My experience in the as an long time employed developer would tell me that you should use an IDE. In the last ten years I have not held a job where anyone in the staff, under the age of 40, used anything but a well known IDE. This is even more true regarding Java, and I can't really comment on python, havening never used it profesionally. In general I have always felt that school should be educating people towards practical skills, and even the old school developers (I'm an old school assembler myself) use IDEs now days.
This is why tech workers won't start a union. It's said really. We come to think that as long as we are getting screwed less then the slackers then we are doing well. Sure when Unions get in place some slackers get better wages than they otherwise would (though I can tell you, from being an ex-union member, that unions don't protect the slackers as much as anti-unionist would like you to think). The bigger thing is that even those of use that work hard and are doing well currently would do much better if we had union protection.
There would be no more contract with out benifits work. There would be no more layoffs for no reason. There would be no more years with out raises.
I would join a tech workers union in a heart beat. I have actually attempted to organize such things in the past, and trust me, no slacker would ever organize a union, it's a heck of alot of work. But in the end, most tech workers think they are harder working than everyone around them and so don't want to be "brought down" by their coworkers. Too bad most tech workers aren't as good as they think they are.
I always assume that my readers are inteligent enough to look up the proof or lack there of on their own. But for the reasearch impaired I'll add the following statements to make the research a little easier.
Sony was not at all inovative when they released the PS1 (Sega had CDRom for many years and both Sega and Nintendo had realtime 3D Rendering in the prior generation), but succeded in out selling all competitors world wide, including two well established console makers. Sony was not inovative in the production of the PS2 (atleast to those that know nothing about processor design) and this time the preceeded to out sell all competitors combined. Go ahead and look up the numbers, they are not hard to find.
The thing here is the same reason the PS1 and PS2 were so successful. Sony does not have to inovate, they let others take those risks. Then sony comes in and does it better than any of their competitors (go ahead argue all you want). The PS3 controller is a fine example. They took the single best selling controller design in history (I mean there was a significant after market industry around allowing them to be hooked up to other machines) and added the functionallity that console fans have been saying they are interested in. Sony did the same thing with the CD rom when the ps1 came out.
You don't have to do it first, if you can do it better.
As to inheritance, a man's fortune will grow or shrink to match his ability.
If a person was born into a family with extensive investments who'e growth rate is higher than the person's expediture then the person's wealth will continue to amass regardless of his level of incompetance (unless the incompetance is of an extreem nature). Two people of the same ability and same motivation from two different economic backgrounds will not have equal opportunities.
Assuming this person does "turn evil" you are then free to cut off his inflow of further resources.
How exactly would cutting off the inflow of further resources effect someone controlling more than 50% of the societies resources, or an alliance of people doing such? If it turns out to be one vote per monetary unit, the other 49.x% of the wealth loses every time, so if really doesn't matter. If you want to see this in action, play a game of Monopoly with someone of equal intelligence but let them start with 10,000 times the starting cash that you have.
None of which are going to put food in your stomach or heat your house.
That right there is to core problem of capitalism, but it would much longer than I have to explain it. But the basic idea is, if necessities were freely available people would be free to spend more effort on improving the over all quality of life of all citizens.
I have far less interest in listening to the village idiot than Albert Einstein.
I won't say whether I agree or not, but I will say that Albert Einstein was by no means wealthy and there are plenty of wealthy people who are far less intelligent (over all) than Eintstein. So in reallity by letting money be the measurement of value you are completely ignoring a persons actually abilities if those abilities do not directly translate into wealth.
Oh, and by the way, surely it's a crime to drive a car you own if you're unlicensed. But you can resell it, right ?
You are mixing apples and oranges. The article is about lincensing not purchasing. If you change the word "own" to the word "lease" in your analogy you will have a more accurat comparison. You will also see the answer to your question changes from yes to no.
Licensing is not owning. Contracts or not only allowed, but critical to a Free Market economy.
I appriciate the support. It's very hard to write about gender difference without some people wanting to label a person as sexist. This is only made worse since it tends to come up in the context of defending one genders advantage at a particular task.
This study considered the hypothesis that on some tasks men and women might employ different information processing strategies...Results demonstrated a near-significant overall reaction time advantage for male participants.
in almost every age group, males have faster reaction times than females, and female disadvantage is not reduced by practice (Noble et al., 1964; Welford, 1980; Adam et al., 1999; Dane and Erzurumlugoglu, 2003). Bellis (1933) reported that mean time to press a key in response to a light was 220 msec for males and 260 msec for females; for sound the difference was 190 msec (males) to 200 msec (females). In comparison, Engel (1972) reported a reaction time to sound of 227 msec (male) to 242 msec (female). Botwinick and Thompson (1966) found that almost all of the male-female difference was accounted for by the lag between the presentation of the stimulus and the beginning of muscle contraction. Muscle contraction times were the same for males and females. In a surprising finding, Szinnai et al. (2005) found that gradual dehydration (loss of 2.6% of body weight over a 7-day period) caused females to have lengthened choice reaction time, but males to have shortened choice reaction times. Adam et al. (1999) reported that males use a more complex strategy than females.
