it seems a bit misleading to claim that something like a server can be setup "without the assistance of someone who actually knows what they are doing."
Perhaps you're taking a claim made by someone calling himself "Toe, The" a bit more seriously than it deserves? I'm sure that Apple makes no such claim.
I don't think I can give you a simple answer to your question. I don't see a clear way to do an apples-to-apples comparison of a film and a graphic novel.
The movie was extremely true to the source material without coming off as a slavish reproduction. I'd say that, in some ways, it is the best "comic book movie" I've seen.
I think I'm safe in categorically stating that the book holds a higher place in the pantheon of graphic novels than the movie does in the pantheon of films. In that sense the book is better. I suppose that, if you like graphic novels and films equally, the book is better. I think some of Frank Miller's art is shit (looking at you, 300), but some of my all time favorite panels appear in The Hard Goodbye.
Having said that, if you've seen the movie there aren't going to be any big revelations in the book. Unlike, for example, the film adaptation of The Return of the King, which leaves out The Scouring of the Shire. To me, that's the most important and meaningful part of the books.
Based on my assumptions about you and the context of your question, I suppose the answer is no. On the other hand, as a guy who finds something special in the work of one guy with some scratch board and a something really different to say, I think I like the book better.
This is all based on a study out of CU Boulder. As a Denver resident, I can attest that the dirty hippies at CU Boulder are on a never-ending quest to justify their poor hygiene. Don't be fooled! Shower every day!
If he wants to make a living out of his game but a proportion of people who play it don't have to pay, he has to charge a higher price to those who do pay. Charging a higher price means that those who pay have to pay more (obviously) and a proportion will not buy the game. So there is a cost to players and a cost to the author.
The whole point of my post was that the way you stated that is not the useful way of looking at it.
First, there is no true cost to illegitimate copies. Unlike, say, shoplifting, it doesn't deprive the seller of inventory. There is certainly the perception of opportunity cost, but I'm unconvinced that this perception aligns with reality.
We agree that, like most goods, the size of his market affects his marginal cost. I stated this in my original post, so I don't understand why you're arguing the point.
There are any number of "what if" scenarios that would influence the size of his market. What if the government mandated that everyone buy a copy of his software? What if he could use slave labor to do most of his programming?
The real question is, does treating your customers worse increase the size of your market. Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn't. You may notice in my post that, while I try to persuade "spidweb" not to use DRM, I don't demand it. My thesis is that DRM creates a great deal of frustration for his customers, and a minor speed-bump to people who would obtain his work illicitly. This seems to be an inequitable and undesirable trade-off.
My real point, though, is that "spidweb" seems to be thinking of people who play his game as his market. The thinking going something like, "If my customers would just pay for the game, I wouldn't have to use DRM." But his customers are paying for the game by definition!
I think it would be more useful for him to think in terms of growing his market, instead of thinking in terms of forcing his customers (and non-customers) to play by the rules.
But, yes, if there was a magic button he could press that made everyone who plays his game pay him, then he could charge less and make more. I'm proposing that DRM is not that magic button. In practice it has been clearly shown to fail at preventing illicit copying and to decrease the value provided to paying customers.
[T]he purpose of DRM is entirely admirable: to stop thieves and free riders and to help creators actually get paid for their work.
Incorrect. The sole purpose of DRM is to give publishers control over a copy of a work after it has been ostensibly sold to a customer. (Its effectiveness in achieving this purpose is a separate question.)
It is laudable that you would only choose to use this control for legitimate purposes, but that does not make it the fundamental purpose of the scheme.
Furthermore, even if, in your benevolence, only intended to use DRM for this purpose, you would still stifle all uses of your work unforeseen by you. Would you have a problem with a legitimate buyer of your work using it on an emulator to enjoy it again twenty years from now? I suppose not. But if the current legal climate persists you would make a criminal of him.
No. DRM is a naked play for control. An attempt to sell something but still act as its owner. Your good intentions do not change this.
Honest people need to pay extra to subsidize thieves.
Can you substantiate this claim? I can't imagine how any cost burden is placed upon you or your legitimate customers by people who aren't your customers copying your work.
