Each Space Shuttle contains more than 34,000 separate tiles, each specifically cut for its own location... this came up when the last shuttle disaster occured.
The first P for me is Principles.
The second is Perspective.
The third one is Passion.
The fourth one is Perseverance.
The fifth -- and these are not necessarily grammatically correct, it's just how I remember them -- is Performance.
The last and probably most important one is People.
And here I thought the six P's of success were Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
Very noble of you indeed. I'm in year 12 as a programmer, and can't wait until I can afford (read: my 3 children are through with college) to become a teacher. I'll probably go the math route, but maybe a computer class by then.
I think anyone who works in a field that has it's basis in classes that are taught in school should consider ending their career with a few years of passing what they learned on to children. There are WAY too many teachers whose sole career is teaching, and have no real world experience. This being said by a guy whose fiance has worked with the local school system for the last 3 years anyway.
I've been a fan of the Madden football games for years.. I played the first one on my AT in CGA. Lately, there hasn't been much change to the games other than frilly add-ons like EA online. With their now exclusive contract with the NFL and this, I can easily say good riddance to a monopolistic company that doesn't seem to care anymore about making great games.
On the flip side, if Ubisoft is going to leave themselves open to a takeover, who are they to complain when it actually happens? I think this is underhanded by EA, but it's perfectly legal. Ubisoft may whine, but has no leg to stand on with regards to a formal complaint.
Just for clarification, you don't have to have a 50.1% or even a 50% stake to claim a takeover. Typically, anything in the 40% or greater range will give you controlling interest, as there usually isn't any one controlling interest with more.
There are quite a few companies out there who are run by a 30%(ish) controlling interest.
It sounds like we're close to the same age. I remember fondly when I got my 2600. You did use your imagination pretty extensively with games like adventure, gunslinger, etc...
Before crappy graphics console games, though, there was the great outdoors, where a folded newspaper hat and a 1x2 piece of wood made you a pirate. You were an archaeologist when you had a ballcap and a flashlight and walked a block or two to a drainage ditch.
So we can scorn all we want about the lack of imagination skills newer games require, but our parents thought the same thing about our atari/intellivision games.
Not to shoot holes in anyone's theory, but not only have I seen an 11 year old, I own one (and an 8, a 9, and a 14 year old). My 11 year old remembers the Mike Tyson ear bite (I just asked him, but am not about to ask him about the rape trials). My 9 year old knows nothing about it... not even who Mike Tyson is.
By 11, kids can be pretty insightful, and their logic skills (and sarcasm skills) are fairly developed. He's finally at an age where I can have real conversations with him, rather than lead him in conversations as in the past.
Haven't you ever heard the phrase "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"?
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go hook my horse to the cart so I can head to the general store for some flour, I have clothes to hand wash and hang to dry, and there's something wrong with my hand-crank well pump.
What stigma? I see diesel chugging 1-ton pick-ups all over the place here!
Ok, humor aside, you're right. The problem, I think, was the crappy attempt by US auto makers at diesel cars in the late 70's early 80's. About the only decent diesel cars I know of that are readily available here are VW and Mercedes made.
As a matter of fact, I'm looking into a Jetta TDI now, as I'm working in downtown Houston again (40 mile commute) and currently I drive a full sized pickup myself.
If anyone has any suggestions for, and experience with, high MPG/MPK cars, I'd love to hear about them.
The typical (I really don't know much about average) margin is pretty high, but it's solely based on sales in numbers. Although a cd costs roughly $4 in hardware, including the j-page, image screening, etc... there's no easy formula to calculate how the other $12 is divied up. For each song, a royalty of $0.058 is paid to the writer(s). The artist stands to make close to $1 per record sale (after paying back all of the label advances).
Since net margin is actually net profit / net revenues, it's still difficult to assume an average. The reason is labels have so many other expenses to pay out. Receptionist, web designers, photographers, etc... But herein lies the rub. Major labels are wasteful. They want to cater recording sessions with extravagent $20K lunches. They want to impress people with large advertisements. They want to keep the competition from signing artists by signing them themselves, only to spend $250K on a cd project and then just shelf it.
The cost of a CD at Best Buy or Walman Marcus could drop substantially if the major labels changed their practice. That amount of waste is completely unnecessary, and only hurts the consumer in the end. A great CD could be produced, stamped, and marketed for $10 per unit in bulk. As a matter of fact, most indies sell for about that price without the benefit of dealing in bulk.