As you can see there have been plenty of studies on these topics. Males have a significant advantage when it comes to reaction time, even more so if they involve spatial location recognition.
Depends on how you look at it. The rich are the only one's that can do anything about it. over half the economy in the US is maintained by the top 20% of populous. If they chose not to be against something, they are indirectly supporting it. There are many organizations wealthy enough to undercut Wal-Mart, or make a better product at a lower price, but they don't because they want higher profits, just like Wal-Mart. Letting the Nazi's take away your Jewish neighbor when you have just as larger of an arsenal or more, is just as bad as supporting the Nazi's (that is after all how finland was considered part of the axis powers).
The majority of the America's consumers are middle class.
I'd like to know how you measure that. If you are measuring by number of people you are way off (the middle class is nothing compared to the lower class in size). If you are talking by amount spent you are also way off (The top 10% spend more on a single home than most of us will ever see in a life time). So tell me how you are measuring this so I can drink the cool-aid too.
basic ethical principles (such as murder, or fraud, or rape)
Fraud is some how on the same level as rape and murder. Just shows you that we all draw our own opinions around what are "basic ethical principles."
Part of this sentence is missing, it should be "A good example is the fact that I would love to buy a high quality, american made, Rubbermaid product, for a price comparable to Gladware." You can still get the product you want, it just costs more than you want to spend.
You are entirelly wrong. Read the history of Rubbermaid. A great american company. They were put out of business because of dealings by Wal-Mart. The Rubbermaid brand was revived, but it is now a product of china and no where even close to the quality of the past.
...what does having a lot of money mean? Its means you've done many things that people approve of and think are the right thing to do.
There are two problems with this. Not only is there more than one way to get ALOT of money, such as inheritance and theft. Both of those examples have nothing to do with personal contribution, but they would both allow the same power in a free market society. The second problem is that just because you got there with good intentions does not mean you will always have good intentions. If we let money truelly be the deciding factor in society then all it would take is a very crafty person to come up with (or steal) a good idea to make their wealth and then use that wealth to rule as they see fit with an iron fist. If they controll the majority of the economy there would be nothing you could do about it, short of revolution.
It would be very easy for the wealthy in our country (say the top 10%) to just spend there resources on paying doctors to NOT help anyone they don't want helped. This way providing medicine only to those willing to be their personal slaves. And I don't know about you, but I don't think that would be much of a world to live in.
Who would you rather have effecting the system most? Those who know how and do produce things or those who do not and can not?
Personally I would rather my society and citizens not be judge by what and how they produce things. There are alot of very good things in this world that have no baring on productivity.
I will reiterate. I would like my voice in society to be of the same value as everyone elses, not based on my families income. I don't care how smart you are, your chances of breaking into the top 10% or even coming close to the income level of a Microsoft executive (just as an example) is more than a million to one against. Ask Gates himself, he will tel you he was lucky. And that is if you come from an upper middle class familly. Try getting there from the bottom 10%.
Most of the world has finally accepted that men and women have different physical capability. Someday they will also accept that they have different mental capabilities. There is a reason that the past chess grand champions have all been men, and it's not because of some conspiracy to keep women out of it. Men have more strategic minds, and if you will look, there are studies that prove this. The part of the male brain that handles mathmatics is larger than in the femal brain (the exact opposite for language). E-sports will use far more of tha analytical skills than emotional or communication skills. Being able to judge a trajectory for an assualt or sizing up compareable forces is something male brains just do better.
I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but people need to stop deluding themselves. Through out history there has been no objectively judge competition where women have been able to regularly hold their own against men. This does not mean men are better than women as a whole, just at those things that can be objectively judge. The flip side is I am farily certain that women would win hands down if there was a way to objectively judge child raising, and we already know they trounce men in the child bearing arena.
My point is, men an women are different, and we should all stop getting pissed off when someone points out that one gender is better than another at a certain thing.
Oh, besides that e-sports would still require fast reflexes, hand-eye coordination and spatial judgement, all of which are know to be better in men.
I find it funny when people talk about governmentally imposed boundries on goods. You can say things like "you have no place deciding where the right place for anyone to shop is" and then assuming that only happens if there is governmental control is just being ignorant. I, and the rest of your country (assuming it's the US), already decided plenty for you. If 90% of us decided that we are not going to buy a certain product, then no one will make it, no mater how badly you want it. A good example is the fact that I would love to buy a high quality, american made, Rubbermaid product. To bad I can't anymore because the american public, by supporting Wal-Mart, made this impossible. All you are doing is exchanging ecconomny for government but in the end it's almost the same. The problem with the capitalist view is that those with money have more opportunity to make more money and therefor have more control over the economy. Personally I would like everyones vote to be worth the same amount, but in the pure capitalist system, the rich get more votes than the poor. I don't get how people can possibly see this as an effective way to run a civilization.
