There may be alot of geeks that know what's going on, but there are far more Joes who just want to be the first guy on the block with the latest new shiny.
Right, but Joe Sixpack will be more frustrated with DRM because he doesn't know what to do when it goes wrong. Lets say Joe Six pack buys a new computer and his nephew buys him an iPod and some free songs on iTunes. Well Joe Six pack goes along for a few months and then decides to get a new computer. Now he's not that technically inclide and soon discovers he can't get his songs off his iPod onto the new computer. Since his nephew isn't in town because of summer vacation to mexico or something he gets quite angry and after 60 minute conversation with tech support in India of his new computer company (he may have never though to call apple instead of Dell) with no avail gets so frustrated he returns the computer but next week his old computer dies and he looses all his songs because since he is Joe Six Pack knows nothing of backing up.
Now... Joe realizing he has to buy his songs all over again gets so fed up he shows up at the apple store demanding a refund for his iPod and everytime he goes to his buddies football games and badmouths all the people involved in his DRM problems even though he hasn't the slightest clue that DRM caused this.
True. Joe six pack will buy DRM. But Joe Six pack will be the most frustrated when DRM goes wrong.
You're assuming that those who choose to commit suicide, for any reason, isn't worthy of living (or the world is better off without them). While I can see how someone can see it that way, I would have to disagree.
I'm not trolling here, but being a history buff, I do want to point out that Hitler was talked out of commiting suicide after the failed Beer Hall Putsch.
Sometimes the world will be better off with someones death, but usually not since the world isn't filled with millions of Hitlers that are suicidal.
Secondly, suicide in Japan is quite different in the US. The most well known modern act of seppuku was the father of Japanese serial killer, Tsutomu Miyazaki. Shamed by his sons acts, he commited ritual suicide so more than not this is seen as a way of retaining honor.
May I also point out is that death to Japanese gives you a clean slate. Take the war minister Tojo from WWII. One of the reasons of animosity of Chinese and Koreans is the Japanese indifference to war criminals in one of their main shrines. They aren't glorifying the war crimes, but as in "this man is dead... he died because of the war, but his slate is clean because he has joined the world of dead spirits and no longer retains his sins of the living".
To us westerners, we still hold people accountable for their sins long after their death even for hundreds of years and that you are responsible for your families well being after this fact.
But in a group, this could result in peer pressure conditions. Encouraging someone to commit suicide is equivalent to killing him.
Or the reverse... If the majority bails out at the last moment, then the person who would have gone through might change his mind.
Secondly, are you suggesting that there is no free will involved with the person who is commiting suicide? I mean unless you put the gun up to their head and push the trigger, I can't believe you are negating their true free will. Unless their depression has caused them to have no control or free will (as in they have become a philosophical zombie) and are subject to any suggestion and incapable of having a say in your reality.
Then again...
Would you want to live a life like that?
(of course this speculation and the assumption that we really have free will in life to begin with)
I think such absolute skepticism is impossible to maintain in the face of how much there is in the world to understand.
Its preferable to blind acceptance. The best solution is to "accept things as true but could be horrible wrong and I won't be bothered if they do turn out to be wrong".
I mean I accept reality as it is presented to me, but if 20ft cat aliens show up tomorrow and say intelligent monkies make us 200 years ago and fabricated our history I won't be too upset because I assumed everything to be true but capable of being wrong.
Although, I think most of everyone will be jumping off bridges and taking cyanide pills as soon as they find out the truth.
That opinion piece uses arguments similar to those being used to ram government funded Wi-Fi down our throats. I'm sorry, but no one has the right to have broadband.
No one has the right to information. Or water... Or clean air. Or hell... No one has the right to food. Go buy it yourself you lazy bastards. While we are at it... No one has the right to life. Go jump a bridge and keep me from paying taxes. [sarcasm disegaged]
But seriously, I live in Philadelphia and we have some of the highest city taxes in the nation, but you know what... I'm not one bit pissed off about the city wide wifi... Wanna know why?
