In germany, where I life, I only saw DVD versions of the game. I'm suspecting I might have shelled out 40 for a fake version, though.. well I'll see tonight.
yes, its not illegal, its just hard. Especially for those 'leet' 'programmers' that can do barely more than hooking a debugger into a games process to find out which function to replace to remove the cd check. If you haven't heard it yet, the steam content is decrypted. 'Pretenting' to be steam won't cut it, kiddo...
amazingly, it goes for 39 here in germany. Thats about 6-10 euros cheaper than other games, including the not so new Ranbow Six 3 and not so hot Real Cockpit (FS rip-off). I hope the other publishers can take the hint: profit through numbers and price level != quality level.
The only entitlement anyone has is to use his body and ability as s/he wishes. There is no guaranty that you will not die tomorrow, from sickness, starvation or an accident. It just won't work any other way. Picture yourself on a desolate island. Hunting and gathering is tough work and it won't afford you a 'living wage'. So where is that wage to come from? I'm sorry, this is the real world and not candy-land. No one should be made to support you involuntariely, and by extention, no one should pay an employee more than s/he wants to pay. If the conditions of employment are so inhumane, go to the bank, present your business plan and start a company where you can then work as you please.
I have a heard. This is why I pitty the most productive members of society, entrepreneurs, that get the shit beaten out of them daily, even though they are the ones bringing wealth and work to the masses since 1750.
I'm sorry, the game can't be that great if people stop after 1/2 hour, 1 hour or even two hours to come to slashdot and tell everyone about it... when I get my copy, I won't be on/. for quite a while...
No, I'm stomping all over you because you're commenting on something you have almost no experience with as if you had something worthwhile to say.
Nothing worthwile to say? Except that working in the video game industry is seen as a priviledge by many? I AM a software developer, I can't stress this enough, partly because I'm not sure about your comprehension skills. So, I'm part of the unwashed masses who could do the work in question. I think this is quite relevant. It is also quite relevant that I'd spend a year learning about the direct x api, open Gl and the mathematics underlying graphics and AI IF I had the gurantee that EA would hire me for those condition: 12 hour work day, food, some entertainment (obviously not much time for that;) and a place to life (something like a boarding school would do). So, I'm a wage dumper, obviously. I and people like me create the condition those developers 'suffer'. It's a job many would do even if they didn't get payed much more than subsidence. I think this is pretty relevant. Also, its obviously true that most people ARE most concerned with their own well being, I'll just stand up and say so, instead of pretending to be so much 'holier-than-thou'. Self-interesst is the only force at work within humans.
Maybe you don't realize this, but you are a slashdotter yourself. Your account makes it so, so don't set yourself artificially apart. Yeah, the 'buggywhip' model, as you seem to call it, might be tried and true. And I did use it right. You, on the other hand made a slashdot typical mistake. You don't realize that labour is a capital good. You can't hurt your workers, not in the USA. You can renegotiate contracts, driving down the price. It is still (and should always be) within the employees power to accept a offer or to abstain. The same goes for suppliers, businesses that suddenly turn victim in your strange world. IF walmart demands lower prices from you, you still have a choice. And walmart has too, just as you needn't buy from EA games if you so choose, walmart has not to buy from supplier X. And just as you don't have to work a MC-Job for 5$, walmart doesn't HAVE to offer you a position 10$. So, to go to the econ part of this. A decrease in price signals over abundance, if you can't or don't want to produce at that price (be that labor or toys) you shouldn't because someone else does it better.
Finally, nobody actually uses the term monopoly to mean that the company is the only producer, it's the only significant producer. Microsoft, for all intents and purposes, has no viable competition in the desktop market - hence the use of the term monopoly in reference to Microsoft. If you have to start resorting to dictionary-strict pendanticism to back up your point, you need to reconsider your position.
We don't get to make up what words mean. Not even the DOJ does. Mono means one. It will mean that until the end of time. Your usage just indicates the slippery slope of anti-trust. First, action is taken against serious offending monopols, the ones that might be using real black mail (stop competing or else we burn down your shop), which is okay because they violated someones property or other inalienable rights. Then, maybe to punish those that are not engaged in politics enough (read, lacking donations) we fight monopolies that are so good, no one can compete in price or quality (American Alluminum comes to mind), then we go after any firm we don't like much, even if they are not a monopoly at all (like microsoft, which btw up to that point employed no lobbists and made no party donations), its no problem though, we just give the word a new meaning. The first step was enough.
Read this. It's from the Cato Institute, a biased source I'll say but maybe it is convincing.
In other words, you're a male between the ages of 15 and 23 - which is not a broad range in the least, it's a grouping that's actually somewhat narrow for more than a few purposes - you're education was paid for by people who aren't you, and you've held nothing but the mindless grunt-work service jobs reserved for the young and/or uneducated for the extreme majority of your working life.
Your are the spinnster. You started out complaining about me being offspring to well-off parents and so sheltered having little experience with real life. Now you tread on me for doing 'grunt-work' all the while ignoring the facts that a) I've worked longer, more and more stressing conditions than most adults my age and even some that are older and b) that I have progressed upwards and been employed as software developer for 3 years now. 'I'm right' doesn't cut it quite, don't you think? I mean, you implied I was a parasite in your original post. And I'll tell you what else: the range 15-23 is broad, because this is where the most changes in a persons life. Maybe you are so rusty that you have forgotten, but between 15 and 23 the following take place: puberty, sexual adulthood, first sex, legal adulthood, first intimate relationship (love), higher education, standing on ones own feet, graduation, entering the work force etc. But no matter, you, of course are still RIGHT!
blablabla rant you could have saved yourself had you actually listened in econ 101...