Like I said previously I'm not arguing semantics, but I do thank you for adding some clarification to "works for hire" (Sorry for the previous use of higher, maybe it was Freudian). I do happen to think you, just like I did previously, over simplified the situtation. Some employees of Blizzard would be considered atrists producing a "work for hire," such as those in the design departments (graphic or otherwise), while others may not. In the end it is the same net effect, he copyright is maintained by the Blizzard Corporate entity.
having not read the guide in question I don't really know the content. But it would seem to me to be very difficult to right a guide on a computer game without referencing something other than abstract game rules. Even mentioning a location in the game could be a violation of copyright or trademark.
I only know of one game rule patent, in fact.
I'm sure I could think of more than one, but Richard Garfield's (Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro) proccess of changing the orientation of a peice to signify it's use is one I know off the top of my head.
With out getting it to semantic arguments or political bias I have to say that there are some significant flaws in the parent comment.
I believe in true freedom and true competition.
This is probably far from the truth. True freedom and true competition would lead to a return of slavery. I know you ask how is slavery freedom, but you have to remember the freedom to have slaves is in itself a freedom. This is the core problem with most of these type of arguments. To protect one freedom you often have to abolish another (the opposite of freedom from oppression is the freedom to oppress).
If someone is willing to spend their own time and their own labor creating something with their own hands, I see no reason why the product shouldn't be allowed to sell. I personally tend to buy some items from large companies just because I feel I've gotten better quality products, but there are many items I won't buy from a big company because I prefer the unique feel of the item.
This is exactly why copyright and Intelectual property laws exist. If it were not for IP and copyright law, ALL products would be manufactured by large companies. They would be legally able to copy every bit of the "feel" of other products, there by removing the benifit of being "unique" and, do too resource differences be able to produce a higher quality or cheaper product.
Intellectual property laws were originally created to protect artists and artists alone.
As has been pointed out this is false, unless you use a very broad defenition of artist which includes anyone who has a new and unique Idea. Copyright law even specifically accounts for cases where a work is created "for higher" by another party. This shows very clearly that copy right was not intended to protect the original artist but who ever, under the law, could legally lay claim to the rights of the work. Having done many "works for higher" in my life I am very familiar with the topic.
Each artist at Blizzard has their own art they've created, and they should worry individually about making the best produt they can at the lowest price. That is competition.
I have already clearly explained that the "artist" that work for blizzard, though they created the "art" have no legal right to it because they have an agreement with Blizzard transfering the copyright. To say that "competition" is as clear as saying making the best product at the lowest price is all that it is happens to be very naive. It is well know that Microsoft, regardless of your opinion, does not make the best produt they can at the lowest price, yet they are a fine example of competition. Italian car makers are another great example. Often times you can be competitive by doing, one or the other, or neither. Linux is a fine example of a project that actually does both, it's a good product and the price is unbeatable, but to say that it is competetive is a bit of a stretch, specially if you measure success through profit.
The rest of the comment is mostly senseless, and probably just throw together in the hopes of being first post. Basically it makes the assumption that the unauthorized WoW guide does not decrease the value of Blizzards intelectual property, and even goes as far as to say it increases it. This is false speculation which does not take into account Blizzards licensing fees on authorized guides. There is also the false assumption that copyright law was intended to open opportunities to everyone, when in reality was intended to protect the rights of the owners from reduction in profit do to unauthorized replication and derivation.
I only hope that Blizzard and other producers of quallity products learn a good lesson and make their licensing far more stringent, possibly even adding no disclosure clauses. Could you imagine that. And as much as the Slash dot crowd thinks this would hurt profititablity of a product, if you look around most people don't care about being what it says in a licensing agreement and will go ahead an pay for the products even with those restrictions.
Now if they could just do something about that pesky "backup" excuse.
That's easy and they will. All you have to do is change the licensing. Basically stop selling the physical media and instead license the code for an undetermined time which can expire at any point at the discretion of the producer. If companies want a legal way to stop people from being able to make any copies what so ever it would be really simple. Just wait untill software comes with built in Non-dislosure agreements to keep you from sharing it with others, since sharing would be disclosing the content.
Then again when was the last time someone played a video game beyond the time covered by either the retailers replacement policy or manufacturers warranty?
I think you actually have the issue almost entirely backward. For the security and stability of a nation as a whole the economic security of it's people is of paramount importance. Allowing economic decisions, such as taxation in the hands of smaller communities withing a nation would certainly lead to instabilty within. Moral Decision on the other hand are the kind of decisions that should be governed on a smaller community scale because they do not impose a particular threat to the stability of a nation.
In the United States there was an attempt to manage this in a reasonable way, alowing individual states, and only states, to make laws governing the people, that where not otherwise needed for the maintance of the economic security of the country. We chose to take things a step further by defining a series of inalienable rights, as defined in the first ten ammendments to the constituion, and most of the other ammendments.
That would be the "Final Solution to the Windows Question" technically speaking.. But then again admiting I happen to know that of the top of my head might be taken the wrong way. Sorry just thought if you are going to reference a horrific event in human history you might as well get it right. Though in this case I don't think that the persicution of Microsoft is all that unjust.
