Look, with all that active sensing, it will be way too visible to sneak weed across the border:)
Slightly closer to topic:) First, cargo capacity would eventually be an issue. Secondly, the current administration is against fuel consumption by the military because ???
Back in 95 when I worked for an ISP, one of the admins wrote 'fixload.sh' for one of the older support techs. It was so hard not to laugh and give it up as he would run it a couple times to fix 'the server' when the LA would hit 10, 20... The perpetrating sysadmin was also the owner/wielder of the 'axe of knowledge'...
Oh and somewhere around puberty, I could increase the size of my disk by 50 or even 100%:) MFM->RLL or MFM->DD Controller... I was krad l33t with my 130mb for the price of only 2x40mb (?$700?) drives. GoGo Gadget-bar-mitzvah-money...
Does 'hb2a' have [damaging, if not nostalgic] meaning to anyone else??
So those two images are both 'microscopic.' Tire tracks? Did Opportunity goof off and play with some MicroMachines(tm) for 3 hours?;)
There are lots of unusual objects, particularly in micro images. Being genious enough to know I'm an idiot; I go 'hmm can't wait until someone explains the process that makes that biological looking shape.'
aThe word commodity is used today to represent fodder for industrial processes: things or substances that are found to be valuable as basic building blocks for many different purposes. bBecause of their very general value, they are typically used in large quantities and in many different ways. Commodities are always sourced by more than one producer, and consumers may substitute one producer's product for another's with impunity. Because commodities are fungible in this way, they are defined by uniform quality standards to which they must conform. These quality standards help to avoid adulteration, and also facilitate quick and easy valuation, which in turn fosters productivity gains.
Ok, that is a direct quotation from the article. He has already strayed from 'factual' definition ["used today to represent"] and failed miserably to avoid absolutes. Yet it is clear that (a) is his offered definition of 'what is a commodity.' He then makes grand and sweeping statements (b) about the [observed] attributes of 'commodities' (a).
All this crap gets very deep and very complicated real fast. Trust me- if he is mentioning 'productivity gains' and Marx, then commodities are not defined by their being "substitut[able]... with impunity". If you don't want to believe me, some keywords: 'division of labor', 'use-value exchange-value based pricing', 'theories of value', 'labor theory', Marx, Smith, Stuart, 'surplus value', 'labor power'...
Individual goods can be vastly demand-elastic compared with the composite market for that good, and NOT be a commodity.
The point is, therefore, that the producer has little or no pricing power in the absence of a producers' cartel or other market distorting mechanism.
The point that denotes a commodity is not the overall elasticity of the market. That's my point.
In a desire to be balanced- The reality of how the term is used connotes lack of differentiation and the general ability to buy the thing in bulk. However, once again, I am probably making an error by acknowledging depth that only obfuscates that point.
To be clear: really elastic demand for a given good relative to the aggregate for all of 'those' goods, doesn't a commodity make.
Additional notes:
-a commodity can also be other forms of stuff than component pieces or raw materials; an example that comes to mind would be tools/machines.
-FWIW/FYI Elasticity is the %[change in quantity demanded] for a %[change in price]. So when something elastic gets 1% more expensive, the quantity sold decreases by >1%.
You keep saying that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means...
Yes, usually a commodity is something cheap that has lots of competition- but that isn't the point. A commodity is 'something that is used to make other stuff(tm)'. The point is that the good sold is used as an input to make other goods.
That used to be a 'big deal' when people with invisible hands were groping[for 42]... Now, ehh...
Oh, and I say Windows is not a commodity because it's not a good:)[neg. marginal utility=a 'bad']
Does anyone know of any hear-aid form factor bluetooth earpieces?
All your nihongo listening exams are belong to me!
In reality, I think it might be difficult to get to correct meanings unless you know some Japanese to start with. Among other things, Japanese:
doesn't really use pronouns
sentences tend to not be simple Sub-Verb-Object
you avoid directly referring to things
you drop unneeded words when they can be directly inferred from the conversation
Use 'post'positions [a type of particles] instead of prepositiong. 'Over the chair' becomes 'chair (of) above (location)' with the words in ()'s being single characters called particles.