You make sense, but I think a couple of points are missed. The first is this... if I am a talented poet/songwriter (which I'm not, I'm a stringed instrument player), and make my living writing, how am I to feed myself if everyone is getting the music I wrote free? I would have to find a job, taking away from my time devoted to writing, and my music would suffer. Music as a whole, it could be assumed then, would also begin to suffer as more and more people are forced out of the market because they can't sustain themselves in it.
Music isn't made artifically scarce, it's charged a fee to pay all of the people that worked to make it happen (even a few who didn't.. the label execs). The fees may or not be something you're willing to pay, but they are tangible, as the product you get for the fee is something you get to hold onto. However, it's not a necessary product, and you will continue to live a fruitful life without your copy of 50 Cent's latest release.
Now, labels are a different story. Yes, their markup for a product is absurd, and a more reasonable profit margin should be targeted. That being said, it still doesn't make it right to break the law. If you want the system to change, work to change it. Otherwise, continue to "share" files and risk going to jail for 15 years.
Finally.... someone with some sense. That model does exist, albeit in smaller distribution. Indie artists are getting their full compensation, but you have to look for them, because no major label is paying for distribution in BestBuy/Walman Marcus/etc... Software too. My favorite editor for coding is UltraEdit which is shareware. I've paid for three different versions now, and UltraCompare, for a grand total of $120.
The more we, as consumers, can do to promote the underdogs, the better off the model as a whole will be.
If you read the whole thread, then why did you suggest I said it's applicable in 100% or even the majority of cases? All I'm saing is a loss of revenue can be attributed to file sharing. There simply is no arguement for that at all. If only one person, and I think we can all agree that there's one person out there somewhere, who downloads a game or song and would otherwise have paid money for it, then it's a loss of revenue. It's not a diffucult to understand term or scenario.
Again, justify it all you want, just not to me. In the past, you wouldn't have been able to have your own copy without paying for it (before tapes). The fact that you actually have a copy of it, especially to the folks that worked hard to make it in the first place, is a loss of revenue.
Then I don't think you've read the entire thread. What I said was this... if you've copied a song that you never would have bought, you still have a copy of it. That copy would have generated an amount of revenue for the producer of it, who incurred a cost in producing/packing it in the first place. Add the fact that there are a lot of people who download shared songs/movies/programs that would have bought them had they not found a free version.
Having been a victim in both music and software, I strongly disagree with anyone who says "I never would have bought a copy anyway, so having this copy of it didn't cost anyone" is just blowing smoke. The fact that you actually have the copy disproves the idea that you might have spent a whole $1 on iTunes for it. You have a copy. Repeat this to yourself over and over again. You would not have a copy if you hadn't wanted it in the first place. That is a loss of revenue.
With libraries, you don't retain a permanent copy of the original work. There is a convenience factor as well. It's much more convenient for me to pay $50 for the techinical book I need and have it around any time than to check it out once every two weeks to avoid being fined. Not to mention it's difficult, if at all possible, to find new works in a public library.
So I think your analogy is a bit wrong. A copier might be a better one, but copying a book page by page wouldn't be very convenient either. Plus you'd probably pay more for your single "copy" of the book in paper, toner, etc... than if you bought it off the shelf.
The point is there really isn't a good analogy for sharing copyrighted files.
I do realize that Canada has such a tax which I think is wrong. I, however, live and work in the US, as do the songwriters that I know, and can really only speak regarding US laws.
Actually, his comment was "If everyone is alright with file sharing, then why not change the laws to reflect the shifting idealogy that culture shouldn't be locked up?"
And I still don't think public opinion agrees that file sharing should be ok. Mayeb public opinion in our geek community, but not in the rest of the can't-program-the-clock-on-the-vcr world.
You may be right about the future of IP, only time will really tell. I just can't see a capitalist society rolling forward without some protection for IP. However, I do think that copyright laws have been extended beyond reason, and the laws should be changed back to a much shorter period. There is no reason my grandchildren should be reaping benefits for work that I did. If I play my cards right, they can be thankful for a nice inheritance instead.
Actually, MS Virtual PC 2004 is great for that. I use it on my desktop to run 95, 98SE, Me, NT4.0, Server2003, XP Home, and XP Pro. The reason, actually, is just for testing software, but I can call any of those up with it (having installed them as OSs under Virtual PC). I also run RH, Fedora, and Debian, but on another box, as running them under a VPC in Windows is kind of silly.
Bullshit. I got laid off from Sony Records in Nashville because of "revenue losses due to the overwhelming popularity of piracy." Do you think Tony Brown lost any of his income? Not in the least. But I got to live off of unemployment for two months afterwards.
