I don't think this level of derision is appropriate, however- The detractors are right that this story is remarkably free of anything interesting other than 'here's a non-NY or SF based linux related event, some guys blogged it'. Mention some new idea or technology that was presented at the event, or at least drop a slashdot-type celebrity name who attended. If there aren't any, be sure to think of that and rectify it in the planning stages of next year's event.
There's something sort of arrogant about publishing your acceptance speech when you didn't even win.
I think he just really wish he could have said "holy fuck, I've won a Nebula" after winning a Nebula. And thank the people who have helped him, which deserve thanking either way. It is weird on the face of it, but I'm not seeing the arrogance.
Which begs the question, why would an obviously talented legal thinker be passed over time and again for judicial appointments?
I was going to guess if Dean or some of the other presidential candidates who appeared as guests on Lessig's blog (and who've since dropped out of the race) won the election they'd put Lessig in their administration somewhere, appointed him to head the FCC, or as you say made him a judge. Maybe if some supporters of those candidates who've since gotten in line in support of Kerry made their voices heard something like that could still happen.
$.50 a track, 192kbit stereo is what it'll take to get me to buy my music.
I'm going to wait until competition drives price down to $.10 a track. Oh, right, it's a monopoly sanctioned by the state but not regulated by the state, prices will only go up as per this slashdot story...
Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit
on
RIAA's Nasty Easter Egg
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
A Napster shill cutting and pasting from a press release or promotional brochure is +5 informative?
Choose from over 500,000 songs from all genres of music.
Right, it's not my favorite artists or songs I'm looking for, it's my favoritie genre.
Collect your favorite tracks and tune into your own playlists.
Okay. Computers are neat, huh?
Download music on up to 3 PCs--for online and offline listening.
So the parent who wanted to listen to music in their car now has to find a pc with a car radio form factor?
Get more tracks for less when you buy in bulk through Napster's Track Packs.
The parent was asking for a flat rate for as much music as they wanted, not a reduced bulk rate.
Plug into over 50 different commercial-free stations that are customized to your favorite genres.
What is it with this genre thing? I don't like musical genres, I like music that I like.
Set up and save tracks to your own playlists and share them with others.
Okay. Computers are neat- wait a minute this is almost just like a previous bullet point!
Build your own custom radio station.
Would this radio station almost have the funtionality of saving my own playlists and sharing them with others?
and more...
Let me guess- we can download music? Off the internet? And then the music files are in the computer?
If you want really good camera shots, you need 5 or 6 ghost spectators floating around the arena, and someone to switch between them
I've always thought it would be interesting to have cameramen player classes, where there would be a bunch of cameras controlled by in-game characters, shoulder mounted even. Perhaps dead players waiting in limbo or casual spectators would switch among them and find the best shots, and the cameraman with the most views would get the most points. None of that would help with storytelling though, but it might be interesting. Cameramen could be killed just like anyone else, which may be necessary to keep tactics secret, but it would cost the killing side a little. To further complicate matters, the type of stuff captured on video would affect the outcome- if one side wins, but there aren't any cameras to see it, then that's not worth as much as a gloriuos victory broadcast live to the world.
Magazines are much more readable than web-pages, frequently- and flipping a page is much faster than waiting for a full screenshot download, even with broadband. Magazines also seem superior for advertisers and more marginal games- why would I bother clicking on a link to a game review of a game I've never heard of, much less clicking on an ad- while with a magazine I'll flip through start to finish and be exposed to all kinds of ads and game reviews I wouldn't have bothered with otherwise. The glossy finish and page layout is nice, and an open magazine takes up more eye real-estate than a 17 or 19-inch monitor.
That said, I don't subscribe to any game magazines or buy them off the rack. Only if I see some back-issues in a thrift store for 50 cents each will I make a purchase.
Magazine are pretty worthless for reviews these days, just because the internet can handle that much better- every game they cover is months away from being finished and exclusive early on access gives them a slight edge over web pages. So it's all just hype machine material, nothing critical, but I don't mind because I enjoy the hype while at the same time I read the real reviews online.
I believe it's either some sort of electro-stigmata heralding the arrival of the cyber-christ, who will liberate the machines from their fleshy oppressors.
On the other hand, people engaged in various consentual sexual acts, there's nothing dangerous or immoral about this! I'm not saying that violence should be banned either, just that it's bizarre to censor sex and still allow showing people getting their brains blown out.