Adjectives are often constructions involving the above
The end result is the construct of noun-phrases that can be insanely long, confusing, and hard to directly translate. Ie "senshuu imouto no tanjoubi ni puresento o katta toki kaban o nusumareta" is basically 'the store I had my bag stolen at while I was buying a birthday present for my younger sister'[note:lifted from site by Kim Allen]. And that is all 'an' adjective. Literally 'last-week my-younger-sister (of) birthday (destination) present (direct object of) purchased time-of bag (direct object of) stolen.
And there are nearly [if not] dozens of different verb forms/conjugations. Such that you could say 'Your gate is 2B' but do so in such a rude way that in reality the purpose of the sentence is an insult:) Converseley, your question would be phrased vastly differently for, lets say, a slightly older random other person, than if for an employee of an airline, etc. And you would likely cause discomfort...
And now off to JPN102...
Shi-tzu-rei-shimas [Goodbye, respectfully-literally '(I am)a rudeness committing'... However saying 'shi-tzu-rei-suru' would actually be rudely stating you are committing a rudeness [if said to anyone not a personal friend]. That is the same verb, same tense, and literally has the identical meaning- just different 'politeness' level..]
We all knew they lived in their own fantasy world!
Some of my favorite quotes:
From both the mental image and funny-long-names-of-stuff-in-Germany file:
"If you beat terrorists over the head enough, they learn," said Col. Nick Pratt, a counterterrorism expert and professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
And the enjoying-that-feeling-of-absolute-superiority-over -those-you-deem-less-palatable-then-santorum file:
One senior official said the authorities were grateful that Qaeda members were so loyal to Swisscom.
Another official agreed: "They'd switch phones but use the same cards. The people were stupid enough to use the same cards all of the time. It was a very good thing for us."
And I'm sure this one has already been posted, but... From both the kill-joy and tinfoil-hat/nuking-new-$20s files:
"They thought these phones protected their anonymity, but they didn't," said a senior intelligence official based in Europe. Even without personal information, the authorities were able to conduct routine monitoring of phone conversations."
At least now, [!RTFM Error], getting sendmail to NOT be an open relay, AND work appropriatly WITHOUT hitting google for over a week, right from the start.
Umm... You mean exactly like most linux installs, right?
The whole "sendmail isn't safe" mantra is based on very old versions. Not surprisingly, all from when it was being [primarily] supported and developed by people with 'day' jobs.
Since when has the difficulty to manually configure *nix software been something one should open there mouth about on/.:) It has to be one of the most configurable program I've ever seen; and you aren't even forced to learn new config formats to upgrade (if your lazy). It is a pretty non-intuitive seeming file, but it is completely backward compatible, and very powerful.
SMTP is a simple concept, but somehow sendmail found a way to make it your worst nightmare. The gotcha's on the configuration alone is enough to break someone.
Snicker. Well yes the S stands for simple... Are you just talking about RFC 821??? What about 822, 876, 947, 1869, 1870, 1891, 1893, 1985, 2033, 2034, 2045, 2046, 2047, 2048, 2049, 2197, 2487, 2554, 2821, 2822? [BTW I'm sure I missed some, and yes some surpercede others]. You don't often use SMTP anymore, rather ESMTP with extensions.
FWIW it's really really easy to make sendmail a non-open relay. I even think RH configures it that way from the start. Use whatever MTA works for you, but don't confuse your relative [or subjective] case with the absolute 'sendmail bad, MyMTA good.' As for Sendmail- they deserves some credit, if for nothing else, that it actually pays money to support one of the more important and underappreciated open source packages. Everything post 8.8 or is it 8.9.3 was heavily contributed to by them.
I'll bet a penny you use pico...
--Someone with yellow car; plate Y EHLO
cybercrime also includes crackers, Kiddy porn rings, internet fraud, etc.
