And with CDs so easy to rip and resell, used CD stores are little more than rent-to-steal shops these days.
I'm the first to defend copyright and that you shouldn't download songs, but this legislation goes over the line. It is very clear under copyright law and from legal precedence that the copyright holder only can control first sale. After that the copy is the owner's to redistribute as I feel fit. This legislation only applies to used CD stores, so it wouldn't stop rip-and-resell. It is crafted to run used CD stores out of business. By only being able to issue credit, they need to have more free inventory; however, the legislation would choke their inventory because of the wait period. Not to mention the alienation of customers with draconian requirements. Essentially the store would have higher overhead, less product, and worse customer relations - a recipe for failure. People will just move online to buy CDs and sell CD's - ebay and amazon still offer the chance to buy used meatspace copies.
now, if this is a typical corporate, the IT manager's status/influence is proportional to his budget and staffing, so is he really going to go for OSX, shrink his department and budget? Sure, he'll win kudos for a short while, but one year later when there's far less support activity, the desktop apps are more reliable, crash less, need less anti-virus emergency activities etc, the directors will question the need for a big-shot manager and recruit someone cheaper.
In your example the IT manager will be replaced because he has been promoted. What is the fastest way to show management skills? Grow your organization to give upper management the idea that you do a bunch of "very important things." Then create efficiency initiatives, where you make massive cuts but still manage to do the "very important things."
aside: ever noticed how personnel ("HR") departments never shrink, even when there's a hiring freeze or even the business is shrinking?
I think your definition of "lots to do" would drive me bonkers.:-) I've been playing quite constantly since beta in October 2004. I have yet to "see it all" even in the old content. I'm no 16 hour hardcore player, but playing 2-4 hours (average) nearly every day, I think I've seen and done plenty of stuff and I know there's quite a bit more to do.
Done poorly (like SWG launch) it would.:D I agree there are lots of things to see and do in terms of content, I was actually referring to variety. You can explore, kill, craft (simplisticly), and umm whine about barrens chat. Other games have offered more variety (complex crafting, housing, politics, etc)
Having come from a hardcore role playing background, I feel that is up to the player to add not the game makers. I tried playing on a RP WoW server, but they were too snooty even for my arrogant self. Besides WoW had so much more to offer than other games that there was no need to add role playing to fill in the gaps.
That is why I describe WoW as simplistic, but still excellent - basically a Fantasy Action Game. Not only do most people not feel the need to participate in roleplay, the game doesn't even offer a good environment in terms of tools. There really is no advancement other than adventuring.
Such as...?
I enjoy the heck out of crafting... LotRO's music system is a nice improvement and probably along the lines you're seeking for non-combat activities.
Yes, I like the idea of LoTRO's music system, though I don't know how well it works. Other activities include: More complex crafting - not just get stuff and click combine Player cities & politics - elect me governor and I promise to ban gold farmers from using my auction house More complicated economies - in SWG there was no "miner class" but you could make pretty good money as a miner for crafters with no combat skills Music/Dancing/Art -See Servognome & the Powerlevelers in concert!
Basically WoW has done an Amazing job in terms of depth & refinement, but not in breadth. On the flip side SWG was great in terms of breadth, but terrible in terms of depth and refinement. If only there were a game that could do both.
I think you mean "simplified interface" so that anyone and everyone who even attempts the game discovers how easy it is to get started and gets hooked within minutes.
WoW may have a "simplified interface," but it also is "dumbed down," in the respect that there really isn't that much to do. There isn't much "role" for an RPG, combat is pretty straight forward (other than raids), and there isn't much in the way of non-combat activities. WoW is great, SWG pre-revamp was great for different reasons (much more non-combat & Roleplay opportunties)... make a game that can do both you'll have a winner.
I mean, the big bad US military is scraping the bottom of the recruitment barrel and radical religionists are slapping our Iraq forces around exactly as predicted in 2002
The US forces in Iraq are not getting slapped around, politically the US is getting slapped around. A roadside bomb killing 2 Americans does not constitute a decisive military action, it does however, feed into a political strategy of maintaining the "war" until the US leaves so that victory can be claimed.
It will be much faster since you'll only have the time window in which your product will not have been copied yet to recoup your R&D cost!
Which means only the big diseases if any get taken care of.
And if you sell at the marginal production cost like a good little capitalist who does not have a Government-granted right to extort money from IDEAS, there will be much less incentive to copy it in the first place.
No a good little capitalist will expect a higher rate of return than marginal production costs because of the higher risk involved.