I'd like to add my little bit of speculation to this, since that seems like what we are doing. First the revolution is hardly Next Generation, but this should not be taken as a bad thing. The revolution is side stepping the whole generation and trying to go for something new. Sadly this puts them in the same position as the Sega CD was a few years back. It will be a cute novelty item, but not something used by the average consumer and will evetually lead to the down fall of nintendo in the home console market. The best part about that is that they will learn from their mistakes and return to focusing on quality handheld gaming and actually produce a power replacement in the GameBoy line, possibly even having a more powerfull machine than their competition for the first time since the release of the original gameboy.
Microsoft of the other hand will still churn our Xbox after Xbox dispite the horrible sales they will see in this and future generation.
Someone will eventually come in a usurp Sony dominance in the console market, but I can't see who that will be yet, since none of the current makers seem to have the momentum to do so.
Oh, and people should stop fooling themselves into beleiving that the market can't support a $700+ game console. That is not high compared to the relative cost of previous consoles.
Re:Someone go to Target and buy them some genres
on
Japan's Top 100 Games
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The point I was making is that a top 100 list made in the US would have a wide selections of genres represented...
Yeah really, there is certainly no way the top 100 in the US would be totally made up of FPS, Sports and RTS games.
Every culture has it biases, including the US. True the list of 100 top games in Japan does not fit what the US has, but it certainly is not limited in it's genres any more than we would. The geners I found a a quick glance are RPG (fantasy and otherwise), 3rd Person shooter, Platform, Turn Based Strategy, Fighting, Racing, Action Adventure, Horror, Simulation, and Sports. The list is no more heavily weighted towards any gener than the US would be other than the fact that most US gamers probably couldn't name 100 games they have actually played. If I recall correctly the last top games list I saw from the US had the top ten as dominated by Rockstar as the Japanes list in dominated by Square, and Rockstar has not release even half as many games.
I am a US citizen and my list would contain almost exclusively RPGs, Strategy (Turn Based and Real Time) and platform, but I wouldn't complain that may of my favorites would not make the top 100 in my own country.
They have this same law in certain cities in the state of Arizona, and it hasn't changed a thing. There was even an interesting study done around here that showed that it's not cost effective to make meth out of over the counter drugs. Turns out the to turn a profit it's better to import the drugs or pure chemicals from other countries. Oh know that's illegal and we all know how hard it is to get illegal contraband across the border into the United States.
If that where the case, and they film happen to be on a single platter, Then I would have everyone's money reimbursed and make sure they are allowed to see the rest of the film. The point is, people have a certain expectation when entring a theater, or other private establishment designed for the enjoyment of an event that does not have some form of interaction built into it. People who interupt others expectated privacy by yammering on a phone deserve much worser than lose of ability to use their phone, and the establishment should be held responsible for allowing someone to interupt the others. Most of these establishments agree and will reimburse you if you ask and can show that a disturbance has been made.
Because of this, I do forsee in the future, many of these establishments using methods of blocking transmissions of phone calls, so that they can give their patrons a better experience. The movie theater talkers are the minority, by a long shot, except in certain parts of the united states, and they should not have the right to disrupt those around them.
If you are one of those people that like using cell phones in theaters, you brought it on yourself. And for once I thank you for being a dick, since you are on the verge of making it nicer for the rest of us, permanently.
Since you were the one that wasn't an AC I thought I'd give you a response. I have heard those same threats from people just moments before going balistic. Oddly enough no one has ever carried through with those threats. This is either do the fact that I have a heck of alot more support than the assholes on their phones in theaters, or that I'm probably crazier than most. Most people, after seeing the seriousness in my eyes, are just happy I only threw thier phone.
Look I'm a nice guy, most of the time. Cell phones, or talking, in inappropriate places do drive me a little mad. And I don't care who you are I WILL make sure you don't interupt a movie I paid for with out you paying a bit extra. And for the rest of theater, I WILL have the movie restarted if the annoyance is significant.
If you don't turn of your cell phone in a theater, you just can't follow directions. You don't turn of your cell phone in an location that people expect to not be interupted (theater, concert hall, resturaunt) then your just a prick. I have gone off on many people for cell phone use in these types of establishments, and will continue to do so. Most of the time I get applause and ovations from the rest of the patrons when I get someone to shut up or leave, or smash their cell phone on the far wall.
Get off your high horse, your not so damn important that your calls can't wait an hour or two. You are an inconsiderate prick and you are trying to justify it by saying that the paint solution does not differentiate. Personally I don't like the paint solution because it just to permanent enough. Now if they can get the phone to explode when left on in a theater I would be happier.
You can tell a person that has never seen HD video (1080i or better). Anyone that owns an HDTV, which is quite a few people as I can count, and has seen HD video is really looking forward to some form of High Defenition DVD (with Blu-Ray being my preference). I was accidentally watching the 20th winter olympics in standard defenition until I realized I couldn't read the country names while watching speed skating. I switched of to High Defenition and all of a sudden the names where crystal clear. The difference between Standard and High defenition is night and day. Those that know this really want an HD DVD format, because up converting 480p just isn't good enough.
The game industry has to make that leap, or else make better games, so that PC gaming does completely take over with their much higher resolution.