They don't need to ban depictions of violence because it's obviously wrong. Sex is not wrong, but does have some bad side effects (STDs and teen pregnancy and so forth). Very few people commit murder compared to the number of people having sex- therefore, since a lot of those people have seen porn at some point, then it's much easier to draw a causal relationship between the two, however tenuous. Also, it's much harder to arrest people for having sex than it is for committing some act of violence, so the porn industry is the only thing they can go after.
Seems to be either a waste of valuable information or suggests that this is more a publicity stunt than science.
I think it was a stunt to try to save the program, which last I heard NASA was pulling out of so it could focus on the 'New Vision'. Though it's likely the Air Force will pick up the tab for all atmosphereic propulsion technologies, in any case...
but implying that the president has anything but a minor role in the immediate economy (especially during thier first term in office) is silly.
But that minor role is far more than any other single elected official, even neglecting all the cabinet members and people appointed by the president to oversee various industries and the fact that senators and others from the same party as the president generally fall in line and support what the president supports.
Also, there's this quote from Kentucky Fried Move that should be the final word on the matter:
"I'M in the driver's seat! I'M in control! I'm the fuckin' president!"
yeah...just look at the thousands of body bags being pulled off the planes...
dude...you need some perspective here...
Vietnam....56,000 dead americans....
Iraq....550 dead americans....
Only 56,000 dead in Vietnam, and we just gave up and let the other guys take the country? Wow, that's nothing compared to this. Yes, and someone else can come up with numbers from a much more brutal and deadly war, to no point- that's all in the past. The present conflict can either get much worse or much better depending on actions taken right now.
I think a few million Vietnamese died in the Vietnam War, so the number of Iraqis dead in the last year of war are going to pale in comparison just as the number of dead Americans does.
That said, the Vietnam War was so fucked up it almost boggles the imagination- but then again nobody got nuked or was gassed either on the battlefield or in concentration camps. Everything else is not even worth your attention if you only compare it to the darkest moments of the past century.
The Iraq war as it currently is is fucked up on a much more comprehensible and manageable level. Vietnam and the rest are all in the past- but choices and votes and opinions expressed on Iraq in the near future can still affect the outcome, we shouldn't wait around and compare body bags tallies.
Bush says he wants broadband for everybody by 2007, Kerry says he wants to spur technologies that will bring broadband to everybody. Same thing.
They sound pretty different to me. One comes with a target date and promise of reaching everyone- and it sounds like a 30s era public works type project: may have a worthile goal, but requires lots of money and bureaucracy, blindly adopts a huge monolithic solution, and is rife with the corruption you'd expect ('In order to avoid certain legal complications, the broadband deploying trucks are always rolling').
'Investing in new technology' is vague, but sounds much less heavy-handed. Even if the new technology doesn't bring broadband as we know it to every last citizen, you've probably promoted the invention of some new and interesting things rather than providing a permanent subisidy to the cable laying and maintenence industry, or whatever.
Which plan did you say came from a Democrat and which from a Republican?
I'm starting to think we'll never see any real space development until a new, radical propulsion technology comes along.
Oddly enough, NASA is pulling out of its involvement in prototype craft and engine research of the X-43 hypersonic demonstrator and RS-84 reusable rocket engine, directly as a result of the new prioritization of space exploration.
Myself, I think we should skip that and work on antimatter production, storage, and propulsion concepts. Sure, it's a good 3 or 4 manhattan projects away from being useful, but it's the stuff we'll get to the stars with. Maybe if someone were to tell the current administration it's also end-all of weaponizable materials they'd throw a few billions dollars at a new accelerator to make it in usable quantities.
I can't get too upset for reporters using "$1 trillion" as a metaphor for "unknown but freaking enormous pile of money" -- it's not like this is a bond issue.
The current administration has a pretty poor track record on this- the war in Iraq was supposed to take a few months and cost a couple billion dollars. And we've invaded Iraq before- it's not like fighting wars and occupying countries is something that was just invented in the 20th century.
So I guess you take whatever estimate that the government says and multiply the time and the money by a hundred or so. Doesn't mean it's not worthing doing, but if they were more honest up front the chances of cancellation later would be smaller even if the chance of starting the thing at all would be lower as well, or maybe not. Think of the RAH-66 Commanche or the probably very soon to be cancelled F/A-22 Raptor- huge cost and time overruns and not much to show for it...