Granted, I did overlook those subcategories...
In my defense:
Aside from cracking...
IANAL But is 'Internet Fraud' significantly different [criminally speaking] than wire or mail fraud? Isn't the essence of fraud that an identifiable actor, with intent to decieve, caused actual harm to an identifiable victim? The fact that a computer was used doesn't seem that core.
Ugg KP; speaking of slippery slopes, damn. Am I going too far if I say that I'm far more worried about the people abusing the children, and that happens in fleshspace?
Also, if you reread the quote:
the FBI's cyberdivision[was]created 18 months ago in large part to help hunt perpetrators of digital copyright infringement
It is directly inferred that the majority of their cybercrimes are being owned by digital copyright infringement. To what degree I conciously thought about that while writing my original post, I shall never say. You still sank my crackership tho.
Forensics is not a type of crime, it's a way of solving them.
You realise you are inherently agreeing with my position right? In order to make that correction, you are saying that the 'prevention and prosecution of cybercrime' is a type of crime.
And while I really do have responses for the rest, you're an AC.
What, you think preventing and prosecuting bank robbers isn't looking out for special interests?
Ok, a few points here:
Robbery is a violent crime. It ain't a property crime. It requires the use of force/violence/threat of violence, etc.
The world really works on future expectation. If you take a look at damn-near-anything(tm) closely, you will see that unexpected outcomes are what cause the fit to hit the shan....
I, and I'll be so bold as to say most actors, expect [heck bank on] my money being 'safe' in bank.
Without 'banking' you get a lot less utility out of life. I know that sounds like crap, but it really is true. ['any of all yalls' sense]
Oh and you pay me back when my FDIC insured account gets hosed.[all yalls sense]
So how do we define when something is for special interests? Yes banks, and rent-a-cops have an especially poignant interest in preventing bank robbery, but societies interest in doing so is FAR greater.
Who would seriously argue that protecting the RIAA/MPAA/etc. is the 3rd most important use of the FBI?
RANT For the record, I think that the Federal Cops should do things that a)should be done, and b)they can do better / more efficiently than an aggregate of local Cops. And while that would be the really whacked out stuff that the FBI can much more efficiently develop the needed expertise in than your town's police dept. If it satisfies (a) at all, being the entertainment industries gestapo Sure As Shit ain't 3rd down from the top on that list... /RANT
Is anyone else disturbed by this quote?
on
FBI Anti-Piracy Seal
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Jana Monroe, assistant director of the FBI's cyberdivision, said the unit, created 18 months ago in large part to help hunt perpetrators of digital copyright infringement, will continue to get significant funding from the bureau. Monroe said preventing and prosecuting cybercrimes is now the FBI's No. 3 priority, behind anti-terrorism efforts and counterintelligence operations.
3rd highest priority is cybercrime!?!? This is more important that say forensics???
My god if that doesn't smack of special interests gone horribly, horribly, wrong.
And that's without even addressing what how slippery a slope the prevention of virtual crimes would seem to be.
The agency has a couple of ideas on how this might be done: A cocktail of nutrients or so-called "nutraceuticals" could help build endurance.
No way can they make "nutraceuticals" a real friggin word. That totaly ruins it. Now I'm gunna have to come up with something else to describe drugs taken to avoid having to eat/sleep/etc.
Err, I guess that's kinda what their usage of it means; but god that word is entirely too stupid sounding to be used seriously.
When the *IAA claims $Xbillion in losses even from your freshman [or HS] micro-e classes you know that's whack.
Think of your basic Supply & Demand curve. It just doesn't work that way. If you want to sell more, you charge less.
(________________i__________________)
(big but[t])
That was just the 'Why you already knew for sure they were full of it, empirically.'
Adding the a skosh more complexity, the model gets a lot closer to what intuition says it is:
Willingness to Pay
I recently came across a few papers, etc., dealing with what is being called 'Willingness to Pay.' What has been found is very much in line with what we all know: most people 'stealing' music/software don't get enough utility from the 'product' to buy it.