And not only that Best Buy has a 52" HDTV for less than $1000, and those prices will drop quickly once more HD broadcasts and video formats are available.
So you mean they are going to have complete industry dominance and more publicity than they can handle? Oh wait, they already do (sorry XBox and Nintendo fans).
Seems to me, in this day and age, being the most hated company is worth billions. If I had a plan to start up a totally loathed company I would go for it.
Slashdot Mirror
My experience in the as an long time employed developer would tell me that you should use an IDE. In the last ten years I have not held a job where anyone in the staff, under the age of 40, used anything but a well known IDE. This is even more true regarding Java, and I can't really comment on python, havening never used it profesionally. In general I have always felt that school should be educating people towards practical skills, and even the old school developers (I'm an old school assembler myself) use IDEs now days.
This is why tech workers won't start a union. It's said really. We come to think that as long as we are getting screwed less then the slackers then we are doing well. Sure when Unions get in place some slackers get better wages than they otherwise would (though I can tell you, from being an ex-union member, that unions don't protect the slackers as much as anti-unionist would like you to think). The bigger thing is that even those of use that work hard and are doing well currently would do much better if we had union protection.
There would be no more contract with out benifits work. There would be no more layoffs for no reason. There would be no more years with out raises.
I would join a tech workers union in a heart beat. I have actually attempted to organize such things in the past, and trust me, no slacker would ever organize a union, it's a heck of alot of work. But in the end, most tech workers think they are harder working than everyone around them and so don't want to be "brought down" by their coworkers. Too bad most tech workers aren't as good as they think they are.
Ahh, good old "proof by assertion".
I always assume that my readers are inteligent enough to look up the proof or lack there of on their own. But for the reasearch impaired I'll add the following statements to make the research a little easier.
Sony was not at all inovative when they released the PS1 (Sega had CDRom for many years and both Sega and Nintendo had realtime 3D Rendering in the prior generation), but succeded in out selling all competitors world wide, including two well established console makers. Sony was not inovative in the production of the PS2 (atleast to those that know nothing about processor design) and this time the preceeded to out sell all competitors combined. Go ahead and look up the numbers, they are not hard to find.
The thing here is the same reason the PS1 and PS2 were so successful. Sony does not have to inovate, they let others take those risks. Then sony comes in and does it better than any of their competitors (go ahead argue all you want). The PS3 controller is a fine example. They took the single best selling controller design in history (I mean there was a significant after market industry around allowing them to be hooked up to other machines) and added the functionallity that console fans have been saying they are interested in. Sony did the same thing with the CD rom when the ps1 came out.
You don't have to do it first, if you can do it better.
As to inheritance, a man's fortune will grow or shrink to match his ability.
If a person was born into a family with extensive investments who'e growth rate is higher than the person's expediture then the person's wealth will continue to amass regardless of his level of incompetance (unless the incompetance is of an extreem nature). Two people of the same ability and same motivation from two different economic backgrounds will not have equal opportunities.
Assuming this person does "turn evil" you are then free to cut off his inflow of further resources.
How exactly would cutting off the inflow of further resources effect someone controlling more than 50% of the societies resources, or an alliance of people doing such? If it turns out to be one vote per monetary unit, the other 49.x% of the wealth loses every time, so if really doesn't matter. If you want to see this in action, play a game of Monopoly with someone of equal intelligence but let them start with 10,000 times the starting cash that you have.
None of which are going to put food in your stomach or heat your house.
That right there is to core problem of capitalism, but it would much longer than I have to explain it. But the basic idea is, if necessities were freely available people would be free to spend more effort on improving the over all quality of life of all citizens.
I have far less interest in listening to the village idiot than Albert Einstein.
I won't say whether I agree or not, but I will say that Albert Einstein was by no means wealthy and there are plenty of wealthy people who are far less intelligent (over all) than Eintstein. So in reallity by letting money be the measurement of value you are completely ignoring a persons actually abilities if those abilities do not directly translate into wealth.
Oh, and by the way, surely it's a crime to drive a car you own if you're unlicensed. But you can resell it, right ?
You are mixing apples and oranges. The article is about lincensing not purchasing. If you change the word "own" to the word "lease" in your analogy you will have a more accurat comparison. You will also see the answer to your question changes from yes to no.
Licensing is not owning. Contracts or not only allowed, but critical to a Free Market economy.
I appriciate the support. It's very hard to write about gender difference without some people wanting to label a person as sexist. This is only made worse since it tends to come up in the context of defending one genders advantage at a particular task.
Scientific study does not seem to support your conclusion.
The Following is from the abstract of Gender differences in choice reaction time: evidence for differential strategies.
The Following is taken from A Literature Review on Reaction Time by Robert J. Kosinski As you can see there have been plenty of studies on these topics. Males have a significant advantage when it comes to reaction time, even more so if they involve spatial location recognition.
The people supporting Walmart are not the rich.