I have always wondered, where/how exactly is all that money spent? Why does it cost so much?
There's a story from the 60s, where a NASA technician wrote to his senator complaining about the bolts being used for the Apollo program costing something like $20 each when he knew he could go down to the hardware store and buy the same bolt for a tiny fraction of that. The senator raised hell and called in a bunch of NASA guys higher up in the food chain to answer before a committee why they were getting swindled on the bolts.
The explanation goes like this:
Early on in the Apollo program someone decided on what chance of failure would be acceptable- I think they chose something like 1 in a million. If your spacecraft has thousands or millions of parts, then even the tiniest probability of failure in the tiniest parts can really accumulate into something unacceptable. A random bolt from a random bin has a certain chance of failure- but if you knew exactly where the bolt was made, how it was made (and the quality control processes used), where the metal came from (or even which mineshaft of which mine it camer from), you could make sure you had a higher quality bolt with a lower chance of failure. Figuring all that information out, testing it anew once it comes in the door, and keeping track of that component from its manufacture to its installation on the space hardware (making sure someone doesn't just replace it with something from the local hardware store, or that it hasn't been exposed to anything that would degrade its performance) doesn't come free. It costs near $20 per bolt.
The government is trying to lower the worth of the dollar on purpose, in order to stimulate trade, the idea being that imports into the U.S. are more expensive and exports are cheaper for other countries, so more foreign money will come in, and tourism as well.
Isn't this crypto-protectionism? It's like tariffs that subsidize competing domestic products, but probably with worse consequences.
Wasn't the point of globalism is that a lot of U.S. countries are building stuff and shipping it to the U.S. from other countries, where the dollar would go further, but now doing that costs more and therefore those companies are less profitable, or am I missing something? To consumers in the U.S., foreign stuff gets more expensive and domestic stays the same, so the net effect is consumers spend more and get less- where's the benefit?
Does anybody have a fucking clue about what country the words 'Nintendo' or 'Sega' comes from? Can you guess where the international headquarters for Sony is located?
And where are their various regional headquarters located? How many Japanese workers did they have to fire when they set those up?
The point is not where a company is located, but whether it built on its successes firing the people who worked hard to make the company what it is because cheaper laborers were found in some other country.
Greed is the thing that causes companies to form to make games. Greed is the thing that causes programmers (fresh off a hit game) to demand the big bucks. Greed is the thing that then drives the _people with the money_ to go elsewhere to hire the programmers.
Greed also causes workers to unionize, causes voters to support protectionist policies, causes companies to lobby for subsidies from the government and so on. The idea is, that in a democracy the greed of the many outweighs the greed of the few, and things balance out.
If someone dupes the many into believing untold riches are down the road if they go without work now, then there's probably going to be hell to pay when the people figure out the check is not in the mail and overreact by putting draconian protectionist policies in place and sparking off all sorts of trade wars...
m ashamed of NASA and I am ashamed of our media coverage of science. When I was a kid, every space shuttle launch was televised. Taking 10-30 minutes of time out of my day to watch the occasional launch helped inspire me...
This kind of thinking is very Nixon-esque: Everyone has to watch the space program on television if they're going to support it, and if they don't (because the networks won't show it if people aren't watching), kill the program. Much better to have lots of high traffic internet sites that let people get info at their leisure rather than be forced to watch it on tv. Lots of space stuff is extremely boring when shown live on tv (and dumbed down for general audiences), but much more interesting on the internet where anyone can get as much interesting detail and high-res images as they can handle.
Maybe this is just the thing we need to start another space race?
I think they really want international funds for this project, especially from the U.S. We would spend our r&d dollars on moon/mars craft, and fulfill obligations to the ISS by funding this and promising to pay for x-many missions. That way, our work stays focused on interplanetary, and we still have a way to get people into LEO for relatively cheap.
On the other hand, a Russian Mars craft, which would probably have to be self-funded, would only happen if the U.S. or China initiated the competition and not the other way around. I think the idea is if the guys on both sides talk big maybe they can get the get the competition going just out of thin air...