No, you are mistaken. The progression towards every more material wealth was always marked by drastic deflation (broad decrease in price or increase in quality for products, for the econ impaired). As an example: there used to be men whos work it was to manually push goods, raw material etc on little boats down stream. Obviously, had the transport industry not became a whole lot more efficient you would be paying quite a bit more for everything. Those poor buggers became unemployed once the steam engine caught on. Suprisingly, looking back, nobody would claim that we are worse of because the economy does not employ those handlers anymore. Look, the cycle always goes like this: new product -> manufacturing through manual labor (which are always deemed working at the 'cutting edge') -> automatisation (or better process) -> price decrease -> mass market availabilty. Now, of course in your little dandy world, there would be no machines, no progress and nothing would ever become cheaper. The processes would always stay the same, if not become more bloated to let more people into the boat. In short, your world is the world of government and mine is the free market. I can only wonder at how you fail to comprehend that only one of those ways leads to more wealth. Now on to your belitteling question: Wal-mart doesn't sell below profit. They don't sell at loss, at least not for all products combined. The reason is simple: It is more harmful for Wal-mart to sell at a loss than it is for mom and pop stores, simply because Wal-mart sells way more units. If you loose a cent for each of a million you sell, quite a lot of money adds up. It adds up faster if you are bigger, see how that works? Well, you won't go for this, you'll just say: eek, wal-mart the cooperate whore has millions of bucks so they can afford this. Well, where does the money come from? Investors! What do they want? Earnings! So, instead of going on this huge expansive rampage that you fear, namly, pricing 'predatorly', so earning a loss AND, at the same time, buying estate and building stores, which also is not cheap I offer you this: Wal-mart sells more cheaply because they buy larger numbers. The distribution of stores and the gathering of 'demand' data for and from a single entity provides the market which much needed stableness. This translates into money. This is quite obvious, even if one suffers from fetal alcohol syndrom like yourself. Btw, you are not the one to decide what price is the right price. This is a question buyers
Nice try, sport. I don't see how your feeling of being more mature than me came about, seeing how your post consists of nothing but quite elogant insults. The sophistication of your writing aside, the content is on par with what five year olds to to each other all the time. To my person that you see fit to attack without the slightest clue:
1. You are male, between the ages of 15 and 23.
Yes, I am male (heh, this is/.). 15-23 is a rather broad spectrum, don't you think? anyways, yes, as the majority here, I am in that range, though rahter at the end of it, being born 1st of August 1981 in East (socialist) Germany. Among other exchange programs, I went to the US (seattle) and stayed there a year.
2. You are in high school or college.
Nope. I graduated, from what you might call a technical college almost 3 years ago (www.dv-schulen.de/schulen/bfsIt/schPu.html). I have a 'degree' in computer science, specialised for software development. I worked long and hard. And, most importantly as soon as legally possible. I started cutting cartons in the garage of my step fathers company, during the holidays. Later I worked there as cleaner, weekly, after school. I went on to do low level technical work (taking PCs apart, installing Windows/Linux/OS), also in that company, on all holidays. (www.km-systems.de). Once, I worked the whole summer break (6 weeks) in the dish-kitchen of a major funiture store, doing all the nasty cleaning, polishing, scrubbing (www.neubert.de). Finally, after coming back from the states, I spend the 3 months until my futher education started doing web-sites and tech support, also for my step dads company. During my 'college' years (three years, 8-4 school), I earned the biggest part of my money by working as a bartender, sometimes as much as 5 nights a week (www.cu-wuerzburg.de). The years since my graduation, I spend working as java developer/consultant in the southern part of germany.
3. Your entire education will be paid for by people who aren't you.
My education was 'sponsered' by the state, as here, public schools are the norm whereas private schools are looked down upon as being elitist (sadly). Needless to say, my parents do spend most of the time working to pay their taxes, so I guess you are right. As for the implications, that my parents are filthily rich and don't know to spend it better then to blow it all on their son, thats wrong. All major financial contributions (my first car etc.) past the age of 18 where made as loans and I had to ask really nice for it too.
4. You've likely never held a permanent "real" job. Assuming you've ever had a job rather than sponging off your parents, it was in the services industry and you spent most of your time standing around jerking off in the storeroom rather than working.
Hahahaha! I've probably did things you don't even know needed doing. See response to two.
If you're truly so staggeringly ignorant that you can't follow the basic processes behind Wal Mart's behavior and figure out why buying low priced junk from them is going to cause you and everybody else more harm than good in the long run, please simply take a shotgun, insert it into the back of your throat, and pull the trigger. It's not that complicated of a concept, and if you really are so lacking in the most basic economic skills that you can't figure it out, you'd really do us all a favor if you just killed yourself.
Up until now, you are the one that displayed ignorance. Well, you couldn't know better and it's just as well to make ad hoc assumptions that fit your world view best.
See, the point is not that wal-mart is selling junk, as far as I know they haven't even been accused of that (and from my experience, it certaintly doesn't hold true here in germany). It sells the same stuff, basically cheaper. Now, if you think I'm brain-dead for wanting to pay as little as possible for the things I buy, something is seriously wron
No. I think it's bad when businesses expect to fill their plates three and four times at the free market buffet, then leave a dollar tip and take a nice thick shit on the new tablecloth before they leave.