I suppose you mean that the costs must be defrayed over a smaller number of copies due to some imagined lost sales. But the question of what your costs would be if people who obtain your work illicitly obtained it legitimately is meaningless. If you attempt to discover the answer to this question experimentally by shackling your actual, paying customers with DRM you'll never know what your sales would have been without it. Much more importantly, you may or may not achieve your goals relating to those who aren't your customers, but you will certainly abuse those you claim to be attempting to protect.
The choice is yours: punish your customers out of a sense of moral outrage, or align your perception of who your customers are with reality. Either way, you, and only you, must live with the consequences.
That is your constitutionally acknowledged right. The right to due process. The process is do what the fuck the officer tells you to do during you interactions will him. Then a court of law determines if they were justified. Period.
The more I think about your reply, the angrier I get.
First, this is NOT what due process guarantees. Due process is a promise that the government makes to the citizen, not the the other way around.
Allow me to propose an example. Let's say your mother gets pulled over by a local cop. Let's say he orders her to gratify him sexually. With her mouth. Let's say you're in the car. Let's imagine you're shouting at her, "Just do it. We'll let a judge sort it out after the fact." Let's say you're a twat who won't lift a finger to defend his own mother from being molested by the lowest kind of scum, simply because he has a badge.
I have seen all of your emphasis, and I'm not saying that what you're saying is bad advice, but I really must insist on a reference to the statute that says that I must comply with any order given to me by a law enforcement officer.
Clearly, I may not resist arrest. But answering a question (about a perfectly legal activity) flippantly doesn't satisfy any of the conditions of resisting arrest. The most obvious being that I am not under arrest!
Resisting arrest alone should not mean tasering is on the table, even with a difficult struggle.
Do I understand correctly that your thesis is that law enforcement officers should be compelled by law to wrassle all challengers?
Or are you saying that the blunt force of a baton (or Maglite) is universally preferable to tasing?
I sincerely hope that I have failed to grasp your point. Would you mind restating it? Can you be more specific about your expectations of a law enforcement officer when attempting to arrest a violent suspect?
If tasers didn't have the lethality question hanging over them I would think differently, but according to Amnesty International, at least, 334 people died after taser shocks between 2001 and 2008.
You correctly quote that 334 people died after being tased. I would be very interested to see regression analysis of all of the available data. What percentage of them were using cocaine? (The article suggests that this is a common factor.) What percentage of them were after a foot pursuit? How many cocaine users die after being arrested subsequent to a foot pursuit in the absence of the use of a taser? How many shootings has taser use statistically prevented? How much blunt force trauma has it prevented? What affect has the use of tasers had on officer safety? And specifically female officer safety.
In the year 2004 there were 1.6 million arrests. Assuming the 334 deaths were evenly distributed across the eight years in question, a rate of about 42 per year, that's one death subsequent to the use of a taser for every 38,095 arrests. That's less than 0.03%, three one-hundredths of one percent, of the time. The reported injury rate is 0.3%, the vast majority being head injuries due to a fall while being tased.
And bear in mind that everybody dies some day, and somebody dies every day. Thousands of people die every day after driving a car, or sending an email, or using a cell phone.
My point is, if, for example, the numbers showed that use of tasers prevented several thousand hospital visits, a couple hundred shootings, and a couple dozen officer deaths every year, would you still feel the same way?
You seemed to have missed my point about us not having the right to argue and debate with a police officer. We don't have that right.
Excuse me? As an American, I absolutely have the right to my freedom, even in the presence of a law enforcement officer, until such time that he can lawfully impinge upon those rights.
I may do any manner of things that he doesn't like. I may speculate about his parentage. I may suggest that he engage in behaviors of questionable anatomical feasibly. I may certainly take photographs, and give him flippant answers.
Those things may not be advisable, but police are public servants, answerable to the law and the people. They are not vested by law with the power to capriciously direct citizen's behavior.
I have a dear friend who is a police officer. I do understand the risk that they assume, and the sacrifices they make to serve the public. They are truly American heroes. But they can not and must not protect the American people by denying us our freedom.
Describe that strictly in terms of addition. (no multiplication or its inverse division) Its harder than you think.
Your conditions betray your fundamental lack of understanding of your own question. You ask someone to perform a fractional operation without using fractions!
