Useful Historical Fact of the Day: If Hitler had played C&C, we would all by typing in German by now.
WWII if it were an RTS (not necessarily in perfect historical order):
Germany: We will pwn j00 France: ZOMG ZERG *France has disconnected from server* UK: You too can experience your finest hour with all herbal enlargement pills Germany: UK is just an F'ing spambot, we'll invade Russia. Russia: No fair Germany, we had a deal! Germany: WTF Russia is turtling!!! Japan: All ur base in Asia r belong to us USA: OMG Japan is so f***ing ninja! I was AFK Russia: This sucks, I have a spambot and AFKer on my team US: Don't worry I was macro building up my production while AFK UK: Sorry about that spam, I was letting my little bro play Russia: Bout F***ing time you showed up Germany: Italy, are you going to do anything productive?! Italy:*Italy has disconnected from the server* *Italy has joined the game* *Italy has joined the Allies* Germany: We're screwed *Germany has disconnected from the server* US: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds." Japan: ZOMG we gotz nuked *Japan has disconnected from the server*
All you complaints derive from poor implementation (shoddy construction by sub-standard builders) and bad planning.
The complaints arise from just the natural problems of living in a densely populated area (also why I mentioned over-urbanization). I would argue that much of the US isn't really urban, it's really suburban in terms of population density.
Set building codes that include walls thicker than paper-thin. Learn to report your neighbors for noise violations. Such behavior can be tied to one or more people with problems that need jail-time or medication to solve. This is not caused by 'ubanization' but can be found out in the sticks whenever those dreaded 'other people' are.
Sure you can change the building codes, but it's going to further increase housing costs in areas that are already high. It still won't stop the annoyance of the kids upstairs jumping up and down, or the guy next door who decides to start nailing pictures to the wall at 3am. You can report the noise to the police, but for the most part there is nothing they will really do, or even want to do. As for locking up the neighbors, everybody from time to time has a heated argument. Sure if it happens for one couple everyday there are problems, but remember you don't have just 1 or 2 neighbors, you have many, and they don't all time their yelling to occur at the same time. In the sticks it happens, but they are far enough away that I don't have to listen to it.
Proper public transport is do-able. The U.S. highway system is more about siphoning your dollars into the hands of automakers and oil tycoons than providing quality service. See Europe, with better public transport and higher urban density than the U.S.
Proper public transportation is done in the US where there is high density populations similar to Europe. Public transport doesn't work in most US cities is that the population density is too low. The reason there is urban sprawl is because people want to avoid very high density living conditions as I mentioned and they want things like backyards. Still a good public transportation system doesn't alleviate the crowding, that's why I mentioned overcrowded trains. I've had to take the light rail during morning "rush hour" in Tokyo. There's nothing like seeing the train roll in with somebody's face literally pressed against the window, and knowing you have to get onboard.
If you dropped any trash on that street then you are responsible for that dirty. Yes, enough money can buy the sanitation crews to wipe your butt as you walk along the sidewalks. Or just jail fools that can't use a trash can. My solution is to let cops take out any frustrations on litterbugs. Beat the crap out of anyone in an Armani or tattered rags if they get caught on camera littering, spitting or not cleaning up after their dog. Oh, and it's not like rural roads are used as dumping grounds.
I agree it would be nice for the cops to stop litterbugs:) At least in rural areas you can drive by the dumping and ignore it, rather than having to walk by or through it.
Not all cities were build during the modernist 'must be a cube' fad in architecture. Just google pictures of La Palomas in Mexico City. Light pollution is just that. If you can penalized people for not properly reducing glare or give incentives for not wasting power lighting up the sky, that will go away.
I agree with you, modern architecture has come a long way, as well as city planning in more recently developed cities that ensure there are open park areas.
I assume you meant 'in a rural' environment. But you don't want to know that the high cost is largely due to either a sin tax from your religious neighbors (who just want to make you less-sinful in that neighborly way) or from a farmer that got a subsidy and tariff to protect his crops. You want c
Not to mention the hard plastic cover also made the controller feel too "tight" especially for a 5 year old. I remember my brother and I would pull the plastic joysick cover off, eventually we got the Suncom Slickstik which was far superior
Funny thing I noticed looking at the pics for atari controllers was they were designed for the right hand to control the joystick and the left to hit the button. Modern controllers are designed the opposite way.