Depends on how you look at it. The rich are the only one's that can do anything about it. over half the economy in the US is maintained by the top 20% of populous. If they chose not to be against something, they are indirectly supporting it. There are many organizations wealthy enough to undercut Wal-Mart, or make a better product at a lower price, but they don't because they want higher profits, just like Wal-Mart. Letting the Nazi's take away your Jewish neighbor when you have just as larger of an arsenal or more, is just as bad as supporting the Nazi's (that is after all how finland was considered part of the axis powers).
The majority of the America's consumers are middle class.
I'd like to know how you measure that. If you are measuring by number of people you are way off (the middle class is nothing compared to the lower class in size). If you are talking by amount spent you are also way off (The top 10% spend more on a single home than most of us will ever see in a life time). So tell me how you are measuring this so I can drink the cool-aid too.
basic ethical principles (such as murder, or fraud, or rape)
Fraud is some how on the same level as rape and murder. Just shows you that we all draw our own opinions around what are "basic ethical principles."
Part of this sentence is missing, it should be "A good example is the fact that I would love to buy a high quality, american made, Rubbermaid product, for a price comparable to Gladware." You can still get the product you want, it just costs more than you want to spend.
...what does having a lot of money mean? Its means you've done many things that people approve of and think are the right thing to do.
You are entirelly wrong. Read the history of Rubbermaid. A great american company. They were put out of business because of dealings by Wal-Mart. The Rubbermaid brand was revived, but it is now a product of china and no where even close to the quality of the past.
There are two problems with this. Not only is there more than one way to get ALOT of money, such as inheritance and theft. Both of those examples have nothing to do with personal contribution, but they would both allow the same power in a free market society. The second problem is that just because you got there with good intentions does not mean you will always have good intentions. If we let money truelly be the deciding factor in society then all it would take is a very crafty person to come up with (or steal) a good idea to make their wealth and then use that wealth to rule as they see fit with an iron fist. If they controll the majority of the economy there would be nothing you could do about it, short of revolution.
It would be very easy for the wealthy in our country (say the top 10%) to just spend there resources on paying doctors to NOT help anyone they don't want helped. This way providing medicine only to those willing to be their personal slaves. And I don't know about you, but I don't think that would be much of a world to live in.
Who would you rather have effecting the system most? Those who know how and do produce things or those who do not and can not?
Personally I would rather my society and citizens not be judge by what and how they produce things. There are alot of very good things in this world that have no baring on productivity.
I will reiterate. I would like my voice in society to be of the same value as everyone elses, not based on my families income. I don't care how smart you are, your chances of breaking into the top 10% or even coming close to the income level of a Microsoft executive (just as an example) is more than a million to one against. Ask Gates himself, he will tel you he was lucky. And that is if you come from an upper middle class familly. Try getting there from the bottom 10%.
Most of the world has finally accepted that men and women have different physical capability. Someday they will also accept that they have different mental capabilities. There is a reason that the past chess grand champions have all been men, and it's not because of some conspiracy to keep women out of it. Men have more strategic minds, and if you will look, there are studies that prove this. The part of the male brain that handles mathmatics is larger than in the femal brain (the exact opposite for language). E-sports will use far more of tha analytical skills than emotional or communication skills. Being able to judge a trajectory for an assualt or sizing up compareable forces is something male brains just do better.
I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but people need to stop deluding themselves. Through out history there has been no objectively judge competition where women have been able to regularly hold their own against men. This does not mean men are better than women as a whole, just at those things that can be objectively judge. The flip side is I am farily certain that women would win hands down if there was a way to objectively judge child raising, and we already know they trounce men in the child bearing arena.
My point is, men an women are different, and we should all stop getting pissed off when someone points out that one gender is better than another at a certain thing.
Oh, besides that e-sports would still require fast reflexes, hand-eye coordination and spatial judgement, all of which are know to be better in men.
I find it funny when people talk about governmentally imposed boundries on goods. You can say things like "you have no place deciding where the right place for anyone to shop is" and then assuming that only happens if there is governmental control is just being ignorant. I, and the rest of your country (assuming it's the US), already decided plenty for you. If 90% of us decided that we are not going to buy a certain product, then no one will make it, no mater how badly you want it. A good example is the fact that I would love to buy a high quality, american made, Rubbermaid product. To bad I can't anymore because the american public, by supporting Wal-Mart, made this impossible. All you are doing is exchanging ecconomny for government but in the end it's almost the same. The problem with the capitalist view is that those with money have more opportunity to make more money and therefor have more control over the economy. Personally I would like everyones vote to be worth the same amount, but in the pure capitalist system, the rich get more votes than the poor. I don't get how people can possibly see this as an effective way to run a civilization.
Like I said previously I'm not arguing semantics, but I do thank you for adding some clarification to "works for hire" (Sorry for the previous use of higher, maybe it was Freudian). I do happen to think you, just like I did previously, over simplified the situtation. Some employees of Blizzard would be considered atrists producing a "work for hire," such as those in the design departments (graphic or otherwise), while others may not. In the end it is the same net effect, he copyright is maintained by the Blizzard Corporate entity.
having not read the guide in question I don't really know the content. But it would seem to me to be very difficult to right a guide on a computer game without referencing something other than abstract game rules. Even mentioning a location in the game could be a violation of copyright or trademark.