Furthermore, sticking decimal points all over the place is a pernicious habit. It makes it easy to shove numbers into a calculator, but works against the understanding of Mathematics.
So, you are a victim of decimal notation. Let us begin with a basic understanding of the question you posed.
3/2 * 4/5 = 12/10 = 6/5 = 1 1/5 (= 1.2)
How does that work out to addition? I'm going to use the commutative property of multiplication to get around the biggest problem you've created for me.
3/2 * 4/5 = 4/5 * 3/2
4/5 = 1 1/2 so we can add 4/5 to itself 1 1/2 times.
4/5 + 4/10 = 12/10 Q.E.D.
You might complain that I multiplied the second term by 1/2. (Or 0.5. *shudder*) Or that I divided it by 2. This might seem more reasonable if I demonstrated on a number line. In any case, I willingly grant that it is not generally useful to consider the multiplication of fractions as a special case of addition. Though I don't think that was the original premise you were attempting to counter.
But it might be useful to think of it that way in certain contexts. If your nephew charged your niece eighty cents for a piggy back ride around the block, and he got tired half way through the second trip, and they came to you to solve their payment problem, you might use this approach. If neither of them understand multiplication, but they both have addition, you could clearly show them that you'd ADD the price of one trip to half the price of a second trip. Give your brother a buck-twenty!
It works the other way around as well, but it's harder to see that you're adding a number to itself less than once (4/5) times.
I wonder about the purpose of your question. If you suspect the validity of the assertion, then you are quite right to ask! After all, Mathematics is not a religion!
But if you are simply rejecting the premise, I wonder what your motivation is.
If you're curious about Math, I hope you'll pursue that curiosity. It is a fascinating subject that has been grossly disserved by the educational system in this country for a long time. You may find that you are the best Math teacher you've ever had!
Are you suffering from hypothermia? Your left pinky seems to be lagging behind the rest of your fingers. (Note your spelling of the subject line above.)
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you're taking a claim made by someone calling himself "Toe, The" a bit more seriously than it deserves? I'm sure that Apple makes no such claim.
-Peter
I don't think I can give you a simple answer to your question. I don't see a clear way to do an apples-to-apples comparison of a film and a graphic novel.
The movie was extremely true to the source material without coming off as a slavish reproduction. I'd say that, in some ways, it is the best "comic book movie" I've seen.
I think I'm safe in categorically stating that the book holds a higher place in the pantheon of graphic novels than the movie does in the pantheon of films. In that sense the book is better. I suppose that, if you like graphic novels and films equally, the book is better. I think some of Frank Miller's art is shit (looking at you, 300), but some of my all time favorite panels appear in The Hard Goodbye.
Having said that, if you've seen the movie there aren't going to be any big revelations in the book. Unlike, for example, the film adaptation of The Return of the King, which leaves out The Scouring of the Shire. To me, that's the most important and meaningful part of the books.
Based on my assumptions about you and the context of your question, I suppose the answer is no. On the other hand, as a guy who finds something special in the work of one guy with some scratch board and a something really different to say, I think I like the book better.
-Peter
About three fuck-ups ago.
-Peter
Sigh
Or stay in the basement and read the Eisner Award-winning book.
-Peter
A secret, such as a password, is not the same thing as an obscure fact, like running a service on a non-standard port*.
-Peter
*I'm aware that this is actually pretty useful in practice, but it isn't a security measure per se.
Uh, yeah. I corrected myself five minutes before you did.
-Peter
Whoops. Secede.
-Peter
Sure, but they'd have to succeed first, so as to escape the restrictions of the Bill of Rights.
-Peter
Why? If you're concerned about the environment, aren't these precisely the companies you'd want to see buying this product?
Now, if they were buying the plant and the patents, that would be a whole other story . . .
-Peter
Brilliant conjugation! D.N.A. couldn't have done better himself.
-Peter
Most jokes are.
-Peter
This is all based on a study out of CU Boulder. As a Denver resident, I can attest that the dirty hippies at CU Boulder are on a never-ending quest to justify their poor hygiene. Don't be fooled! Shower every day!
-Peter
Not even close to enough.
-Peter
The whole point of my post was that the way you stated that is not the useful way of looking at it.