Gee, you mean that maybe the fundamental paradigm of market economics is whats happening? It doesn't require a whole new paradigm based on everyone wanting to rob poor rich oligopolists?
But wait! There's More!
Network Externalities
The 'age old' examples are things like the Bandwagon and Snob effects. [You want more the more other people have something, or the reverse]. But think about what you already know.
If people who wouldn't have paid for your product have it and use it, well you didn't loose any potential revenue [no matter what you think honey].
Oohh Oooohh! What do you call it when more people know about your work? Oh yeah marketing.
The stuff I've read was dealing specifically with software, so I'll limit the scope to just that. When the unwilling end up willing [need app at work, change in income, etc.] the effectiveness of this form of marketing can be profound. Oh, and what about the community effect? What about the 'buzz' effect? Nah they don't exist, RedHat was really worth that much...
Turns out that the addition of unwilling 'pirates' in fact boosts the damned demand curve. The only people who are in danger, are those who have crap product. [Unless there is something I've not thought of that experiences a strong Snob effect...]
So am I saying it's not 'stealing.'? Well, IANAL, and I'm not even going there. Ok, I lied. It is in fact possible[probable] that there is a negligible or negative loss in such activities. Intelligent firms would actually manage and caughnotcaughoverlycaughdiscouragecaugh such behavior
But no, I don't know if I but that for the recording industry. Two reasons:
They have behaved so stupidly that the potential positive marketing opportunity has been mung'd into a massively negative one
and
Anytime prices are held artificially high through monopolistic-like tactics, then the rules completely change.
And ya know, $1/song when the marginal cost of production is near 0, is STILL agregious.
Still don't believe me? If you charge $0.10/song, how many people wouldn't purchase damn-near-every-song-they-even-might-know-someone who-likes; but would instead deal with free P2P shares to download them 'illegally'?
Gee make alcohol illegal, nobody will drink...
PS There is a utility crew right across the street doing some highly important something involving a backhoe and jackhammer... So have pity if this entire comment falls into the 'infinite monkeys with typewriters' category...
PPS And FWIW I'm in GMT-5land...
PPPS In Soviet Russia.... ahh screw it
Wouldn't this combination of abundant peroxide and sulfuric acid, make for easy 'fuel' production?
IIRC, you can use a catalyst to crack peroxide into steam and O2. And I know SA is like the 'Mister Log' of chemicals; but I am pretty sure it can be made to exothermically react with water. ['NEVER pour water into concentrated SA' warnings, et al.]
I think I just invented the 'far-toxide' rocket. [typed while digging around to find IP attyn's bcard]
To sum up:
H2O2 + catalyst = Steam + O2
H2SO4 + Steam = Heat + ionsofstuff
Anyone chemically-enabled out there do the math and figure out how much output you get from it? That involves invoking knowledge which makes me think of a green compliment to tortilla chips, and not much else.
Another thought- environmentally powered 'melt' for a probe?
The computer graphics industry struggled with that problem for most of the last decade, and made it out the other side of that valley a few years ago. The better film CG houses have that problem pretty much solved.
Most assuredly so, except I'm not so sure they've cleared the rim yet. Think about Gollum, damn good, but sometimes it just slaps you in the face that he's CG.
Motion capture data driving photorealistic characters looks good, but generated motion still isn't right. Look at something like "EA Football", and watch the movement go back and forth from realistic to terrible.
I really have a few thoughts on this one:
The motion equivalent of interpolation- when connecting discrete movements- still not exactly 'science'?
I've also noticed that CG, no matter how well its been kinomized[???], looks
fake because it is too 'clean' or perhaps 'unflawed.' I noticed that the fake camera work in the Battlestar G miniseries really REALLY helped the CG escape concious detection...
Maybe w/ CG actors, it's the missing microexpressions (which, contrary to my previous post, is about F'rubber![w/lotsa little embedded actuators[
I also think that there is a major distinction between CG, generally, and robotics in that CG suffers more a "depression of frustration":)
With CG it's annoying because you have to continuously suspend your disbelief while watching. With 'Social Robotics' the problem is that you are interacting with the thing. When wierdness(tm) strikes, it is really disruptive to the interaction- especially if it unsettles your entire model of your partner.