What has EA taken from you, or anyone else that wouldn't enter into contract with them? What? Have they stolen your wallet? Did an EA bulldozer run over your house? What have they taken from 'the buffet' which you claim to take share in (yourself or by proxie)? Nothing. Zip. They borrowed, or otherwise aquired funds in a legal (read: voluntary way), employed people who, every day, reaffirm their agreement with the terms of employment and churned out products that enrich peoples lifes. So, lets see: they made millions of customers happy and gave lots of people 'the dream job' and provided their families with income. How much have you done? Are you equally useful, by your own standards? I doubt it.
why should I boykott EA Games or Walmart? As long as there are no gang of thugs herding slave labor into stores/buildings of those companies, I don't see why I should buy more expensive products or ones that I don't like as much, just because they are made by a different company. I'm sorry, I'm not going to hurt myself by avoiding Battlefield 2 just because someones bitchie wife doesn't get screwed enough. The bottom line is this: EA could fire its dev staff tomorrow and the next day, they'd have their offices full with specialists from all fields of software development. Sure, they wouldn't be as productive at first, but they'll more than make up for it with the enthusiasm that comes with working in your dream job. All people doing the 'cool' stuff, pushing the frontier and so forth, must work hard because virtually everyone would love to do too.
the issue is not so much with ownage (sorry;) as such but with not being sure where it came from. Stories of cheating clans in esports and otherwise are just too wide spread. Some of those entities caught cheating (solo players or clans) where legends in counter-strike for example. Before the 'public' became aware of the cheating issues, many would have felt elated by getting their asses handed to them royaly. In my firm believe in humanity, I just assume that the vast majority of gamers (humans) are actually 'good loosers' that get inspired when people that play very good defeat them. But, if the certainty about the other players superority actually diminishes, through the increased awareness of cheats for example, it is clear that many feel suspicios if a new guy comes on 'their' server and starts kicking ass. Add to this technical problems, like skipped animations and latency issues and it might actually appear to players watching you as if you were really cheating.
well, you at least need to talk about it? There is a lot that can bias ground based observation (as their probably is with space and stratosphere (ballons) meassurements). But if you find discrepancies like this, it is exactly alarmist to carry on assuming the 'bad' data is correct. I'm sorry, I came to the conclusion that the persevierant ignoring of 'good' data is due to age old reasons: the majority of people WANT to feel guilty. Just that we have replaced god (not religious, me) with Gaia. The nature godess is mad at us because we are naughty, having fun and an actual easy life. Most people feel so drawen to doomsday scenarios that basically amounts to the spanking of humanity for their evil deeds. Every natural catastroph and change in human times was accompanied by 'clerics' of all fashion proclaiming that 'you have brought this on yourself, now you get what you deserve, learn from this and do a lot more of X next time'. Now the X can be many things, abstinence, building temples, praying, not eating pork, or using solar panels. Sorry, I can't take anything along those lines very serious.
Any scientific article in the popular press has to "censor" a lot of material, simply because it would not be understood by the public without hundreds or thousands of pages of background material. Distinguishing between fringe and mainstream theories falls into this category--as a rule it is simply not possible to summarize briefly and comprehensibly the mass of data that lead most scientists to strongly prefer one theory over another. So for most purposes, the best that can be done is to say, "Almost all leading scientists in the field favor theory A" and refer the reader to the scientific literature if they want to understand or critique why this is so.
Maybe I need to state my point more clearly since I feel I'm loosing track of my argument;). My concern is this: Here (germany) the press is frustratingly one sided. Yes, online they do sometimes provide links for futher research but never do they mention any disputes over the knowledge they present. The articles are reminicent of this: The ministry of truth has determined that 'X'. Period. So, I know that every (or at least the great majority) theory (even what is deemed most fundamental like evolution, gravity etc.) has at least minor problems. Maybe even disputed elements. Sometimes there are even (lacking data) equally simple (occams razor) and equally valid theories (fitting the data). Now, this just never gets mention. The public is made to believe that if 'the scientific community' proclaims there findings, they are sort of final and in stone cast truth, an attitude no scientist could or should applaud. Naturally, when I read a headline that say 'Journalists should only write about the 'true' side of argument' my blood boils, because final truths can't be found, outside maybe a church (not religious, me).
Actually, neither theory used ellipses. Ptolemaic theory used a complicated and arbitrary system of circular orbits running around other circular orbits, with the sun in the middle. It was so complex that it could be made to match virtually any observation. The Copernican system on the other hand, was so simple that the only way for Kepler to bring it into better correspondence with observations was to give up on the circular orbits, even though Kepler hated ellipses, regarding them as imperfect circles. So in that sense, Copernican theory was better, because it was capable of leading scientists to a better understanding, while Ptolemaic theory was a blind alley.
Yeah, well my answer was not really refering to those instances of theories. I was just trying to say: look, if there are two theories that are probably wrong but work most of the time, you can just give them equal time unless something better comes along. Except for occams razor of course. From the sound of it, the Ptolemaic theory sort of falls under it. And if it really could make to fit most observations at the same time than it clearly is the superior theory until something simpler with the same abilities (or better) comes along.
naaa, this wasn't what I meant. More clearly: I suspect that bugs intentionaly left in 'force' (encourage) people to patch (official patch) the game, thus making the cracks that appeared for the vanilla version useless and thus encouraging more people to buy because crack makers don't pay as much attention to sub versions of a given game, in effect limiting the available cracks for the 'playable' version of a game.
well, sattelite records showing no global warming would be such data, no? And what is the result? Not a single puplication (nature refused with no reason given), no coverage and here, only ridicule ('can't you see, we are all doomed! You bush voting anti-abortion gay hating monster.').