So you admit that our laws, supposedly to protect inventors and creators, aren't even coming close to doing their job?
I wasn't an inventor or creator, just an IT guy. As for the songwriters, I also wouldn't say the laws aren't even coming close to doing their job either. While writers aren't making the money they used to, they are still making some money. And the laws aren't helping much because only a small percentage of file sharers have been fined.
I agree with you completely. If the punishment were harsher, you might have a different opinion regarding speeding. A $100 ticket once in a while may not be much of a deterrent. A points system that will add $1000 a year to your registration might be more of a deterrent. The possibility of spending quality time in prison would be much more of a deterrent.
You have a threshold for what you're willing to sacrifice related to "breaking the law" by speeding. You would probably drive 2 miles under the limit if you knew you would lose your right hand the first time you were caught.
People that get caught sharing copyrighted material know it's wrong, know that the **AA are using every means necessary to stop it, and shouldn't at all be surprised that, when they are caught, the book is thrown at them to set an example.
It's so cliche, but if you can't do the time, then don't do the crime. And certainly don't whine when you get caught doing something you know is wrong. Want to share files legally? Work to change the system first.
The problem is that everyone does not agree that file sharing is ok... and I'm one of them. There are more people murdered every day now, but that doesn't mean the laws should be changed because it seems a larger percentage of poeple think it's ok now.
Laws are not necessarily made to prevent bad behavior, but to prevent behavior that is considered harmful. Murder is an obvious one. But taking software/songs/movies without paying for them is harmful to the people that put it together. And don't think for a minute it's hurting the label/movie executives. It's hurting the few people they're going to lay off when their revenue dips.
I think your assumption that everyone is alright with file sharing is way off, given that not even everyone on/. thinks it's alright.
It doesn't matter if they would have bought it or not. The fact is they are in possession of the song/movie/software. Possession of the song/movie/software is how the companies that provide it earn revenue. So simply by having it, they have bypasses the revenue piece of the puzzle. That is, in technical accounting jargon, attributable to operating loss.
Slashdot Mirror
Each Space Shuttle contains more than 34,000 separate tiles, each specifically cut for its own location... this came up when the last shuttle disaster occured.
The first P for me is Principles.
The second is Perspective.
The third one is Passion.
The fourth one is Perseverance.
The fifth -- and these are not necessarily grammatically correct, it's just how I remember them -- is Performance.
The last and probably most important one is People.
And here I thought the six P's of success were Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
I quit that company. I left to become a teacher
Very noble of you indeed. I'm in year 12 as a programmer, and can't wait until I can afford (read: my 3 children are through with college) to become a teacher. I'll probably go the math route, but maybe a computer class by then.
I think anyone who works in a field that has it's basis in classes that are taught in school should consider ending their career with a few years of passing what they learned on to children. There are WAY too many teachers whose sole career is teaching, and have no real world experience. This being said by a guy whose fiance has worked with the local school system for the last 3 years anyway.
I've been a fan of the Madden football games for years.. I played the first one on my AT in CGA. Lately, there hasn't been much change to the games other than frilly add-ons like EA online. With their now exclusive contract with the NFL and this, I can easily say good riddance to a monopolistic company that doesn't seem to care anymore about making great games.
On the flip side, if Ubisoft is going to leave themselves open to a takeover, who are they to complain when it actually happens? I think this is underhanded by EA, but it's perfectly legal. Ubisoft may whine, but has no leg to stand on with regards to a formal complaint.
Just for clarification, you don't have to have a 50.1% or even a 50% stake to claim a takeover. Typically, anything in the 40% or greater range will give you controlling interest, as there usually isn't any one controlling interest with more.
There are quite a few companies out there who are run by a 30%(ish) controlling interest.
It sounds like we're close to the same age. I remember fondly when I got my 2600. You did use your imagination pretty extensively with games like adventure, gunslinger, etc...
Before crappy graphics console games, though, there was the great outdoors, where a folded newspaper hat and a 1x2 piece of wood made you a pirate. You were an archaeologist when you had a ballcap and a flashlight and walked a block or two to a drainage ditch.
So we can scorn all we want about the lack of imagination skills newer games require, but our parents thought the same thing about our atari/intellivision games.
Not to shoot holes in anyone's theory, but not only have I seen an 11 year old, I own one (and an 8, a 9, and a 14 year old). My 11 year old remembers the Mike Tyson ear bite (I just asked him, but am not about to ask him about the rape trials). My 9 year old knows nothing about it... not even who Mike Tyson is.