First, there is no true cost to illegitimate copies. Unlike, say, shoplifting, it doesn't deprive the seller of inventory. There is certainly the perception of opportunity cost, but I'm unconvinced that this perception aligns with reality.
We agree that, like most goods, the size of his market affects his marginal cost. I stated this in my original post, so I don't understand why you're arguing the point.
There are any number of "what if" scenarios that would influence the size of his market. What if the government mandated that everyone buy a copy of his software? What if he could use slave labor to do most of his programming?
The real question is, does treating your customers worse increase the size of your market. Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn't. You may notice in my post that, while I try to persuade "spidweb" not to use DRM, I don't demand it. My thesis is that DRM creates a great deal of frustration for his customers, and a minor speed-bump to people who would obtain his work illicitly. This seems to be an inequitable and undesirable trade-off.
My real point, though, is that "spidweb" seems to be thinking of people who play his game as his market. The thinking going something like, "If my customers would just pay for the game, I wouldn't have to use DRM." But his customers are paying for the game by definition!
I think it would be more useful for him to think in terms of growing his market, instead of thinking in terms of forcing his customers (and non-customers) to play by the rules.
But, yes, if there was a magic button he could press that made everyone who plays his game pay him, then he could charge less and make more. I'm proposing that DRM is not that magic button. In practice it has been clearly shown to fail at preventing illicit copying and to decrease the value provided to paying customers.
-Peter
Incorrect. The sole purpose of DRM is to give publishers control over a copy of a work after it has been ostensibly sold to a customer. (Its effectiveness in achieving this purpose is a separate question.)
It is laudable that you would only choose to use this control for legitimate purposes, but that does not make it the fundamental purpose of the scheme.
Furthermore, even if, in your benevolence, only intended to use DRM for this purpose, you would still stifle all uses of your work unforeseen by you. Would you have a problem with a legitimate buyer of your work using it on an emulator to enjoy it again twenty years from now? I suppose not. But if the current legal climate persists you would make a criminal of him.
No. DRM is a naked play for control. An attempt to sell something but still act as its owner. Your good intentions do not change this.
Can you substantiate this claim? I can't imagine how any cost burden is placed upon you or your legitimate customers by people who aren't your customers copying your work.
I suppose you mean that the costs must be defrayed over a smaller number of copies due to some imagined lost sales. But the question of what your costs would be if people who obtain your work illicitly obtained it legitimately is meaningless. If you attempt to discover the answer to this question experimentally by shackling your actual, paying customers with DRM you'll never know what your sales would have been without it. Much more importantly, you may or may not achieve your goals relating to those who aren't your customers, but you will certainly abuse those you claim to be attempting to protect.
The choice is yours: punish your customers out of a sense of moral outrage, or align your perception of who your customers are with reality. Either way, you, and only you, must live with the consequences.
-Peter
The more I think about your reply, the angrier I get.
First, this is NOT what due process guarantees. Due process is a promise that the government makes to the citizen, not the the other way around.
Allow me to propose an example. Let's say your mother gets pulled over by a local cop. Let's say he orders her to gratify him sexually. With her mouth. Let's say you're in the car. Let's imagine you're shouting at her, "Just do it. We'll let a judge sort it out after the fact." Let's say you're a twat who won't lift a finger to defend his own mother from being molested by the lowest kind of scum, simply because he has a badge.
You know, just for the sake of discussion.
-Peter
I have seen all of your emphasis, and I'm not saying that what you're saying is bad advice, but I really must insist on a reference to the statute that says that I must comply with any order given to me by a law enforcement officer.
Clearly, I may not resist arrest. But answering a question (about a perfectly legal activity) flippantly doesn't satisfy any of the conditions of resisting arrest. The most obvious being that I am not under arrest!
-Peter
Hilarious!
I actually meant "suggest" as in "recommend". Like, "Why don't you go" something.
I love the way you ran with it, though.
-Peter
Do I understand correctly that your thesis is that law enforcement officers should be compelled by law to wrassle all challengers?
Or are you saying that the blunt force of a baton (or Maglite) is universally preferable to tasing?