The fact that the president of the country can lose the population gives us things like... well George Bush.
Fact is both lost, they both got less than 50% of the popular vote. In terms of pissing off people, no matter who won half the country would be upset and complaining. Though electoral college overall is a worse system when it comes to electing a single leader like president, it isn't completely without merit.
- In popular vote we'd probably still be counting votes from the 2000 election as it was so close the loser would go to court to challenge the vote count of every precinct in the country. - Election issues *cough* rigged diebold machines in ohio *cough* get contained to a specific state. - It also serves to ensure the voice of those in less densly populated states are not alienated. Do you think a candidate would ever go to New Hampshire or Iowa in a purely popular vote? - Reduces fragmentation, purely popular votes better allow candidates from other parties to impact election results. This can result in the views of the majority split resulting in a less representative candidate winning the election. Basically the Nader effect on a national scale.
I'm glad the world's population is more urban than rural. cities rock.
On the other hand, over urbanization means u wake up from a horrible sleep because the couple in the house nextdoor(6 inches away) was fighting all night. Then you have the choice of taking an overcrowded train or crawl along the highway in your car at 6mph to get to your cubicle at work. After a hard day you can walk along dirty streets on your way to a bar, look up at all the grey buildings with no possibility of seeing 90% of the sky, let alone the sunset on the horizon. When you get to the bar you can enjoy ordering a pint of beer that costs 2x what it would in a less urban environment. After a few drinks, head home, grab the mail and realize when you see the bill for your mortgage you could buy a nice 4 bedroom house with a big backyard in the country for less than what you pay for your tiny 2 bedroom city shack.
Without copyright we may never have gotten the amazing Gwen Stefani / Akon collaboration "The Sweet Escape". In my opinion, that's OK. That song was only produced because of a wealthy patron who thought they could make a shitload of money from it. Perhaps without copyright, the wealthy patrons will again be motivated by artistic merit like they were in the past... Umm... this would be different how? The only thing I can see is that "What the rich want" might be better than "What the rich think they can make money on".
Copyright doesn't prohibit wealthy patrons, so elitist can pledge money to artists they want. Your argument points out one of the problems of relying on wealthy patrons, they make all the decisions. With profit motive, the masses can create enough momentum where the wealthy will invest and more importantly promote music to a wider audience. Do you think that wealthy white guys would invest in promoting urban music unless there was money to be had?
There's a good argument for a short term copyright policy based on commercial restrictions only. On the other hand, I have yet to hear a good argument for restricting personal copying - having everyone trade their physical property rights away for an alleged marginal increase in the supply of artistic works seems like a strictly bad deal.
You can't seperate the two, personal copying does have a commercial impact. When people were sharing tapes amongst their friends it wasn't a huge impact due to limited distribution reach and an inferior product; now that people can share digital copies to anybody anywhere the threat is much greater.
My 9th grade science teacher didn't know the answer when I asked why ice expands as it freezes.
My Thermo Teacher didn't know the exact answer off the top of his head either, sometimes people can't just recite "obvious" things off the cuff.
Teaching positions should be prized, highly paid and respected positions that are difficult to attain and keep. We should have the best teaching our children. Instead, we get what we paid for.
First it is impossible to have 4M people who are the "best." Second what do you define as the "best"? Look at college professors, high pay, high intelligence; how many great teaching college professors are out there? Instead of focusing on fixing the teachers, we probably would gain more by fixing the students. Other countries that excel in academics don't necessarily have better teachers, they have a culture where the expectations on the students are far greater.
For something like a digitally recorded song, there need be no allocation step - physically, everyone can have a copy and there need be no contention over it.
The problem with things like digitally recorded music is that it is scarce, however, the scarcity is in two states - none or infinite.
Society doesn't owe a living to Gwen Stefani or Justin Timberlake through fat recording contracts.
Copyright doesn't guarantee a living to anybody, nobody has to pay for what they make.
If they can make a living through performances, great. If they can find a wealthy patron, great.
So culture should be relegated to what the rich want, or who you can pin a pretty face to? The greatest drivers to development are devices for risk mitigation. What copyright does is give a legal protection to allow people to take risk and create. Most people still fail to capitalize, but just the opportunity gives incentive for more people to create.
the world will have lost less than it is losing today by people not having access to their own culture and to all the remixes that remix-artists aren't able to make.