You have a interesting take on things, maybe I'll try to work that into the argument the next time it comes up, but it's so bizarre (that's probably why you're posting AC) it would probably only pollute the waters.
just like boxers can opt-in to being punched, many actors may opt-in to swearing seans.
This doesn't make any sense. I'm pretty sure boxers make physical contact all the time- or are you talking about boxers in movies? Does that last part mean 'sans swearing'?
In real life, if you call someone a f*cken sh*thead it hurts him much like assaulting him would.
Is this an argument for more censorship of language? I and the US justice system certainly don't agree with you here- how many people have died or been hospitalized purely from verbal abuse?
I can create such a dramatical staging -- While filming with the other actors, I'll move my lips silently, so I'm not swearing at them; and later on a sound-stage I'll do a voice-over to add the audio effects. In exactly the same way as your murder analogy, noone was sworn at.... However if I do a dramatic re-enactment of calling someone a fucken shithed by saying it to him in a performance, it doesn't hurt any worse than being stabbed by a plastic knife.
You're right, I completely disregarded the feelings of the actors and thought only of the viewers, in regards to simulated swearing vs. not (but obviously not for simulated murder vs. real), but this line of logic is still ambiguous:
So the idea that the swearing is simulated does A. makes sure no one was offended on the set, B. makes sure no viewer feels bad for the people on the set who had to put up with the harsh language. I was thinking more along the the lines of having to hear harsh language in any context is undesirable to a lot of people, whether or not it was mean-spirited, recorded in a studio, or any other scenario.
I also place a high value on judging the likelihood of anyone viewing the act they viewed and then carrying it out for real. It's my belief that if kids watch a simulation of a shoot-out on tv, they have a higher likelihood of simulating a shootout for fun, but the likelihood of them actually taking real guns and shooting real bullets at each other is much lower. I don't think the consequences of people acting out violence is that bad as long as they aren't using real weapons (or realistic weapons in a public area without making that clear to everyone in view), and society probably feels the same way so they don't give a high priority to limiting access to violent imagery.
Finally, I carefully used the words 'physically' and 'sound-waves' and stand by the assertion that a played back recording of a swear word is for most purposes indistinguishable in that domain from the same sounds emanating from vocal cords.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think this level of derision is appropriate, however- The detractors are right that this story is remarkably free of anything interesting other than 'here's a non-NY or SF based linux related event, some guys blogged it'. Mention some new idea or technology that was presented at the event, or at least drop a slashdot-type celebrity name who attended. If there aren't any, be sure to think of that and rectify it in the planning stages of next year's event.
There's something sort of arrogant about publishing your acceptance speech when you didn't even win.
I think he just really wish he could have said "holy fuck, I've won a Nebula" after winning a Nebula. And thank the people who have helped him, which deserve thanking either way. It is weird on the face of it, but I'm not seeing the arrogance.
Which begs the question, why would an obviously talented legal thinker be passed over time and again for judicial appointments?
I was going to guess if Dean or some of the other presidential candidates who appeared as guests on Lessig's blog (and who've since dropped out of the race) won the election they'd put Lessig in their administration somewhere, appointed him to head the FCC, or as you say made him a judge. Maybe if some supporters of those candidates who've since gotten in line in support of Kerry made their voices heard something like that could still happen.
Kick Ass and Take Names, or Kick ass And Take Names?
$.50 a track, 192kbit stereo is what it'll take to get me to buy my music.
I'm going to wait until competition drives price down to $.10 a track. Oh, right, it's a monopoly sanctioned by the state but not regulated by the state, prices will only go up as per this slashdot story...
Choose from over 500,000 songs from all genres of music.
Right, it's not my favorite artists or songs I'm looking for, it's my favoritie genre.
Collect your favorite tracks and tune into your own playlists.
Okay. Computers are neat, huh?
Download music on up to 3 PCs--for online and offline listening.
So the parent who wanted to listen to music in their car now has to find a pc with a car radio form factor?
Get more tracks for less when you buy in bulk through Napster's Track Packs.
The parent was asking for a flat rate for as much music as they wanted, not a reduced bulk rate.
Plug into over 50 different commercial-free stations that are customized to your favorite genres.
What is it with this genre thing? I don't like musical genres, I like music that I like.
Set up and save tracks to your own playlists and share them with others.
Okay. Computers are neat- wait a minute this is almost just like a previous bullet point!
Build your own custom radio station.