Because it means money it being directed towards technology and not something usless. Hell it means I can have my faster broad band connection (and hopefully FiOS if damn verizon would roll it out) and I could spend $20 a month and get my laptop a wifi connection anywhere in the city regardless of hotspot.
Do you see my complaining? Government spends your money regardless... Lets just aim the cash flow on something useful.
If you were paying a little more attention to the debate you would know that Google is the one asking the government to ban this type of discrimination.
Hrm... You mean like government regulated anarchism?
Local apps give us a lot of freedom. It might be nice to be able to also have such a centralised system available, but even with access on planes, there are always times and places you'll be cut off.
I couldn't work without email or internet access (i use google for 50% of my job) and if nothing else I need intranet access.
So if I don't have network access I'm pretty much dead in the water. I can run my apps fine locally, but I might as well be go take a coffee break when the internet is down. And come to think of it... The 2 years I've worked there, the internet has never been down. Maybe because heads would roll if it ever did.
Infected rats tend to be more active and less afraid of novelty, both of which behaviours are likely to place the rat at increased risk of predation by cats.
Hrm... I grew up with wild cats that ate more mice than I can count and I used to play with the dead reates by poking them with a stick.
Yet, I observe, I don't fear cat piss nor am I afraid of novelty and I am more active than my standard human brethern.
So does this mean I'm infected? I mean is this a bad thing? Baring being invaded by 20ft tall alien cats that is.
For example, is a piece of software that "phones home" for ANY reason considered spyware?
If it is without the knowledge of the user, then yes, that is pretty much the definition of spyware.
If a program pops a dialog up and says, it wants to know if its ok to send DoubleClick all my history urls and cookies and then I click yes and it phones home... Then well... I'm just dumb, but thats not spyware.
I, personally, have several ideas that I think are "patent-worthy". I cannot afford a patent let alone the costs of (pre-)production. So let's say I scrape together enough cash to make a patent ($400-$5000 depending on the route you go), now what do I do with it? My options are to produce the product (I have already established that this is out of question financially), wait for someone to infringe on my patent and sue them (expensive and risky, especially for an individual trying to feed a family), or sell my patent to someone else.
The original point of patents was not to feed the inventors family, but rather to promote scientific innovations that benefit the society (or at least American society) in general. The goal was as sort of a carrot on a stick to grant inventors temporary monopolies so that they could bring their market to product and reap the benefits of that and then afterwards anyone could copy that invention.
If you can't do that in 17 years, then your invention was most likley not that innovative.
There are at least two logical ways to dramatize global warming effects: 1) Assume an extremely fast change, say in decades. Show the effects of global warming on several generations of characters -- The Godfather with polluters rather than criminals. 2) Assume a more reasonable rate of change, say thousands of years. Jump forward a few millennia and depict the aftermath -- a futuristic Mad Max with snowmobiles. The Day After Tomorrow does neither but then it's not about global warming effects. It's about special effects.
The near submersion of the Statue of Liberty is possibly the most notable special effect and illustrates our point. Using the 305 ft (93 m) tall (including the pedestal) 2 statue as a reference, we estimate the maximum "wind induced storm surge" height to be about 240 ft (72.8 m). This is about 215 ft (65.2 m) higher than the unusually high storm surge during hurricane Camille (1969) caused by maximum wind speeds near 200 miles per hour (322 km/hr) 3. A 240 foot (72.8 m) high storm surge would be virtually impossible without help from a catastrophic event like an asteroid strike or nearly instantaneous melting of Antarctic ice.
Not only does Antarctica hold about 90% of all ice on Earth but the ice rests on a land mass. Water produced by melting will raise ocean levels. By contrast, North Pole ice is floating. Melting it would have little effect on ocean levels although it might be disastrous for Santa Claus.