So your product WILL be copied and improved upon and further on, and progress will go orders of magnitude faster.
Who is going to invest in improvement? Those investment dollars are better spent in cutting production costs of existing product in an environment with no IP protection. We will get cheaper existing drugs (which is what happens in the generics market), but no new drugs.
The truth is that "intellectual" property is imaginary.
The same could be said for privacy.
Nobody owns the plot that everyone uses in modern movies, popular culture, or "folk songs" and things were never before subject to such legislation. They were never "property" before. Myths and tales permeated the countryside. That was until plays could be captured forever as "movies", and music could be stowed away on "records."
Nobody owned their likeness until it could be captured on canvas or more importantly film. Nobody owned their DNA information until we could decode it. Nobody owns their social security number, after all it's just a number.
If you give something out to the free air that can be copied and played again, it will be. You have no power to stop the echo of your voice once you've used it to scream something from atop a mountain, it is then no longer yours to contain.
Then it should be fine to have video surveillance everywhere. If you want to walk out in public, you have no power to stop your image from being seen.
There is no such thing as identity theft, because my use of your identity doesn't necessarily prevent you from using it.
How should the school have handled it? There's nothing to handle. When/if parents complained, the appropriate authority figures should have repeated my response to #1: "It is not illegal to create game maps for a first-person shooter game."
Of course in the very unlikely event he did something, those authority figures would be out of work, in massive debt due to lawsuits, unemployable, and endlessly harassed. It's not about over-zealous school officials, its about people covering their asses.
That's the David and Lucile Packard Foundation which has little or nothing to do with HP. The only connection is that they share a founder. It's the Packards' private money (most probably made at HP), I believe.
Yeah, and the US vice president no longer has ties to Haliburton. 15% of the Packard Foundation's investment holdings is HP or Agilent stock.
In the case of iPod's, it really is Apple's fault since they make the battery impossible or expensive to replace. It's MUCH more environmentally friendly to make fixable electronic gadgets instead of disposable ones.
What do you think the average consumer will do with their old iPod battery when they replace it? Same thing most people do with their old AA batteries, toss it in the garbage. So make it difficult for the customer to replace the battery themselves and they will need to come into the store where you can control the disposal.
You're right, but I understand "Due process of law" to be a trial by jury of ones peers.
That is one instance of "due process of law." You can also waive your rights, for example by signing a confession you waive your right to not self-incriminate. Soldiers have agreed to accept certain limits on their rights when they join.
I'm not entirely opposed to changing that, but a government that doesn't play by it's own rules is not a legitimate government, so why should we fight to protect it in the first place?
What the public wants is sometimes in conflict with what the public demands. We demand 100% safety, but we want to keep ideals of freedom, free speech, etc. - when push comes to shove, we end up dropping our ideals for our demands. Reminds me of a great line from A Few Good Men: "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way." - A Few Good Men
While I understand the need for this because of the reason you mentioned. I would highly doubt any soldier would blog away security related issues
I would highly doubt most people would knowingly blog personal information (address, phone number). People can be naive, and sometimes don't realize the information they are posting.
Do you think $4 is expensive for a box of cereal? Wait 'til you're paying $8-10 a box.
I can get a box of generic cereal for $1, $4 boxes of cereal are due to branding markups. The price increase will depend on the goods being sold - perhaps there will be a 100% increase in the price of generic cereal (which have almost no margins to absorb cost), maybe 25% for brand name cereal.
True, and certainly in China's case - who will this hurt exactly? What percentage of US goods are in fact manufactured in China? Quite a large one I'll bet, certainly a significant one.
Mostly China. Impose sanctions on China, and Americans will end up paying a little bit more for goods; China will lose out on investments and jobs.
The football players I knew were (and to my knowledge, have been as long as the damn sport has been around!) always the most obnoxious, arrogant, and physically abusive people around.
Other than the physical part, I've found there are always people who are arrogant, obnoxious, and abusive when they are in an element they feel they control. Try playing as a noob on WoW, and you'll enjoy a few people who "have 4 level 60 chars" and spew out obscenities and verbal abuse.
No, what differentiates The Internet is that it isn't a restricted access private network like all other global networks. Instead of being controlled by one source, it is an agreement between many parties with the effect that essentially anyone in the world can set up an ISP and/or get an internet connection. That's the difference.
That is true of telephone networks as well.
The format of bits is irrelevent. Again, other networks use the same format of bits, but this means nothing they still aren't The Internet
It's not either the connection, or the format that defines the internet... it's both. Other networks use the same format as the internet, but are not part of the internet because they are not conencted. Other networks use the same connections, but are not part of the internet because they use different protocols and can't be accessed Those that share the same connections and protocols are part of the internet.