They just want to get the games on the shelves asap, usually before thanksgiving, like right now, and worry about the patch later.
Yep, this seems really to be the problem. I often wonder why game magazines don't focus on bugs. My favorite example being Rome of course (sorry, we are just really frustrated after shelling out 100 for two copies (my brother and I actually being of the anti-piracy persuation)) where all was peachy for the journalists covering the game. I know this is in no way original, but I strongly suspect that the bugs in the first release often aid copy protection. As everyone knows (yes, I have pirated in my younger, more foolish years;) a patch won't install if you use a cracked.exe and often times, follow up cracks for subversions of a games are rare. Do you know anything about this which you are at the liberty to share?
Actually, it takes a lot of knowledge to distinguish between a "junk" theory and a good theory. A good theory is one that makes strong predictions (i.e. ones that can be tested and that would invalidate the theory if they turned out wrong) and which has already passed many such tests. But without detailed knowledge of the scientific literature and the theory's history, it is difficult to distinguish this from a junk theory that has never made correct predictions, but which has been revised after the fact to bring it into line with current knowledge (e.g. Creationism).
The answer is not to 'censor' the 'junk' to 'protect' the unwashed masses by some higher authority (whatever it may be). The nature of truth is such that though being external to humans and there being objective, once internalized meaning observed it becomes highly subjective. Substantiation, and this insight has vanished, through predictions means nothing. A theory can only be prooven wrong, never right. As regards Creationism, it is not a theory at all because it is not falsifiable. Therefore, don't picture the evolution vs. creationism debate when reading this. Never the less, critque on evolution by creationists has and will in the future only stengthen evolution as scientists see it necessary to tackle problems that have not been dealt with yet. No one theory in the current scientific discourse is without it's weakness, not one. Presenting alternative viewpoints is, absent a to-be discovered method of prooving things correct, imperative to futhering knowledge. The only valid dogma, for me at least, is: accept no dogma.
Concerning the second paragraph, the value of a theory is related to its practicality. How good is it at predicting the future ( future observations of reality)? Futhermore, it is my opinion that theory a) that says the sun orbits earth in an eliptic fashion is equally useless (and wrong) as theory b) that says the earth orbits the sun, describing a circle.
well, I was just pointing to the (in every day life quite obvious) fact that popularity, even among peers, means nothing except that something is popular. It is quite feasable to think up a scenario where substantiated scientific claims pass into dogma quickly, thus undermining the critical thought of scholars requiring a basis for their own research from that field. This dogma can take the form of many things: being denied funding, being called names, being ridiculed, not getting any exposure and being punished. For the love of buddah, just take a look at what this slashdot article says, right in the headline: Those in possession of 'The truth' complain about Liars getting coverage in the media. It's a fucking witch hunt and has nothing to do with what science is supposed to mean. A good theory does not need to fear being presented along side 'junk' science. It will shine because it is so much more coherent than the junk and explains the world so much better. A good theory, like a good speaker, is never afraid of it's lessers because its own glory will stand out so much more when compared.
get cited by other scientists. The best scientists get cited a lot.
This system is flawless as the google page rank algorithm pooves daily when the top 50 results to my queries are the exact same dailer pages that don't have anything to do with what I searched for.
your post is, sorry fully bullshit. Any system that has three or more factors that affect each other is by definition chaotic. This does apply for the climate, long term or not. A very good example for feedback is this: it is thought that when the temperatures rise, moisture in the athmosphere rises as well, rainfall increases leading to an increase in snowfall, for example in the artic and antarctic and other regions affected by snowfall. Now, bigger snowfields, glaciers (that grow bigger as more snow falls) and icefields lead to an decrease in sunlight reflections and thus to cooling. Alone this tiny part of what the climate is about is as chaotic as it gets. The climate is not linear, period, and your model can't be made to anticipate this because the distribition of outputs is RANDOM. A model that truly anticipates the chaotic property of the climate is nothing but a random number generator.
very good that your list includes china, makes it more obvious what we are really talking about. The lefties are at it again, ruining the day for everyone. Was it not enough to see 100 millions killed during Stalins, Maos, PolPots and Ches rule? Did the 500 million deaths from malaria due to the banning of DDT by well-informed, intellectual, science oriented socialists not satisfy your hunger for blind interventionism? Canada and Western Europe are ruled and comprised of closet socialists, left and right, that would just rather not talk about the spectecular failure of their ideology. Who talks about starving russians due to massive intervention from the state to futher the so called noble goals of equality and erradication of greed? Who talks about the british state run healt care that refuses treatment to elderly people because they are not deemed worthy past the age of 65 to receive life enhancing treatment? Who talks about the social security that costs germans 75% of their incomes and leaves them with sub-par medical services and a pension barely sufficient to maintain life once they reach retirement? I'd know, I life here: The USs concern should be with getting in touch with their roots, they've been following the morons around the world for too long already.
fringe can mean 'holding an extreme viewpoint'. I am sorry, it might be true that 'most' scientists believe this or that but truth is not determined by majority, or is it? If everyone says the US didn't go to war with iraq, has it not happend? Well, chalk me up for being an insane minority of one.