The storm surge in the movie eventually recedes but not to its previous level. Again, using the Statue of Liberty as a reference, and allowing for about 20 ft (6.07 m) of snow, the water level had to remain over 150 ft (45.5 m) higher than normal. To raise ocean levels by 150 ft (45.5 m), about 75% of Antarctica's ice would have to melt4. We estimate this would take about 2.6 years 5, 6, assuming that all solar energy available to Earth went entirely into melting Antarctica's ice and that the ice was already warmed up to 0 C. Obviously, this is only a fraction of the time required for melting.
On the other hand, maybe we're supposed to believe that the 150 ft (45.5 m) deep water did not recede because it was frozen all the way to the bottom in a few hours. After all, the movie showed no flooding in Washington DC even though it's located in a coastal area. According to the movie the storm system over New York pulled extremely cold air from the upper troposphere down to ground level where it had a temperature of -151 (-102 C) F, over 20 F (11 C) colder than the coldest climatic temperature ever recorded on Earth7.
Click on the link I posted before the quote... Lots more of interesting tidbits about why this movie would never happen in real life.
I think you'll find a lot of people who have "wasted" that money who would disagree. There is a reason they advertise. There is a reason why they invest so much to produce and air a commercial. It's for return on investment. Does targetted advertising have a higher return on investment? Probably. But the only way to currently do targetted advertising is on the web (well you could advertise on certain shows/channels/times on tv/radio), whereas the vast majority of people still use the tv and radio for entertainment.
Sure this works, but it is highly inefficent as your bleeding money while the company selling you add space is trying to prove something to you that could possibly have no relation. Kind of like writing AI routines to try all possible combinations instead of one that can recognize the obvious pattern.
You know what... I have seen AARP ads on Cartoon network.
Does that make sense? No it does not and I bet they paid $50,000 per second of that ad.
Back when TV and radio first started, there were only a handful of stations and handful of channels. If you advertised you pretty much hit everyone that watched or listen and this made economic sense.
But now we've got it so that people have hundreds of channels and a dial full of stations (which many people don't bother to listen to anymore) and hundreds of other media outlets such as the net, dvds, pd casting, and whatever you watch or listen to for entertainment.
People need to target their ads and many ad companies know this. Why do you think they are spending millions of dollars with data mining operations in order to deliver ads to the persons eyes. Because if you blanket like you did with old school radio and TV then you are just blowing your money on people who would never buy your product anyways.
Eventually, even TV will monitor your buying habbits based on information bought by companies you buy from and only show you commercials based on your tendancies.
The reason why internet radio isn't working with the old school model of selling ads. I bet they are only using local advertisers and not getting people from around the world to buy ads. Secondly, they could even use IP local to determine where people are and sell different commericals based off that.
Who's your auto/home/life insurer? How did you choose that company?
The same one I got in 1995 with state farm. I got them because my parents had me under their policy before that. They haven't given me any greif and my payments are cheep so I keep them on.
What kind of car/truck/motorcycle do you drive (if any)? What makes you think that car/whatever is better than another (better enough to buy, at least)?
It is a used honda. I got because it was cheap (free). It gets me to place A and B and has high gas mileage so I have no need to get a new one.
What's your favorite breakfast cereal?
I hate cereal.
What kind of shoes are you wearing?
I don't know. I've had them since 2003. They say sketchers at the bottom. I choose them because I think I needed new shoes and walked into a shop and picked the first ones that felt good. I've been needing new shoes and probaly will just pick the ones that feel the best next time I walk into a store.
What's your favorite soft drink?
I hate soft drinks. I drink a lot of water though. As far as I remember it happens to be whatever Target has on their shelves and not
Do you own an iPod?
Yes. It was a Christmas gift so hence free and I didn't ask for it. So indirectly, I suppose the person got it for me might have been influenced by ads or maybe it was because I have a mac.
I just realized, maybe I am an exception to this being average human rule and I am the corporations worst nightmare because I tend to not actually go buy things unless I need them and when I do I just go to the store and say "you there product... you don't cost more than the money in my wallet. I shall aquire thee!" and then buy it. I do spend a great deal of money on hardware, software, anime, and hard liquor alcohol (not beer) and as far as I know I hardly see any mainstream ads for any of those products (unless you count dell).