To be clear: I am NOT saying CG is any way less important than robotics. And I know that interactivity is an increasingly central theme in CG. It's just that most of the CG in the past decade was not generally interactive; and definitely not socially so. Imperfect avatars [ie how you, as QB, animate your commands] seem less annoying than how, say, you don't see the Center's butt clench as he prepares the hike. [ok, bad example, heh.]
Hell, I can't go any farther with this and steer clear of more bad 'girlfriend' jokes!
Uncanny Valley-ness, not F'rubber is the issue.
on
A New Face For Robotics
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The basic problem is should they be really anthropomorphic or not.
[if a robot needs to portray a living creature,]
it is critical that an appropriate degree of familiarity
be maintained. Mashiro Mori contends that the progression
from a non-realistic to realistic portrayal of
a living thing is non-linear. In particular, there is an
?uncanny valley? (see Fig. 8) as similarity becomes
almost, but not quite perfect. At this point, the subtle
imperfections of the recreation become highly disturbing,
or even repulsive...
FWIW There are many more issues than just cannyness, and that paper gets into a lot of em...
Slashdot Mirror
Slightly closer to topic :) First, cargo capacity would eventually be an issue. Secondly, the current administration is against fuel consumption by the military because ???
Back in 95 when I worked for an ISP, one of the admins wrote 'fixload.sh' for one of the older support techs. It was so hard not to laugh and give it up as he would run it a couple times to fix 'the server' when the LA would hit 10, 20... The perpetrating sysadmin was also the owner/wielder of the 'axe of knowledge'...
Oh and somewhere around puberty, I could increase the size of my disk by 50 or even 100% :) MFM->RLL or MFM->DD Controller... I was krad l33t with my 130mb for the price of only 2x40mb (?$700?) drives. GoGo Gadget-bar-mitzvah-money...
Does 'hb2a' have [damaging, if not nostalgic] meaning to anyone else??If you notice the raw image names given, they begin with:
1M131201699EFF
1M131212854EFF 1------------- Opportunity
-M------------ Microscopic Imager
--iiiiiiiii--- Time taken, unsigned integer seconds since ?MEpoch?...
-----------EFF Full-Frame 'EDR' (not linearized)
#man meredr
So those two images are both 'microscopic.' ;)
Tire tracks? Did Opportunity goof off and play with some MicroMachines(tm) for 3 hours?
There are lots of unusual objects, particularly in micro images. Being genious enough to know I'm an idiot; I go 'hmm can't wait until someone explains the process that makes that biological looking shape.'
Ok, that is a direct quotation from the article. He has already strayed from 'factual' definition ["used today to represent"] and failed miserably to avoid absolutes. Yet it is clear that (a) is his offered definition of 'what is a commodity.' He then makes grand and sweeping statements (b) about the [observed] attributes of 'commodities' (a).
All this crap gets very deep and very complicated real fast. Trust me- if he is mentioning 'productivity gains' and Marx, then commodities are not defined by their being "substitut[able]... with impunity". If you don't want to believe me, some keywords: 'division of labor', 'use-value exchange-value based pricing', 'theories of value', 'labor theory', Marx, Smith, Stuart, 'surplus value', 'labor power'...
Individual goods can be vastly demand-elastic compared with the composite market for that good, and NOT be a commodity.
The point that denotes a commodity is not the overall elasticity of the market. That's my point.
In a desire to be balanced- The reality of how the term is used connotes lack of differentiation and the general ability to buy the thing in bulk. However, once again, I am probably making an error by acknowledging depth that only obfuscates that point.
To be clear: really elastic demand for a given good relative to the aggregate for all of 'those' goods, doesn't a commodity make.Additional notes:
-a commodity can also be other forms of stuff than component pieces or raw materials; an example that comes to mind would be tools/machines.