Would this radio station almost have the funtionality of saving my own playlists and sharing them with others?
and more...
Let me guess- we can download music? Off the internet? And then the music files are in the computer?
can Hollywood not just take a chance and film an Iain Banks, Greg Bear, etc. novel and just give us some good science fiction?
Forge of God
Anvil of Stars
If you want really good camera shots, you need 5 or 6 ghost spectators floating around the arena, and someone to switch between them
I've always thought it would be interesting to have cameramen player classes, where there would be a bunch of cameras controlled by in-game characters, shoulder mounted even. Perhaps dead players waiting in limbo or casual spectators would switch among them and find the best shots, and the cameraman with the most views would get the most points. None of that would help with storytelling though, but it might be interesting. Cameramen could be killed just like anyone else, which may be necessary to keep tactics secret, but it would cost the killing side a little. To further complicate matters, the type of stuff captured on video would affect the outcome- if one side wins, but there aren't any cameras to see it, then that's not worth as much as a gloriuos victory broadcast live to the world.
Magazines are much more readable than web-pages, frequently- and flipping a page is much faster than waiting for a full screenshot download, even with broadband. Magazines also seem superior for advertisers and more marginal games- why would I bother clicking on a link to a game review of a game I've never heard of, much less clicking on an ad- while with a magazine I'll flip through start to finish and be exposed to all kinds of ads and game reviews I wouldn't have bothered with otherwise. The glossy finish and page layout is nice, and an open magazine takes up more eye real-estate than a 17 or 19-inch monitor.
That said, I don't subscribe to any game magazines or buy them off the rack. Only if I see some back-issues in a thrift store for 50 cents each will I make a purchase.
Magazine are pretty worthless for reviews these days, just because the internet can handle that much better- every game they cover is months away from being finished and exclusive early on access gives them a slight edge over web pages. So it's all just hype machine material, nothing critical, but I don't mind because I enjoy the hype while at the same time I read the real reviews online.
"Jesus!"
I believe it's either some sort of electro-stigmata heralding the arrival of the cyber-christ, who will liberate the machines from their fleshy oppressors.
Either that or it's just all bullshit.
On the other hand, people engaged in various consentual sexual acts, there's nothing dangerous or immoral about this! I'm not saying that violence should be banned either, just that it's bizarre to censor sex and still allow showing people getting their brains blown out.
They don't need to ban depictions of violence because it's obviously wrong. Sex is not wrong, but does have some bad side effects (STDs and teen pregnancy and so forth). Very few people commit murder compared to the number of people having sex- therefore, since a lot of those people have seen porn at some point, then it's much easier to draw a causal relationship between the two, however tenuous. Also, it's much harder to arrest people for having sex than it is for committing some act of violence, so the porn industry is the only thing they can go after.
Seems to be either a waste of valuable information or suggests that this is more a publicity stunt than science.
I think it was a stunt to try to save the program, which last I heard NASA was pulling out of so it could focus on the 'New Vision'. Though it's likely the Air Force will pick up the tab for all atmosphereic propulsion technologies, in any case...
But that minor role is far more than any other single elected official, even neglecting all the cabinet members and people appointed by the president to oversee various industries and the fact that senators and others from the same party as the president generally fall in line and support what the president supports.
Also, there's this quote from Kentucky Fried Move that should be the final word on the matter:
See?
The age-old numbers game:
yeah...just look at the thousands of body bags being pulled off the planes...
dude...you need some perspective here...
Vietnam....56,000 dead americans....
Iraq....550 dead americans....
Only 56,000 dead in Vietnam, and we just gave up and let the other guys take the country? Wow, that's nothing compared to this. Yes, and someone else can come up with numbers from a much more brutal and deadly war, to no point- that's all in the past. The present conflict can either get much worse or much better depending on actions taken right now.
"First, we're up to 591 now."
When did Iraqis cease to count as people?
The numbers game is pretty stupid, but anyhow:
I think a few million Vietnamese died in the Vietnam War, so the number of Iraqis dead in the last year of war are going to pale in comparison just as the number of dead Americans does.
That said, the Vietnam War was so fucked up it almost boggles the imagination- but then again nobody got nuked or was gassed either on the battlefield or in concentration camps. Everything else is not even worth your attention if you only compare it to the darkest moments of the past century.