Um, not even. For one, you can use the same types of connections and the exact same protocols in any network, and that doesn't make them The Internet.
I was referring to what you are connected to, not the type of connection. You can't just make a global network and call it "The Internet." It has to be connected to the existing framework.
And for two, The Internet is still The Internet when the protocol changes or a new connection type (e.g. satellite) is added to the mix.
You can redefine the Internet by changing the protocol. Let's say a part of The Internet changes protocols and cannot communicate with other nodes, Is it still part of the Internet? That's why typically there is backwards compatibility, so it isn't a complete change, rather it's an augmentation.
The Internet is the global network, and that's what makes it what it is. Not the format of the bits going across it.
There are many global networks. What differentiates The Internet from other global networks is the format of bits, how they are handled, and where they can go.
You are right that the key observation is that the technological means by which all of the computers are connected and the protocols they use are not important
The protocols & connections make "The Internet." If you are networking without those, it's not "The Internet", it's some other network.
Regarding abortion and protests what is happening is that one group wants to impose a set of rules derived from religion, morality or whatever reason they follow on another group that demands a more pragmatic set of rules that's utterly offensive to the first group.
Both groups are trying to impose a set of rules derived from morality, the rule is don't kill people. The philisophical divide is, what constitutes a person? People have been debating that for thousands of years, there is no solution.
If you wanted to test trig knowledge, you'd design a problem not solvable via easy geometry.
How is the test taker to know what they are supposed to apply? Look at the posts on/. on how they would try to solve the Chinese problem - there's geometry, trig, and even vectors. If I tried to apply something not intended and hit a dead end, start over and run out of time. Does that mean I don't know the material, or that I wasn't fast enough at figuring out what the test maker wanted?
As to factual knowledge being more important, I'd say that's almost never true in mathematics. Being apply to apply mathematical concepts logically is what math is all about. If the student grasps the material fully, then there should be plenty of time to complete the exam.
It depends on context. I agree at a high level math is about logical application of various techniques. However, timed standardized exams aren't the best method at assessing complex logical thought processes. Usually there's no partial credit, so the thought process could be correct but the mistake could be in execution. You also have the problem of people not following the "obvious" path and taking more/less time, as well as not necessarily demonstrating the knowledge you were looking for. A friend of mine got through DiffEq not by learning the techniques from that class, but just applying Laplace transforms and techniques from other classes.
Many tests are actually designed to take more than the allotted time. How much the student completes is also used to measure how fully the student knows the material.
The difference is that the Chinese version requires you to now simply know (and be able to mindlessly regurgitate) a few facts about mathematics, it requires you to analyse a problem, reason about it, chain together a sequence of logical deductions, and present that reasoning in a clear way.
The question is what do you want to test? I'm assuming that these are standardized timed exams, in which case factual knowledge is more important than the speed at which one can make logical deductions. The more complex the problem, the more ways people can solve it, and the amount of time it takes varies more. Do you penalize the kid who takes more time coming up with and applying complex trig identities rather than applying easy geometry?
Here's an analogy: Two history questions: one asks you to write a short essay discussing the rise to power of Queen Elizabeth I, and the cultural impacts those events had, both at the time, and through history; the other asks you to list dates associated with Queen Elizabeth I, and the names of some famous people alive at that time. One of those is actually testing your grasp of history, and the other is mindless regurgitation of facts that will probably soon be forgotten.
The problem comes in if you only have 15 minutes to write the essay. Basically one tests how well you memorize facts, the latter tests how well you memorized an outline that your teacher gave you. I remember in our teacher led AP US History Study Sessions we planned out the "answers" for most likely DBQs. I could have come up with something complex on my own, however, sometimes time limits don't allow me to fully think things out; and you don't get credit for just an outline of a really thought provoking essay
China and India will exhibit strong economies, due to their actual production of goods with intrinsic value.
Selling to whom? If the US economy goes down it'll take India & China (US represents ~20% of their exports) with it.
The economy of the US, built around goods without any intrinsic value, cannot remain strong
The US produces IP because it's more value added. Any item you make has IP in it's design. The US has just seperated the IP generation from the item production - designed by Apple in California, built in China. If IP is not protected in China, then the US will go back to design in the US build in the US. It will also leave idle many Chinese factories that have depended on building US designed products.