Still, I think everyone should aspire to be me in at least in a sense that you don't buy everything you see on tv (then again I only watch Commedy Central, Cartoon Network and History Channel). No wonder this nation is in debt if I am the exception and not the rule of the average person.
It means that they realized people don't want to listen to advertisment and if you are listening to internet radio, you might as well listen to non-crap non-commercialized radio.
The problem is that radio stations have to fool advertisers that people are listening to them with contests and call in campaigns and sheer speculation. There is no way to prove how many people are listening at any given time. Just a big assumuption. With internet streaming, you have stastics and logs of who is actually listening. As with the problem with click through ads, people discovered that people ignore ads and have been for years.
I've personally never bought or been influenced by an add on a TV or radio. Mostly because 99% of the products don't apply to a geek other than laughing at Geico commercials.
However, I have bought plenty of things because of Adsense and searching on google because it interests me or I was actually looking for comparable products. Brute force advertising is just a waste of money.
Yeah? And? Where are the flying cars we were all supposed to have?
This is a policital/societal reason and not a technological one. Do you really think it would be wise to have flying cars? Drunk drivers and old ladies flying at high velocity into buildings. I mean... I thank god we don't have flying cars today. We won't get them until all our cars are totally automated and unable to be manually controled.
Where's our fusion energy?
2015. You've got 10 years. Its like complaining to someone in 1935 that we haven't invented the atomic bomb yet.
Where's our moonbase? Where's our Mars colony?
This is economical reasons... We could have people on mars in 6 months, but it require every person and business to do nothing but devote their lives to the project and do nothing else. Do you really see the benefit of sending people to a barren and uninhabital place just to sit at the rocks?
Where's my fucking robot sex toy?
I'm sure a Japanese man is working on this as we speak... Trying to Asimo and a real doll to mate. Just be a bit more patient.
Back before plumbing, people had to get buckets of water out of wells and bring them inside before they could use water. Would we consider this practice absurd?
Working with technological limitations isn't absurd, but accepting the limiation is.
Otherwise, we'd still be carrying buckets of water and not taking showers as much as we should be.
But where and how do mom and pop recruit and pay for the essential creative talent? They will need artists to conceive, build and populate their world. They will need writers to bring that world to life. They will need designers who know how to translate stories into game-play.
But if the technology and tools made the engine and art easy enough to create, you wouldn't need to hire teams of people to do this and you'd only need a handful or just a single person like the old days who would write the story, do the art, and everything else.
Or at best low paid eager interns;)
However, this would require years of maxing out technology with no improvements at the high end (I mean once you created a game engine so real you can't tell the difference between it and live video, how much more can you improve?). Or rather when technology and game development tools got so advanced, that you could just install a dev kit and after 30 minutes reading a manual you'd have all the knowledge you need to create a game.
Like I said previously this will be a long time in the making. Make 10-20 years...
I'll provide references on request (I'd have to dig them out of my files). I don't deny at all that the Koreans, Vietnamese, Germans, and Japanese did it.
I recall a story but a US vet that was fighting in Italy in 43-44 and he was wounded and taken captive by Germans. He had gotten hit in the leg and needed medical attention so they put him with the rest of the captured wounded and put him in a truck and sent him north. He remembered it being clearly marked with red cross emblems and they even had a symbol on top.
As they were traveling an American fighter and started straffing the road. The Italian driver jumped out and fled leaving the Americans alone in the truck. Unable to get up and move he stayed there while the plane made several passes shooting at them and all he could do was curse at the sky.
But apparently the plane was either a bad shot or didn't intend to actual shoot because no one was hit inside the truck, but it made them wonder.
Secondly, Russians/Soviets were notorious for breaking Geneva conventions during WWII so I bet they often would should at German medics (and vice versa).
or ask Albert Gentile, 84th Infantry Division, Company B, 333 Infantry, why he carried a service.45 automatic.
I wish I could find the sources online, but I think it was in a book I read.