The Iraq war as it currently is is fucked up on a much more comprehensible and manageable level. Vietnam and the rest are all in the past- but choices and votes and opinions expressed on Iraq in the near future can still affect the outcome, we shouldn't wait around and compare body bags tallies.
Bush says he wants broadband for everybody by 2007, Kerry says he wants to spur technologies that will bring broadband to everybody. Same thing.
They sound pretty different to me. One comes with a target date and promise of reaching everyone- and it sounds like a 30s era public works type project: may have a worthile goal, but requires lots of money and bureaucracy, blindly adopts a huge monolithic solution, and is rife with the corruption you'd expect ('In order to avoid certain legal complications, the broadband deploying trucks are always rolling').
'Investing in new technology' is vague, but sounds much less heavy-handed. Even if the new technology doesn't bring broadband as we know it to every last citizen, you've probably promoted the invention of some new and interesting things rather than providing a permanent subisidy to the cable laying and maintenence industry, or whatever.
Which plan did you say came from a Democrat and which from a Republican?
I'm starting to think we'll never see any real space development until a new, radical propulsion technology comes along.
Oddly enough, NASA is pulling out of its involvement in prototype craft and engine research of the X-43 hypersonic demonstrator and RS-84 reusable rocket engine, directly as a result of the new prioritization of space exploration.
Myself, I think we should skip that and work on antimatter production, storage, and propulsion concepts. Sure, it's a good 3 or 4 manhattan projects away from being useful, but it's the stuff we'll get to the stars with. Maybe if someone were to tell the current administration it's also end-all of weaponizable materials they'd throw a few billions dollars at a new accelerator to make it in usable quantities.
I can't get too upset for reporters using "$1 trillion" as a metaphor for "unknown but freaking enormous pile of money" -- it's not like this is a bond issue.
The current administration has a pretty poor track record on this- the war in Iraq was supposed to take a few months and cost a couple billion dollars. And we've invaded Iraq before- it's not like fighting wars and occupying countries is something that was just invented in the 20th century.
So I guess you take whatever estimate that the government says and multiply the time and the money by a hundred or so. Doesn't mean it's not worthing doing, but if they were more honest up front the chances of cancellation later would be smaller even if the chance of starting the thing at all would be lower as well, or maybe not. Think of the RAH-66 Commanche or the probably very soon to be cancelled F/A-22 Raptor- huge cost and time overruns and not much to show for it...
I have always wondered, where/how exactly is all that money spent? Why does it cost so much?
There's a story from the 60s, where a NASA technician wrote to his senator complaining about the bolts being used for the Apollo program costing something like $20 each when he knew he could go down to the hardware store and buy the same bolt for a tiny fraction of that. The senator raised hell and called in a bunch of NASA guys higher up in the food chain to answer before a committee why they were getting swindled on the bolts.
The explanation goes like this:
Early on in the Apollo program someone decided on what chance of failure would be acceptable- I think they chose something like 1 in a million. If your spacecraft has thousands or millions of parts, then even the tiniest probability of failure in the tiniest parts can really accumulate into something unacceptable. A random bolt from a random bin has a certain chance of failure- but if you knew exactly where the bolt was made, how it was made (and the quality control processes used), where the metal came from (or even which mineshaft of which mine it camer from), you could make sure you had a higher quality bolt with a lower chance of failure. Figuring all that information out, testing it anew once it comes in the door, and keeping track of that component from its manufacture to its installation on the space hardware (making sure someone doesn't just replace it with something from the local hardware store, or that it hasn't been exposed to anything that would degrade its performance) doesn't come free. It costs near $20 per bolt.
The government is trying to lower the worth of the dollar on purpose, in order to stimulate trade, the idea being that imports into the U.S. are more expensive and exports are cheaper for other countries, so more foreign money will come in, and tourism as well.
Isn't this crypto-protectionism? It's like tariffs that subsidize competing domestic products, but probably with worse consequences.
Wasn't the point of globalism is that a lot of U.S. countries are building stuff and shipping it to the U.S. from other countries, where the dollar would go further, but now doing that costs more and therefore those companies are less profitable, or am I missing something? To consumers in the U.S., foreign stuff gets more expensive and domestic stays the same, so the net effect is consumers spend more and get less- where's the benefit?
Does anybody have a fucking clue about what country the words 'Nintendo' or 'Sega' comes from? Can you guess where the international headquarters for Sony is located?