I only know of one game rule patent, in fact.
I'm sure I could think of more than one, but Richard Garfield's (Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro) proccess of changing the orientation of a peice to signify it's use is one I know off the top of my head.
With out getting it to semantic arguments or political bias I have to say that there are some significant flaws in the parent comment.
I believe in true freedom and true competition.
This is probably far from the truth. True freedom and true competition would lead to a return of slavery. I know you ask how is slavery freedom, but you have to remember the freedom to have slaves is in itself a freedom. This is the core problem with most of these type of arguments. To protect one freedom you often have to abolish another (the opposite of freedom from oppression is the freedom to oppress).
If someone is willing to spend their own time and their own labor creating something with their own hands, I see no reason why the product shouldn't be allowed to sell. I personally tend to buy some items from large companies just because I feel I've gotten better quality products, but there are many items I won't buy from a big company because I prefer the unique feel of the item. This is exactly why copyright and Intelectual property laws exist. If it were not for IP and copyright law, ALL products would be manufactured by large companies. They would be legally able to copy every bit of the "feel" of other products, there by removing the benifit of being "unique" and, do too resource differences be able to produce a higher quality or cheaper product.
Intellectual property laws were originally created to protect artists and artists alone.
As has been pointed out this is false, unless you use a very broad defenition of artist which includes anyone who has a new and unique Idea. Copyright law even specifically accounts for cases where a work is created "for higher" by another party. This shows very clearly that copy right was not intended to protect the original artist but who ever, under the law, could legally lay claim to the rights of the work. Having done many "works for higher" in my life I am very familiar with the topic.
Each artist at Blizzard has their own art they've created, and they should worry individually about making the best produt they can at the lowest price. That is competition.
I have already clearly explained that the "artist" that work for blizzard, though they created the "art" have no legal right to it because they have an agreement with Blizzard transfering the copyright. To say that "competition" is as clear as saying making the best product at the lowest price is all that it is happens to be very naive. It is well know that Microsoft, regardless of your opinion, does not make the best produt they can at the lowest price, yet they are a fine example of competition. Italian car makers are another great example. Often times you can be competitive by doing, one or the other, or neither. Linux is a fine example of a project that actually does both, it's a good product and the price is unbeatable, but to say that it is competetive is a bit of a stretch, specially if you measure success through profit.
The rest of the comment is mostly senseless, and probably just throw together in the hopes of being first post. Basically it makes the assumption that the unauthorized WoW guide does not decrease the value of Blizzards intelectual property, and even goes as far as to say it increases it. This is false speculation which does not take into account Blizzards licensing fees on authorized guides. There is also the false assumption that copyright law was intended to open opportunities to everyone, when in reality was intended to protect the rights of the owners from reduction in profit do to unauthorized replication and derivation.
I only hope that Blizzard and other producers of quallity products learn a good lesson and make their licensing far more stringent, possibly even adding no disclosure clauses. Could you imagine that. And as much as the Slash dot crowd thinks this would hurt profititablity of a product, if you look around most people don't care about being what it says in a licensing agreement and will go ahead an pay for the products even with those restrictions.
Now if they could just do something about that pesky "backup" excuse.
That's easy and they will. All you have to do is change the licensing. Basically stop selling the physical media and instead license the code for an undetermined time which can expire at any point at the discretion of the producer. If companies want a legal way to stop people from being able to make any copies what so ever it would be really simple. Just wait untill software comes with built in Non-dislosure agreements to keep you from sharing it with others, since sharing would be disclosing the content.
Then again when was the last time someone played a video game beyond the time covered by either the retailers replacement policy or manufacturers warranty?
I think you actually have the issue almost entirely backward. For the security and stability of a nation as a whole the economic security of it's people is of paramount importance. Allowing economic decisions, such as taxation in the hands of smaller communities withing a nation would certainly lead to instabilty within. Moral Decision on the other hand are the kind of decisions that should be governed on a smaller community scale because they do not impose a particular threat to the stability of a nation.
In the United States there was an attempt to manage this in a reasonable way, alowing individual states, and only states, to make laws governing the people, that where not otherwise needed for the maintance of the economic security of the country. We chose to take things a step further by defining a series of inalienable rights, as defined in the first ten ammendments to the constituion, and most of the other ammendments.
That would be the "Final Solution to the Windows Question" technically speaking.. But then again admiting I happen to know that of the top of my head might be taken the wrong way. Sorry just thought if you are going to reference a horrific event in human history you might as well get it right. Though in this case I don't think that the persicution of Microsoft is all that unjust.
I'd like to add my little bit of speculation to this, since that seems like what we are doing. First the revolution is hardly Next Generation, but this should not be taken as a bad thing. The revolution is side stepping the whole generation and trying to go for something new. Sadly this puts them in the same position as the Sega CD was a few years back. It will be a cute novelty item, but not something used by the average consumer and will evetually lead to the down fall of nintendo in the home console market. The best part about that is that they will learn from their mistakes and return to focusing on quality handheld gaming and actually produce a power replacement in the GameBoy line, possibly even having a more powerfull machine than their competition for the first time since the release of the original gameboy.