Those remixes don't exist without the original. The compromise is to give incentive to create (so you have the original), with a method for those works to fall into public domain (so you have the remixes). Personally I feel that copyright with more reasonable protection (~5-10years) and taxation, is preferable to just abandoment of copyright.
The land you own is based off a lot more than just pieces of paper and pretend lines - it is first and foremost based off of there being physical land there in real existence.
A copyrighted work is based off the fact that you created something, don't confuse imaginary with non-scarce. Ultimately both physical and IP have numerous legal structures that are just "made up." Air rights, easement, licensing, etc. apply to land and can be just as unfair as their IP counterparts.
Most unreasonable search and seizure cases are about whether the cop had any right to position themselves so they could see something in the first place. The decision not to allow some evidence into court is the decision not to let the state get away with committing crimes in order to stop other crimes
That doesn't deny the fact that in essence the judicial system has to pretend they didn't see something. We could just hold the violating officer responsible and throw them in jail; however, in "fairness" we provide a make believe see-no-evil remedy.
If his reduces taxes on the rest of us, I'm all for it! Following this author's ridiculous logic to its natural conclusion, we will kill all innovation, but hey, so long as we stop this "unfair inequality" he whines about.
Well if we tax IP then we get the best of both worlds. Most stuff will default and fall into public domain, that which the author is continuing to captialize on will benifit society through taxes, which also provide an incentive to not just sit on an idea.
It isn't even that, IP is the fiction that pretending ideas are like physical objects is a sensible idea.
The land you own is based off of pieces of paper and pretend lines to mark what is yours; and the right against unreasonable search and seizure is pretending not to see something. Societies are built on a framework of agreements not physical truths.
You do not have a fundamental human right to allocate my resources for me.
You can choose who to associate with in your private life. If you rent a room or hire somebody, Congress has the right to regulate it. When you are engaging in commerce, your freedoms can be abridged.
I never understood people that thought it was the greatest MMO.
It was the greatest MMO in terms of being a role-playing game. It appealed to a minority of people who enjoyed being "Moisture Farmer #5" to "Uber Jedi Galactic Hero."
The GP's idea of the counter-intuitive notion of encouraging immigration to help the economy is nothing new. That's what America has been doing ever since it was founded.
I totally agree that an open immigration policy can help generate many new economic opportunities. My disagreement with the GGP is that a "pull" approach of immigration doesn't necessarily attract the type of risk takers who create business opportunties. An open Immigration policy provides the potential of new ideas and skills; but most importantly desire & energy, which may not necessarily be present in a "pull" immigration policy.
We should be pinning a green card to anybody with an engineering, medical, or CS degree and encouraging them to stay, and bring their families, and start many JOB GENERATING BUSINESSES *here*.
For the most part bringing in foreign workers results in a greater amount of workers; Immigrants who come on their own are more likely to start their own companies. Creating businesses requires risk taking, not a college degree. US culture may not promote technical excellence, but it does promote entrepreneurship.
You have no right to stop me from saying a sequence of words just because you said the same sequence of words earlier. It's not about my rights being more important than yours, it's about your alleged "right" to prevent copying of numbers being ridiculous, unnecessary, and stifling innovation.
Fair use is part of copyright law. There are a number of ways you are allowed to innovate using same sequence of words, parody, derivative works, education, etc. If you are using the same sequence of words just to repeat them, then you are not innovating.
Slashdot Mirror
Tron & Pr0n... a perfect combination
Germany: We will pwn j00
France: ZOMG ZERG *France has disconnected from server*
UK: You too can experience your finest hour with all herbal enlargement pills
Germany: UK is just an F'ing spambot, we'll invade Russia
Russia: No fair Germany, we had a deal!
Germany: WTF Russia is turtling!!!
Japan: All ur base in Asia r belong to us
USA: OMG Japan is so f***ing ninja! I was AFK
Russia: This sucks, I have a spambot and AFKer on my team
US: Don't worry I was macro building up my production while AFK
UK: Sorry about that spam, I was letting my little bro play
Russia: Bout F***ing time you showed up
Germany: Italy, are you going to do anything productive?!