You know-it-all brick, please present me with a theory that unifies special relativity with quantumn mechanics, among which the main beef IS gravity. We know that it is. We don't know the what the why or the how. The key to science is humbleness. As socrates says 'I know only that I know nothing'. Theories are models of the world and they need to continually show that they are the most practical model in dealing with reality. A model that states that the climate changes, that this must be horrible for all humans and that it must be caused by humans is not very practical. It implies that the climate is, baring human intervention, static which must appear to any observer as the most absurd statement in sciences history.
No knowledge is immune from doubt preciesly because it can never be perfect and this insight is the achievement of the enlightement, leading directly to the scientific method.
Slashdot Mirror
In germany, where I life, I only saw DVD versions of the game. I'm suspecting I might have shelled out 40 for a fake version, though .. well I'll see tonight.
yes, its not illegal, its just hard. Especially for those 'leet' 'programmers' that can do barely more than hooking a debugger into a games process to find out which function to replace to remove the cd check. If you haven't heard it yet, the steam content is decrypted. 'Pretenting' to be steam won't cut it, kiddo ...
amazingly, it goes for 39 here in germany. Thats about 6-10 euros cheaper than other games, including the not so new Ranbow Six 3 and not so hot Real Cockpit (FS rip-off). I hope the other publishers can take the hint: profit through numbers and price level != quality level.
The only entitlement anyone has is to use his body and ability as s/he wishes. There is no guaranty that you will not die tomorrow, from sickness, starvation or an accident. It just won't work any other way. Picture yourself on a desolate island. Hunting and gathering is tough work and it won't afford you a 'living wage'. So where is that wage to come from? I'm sorry, this is the real world and not candy-land. No one should be made to support you involuntariely, and by extention, no one should pay an employee more than s/he wants to pay. If the conditions of employment are so inhumane, go to the bank, present your business plan and start a company where you can then work as you please.
I have a heard. This is why I pitty the most productive members of society, entrepreneurs, that get the shit beaten out of them daily, even though they are the ones bringing wealth and work to the masses since 1750.
I'm sorry, the game can't be that great if people stop after 1/2 hour, 1 hour or even two hours to come to slashdot and tell everyone about it ... when I get my copy, I won't be on /. for quite a while ...
No, I'm stomping all over you because you're commenting on something you have almost no experience with as if you had something worthwhile to say.
Nothing worthwile to say? Except that working in the video game industry is seen as a priviledge by many? I AM a software developer, I can't stress this enough, partly because I'm not sure about your comprehension skills. So, I'm part of the unwashed masses who could do the work in question. I think this is quite relevant. It is also quite relevant that I'd spend a year learning about the direct x api, open Gl and the mathematics underlying graphics and AI IF I had the gurantee that EA would hire me for those condition: 12 hour work day, food, some entertainment (obviously not much time for that
Maybe you don't realize this, but you are a slashdotter yourself. Your account makes it so, so don't set yourself artificially apart. Yeah, the 'buggywhip' model, as you seem to call it, might be tried and true. And I did use it right. You, on the other hand made a slashdot typical mistake. You don't realize that labour is a capital good. You can't hurt your workers, not in the USA. You can renegotiate contracts, driving down the price. It is still (and should always be) within the employees power to accept a offer or to abstain. The same goes for suppliers, businesses that suddenly turn victim in your strange world. IF walmart demands lower prices from you, you still have a choice. And walmart has too, just as you needn't buy from EA games if you so choose, walmart has not to buy from supplier X. And just as you don't have to work a MC-Job for 5$, walmart doesn't HAVE to offer you a position 10$. So, to go to the econ part of this. A decrease in price signals over abundance, if you can't or don't want to produce at that price (be that labor or toys) you shouldn't because someone else does it better.
Finally, nobody actually uses the term monopoly to mean that the company is the only producer, it's the only significant producer. Microsoft, for all intents and purposes, has no viable competition in the desktop market - hence the use of the term monopoly in reference to Microsoft. If you have to start resorting to dictionary-strict pendanticism to back up your point, you need to reconsider your position.
We don't get to make up what words mean. Not even the DOJ does. Mono means one. It will mean that until the end of time. Your usage just indicates the slippery slope of anti-trust. First, action is taken against serious offending monopols, the ones that might be using real black mail (stop competing or else we burn down your shop), which is okay because they violated someones property or other inalienable rights. Then, maybe to punish those that are not engaged in politics enough (read, lacking donations) we fight monopolies that are so good, no one can compete in price or quality (American Alluminum comes to mind), then we go after any firm we don't like much, even if they are not a monopoly at all (like microsoft, which btw up to that point employed no lobbists and made no party donations), its no problem though, we just give the word a new meaning. The first step was enough. Read this. It's from the Cato Institute, a biased source I'll say but maybe it is convincing.
In other words, you're a male between the ages of 15 and 23 - which is not a broad range in the least, it's a grouping that's actually somewhat narrow for more than a few purposes - you're education was paid for by people who aren't you, and you've held nothing but the mindless grunt-work service jobs reserved for the young and/or uneducated for the extreme majority of your working life.