Microsoft of the other hand will still churn our Xbox after Xbox dispite the horrible sales they will see in this and future generation.
Someone will eventually come in a usurp Sony dominance in the console market, but I can't see who that will be yet, since none of the current makers seem to have the momentum to do so.
Oh, and people should stop fooling themselves into beleiving that the market can't support a $700+ game console. That is not high compared to the relative cost of previous consoles.
The point I was making is that a top 100 list made in the US would have a wide selections of genres represented...
Yeah really, there is certainly no way the top 100 in the US would be totally made up of FPS, Sports and RTS games.
Every culture has it biases, including the US. True the list of 100 top games in Japan does not fit what the US has, but it certainly is not limited in it's genres any more than we would. The geners I found a a quick glance are RPG (fantasy and otherwise), 3rd Person shooter, Platform, Turn Based Strategy, Fighting, Racing, Action Adventure, Horror, Simulation, and Sports. The list is no more heavily weighted towards any gener than the US would be other than the fact that most US gamers probably couldn't name 100 games they have actually played. If I recall correctly the last top games list I saw from the US had the top ten as dominated by Rockstar as the Japanes list in dominated by Square, and Rockstar has not release even half as many games.
I am a US citizen and my list would contain almost exclusively RPGs, Strategy (Turn Based and Real Time) and platform, but I wouldn't complain that may of my favorites would not make the top 100 in my own country.
They have this same law in certain cities in the state of Arizona, and it hasn't changed a thing. There was even an interesting study done around here that showed that it's not cost effective to make meth out of over the counter drugs. Turns out the to turn a profit it's better to import the drugs or pure chemicals from other countries. Oh know that's illegal and we all know how hard it is to get illegal contraband across the border into the United States.
If that where the case, and they film happen to be on a single platter, Then I would have everyone's money reimbursed and make sure they are allowed to see the rest of the film. The point is, people have a certain expectation when entring a theater, or other private establishment designed for the enjoyment of an event that does not have some form of interaction built into it. People who interupt others expectated privacy by yammering on a phone deserve much worser than lose of ability to use their phone, and the establishment should be held responsible for allowing someone to interupt the others. Most of these establishments agree and will reimburse you if you ask and can show that a disturbance has been made.
Because of this, I do forsee in the future, many of these establishments using methods of blocking transmissions of phone calls, so that they can give their patrons a better experience. The movie theater talkers are the minority, by a long shot, except in certain parts of the united states, and they should not have the right to disrupt those around them.
If you are one of those people that like using cell phones in theaters, you brought it on yourself. And for once I thank you for being a dick, since you are on the verge of making it nicer for the rest of us, permanently.
Since you were the one that wasn't an AC I thought I'd give you a response. I have heard those same threats from people just moments before going balistic. Oddly enough no one has ever carried through with those threats. This is either do the fact that I have a heck of alot more support than the assholes on their phones in theaters, or that I'm probably crazier than most. Most people, after seeing the seriousness in my eyes, are just happy I only threw thier phone.
Look I'm a nice guy, most of the time. Cell phones, or talking, in inappropriate places do drive me a little mad. And I don't care who you are I WILL make sure you don't interupt a movie I paid for with out you paying a bit extra. And for the rest of theater, I WILL have the movie restarted if the annoyance is significant.
If you don't turn of your cell phone in a theater, you just can't follow directions. You don't turn of your cell phone in an location that people expect to not be interupted (theater, concert hall, resturaunt) then your just a prick. I have gone off on many people for cell phone use in these types of establishments, and will continue to do so. Most of the time I get applause and ovations from the rest of the patrons when I get someone to shut up or leave, or smash their cell phone on the far wall.
Get off your high horse, your not so damn important that your calls can't wait an hour or two. You are an inconsiderate prick and you are trying to justify it by saying that the paint solution does not differentiate. Personally I don't like the paint solution because it just to permanent enough. Now if they can get the phone to explode when left on in a theater I would be happier.
You can tell a person that has never seen HD video (1080i or better). Anyone that owns an HDTV, which is quite a few people as I can count, and has seen HD video is really looking forward to some form of High Defenition DVD (with Blu-Ray being my preference). I was accidentally watching the 20th winter olympics in standard defenition until I realized I couldn't read the country names while watching speed skating. I switched of to High Defenition and all of a sudden the names where crystal clear. The difference between Standard and High defenition is night and day. Those that know this really want an HD DVD format, because up converting 480p just isn't good enough.
The game industry has to make that leap, or else make better games, so that PC gaming does completely take over with their much higher resolution.
And not only that Best Buy has a 52" HDTV for less than $1000, and those prices will drop quickly once more HD broadcasts and video formats are available.
[Sony is] the next big hated company.
So you mean they are going to have complete industry dominance and more publicity than they can handle? Oh wait, they already do (sorry XBox and Nintendo fans).
Seems to me, in this day and age, being the most hated company is worth billions. If I had a plan to start up a totally loathed company I would go for it.