And where are their various regional headquarters located? How many Japanese workers did they have to fire when they set those up?
The point is not where a company is located, but whether it built on its successes firing the people who worked hard to make the company what it is because cheaper laborers were found in some other country.
Greed is the thing that causes companies to form to make games. Greed is the thing that causes programmers (fresh off a hit game) to demand the big bucks. Greed is the thing that then drives the _people with the money_ to go elsewhere to hire the programmers.
Greed also causes workers to unionize, causes voters to support protectionist policies, causes companies to lobby for subsidies from the government and so on. The idea is, that in a democracy the greed of the many outweighs the greed of the few, and things balance out.
If someone dupes the many into believing untold riches are down the road if they go without work now, then there's probably going to be hell to pay when the people figure out the check is not in the mail and overreact by putting draconian protectionist policies in place and sparking off all sorts of trade wars...
m ashamed of NASA and I am ashamed of our media coverage of science. When I was a kid, every space shuttle launch was televised. Taking 10-30 minutes of time out of my day to watch the occasional launch helped inspire me...
This kind of thinking is very Nixon-esque: Everyone has to watch the space program on television if they're going to support it, and if they don't (because the networks won't show it if people aren't watching), kill the program. Much better to have lots of high traffic internet sites that let people get info at their leisure rather than be forced to watch it on tv. Lots of space stuff is extremely boring when shown live on tv (and dumbed down for general audiences), but much more interesting on the internet where anyone can get as much interesting detail and high-res images as they can handle.
Maybe this is just the thing we need to start another space race?
I think they really want international funds for this project, especially from the U.S. We would spend our r&d dollars on moon/mars craft, and fulfill obligations to the ISS by funding this and promising to pay for x-many missions. That way, our work stays focused on interplanetary, and we still have a way to get people into LEO for relatively cheap.
On the other hand, a Russian Mars craft, which would probably have to be self-funded, would only happen if the U.S. or China initiated the competition and not the other way around. I think the idea is if the guys on both sides talk big maybe they can get the get the competition going just out of thin air...
You have a interesting take on things, maybe I'll try to work that into the argument the next time it comes up, but it's so bizarre (that's probably why you're posting AC) it would probably only pollute the waters.
just like boxers can opt-in to being punched, many actors may opt-in to swearing seans.
This doesn't make any sense. I'm pretty sure boxers make physical contact all the time- or are you talking about boxers in movies? Does that last part mean 'sans swearing'?
In real life, if you call someone a f*cken sh*thead it hurts him much like assaulting him would.
Is this an argument for more censorship of language? I and the US justice system certainly don't agree with you here- how many people have died or been hospitalized purely from verbal abuse?
I can create such a dramatical staging -- While filming with the other actors, I'll move my lips silently, so I'm not swearing at them; and later on a sound-stage I'll do a voice-over to add the audio effects. In exactly the same way as your murder analogy, noone was sworn at....
However if I do a dramatic re-enactment of calling someone a fucken shithed by saying it to him in a performance, it doesn't hurt any worse than being stabbed by a plastic knife.
You're right, I completely disregarded the feelings of the actors and thought only of the viewers, in regards to simulated swearing vs. not (but obviously not for simulated murder vs. real), but this line of logic is still ambiguous:
So the idea that the swearing is simulated does A. makes sure no one was offended on the set, B. makes sure no viewer feels bad for the people on the set who had to put up with the harsh language. I was thinking more along the the lines of having to hear harsh language in any context is undesirable to a lot of people, whether or not it was mean-spirited, recorded in a studio, or any other scenario.
I also place a high value on judging the likelihood of anyone viewing the act they viewed and then carrying it out for real. It's my belief that if kids watch a simulation of a shoot-out on tv, they have a higher likelihood of simulating a shootout for fun, but the likelihood of them actually taking real guns and shooting real bullets at each other is much lower. I don't think the consequences of people acting out violence is that bad as long as they aren't using real weapons (or realistic weapons in a public area without making that clear to everyone in view), and society probably feels the same way so they don't give a high priority to limiting access to violent imagery.
Finally, I carefully used the words 'physically' and 'sound-waves' and stand by the assertion that a played back recording of a swear word is for most purposes indistinguishable in that domain from the same sounds emanating from vocal cords.