Your are the spinnster. You started out complaining about me being offspring to well-off parents and so sheltered having little experience with real life. Now you tread on me for doing 'grunt-work' all the while ignoring the facts that a) I've worked longer, more and more stressing conditions than most adults my age and even some that are older and b) that I have progressed upwards and been employed as software developer for 3 years now. 'I'm right' doesn't cut it quite, don't you think? I mean, you implied I was a parasite in your original post. And I'll tell you what else: the range 15-23 is broad, because this is where the most changes in a persons life. Maybe you are so rusty that you have forgotten, but between 15 and 23 the following take place: puberty, sexual adulthood, first sex, legal adulthood, first intimate relationship (love), higher education, standing on ones own feet, graduation, entering the work force etc. But no matter, you, of course are still RIGHT!
blablabla rant you could have saved yourself had you actually listened in econ 101
No, you are mistaken. The progression towards every more material wealth was always marked by drastic deflation (broad decrease in price or increase in quality for products, for the econ impaired). As an example: there used to be men whos work it was to manually push goods, raw material etc on little boats down stream. Obviously, had the transport industry not became a whole lot more efficient you would be paying quite a bit more for everything. Those poor buggers became unemployed once the steam engine caught on. Suprisingly, looking back, nobody would claim that we are worse of because the economy does not employ those handlers anymore. Look, the cycle always goes like this: new product -> manufacturing through manual labor (which are always deemed working at the 'cutting edge') -> automatisation (or better process) -> price decrease -> mass market availabilty. Now, of course in your little dandy world, there would be no machines, no progress and nothing would ever become cheaper. The processes would always stay the same, if not become more bloated to let more people into the boat. In short, your world is the world of government and mine is the free market. I can only wonder at how you fail to comprehend that only one of those ways leads to more wealth. Now on to your belitteling question: Wal-mart doesn't sell below profit. They don't sell at loss, at least not for all products combined. The reason is simple: It is more harmful for Wal-mart to sell at a loss than it is for mom and pop stores, simply because Wal-mart sells way more units. If you loose a cent for each of a million you sell, quite a lot of money adds up. It adds up faster if you are bigger, see how that works? Well, you won't go for this, you'll just say: eek, wal-mart the cooperate whore has millions of bucks so they can afford this. Well, where does the money come from? Investors! What do they want? Earnings! So, instead of going on this huge expansive rampage that you fear, namly, pricing 'predatorly', so earning a loss AND, at the same time, buying estate and building stores, which also is not cheap I offer you this: Wal-mart sells more cheaply because they buy larger numbers. The distribution of stores and the gathering of 'demand' data for and from a single entity provides the market which much needed stableness. This translates into money. This is quite obvious, even if one suffers from fetal alcohol syndrom like yourself. Btw, you are not the one to decide what price is the right price. This is a question buyers
Nice try, sport. I don't see how your feeling of being more mature than me came about, seeing how your post consists of nothing but quite elogant insults. The sophistication of your writing aside, the content is on par with what five year olds to to each other all the time. To my person that you see fit to attack without the slightest clue:
/.). 15-23 is a rather broad spectrum, don't you think? anyways, yes, as the majority here, I am in that range, though rahter at the end of it, being born 1st of August 1981 in East (socialist) Germany. Among other exchange programs, I went to the US (seattle) and stayed there a year.
1. You are male, between the ages of 15 and 23.
Yes, I am male (heh, this is
2. You are in high school or college.
Nope. I graduated, from what you might call a technical college almost 3 years ago (www.dv-schulen.de/schulen/bfsIt/schPu.html). I have a 'degree' in computer science, specialised for software development. I worked long and hard. And, most importantly as soon as legally possible. I started cutting cartons in the garage of my step fathers company, during the holidays. Later I worked there as cleaner, weekly, after school. I went on to do low level technical work (taking PCs apart, installing Windows/Linux/OS), also in that company, on all holidays. (www.km-systems.de). Once, I worked the whole summer break (6 weeks) in the dish-kitchen of a major funiture store, doing all the nasty cleaning, polishing, scrubbing (www.neubert.de). Finally, after coming back from the states, I spend the 3 months until my futher education started doing web-sites and tech support, also for my step dads company. During my 'college' years (three years, 8-4 school), I earned the biggest part of my money by working as a bartender, sometimes as much as 5 nights a week (www.cu-wuerzburg.de). The years since my graduation, I spend working as java developer/consultant in the southern part of germany.
3. Your entire education will be paid for by people who aren't you.
My education was 'sponsered' by the state, as here, public schools are the norm whereas private schools are looked down upon as being elitist (sadly). Needless to say, my parents do spend most of the time working to pay their taxes, so I guess you are right. As for the implications, that my parents are filthily rich and don't know to spend it better then to blow it all on their son, thats wrong. All major financial contributions (my first car etc.) past the age of 18 where made as loans and I had to ask really nice for it too.
4. You've likely never held a permanent "real" job. Assuming you've ever had a job rather than sponging off your parents, it was in the services industry and you spent most of your time standing around jerking off in the storeroom rather than working.
Hahahaha! I've probably did things you don't even know needed doing. See response to two.
If you're truly so staggeringly ignorant that you can't follow the basic processes behind Wal Mart's behavior and figure out why buying low priced junk from them is going to cause you and everybody else more harm than good in the long run, please simply take a shotgun, insert it into the back of your throat, and pull the trigger. It's not that complicated of a concept, and if you really are so lacking in the most basic economic skills that you can't figure it out, you'd really do us all a favor if you just killed yourself.
Up until now, you are the one that displayed ignorance. Well, you couldn't know better and it's just as well to make ad hoc assumptions that fit your world view best.
See, the point is not that wal-mart is selling junk, as far as I know they haven't even been accused of that (and from my experience, it certaintly doesn't hold true here in germany). It sells the same stuff, basically cheaper. Now, if you think I'm brain-dead for wanting to pay as little as possible for the things I buy, something is seriously wron
No. I think it's bad when businesses expect to fill their plates three and four times at the free market buffet, then leave a dollar tip and take a nice thick shit on the new tablecloth before they leave.