By 11, kids can be pretty insightful, and their logic skills (and sarcasm skills) are fairly developed. He's finally at an age where I can have real conversations with him, rather than lead him in conversations as in the past.
Right, it was Chrysler, and it was hailed as the Car of the Future at the time.
Evidently, rather than price, the main roadblock was the pollutants the car emited.
Haven't you ever heard the phrase "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"?
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go hook my horse to the cart so I can head to the general store for some flour, I have clothes to hand wash and hang to dry, and there's something wrong with my hand-crank well pump.
What stigma? I see diesel chugging 1-ton pick-ups all over the place here!
Ok, humor aside, you're right. The problem, I think, was the crappy attempt by US auto makers at diesel cars in the late 70's early 80's. About the only decent diesel cars I know of that are readily available here are VW and Mercedes made.
As a matter of fact, I'm looking into a Jetta TDI now, as I'm working in downtown Houston again (40 mile commute) and currently I drive a full sized pickup myself.
If anyone has any suggestions for, and experience with, high MPG/MPK cars, I'd love to hear about them.
The typical (I really don't know much about average) margin is pretty high, but it's solely based on sales in numbers. Although a cd costs roughly $4 in hardware, including the j-page, image screening, etc... there's no easy formula to calculate how the other $12 is divied up. For each song, a royalty of $0.058 is paid to the writer(s). The artist stands to make close to $1 per record sale (after paying back all of the label advances).
Since net margin is actually net profit / net revenues, it's still difficult to assume an average. The reason is labels have so many other expenses to pay out. Receptionist, web designers, photographers, etc... But herein lies the rub. Major labels are wasteful. They want to cater recording sessions with extravagent $20K lunches. They want to impress people with large advertisements. They want to keep the competition from signing artists by signing them themselves, only to spend $250K on a cd project and then just shelf it.
The cost of a CD at Best Buy or Walman Marcus could drop substantially if the major labels changed their practice. That amount of waste is completely unnecessary, and only hurts the consumer in the end. A great CD could be produced, stamped, and marketed for $10 per unit in bulk. As a matter of fact, most indies sell for about that price without the benefit of dealing in bulk.
You make sense, but I think a couple of points are missed. The first is this... if I am a talented poet/songwriter (which I'm not, I'm a stringed instrument player), and make my living writing, how am I to feed myself if everyone is getting the music I wrote free? I would have to find a job, taking away from my time devoted to writing, and my music would suffer. Music as a whole, it could be assumed then, would also begin to suffer as more and more people are forced out of the market because they can't sustain themselves in it.
Music isn't made artifically scarce, it's charged a fee to pay all of the people that worked to make it happen (even a few who didn't.. the label execs). The fees may or not be something you're willing to pay, but they are tangible, as the product you get for the fee is something you get to hold onto. However, it's not a necessary product, and you will continue to live a fruitful life without your copy of 50 Cent's latest release.
Now, labels are a different story. Yes, their markup for a product is absurd, and a more reasonable profit margin should be targeted. That being said, it still doesn't make it right to break the law. If you want the system to change, work to change it. Otherwise, continue to "share" files and risk going to jail for 15 years.
Finally.... someone with some sense. That model does exist, albeit in smaller distribution. Indie artists are getting their full compensation, but you have to look for them, because no major label is paying for distribution in BestBuy/Walman Marcus/etc... Software too. My favorite editor for coding is UltraEdit which is shareware. I've paid for three different versions now, and UltraCompare, for a grand total of $120.
The more we, as consumers, can do to promote the underdogs, the better off the model as a whole will be.
Now that should be modded insightful :)
If you read the whole thread, then why did you suggest I said it's applicable in 100% or even the majority of cases? All I'm saing is a loss of revenue can be attributed to file sharing. There simply is no arguement for that at all. If only one person, and I think we can all agree that there's one person out there somewhere, who downloads a game or song and would otherwise have paid money for it, then it's a loss of revenue. It's not a diffucult to understand term or scenario.
Again, justify it all you want, just not to me. In the past, you wouldn't have been able to have your own copy without paying for it (before tapes). The fact that you actually have a copy of it, especially to the folks that worked hard to make it in the first place, is a loss of revenue.
Then I don't think you've read the entire thread. What I said was this... if you've copied a song that you never would have bought, you still have a copy of it. That copy would have generated an amount of revenue for the producer of it, who incurred a cost in producing/packing it in the first place. Add the fact that there are a lot of people who download shared songs/movies/programs that would have bought them had they not found a free version.