-FWIW/FYI Elasticity is the %[change in quantity demanded] for a %[change in price]. So when something elastic gets 1% more expensive, the quantity sold decreases by >1%.
You keep saying that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means...
Yes, usually a commodity is something cheap that has lots of competition- but that isn't the point. A commodity is 'something that is used to make other stuff(tm)'.
The point is that the good sold is used as an input to make other goods.
That used to be a 'big deal' when people with invisible hands were groping[for 42]... Now, ehh...
Oh, and I say Windows is not a commodity because it's not a goodAll your nihongo listening exams are belong to me!
In reality, I think it might be difficult to get to correct meanings unless you know some Japanese to start with. Among other things, Japanese:
- Adjectives are often constructions involving the above
The end result is the construct of noun-phrases that can be insanely long, confusing, and hard to directly translate. Ie "senshuu imouto no tanjoubi ni puresento o katta toki kaban o nusumareta" is basically 'the store I had my bag stolen at while I was buying a birthday present for my younger sister'[note:lifted from site by Kim Allen]. And that is all 'an' adjective. Literally 'last-week my-younger-sister (of) birthday (destination) present (direct object of) purchased time-of bag (direct object of) stolen.And there are nearly [if not] dozens of different verb forms/conjugations. Such that you could say 'Your gate is 2B' but do so in such a rude way that in reality the purpose of the sentence is an insult :) Converseley, your question would be phrased vastly differently for, lets say, a slightly older random other person, than if for an employee of an airline, etc. And you would likely cause discomfort...
And now off to JPN102...
Shi-tzu-rei-shimas [Goodbye, respectfully-literally '(I am)a rudeness committing'... However saying 'shi-tzu-rei-suru' would actually be rudely stating you are committing a rudeness [if said to anyone not a personal friend]. That is the same verb, same tense, and literally has the identical meaning- just different 'politeness' level..]Some of my favorite quotes:
From both the mental image and funny-long-names-of-stuff-in-Germany file:
- "If you beat terrorists over the head enough, they learn," said Col. Nick Pratt, a counterterrorism expert and professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
And the enjoying-that-feeling-of-absolute-superiority-oveAnother official agreed: "They'd switch phones but use the same cards. The people were stupid enough to use the same cards all of the time. It was a very good thing for us."
And I'm sure this one has already been posted, but...
From both the kill-joy and tinfoil-hat/nuking-new-$20s files:
- "They thought these phones protected their anonymity, but they didn't," said a senior intelligence official based in Europe. Even without personal information, the authorities were able to conduct routine monitoring of phone conversations."
Sigh...Umm... You mean exactly like most linux installs, right?
The whole "sendmail isn't safe" mantra is based on very old versions. Not surprisingly, all from when it was being [primarily] supported and developed by people with 'day' jobs.
Since when has the difficulty to manually configure *nix software been something one should open there mouth about onSMTP is a simple concept, but somehow sendmail found a way to make it your worst nightmare. The gotcha's on the configuration alone is enough to break someone.
Snicker. Well yes the S stands for simple... Are you just talking about RFC 821??? What about 822, 876, 947, 1869, 1870, 1891, 1893, 1985, 2033, 2034, 2045, 2046, 2047, 2048, 2049, 2197, 2487, 2554, 2821, 2822? [BTW I'm sure I missed some, and yes some surpercede others]. You don't often use SMTP anymore, rather ESMTP with extensions.
FWIW it's really really easy to make sendmail a non-open relay. I even think RH configures it that way from the start.
Use whatever MTA works for you, but don't confuse your relative [or subjective] case with the absolute 'sendmail bad, MyMTA good.' As for Sendmail- they deserves some credit, if for nothing else, that it actually pays money to support one of the more important and underappreciated open source packages. Everything post 8.8 or is it 8.9.3 was heavily contributed to by them.
I'll bet a penny you use pico...
--Someone with yellow car; plate Y EHLO
I was thinking to myself "This is way too difficult to build..."