What has EA taken from you, or anyone else that wouldn't enter into contract with them? What? Have they stolen your wallet? Did an EA bulldozer run over your house? What have they taken from 'the buffet' which you claim to take share in (yourself or by proxie)? Nothing. Zip. They borrowed, or otherwise aquired funds in a legal (read: voluntary way), employed people who, every day, reaffirm their agreement with the terms of employment and churned out products that enrich peoples lifes. So, lets see: they made millions of customers happy and gave lots of people 'the dream job' and provided their families with income. How much have you done? Are you equally useful, by your own standards? I doubt it.
why should I boykott EA Games or Walmart? As long as there are no gang of thugs herding slave labor into stores/buildings of those companies, I don't see why I should buy more expensive products or ones that I don't like as much, just because they are made by a different company. I'm sorry, I'm not going to hurt myself by avoiding Battlefield 2 just because someones bitchie wife doesn't get screwed enough. The bottom line is this: EA could fire its dev staff tomorrow and the next day, they'd have their offices full with specialists from all fields of software development. Sure, they wouldn't be as productive at first, but they'll more than make up for it with the enthusiasm that comes with working in your dream job. All people doing the 'cool' stuff, pushing the frontier and so forth, must work hard because virtually everyone would love to do too.
the issue is not so much with ownage (sorry ;) as such but with not being sure where it came from. Stories of cheating clans in esports and otherwise are just too wide spread. Some of those entities caught cheating (solo players or clans) where legends in counter-strike for example. Before the 'public' became aware of the cheating issues, many would have felt elated by getting their asses handed to them royaly. In my firm believe in humanity, I just assume that the vast majority of gamers (humans) are actually 'good loosers' that get inspired when people that play very good defeat them. But, if the certainty about the other players superority actually diminishes, through the increased awareness of cheats for example, it is clear that many feel suspicios if a new guy comes on 'their' server and starts kicking ass. Add to this technical problems, like skipped animations and latency issues and it might actually appear to players watching you as if you were really cheating.
well, you at least need to talk about it? There is a lot that can bias ground based observation (as their probably is with space and stratosphere (ballons) meassurements). But if you find discrepancies like this, it is exactly alarmist to carry on assuming the 'bad' data is correct. I'm sorry, I came to the conclusion that the persevierant ignoring of 'good' data is due to age old reasons: the majority of people WANT to feel guilty. Just that we have replaced god (not religious, me) with Gaia. The nature godess is mad at us because we are naughty, having fun and an actual easy life. Most people feel so drawen to doomsday scenarios that basically amounts to the spanking of humanity for their evil deeds. Every natural catastroph and change in human times was accompanied by 'clerics' of all fashion proclaiming that 'you have brought this on yourself, now you get what you deserve, learn from this and do a lot more of X next time'. Now the X can be many things, abstinence, building temples, praying, not eating pork, or using solar panels. Sorry, I can't take anything along those lines very serious.
Any scientific article in the popular press has to "censor" a lot of material, simply because it would not be understood by the public without hundreds or thousands of pages of background material. Distinguishing between fringe and mainstream theories falls into this category--as a rule it is simply not possible to summarize briefly and comprehensibly the mass of data that lead most scientists to strongly prefer one theory over another. So for most purposes, the best that can be done is to say, "Almost all leading scientists in the field favor theory A" and refer the reader to the scientific literature if they want to understand or critique why this is so. Maybe I need to state my point more clearly since I feel I'm loosing track of my argument
Actually, neither theory used ellipses. Ptolemaic theory used a complicated and arbitrary system of circular orbits running around other circular orbits, with the sun in the middle. It was so complex that it could be made to match virtually any observation. The Copernican system on the other hand, was so simple that the only way for Kepler to bring it into better correspondence with observations was to give up on the circular orbits, even though Kepler hated ellipses, regarding them as imperfect circles. So in that sense, Copernican theory was better, because it was capable of leading scientists to a better understanding, while Ptolemaic theory was a blind alley. Yeah, well my answer was not really refering to those instances of theories. I was just trying to say: look, if there are two theories that are probably wrong but work most of the time, you can just give them equal time unless something better comes along. Except for occams razor of course. From the sound of it, the Ptolemaic theory sort of falls under it. And if it really could make to fit most observations at the same time than it clearly is the superior theory until something simpler with the same abilities (or better) comes along.
naaa, this wasn't what I meant. More clearly: I suspect that bugs intentionaly left in 'force' (encourage) people to patch (official patch) the game, thus making the cracks that appeared for the vanilla version useless and thus encouraging more people to buy because crack makers don't pay as much attention to sub versions of a given game, in effect limiting the available cracks for the 'playable' version of a game.
well, sattelite records showing no global warming would be such data, no? And what is the result? Not a single puplication (nature refused with no reason given), no coverage and here, only ridicule ('can't you see, we are all doomed! You bush voting anti-abortion gay hating monster.').
They just want to get the games on the shelves asap, usually before thanksgiving, like right now, and worry about the patch later.
;) a patch won't install if you use a cracked .exe and often times, follow up cracks for subversions of a games are rare. Do you know anything about this which you are at the liberty to share?