I sincerely hope that I have failed to grasp your point. Would you mind restating it? Can you be more specific about your expectations of a law enforcement officer when attempting to arrest a violent suspect?
You correctly quote that 334 people died after being tased. I would be very interested to see regression analysis of all of the available data. What percentage of them were using cocaine? (The article suggests that this is a common factor.) What percentage of them were after a foot pursuit? How many cocaine users die after being arrested subsequent to a foot pursuit in the absence of the use of a taser? How many shootings has taser use statistically prevented? How much blunt force trauma has it prevented? What affect has the use of tasers had on officer safety? And specifically female officer safety.
In the year 2004 there were 1.6 million arrests. Assuming the 334 deaths were evenly distributed across the eight years in question, a rate of about 42 per year, that's one death subsequent to the use of a taser for every 38,095 arrests. That's less than 0.03%, three one-hundredths of one percent, of the time. The reported injury rate is 0.3%, the vast majority being head injuries due to a fall while being tased.
And bear in mind that everybody dies some day, and somebody dies every day. Thousands of people die every day after driving a car, or sending an email, or using a cell phone.
My point is, if, for example, the numbers showed that use of tasers prevented several thousand hospital visits, a couple hundred shootings, and a couple dozen officer deaths every year, would you still feel the same way?
-Peter
Excuse me? As an American, I absolutely have the right to my freedom, even in the presence of a law enforcement officer, until such time that he can lawfully impinge upon those rights.
I may do any manner of things that he doesn't like. I may speculate about his parentage. I may suggest that he engage in behaviors of questionable anatomical feasibly. I may certainly take photographs, and give him flippant answers.
Those things may not be advisable, but police are public servants, answerable to the law and the people. They are not vested by law with the power to capriciously direct citizen's behavior.
I have a dear friend who is a police officer. I do understand the risk that they assume, and the sacrifices they make to serve the public. They are truly American heroes. But they can not and must not protect the American people by denying us our freedom.
-Peter
I don't know what was up with that post. I wasn't drinking or anything.
Sorry about that.
-Peter
Your conditions betray your fundamental lack of understanding of your own question. You ask someone to perform a fractional operation without using fractions!
Furthermore, sticking decimal points all over the place is a pernicious habit. It makes it easy to shove numbers into a calculator, but works against the understanding of Mathematics.
So, you are a victim of decimal notation. Let us begin with a basic understanding of the question you posed.
3/2 * 4/5 = 12/10 = 6/5 = 1 1/5 (= 1.2)
How does that work out to addition? I'm going to use the commutative property of multiplication to get around the biggest problem you've created for me.
3/2 * 4/5 = 4/5 * 3/2
4/5 = 1 1/2 so we can add 4/5 to itself 1 1/2 times.
4/5 + 4/10 = 12/10 Q.E.D.
You might complain that I multiplied the second term by 1/2. (Or 0.5. *shudder*) Or that I divided it by 2. This might seem more reasonable if I demonstrated on a number line. In any case, I willingly grant that it is not generally useful to consider the multiplication of fractions as a special case of addition. Though I don't think that was the original premise you were attempting to counter.
But it might be useful to think of it that way in certain contexts. If your nephew charged your niece eighty cents for a piggy back ride around the block, and he got tired half way through the second trip, and they came to you to solve their payment problem, you might use this approach. If neither of them understand multiplication, but they both have addition, you could clearly show them that you'd ADD the price of one trip to half the price of a second trip. Give your brother a buck-twenty!
It works the other way around as well, but it's harder to see that you're adding a number to itself less than once (4/5) times.
I wonder about the purpose of your question. If you suspect the validity of the assertion, then you are quite right to ask! After all, Mathematics is not a religion!
But if you are simply rejecting the premise, I wonder what your motivation is.
If you're curious about Math, I hope you'll pursue that curiosity. It is a fascinating subject that has been grossly disserved by the educational system in this country for a long time. You may find that you are the best Math teacher you've ever had!
-Peter
Are you suffering from hypothermia? Your left pinky seems to be lagging behind the rest of your fingers. (Note your spelling of the subject line above.)
-Peter
And yet the word "penis" slid right by you.
Penis. Slid. Tee-he!
-Peter
As Robin Williams put it, "See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time."
-Peter