But then I noticed that the 65+ page manual includes:
How to build a wooden box
And if that wasn't enough, the fact that it has
Full 26-key keyboard with key-click sound
sealed the deal!
I really wanted to make a Darl joke, but alas...
Herzlicher Glukwunsch...All of the problems that immediately came to mind, fell under the unsurprisingly vague section Design Considerations.
And none of them seem solved...
Hell, did it even mention what spectrum was being targetted?
He better watch out or the Pysicians Committee for Responsible Medicine will be all over him...
ps if you didn't get it, go enjoy your pasta and cake.
Granted, I did overlook those subcategories...
In my defense:
Aside from cracking... IANAL But is 'Internet Fraud' significantly different [criminally speaking] than wire or mail fraud? Isn't the essence of fraud that an identifiable actor, with intent to decieve, caused actual harm to an identifiable victim? The fact that a computer was used doesn't seem that core.
Ugg KP; speaking of slippery slopes, damn. Am I going too far if I say that I'm far more worried about the people abusing the children, and that happens in fleshspace?
Also, if you reread the quote:
It is directly inferred that the majority of their cybercrimes are being owned by digital copyright infringement. To what degree I conciously thought about that while writing my original post, I shall never say.You still sank my crackership tho.
You realise you are inherently agreeing with my position right?
In order to make that correction, you are saying that the 'prevention and prosecution of cybercrime' is a type of crime.
And while I really do have responses for the rest, you're an AC.
Ok, a few points here:
Robbery is a violent crime. It ain't a property crime. It requires the use of force/violence/threat of violence, etc.
The world really works on future expectation. If you take a look at damn-near-anything(tm) closely, you will see that unexpected outcomes are what cause the fit to hit the shan....
I, and I'll be so bold as to say most actors, expect [heck bank on] my money being 'safe' in bank.
Without 'banking' you get a lot less utility out of life. I know that sounds like crap, but it really is true. ['any of all yalls' sense]
Oh and you pay me back when my FDIC insured account gets hosed.[all yalls sense]
So how do we define when something is for special interests? Yes banks, and rent-a-cops have an especially poignant interest in preventing bank robbery, but societies interest in doing so is FAR greater.
Who would seriously argue that protecting the RIAA/MPAA/etc. is the 3rd most important use of the FBI?
RANT
For the record, I think that the Federal Cops should do things that a)should be done, and b)they can do better / more efficiently than an aggregate of local Cops. And while that would be the really whacked out stuff that the FBI can much more efficiently develop the needed expertise in than your town's police dept. If it satisfies (a) at all, being the entertainment industries gestapo Sure As Shit ain't 3rd down from the top on that list...
/RANT
3rd highest priority is cybercrime!?!?
This is more important that say forensics???
My god if that doesn't smack of special interests gone horribly, horribly, wrong.
And that's without even addressing what how slippery a slope the prevention of virtual crimes would seem to be.
Yale MBA's, and their dad's friends.
Duh!
No way can they make "nutraceuticals" a real friggin word.
That totaly ruins it. Now I'm gunna have to come up with something else to describe drugs taken to avoid having to eat/sleep/etc.
Err, I guess that's kinda what their usage of it means; but god that word is entirely too stupid sounding to be used seriously.
At least my version was always neutraceuticles...
Do I put my nutraceuticles in there?3 years late...
No dates for you!Think of your basic Supply & Demand curve. It just doesn't work that way. If you want to sell more, you charge less.
(________________i__________________)
(big but[t])
That was just the 'Why you already knew for sure they were full of it, empirically.'
Adding the a skosh more complexity, the model gets a lot closer to what intuition says it is:
I recently came across a few papers, etc., dealing with what is being called 'Willingness to Pay.' What has been found is very much in line with what we all know: most people 'stealing' music/software don't get enough utility from the 'product' to buy it.
Gee, you mean that maybe the fundamental paradigm of market economics is whats happening? It doesn't require a whole new paradigm based on everyone wanting to rob poor rich oligopolists?
But wait! There's More!