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This legislation only applies to used CD stores, so it wouldn't stop rip-and-resell. It is crafted to run used CD stores out of business. By only being able to issue credit, they need to have more free inventory; however, the legislation would choke their inventory because of the wait period. Not to mention the alienation of customers with draconian requirements. Essentially the store would have higher overhead, less product, and worse customer relations - a recipe for failure.
People will just move online to buy CDs and sell CD's - ebay and amazon still offer the chance to buy used meatspace copies.
I've noticed they are one of the first to go.
I agree there are lots of things to see and do in terms of content, I was actually referring to variety. You can explore, kill, craft (simplisticly), and umm whine about barrens chat. Other games have offered more variety (complex crafting, housing, politics, etc)
That is why I describe WoW as simplistic, but still excellent - basically a Fantasy Action Game. Not only do most people not feel the need to participate in roleplay, the game doesn't even offer a good environment in terms of tools. There really is no advancement other than adventuring.
Yes, I like the idea of LoTRO's music system, though I don't know how well it works. Other activities include:
More complex crafting - not just get stuff and click combine
Player cities & politics - elect me governor and I promise to ban gold farmers from using my auction house
More complicated economies - in SWG there was no "miner class" but you could make pretty good money as a miner for crafters with no combat skills
Music/Dancing/Art -See Servognome & the Powerlevelers in concert!
Basically WoW has done an Amazing job in terms of depth & refinement, but not in breadth. On the flip side SWG was great in terms of breadth, but terrible in terms of depth and refinement. If only there were a game that could do both.
WoW is great, SWG pre-revamp was great for different reasons (much more non-combat & Roleplay opportunties)... make a game that can do both you'll have a winner.
No a good little capitalist will expect a higher rate of return than marginal production costs because of the higher risk involved.
Who is going to invest in improvement? Those investment dollars are better spent in cutting production costs of existing product in an environment with no IP protection. We will get cheaper existing drugs (which is what happens in the generics market), but no new drugs.
Nobody owned their likeness until it could be captured on canvas or more importantly film. Nobody owned their DNA information until we could decode it. Nobody owns their social security number, after all it's just a number.Then it should be fine to have video surveillance everywhere. If you want to walk out in public, you have no power to stop your image from being seen.
There is no such thing as identity theft, because my use of your identity doesn't necessarily prevent you from using it.
It's not about over-zealous school officials, its about people covering their asses.
What the public wants is sometimes in conflict with what the public demands. We demand 100% safety, but we want to keep ideals of freedom, free speech, etc. - when push comes to shove, we end up dropping our ideals for our demands.
Reminds me of a great line from A Few Good Men: "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way." - A Few Good Men
It's not either the connection, or the format that defines the internet... it's both. Other networks use the same format as the internet, but are not part of the internet because they are not conencted. Other networks use the same connections, but are not part of the internet because they use different protocols and can't be accessed
Those that share the same connections and protocols are part of the internet.
You can redefine the Internet by changing the protocol. Let's say a part of The Internet changes protocols and cannot communicate with other nodes, Is it still part of the Internet? That's why typically there is backwards compatibility, so it isn't a complete change, rather it's an augmentation.
There are many global networks. What differentiates The Internet from other global networks is the format of bits, how they are handled, and where they can go.
It depends on context. I agree at a high level math is about logical application of various techniques. However, timed standardized exams aren't the best method at assessing complex logical thought processes. Usually there's no partial credit, so the thought process could be correct but the mistake could be in execution. You also have the problem of people not following the "obvious" path and taking more/less time, as well as not necessarily demonstrating the knowledge you were looking for. A friend of mine got through DiffEq not by learning the techniques from that class, but just applying Laplace transforms and techniques from other classes.
Or how well they match the test maker's logic.
I'm assuming that these are standardized timed exams, in which case factual knowledge is more important than the speed at which one can make logical deductions.
The more complex the problem, the more ways people can solve it, and the amount of time it takes varies more.
Do you penalize the kid who takes more time coming up with and applying complex trig identities rather than applying easy geometry?
The problem comes in if you only have 15 minutes to write the essay. Basically one tests how well you memorize facts, the latter tests how well you memorized an outline that your teacher gave you. I remember in our teacher led AP US History Study Sessions we planned out the "answers" for most likely DBQs. I could have come up with something complex on my own, however, sometimes time limits don't allow me to fully think things out; and you don't get credit for just an outline of a really thought provoking essay
The US produces IP because it's more value added. Any item you make has IP in it's design. The US has just seperated the IP generation from the item production - designed by Apple in California, built in China. If IP is not protected in China, then the US will go back to design in the US build in the US. It will also leave idle many Chinese factories that have depended on building US designed products.