits then by all means.
Did you ever notice who the highest paid people in companies are, people whose salaries frequently equal that of a dozen or so employees (and more)?
Then did you ever notice that while all of these things get outsourced, the corporate management structure doesn't go with it?
What skills do US corporate dictators have that foreign ones do not? I'm sure tha tthe Chinese would be far better at keeping large groups of people disciplined in a hierarchicial order and getting the products out and all of that as their American counterparts.
After all, remeber, nothing is ever really about the bottom line. It's about what's lining the rich guy's pocket.
China has a large and well educated population that is increasingly moving toward High Tech items, because other countires (such as Taiwan) have traditionally dominated these markets and have kept pries rather high. Using cheaper (criminally, but that's editorializing) labor they can bring to market a cheaper product (of similar quality). Heck, even software jobs are moving to south east Asia and the Indian subcontinent, in an airing of Talk of the Nation a few weeks ago, they were discussing the high levels of education and low cost of workers for fields from mechanical engineering, to software design and tech support in foreign countries, especially since the incerasing wiredness of the world and these countries in particular makes it easier (and more cost effective) than ever.
I think that in the next few years there will be an even greater outsourcing of these sorts of projects. India and Bangladesh are typically cheaper markets then China to work in, and we can probably look forward to those countries entering into these markets.
Now for my editorial, because I have to have it (you can stop reading if you'd like). with the US job market as tight as it is right now, it is a major ethical dillema to be outsourcing High paying jobs to countires where the worker that would make $60,000 a year here, makes $5,000 over there. It puts the US economy in grave danger of collapsing in on itself as these lucrative jobs are removed and th emarket has to return to a service and agricultural based economy (the latter of which is becoming a smaller employer but larger business by the year). In all hopes this would see the rise in the standards of living for the average person in China, Micronesia, wherever, but it doesn't seem like the transition would be quick as workers there would have to get it in their heads that they deserrve that amount of money. (To sum, it's like an emerging basketball trend, American players (on the whole) have no actual proficiency with teh sport (though they have a great deal of raw physical talent), and eastern European players do. This means an increasing influx of Eastern European players until they become complacent in their position and the Americans learn to play the game (with little things like passing, and team work)).
Ideally, (and I'm being naive) there is a way to protect American jobs while increasing (or ostensibly increasing) the standard of living in foreign countries. If the US government, or the AMerican consumer, would refuse to allow the sale of (or purchase) goods that were manufactured or generated by workers who were not treated equally to their American counterparts. Of course, in teh drive for cheap stuff there are no rules. [end]
I thought it was funny. Then again, that might point out something very much wrong with me.
The problem here is that many authors are in similar situations to recording artists, in that they are only seeing a slim percentage of the profits from their labors. The amount of books pushed out is very slim in comparison to the number of CDs sold, and unless you become the next great genre fiction writer (like TOm Clancy, or John Grisham or whatever your fancy is) then you're pretty much out of luck as far as the big millions come.
Put it on top that in the publishing industry books can be returned to the publisher, so the publisher can withold royalties to the author for the longest time stating that they are making sure that the books are not returned en masse causing a massive hit to the house. All the while, the publishing house is building up interest on the royalty payment that was supposed to go to the author.
I seee e-books as a positive solution for the industry; the middlemen are for the most part cut out, and the prospect of returning books is non-existent (after all there are no actual books, only large text files). Now the publisher has no excuse but to pay the author the money owed. Of course, I hate the way e-books work. Recently I read David Copperfield online (as it is easily availible having puhed far beyond copyright date, and even the Penguin Classics are up around ten bucks). I found myself printing out the pages most of the time, so I could carry them around and read them while lying in bed, lying on a couch, and lying in the tub. I suppose I should get an e-book reader, but it still precludes reading in the bath. [This segment brought to you by the commitern for Too Much Information]