The 'age old' examples are things like the Bandwagon and Snob effects. [You want more the more other people have something, or the reverse]. But think about what you already know.
If people who wouldn't have paid for your product have it and use it, well you didn't loose any potential revenue [no matter what you think honey].
Oohh Oooohh! What do you call it when more people know about your work? Oh yeah marketing .
The stuff I've read was dealing specifically with software, so I'll limit the scope to just that. When the unwilling end up willing [need app at work, change in income, etc.] the effectiveness of this form of marketing can be profound.
Oh, and what about the community effect? What about the 'buzz' effect?
Nah they don't exist, RedHat was really worth that much...
Turns out that the addition of unwilling 'pirates' in fact boosts the damned demand curve. The only people who are in danger, are those who have crap product.
[Unless there is something I've not thought of that experiences a strong Snob effect...]
So am I saying it's not 'stealing.'? Well, IANAL, and I'm not even going there.
Ok, I lied.
It is in fact possible[probable] that there is a negligible or negative loss in such activities.
Intelligent firms would actually manage and caughnotcaughoverlycaughdiscouragecaugh such behavior
But no, I don't know if I but that for the recording industry. Two reasons:
- They have behaved so stupidly that the potential positive marketing opportunity has been mung'd into a massively negative one
andAnd ya know, $1/song when the marginal cost of production is near 0, is STILL agregious.
Still don't believe me? If you charge $0.10/song, how many people wouldn't purchase damn-near-every-song-they-even-might-know-someone who-likes; but would instead deal with free P2P shares to download them 'illegally'?
Gee make alcohol illegal, nobody will drink...
PS There is a utility crew right across the street doing some highly important something involving a backhoe and jackhammer... So have pity if this entire comment falls into the 'infinite monkeys with typewriters' category...
PPS And FWIW I'm in GMT-5land...
PPPS In Soviet Russia.... ahh screw it
Wouldn't this combination of abundant peroxide and sulfuric acid, make for easy 'fuel' production?
IIRC, you can use a catalyst to crack peroxide into steam and O2. And I know SA is like the 'Mister Log' of chemicals; but I am pretty sure it can be made to exothermically react with water. ['NEVER pour water into concentrated SA' warnings, et al.]
I think I just invented the 'far-toxide' rocket. [typed while digging around to find IP attyn's bcard]To sum up:
Anyone chemically-enabled out there do the math and figure out how much output you get from it? That involves invoking knowledge which makes me think of a green compliment to tortilla chips, and not much else.
Another thought- environmentally powered 'melt' for a probe?
Coincidence? I think not...
Most assuredly so, except I'm not so sure they've cleared the rim yet. Think about Gollum, damn good, but sometimes it just slaps you in the face that he's CG.
I really have a few thoughts on this one:
I also think that there is a major distinction between CG, generally, and robotics in that CG suffers more a "depression of frustration" :)
With CG it's annoying because you have to continuously suspend your disbelief while watching. With 'Social Robotics' the problem is that you are interacting with the thing. When wierdness(tm) strikes, it is really disruptive to the interaction- especially if it unsettles your entire model of your partner.
To be clear: I am NOT saying CG is any way less important than robotics. And I know that interactivity is an increasingly central theme in CG. It's just that most of the CG in the past decade was not generally interactive; and definitely not socially so. Imperfect avatars [ie how you, as QB, animate your commands] seem less annoying than how, say, you don't see the Center's butt clench as he prepares the hike. [ok, bad example, heh.]
Hell, I can't go any farther with this and steer clear of more bad 'girlfriend' jokes!
In the article they mention the 'Mori Uncanniness' problem- there is a point that is the 'most anthropomorphic' you can get, before the thing becomes about as pleasant as santorum. IANARS, but the RS's at CMU's Robotics Institute state in A Survey of socially interactive robots
FWIW There are many more issues than just cannyness, and that paper gets into a lot of em...
While trying to view the microsoft link above I got the following error message:
Still amazingly honest for Microsoft!/p