Italy:*Italy has disconnected from the server* *Italy has joined the game* *Italy has joined the Allies*
Germany: We're screwed *Germany has disconnected from the server*
US: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds."
Japan: ZOMG we gotz nuked *Japan has disconnected from the server*
The complaints arise from just the natural problems of living in a densely populated area (also why I mentioned over-urbanization). I would argue that much of the US isn't really urban, it's really suburban in terms of population density.
Sure you can change the building codes, but it's going to further increase housing costs in areas that are already high. It still won't stop the annoyance of the kids upstairs jumping up and down, or the guy next door who decides to start nailing pictures to the wall at 3am. You can report the noise to the police, but for the most part there is nothing they will really do, or even want to do.
As for locking up the neighbors, everybody from time to time has a heated argument. Sure if it happens for one couple everyday there are problems, but remember you don't have just 1 or 2 neighbors, you have many, and they don't all time their yelling to occur at the same time. In the sticks it happens, but they are far enough away that I don't have to listen to it.
Proper public transportation is done in the US where there is high density populations similar to Europe. Public transport doesn't work in most US cities is that the population density is too low. The reason there is urban sprawl is because people want to avoid very high density living conditions as I mentioned and they want things like backyards.
Still a good public transportation system doesn't alleviate the crowding, that's why I mentioned overcrowded trains. I've had to take the light rail during morning "rush hour" in Tokyo. There's nothing like seeing the train roll in with somebody's face literally pressed against the window, and knowing you have to get onboard.
I agree it would be nice for the cops to stop litterbugs :)
At least in rural areas you can drive by the dumping and ignore it, rather than having to walk by or through it.
I agree with you, modern architecture has come a long way, as well as city planning in more recently developed cities that ensure there are open park areas.
Not to mention the hard plastic cover also made the controller feel too "tight" especially for a 5 year old. I remember my brother and I would pull the plastic joysick cover off, eventually we got the Suncom Slickstik which was far superior
Funny thing I noticed looking at the pics for atari controllers was they were designed for the right hand to control the joystick and the left to hit the button. Modern controllers are designed the opposite way.
- In popular vote we'd probably still be counting votes from the 2000 election as it was so close the loser would go to court to challenge the vote count of every precinct in the country.
- Election issues *cough* rigged diebold machines in ohio *cough* get contained to a specific state.
- It also serves to ensure the voice of those in less densly populated states are not alienated. Do you think a candidate would ever go to New Hampshire or Iowa in a purely popular vote?
- Reduces fragmentation, purely popular votes better allow candidates from other parties to impact election results. This can result in the views of the majority split resulting in a less representative candidate winning the election. Basically the Nader effect on a national scale.
You can't seperate the two, personal copying does have a commercial impact. When people were sharing tapes amongst their friends it wasn't a huge impact due to limited distribution reach and an inferior product; now that people can share digital copies to anybody anywhere the threat is much greater.
First it is impossible to have 4M people who are the "best." Second what do you define as the "best"? Look at college professors, high pay, high intelligence; how many great teaching college professors are out there?
Instead of focusing on fixing the teachers, we probably would gain more by fixing the students. Other countries that excel in academics don't necessarily have better teachers, they have a culture where the expectations on the students are far greater.
Copyright doesn't guarantee a living to anybody, nobody has to pay for what they make.
So culture should be relegated to what the rich want, or who you can pin a pretty face to? The greatest drivers to development are devices for risk mitigation. What copyright does is give a legal protection to allow people to take risk and create. Most people still fail to capitalize, but just the opportunity gives incentive for more people to create.
Those remixes don't exist without the original. The compromise is to give incentive to create (so you have the original), with a method for those works to fall into public domain (so you have the remixes). Personally I feel that copyright with more reasonable protection (~5-10years) and taxation, is preferable to just abandoment of copyright.
That doesn't deny the fact that in essence the judicial system has to pretend they didn't see something. We could just hold the violating officer responsible and throw them in jail; however, in "fairness" we provide a make believe see-no-evil remedy.
"Lawlz"
Interstate commerce - which given case law, basically covers all commerce (not that it's right).
When you are engaging in commerce, your freedoms can be abridged.
US culture may not promote technical excellence, but it does promote entrepreneurship.