Having been a victim in both music and software, I strongly disagree with anyone who says "I never would have bought a copy anyway, so having this copy of it didn't cost anyone" is just blowing smoke. The fact that you actually have the copy disproves the idea that you might have spent a whole $1 on iTunes for it. You have a copy. Repeat this to yourself over and over again. You would not have a copy if you hadn't wanted it in the first place. That is a loss of revenue.
With libraries, you don't retain a permanent copy of the original work. There is a convenience factor as well. It's much more convenient for me to pay $50 for the techinical book I need and have it around any time than to check it out once every two weeks to avoid being fined. Not to mention it's difficult, if at all possible, to find new works in a public library.
So I think your analogy is a bit wrong. A copier might be a better one, but copying a book page by page wouldn't be very convenient either. Plus you'd probably pay more for your single "copy" of the book in paper, toner, etc... than if you bought it off the shelf.
The point is there really isn't a good analogy for sharing copyrighted files.
Not if you live in the US... read here.
I do realize that Canada has such a tax which I think is wrong. I, however, live and work in the US, as do the songwriters that I know, and can really only speak regarding US laws.
Actually, his comment was "If everyone is alright with file sharing, then why not change the laws to reflect the shifting idealogy that culture shouldn't be locked up?"
And I still don't think public opinion agrees that file sharing should be ok. Mayeb public opinion in our geek community, but not in the rest of the can't-program-the-clock-on-the-vcr world.
You may be right about the future of IP, only time will really tell. I just can't see a capitalist society rolling forward without some protection for IP. However, I do think that copyright laws have been extended beyond reason, and the laws should be changed back to a much shorter period. There is no reason my grandchildren should be reaping benefits for work that I did. If I play my cards right, they can be thankful for a nice inheritance instead.
Actually, MS Virtual PC 2004 is great for that. I use it on my desktop to run 95, 98SE, Me, NT4.0, Server2003, XP Home, and XP Pro. The reason, actually, is just for testing software, but I can call any of those up with it (having installed them as OSs under Virtual PC). I also run RH, Fedora, and Debian, but on another box, as running them under a VPC in Windows is kind of silly.
Ok, you live in your world and I'll live in mine. I'm certain the sky is blue in mine though ;)
Debunked: they get paid the same no matter what.
Bullshit. I got laid off from Sony Records in Nashville because of "revenue losses due to the overwhelming popularity of piracy." Do you think Tony Brown lost any of his income? Not in the least. But I got to live off of unemployment for two months afterwards.
So you admit that our laws, supposedly to protect inventors and creators, aren't even coming close to doing their job?
I wasn't an inventor or creator, just an IT guy. As for the songwriters, I also wouldn't say the laws aren't even coming close to doing their job either. While writers aren't making the money they used to, they are still making some money. And the laws aren't helping much because only a small percentage of file sharers have been fined.
I agree with you completely. If the punishment were harsher, you might have a different opinion regarding speeding. A $100 ticket once in a while may not be much of a deterrent. A points system that will add $1000 a year to your registration might be more of a deterrent. The possibility of spending quality time in prison would be much more of a deterrent.
You have a threshold for what you're willing to sacrifice related to "breaking the law" by speeding. You would probably drive 2 miles under the limit if you knew you would lose your right hand the first time you were caught.
People that get caught sharing copyrighted material know it's wrong, know that the **AA are using every means necessary to stop it, and shouldn't at all be surprised that, when they are caught, the book is thrown at them to set an example.
It's so cliche, but if you can't do the time, then don't do the crime. And certainly don't whine when you get caught doing something you know is wrong. Want to share files legally? Work to change the system first.
The problem is that everyone does not agree that file sharing is ok... and I'm one of them. There are more people murdered every day now, but that doesn't mean the laws should be changed because it seems a larger percentage of poeple think it's ok now.
/. thinks it's alright.
Laws are not necessarily made to prevent bad behavior, but to prevent behavior that is considered harmful. Murder is an obvious one. But taking software/songs/movies without paying for them is harmful to the people that put it together. And don't think for a minute it's hurting the label/movie executives. It's hurting the few people they're going to lay off when their revenue dips.
I think your assumption that everyone is alright with file sharing is way off, given that not even everyone on
It doesn't matter if they would have bought it or not. The fact is they are in possession of the song/movie/software. Possession of the song/movie/software is how the companies that provide it earn revenue. So simply by having it, they have bypasses the revenue piece of the puzzle. That is, in technical accounting jargon, attributable to operating loss.