Yep, this seems really to be the problem. I often wonder why game magazines don't focus on bugs. My favorite example being Rome of course (sorry, we are just really frustrated after shelling out 100 for two copies (my brother and I actually being of the anti-piracy persuation)) where all was peachy for the journalists covering the game. I know this is in no way original, but I strongly suspect that the bugs in the first release often aid copy protection. As everyone knows (yes, I have pirated in my younger, more foolish years
Actually, it takes a lot of knowledge to distinguish between a "junk" theory and a good theory. A good theory is one that makes strong predictions (i.e. ones that can be tested and that would invalidate the theory if they turned out wrong) and which has already passed many such tests. But without detailed knowledge of the scientific literature and the theory's history, it is difficult to distinguish this from a junk theory that has never made correct predictions, but which has been revised after the fact to bring it into line with current knowledge (e.g. Creationism).
The answer is not to 'censor' the 'junk' to 'protect' the unwashed masses by some higher authority (whatever it may be). The nature of truth is such that though being external to humans and there being objective, once internalized meaning observed it becomes highly subjective. Substantiation, and this insight has vanished, through predictions means nothing. A theory can only be prooven wrong, never right. As regards Creationism, it is not a theory at all because it is not falsifiable. Therefore, don't picture the evolution vs. creationism debate when reading this. Never the less, critque on evolution by creationists has and will in the future only stengthen evolution as scientists see it necessary to tackle problems that have not been dealt with yet. No one theory in the current scientific discourse is without it's weakness, not one. Presenting alternative viewpoints is, absent a to-be discovered method of prooving things correct, imperative to futhering knowledge. The only valid dogma, for me at least, is: accept no dogma.
Concerning the second paragraph, the value of a theory is related to its practicality. How good is it at predicting the future ( future observations of reality)? Futhermore, it is my opinion that theory a) that says the sun orbits earth in an eliptic fashion is equally useless (and wrong) as theory b) that says the earth orbits the sun, describing a circle.
well, I was just pointing to the (in every day life quite obvious) fact that popularity, even among peers, means nothing except that something is popular. It is quite feasable to think up a scenario where substantiated scientific claims pass into dogma quickly, thus undermining the critical thought of scholars requiring a basis for their own research from that field. This dogma can take the form of many things: being denied funding, being called names, being ridiculed, not getting any exposure and being punished. For the love of buddah, just take a look at what this slashdot article says, right in the headline: Those in possession of 'The truth' complain about Liars getting coverage in the media. It's a fucking witch hunt and has nothing to do with what science is supposed to mean. A good theory does not need to fear being presented along side 'junk' science. It will shine because it is so much more coherent than the junk and explains the world so much better. A good theory, like a good speaker, is never afraid of it's lessers because its own glory will stand out so much more when compared.
get cited by other scientists. The best scientists get cited a lot.
This system is flawless as the google page rank algorithm pooves daily when the top 50 results to my queries are the exact same dailer pages that don't have anything to do with what I searched for.
The article should have read: The ministry of truth will not tolerate dissenting opinions. The ministry of love has been notified.
in my original answer, please replace 'decrease of sunlight reflection' with 'increase of ...'.
your post is, sorry fully bullshit. Any system that has three or more factors that affect each other is by definition chaotic. This does apply for the climate, long term or not. A very good example for feedback is this: it is thought that when the temperatures rise, moisture in the athmosphere rises as well, rainfall increases leading to an increase in snowfall, for example in the artic and antarctic and other regions affected by snowfall. Now, bigger snowfields, glaciers (that grow bigger as more snow falls) and icefields lead to an decrease in sunlight reflections and thus to cooling. Alone this tiny part of what the climate is about is as chaotic as it gets. The climate is not linear, period, and your model can't be made to anticipate this because the distribition of outputs is RANDOM. A model that truly anticipates the chaotic property of the climate is nothing but a random number generator.
very good that your list includes china, makes it more obvious what we are really talking about. The lefties are at it again, ruining the day for everyone. Was it not enough to see 100 millions killed during Stalins, Maos, PolPots and Ches rule? Did the 500 million deaths from malaria due to the banning of DDT by well-informed, intellectual, science oriented socialists not satisfy your hunger for blind interventionism? Canada and Western Europe are ruled and comprised of closet socialists, left and right, that would just rather not talk about the spectecular failure of their ideology. Who talks about starving russians due to massive intervention from the state to futher the so called noble goals of equality and erradication of greed? Who talks about the british state run healt care that refuses treatment to elderly people because they are not deemed worthy past the age of 65 to receive life enhancing treatment? Who talks about the social security that costs germans 75% of their incomes and leaves them with sub-par medical services and a pension barely sufficient to maintain life once they reach retirement? I'd know, I life here: The USs concern should be with getting in touch with their roots, they've been following the morons around the world for too long already.
fringe can mean 'holding an extreme viewpoint'. I am sorry, it might be true that 'most' scientists believe this or that but truth is not determined by majority, or is it? If everyone says the US didn't go to war with iraq, has it not happend? Well, chalk me up for being an insane minority of one.
You know-it-all brick, please present me with a theory that unifies special relativity with quantumn mechanics, among which the main beef IS gravity. We know that it is. We don't know the what the why or the how. The key to science is humbleness. As socrates says 'I know only that I know nothing'. Theories are models of the world and they need to continually show that they are the most practical model in dealing with reality. A model that states that the climate changes, that this must be horrible for all humans and that it must be caused by humans is not very practical. It implies that the climate is, baring human intervention, static which must appear to any observer as the most absurd statement in sciences history.
No knowledge is immune from doubt preciesly because it can never be perfect and this insight is the achievement of the enlightement, leading directly to the scientific method.