During the battle of Stalingrad, a Soviet female nurse was awarded the Order of Lenin (or something similar) for rescusing 10 wounded male comrades by carrying them on her back through the city ruins, but at the same time killing 8 (or so) Germans in the process with PPsH machine gun in the same process.
Slashdot Mirror
There may be alot of geeks that know what's going on, but there are far more Joes who just want to be the first guy on the block with the latest new shiny.
Right, but Joe Sixpack will be more frustrated with DRM because he doesn't know what to do when it goes wrong. Lets say Joe Six pack buys a new computer and his nephew buys him an iPod and some free songs on iTunes. Well Joe Six pack goes along for a few months and then decides to get a new computer. Now he's not that technically inclide and soon discovers he can't get his songs off his iPod onto the new computer. Since his nephew isn't in town because of summer vacation to mexico or something he gets quite angry and after 60 minute conversation with tech support in India of his new computer company (he may have never though to call apple instead of Dell) with no avail gets so frustrated he returns the computer but next week his old computer dies and he looses all his songs because since he is Joe Six Pack knows nothing of backing up.
Now... Joe realizing he has to buy his songs all over again gets so fed up he shows up at the apple store demanding a refund for his iPod and everytime he goes to his buddies football games and badmouths all the people involved in his DRM problems even though he hasn't the slightest clue that DRM caused this.
True. Joe six pack will buy DRM. But Joe Six pack will be the most frustrated when DRM goes wrong.
You're assuming that those who choose to commit suicide, for any reason, isn't worthy of living (or the world is better off without them). While I can see how someone can see it that way, I would have to disagree.
I'm not trolling here, but being a history buff, I do want to point out that Hitler was talked out of commiting suicide after the failed Beer Hall Putsch.
Sometimes the world will be better off with someones death, but usually not since the world isn't filled with millions of Hitlers that are suicidal.
Secondly, suicide in Japan is quite different in the US. The most well known modern act of seppuku was the father of Japanese serial killer, Tsutomu Miyazaki. Shamed by his sons acts, he commited ritual suicide so more than not this is seen as a way of retaining honor.
May I also point out is that death to Japanese gives you a clean slate. Take the war minister Tojo from WWII. One of the reasons of animosity of Chinese and Koreans is the Japanese indifference to war criminals in one of their main shrines. They aren't glorifying the war crimes, but as in "this man is dead... he died because of the war, but his slate is clean because he has joined the world of dead spirits and no longer retains his sins of the living".
To us westerners, we still hold people accountable for their sins long after their death even for hundreds of years and that you are responsible for your families well being after this fact.
Back in 1985, my uncle worked at IBM and got my family a discount.
Oh the hours of fun playing Kings Quest II.
But in a group, this could result in peer pressure conditions. Encouraging someone to commit suicide is equivalent to killing him.
Or the reverse... If the majority bails out at the last moment, then the person who would have gone through might change his mind.
Secondly, are you suggesting that there is no free will involved with the person who is commiting suicide? I mean unless you put the gun up to their head and push the trigger, I can't believe you are negating their true free will. Unless their depression has caused them to have no control or free will (as in they have become a philosophical zombie) and are subject to any suggestion and incapable of having a say in your reality.
Then again...
Would you want to live a life like that?
(of course this speculation and the assumption that we really have free will in life to begin with)
Oh thats easy to guess sarcasm!
How about trying to guess "I love Microsoft. It is so secure!"
I'll bet you 100... Oh wait... Nevermind...
I think such absolute skepticism is impossible to maintain in the face of how much there is in the world to understand.
Its preferable to blind acceptance. The best solution is to "accept things as true but could be horrible wrong and I won't be bothered if they do turn out to be wrong".
I mean I accept reality as it is presented to me, but if 20ft cat aliens show up tomorrow and say intelligent monkies make us 200 years ago and fabricated our history I won't be too upset because I assumed everything to be true but capable of being wrong.
Although, I think most of everyone will be jumping off bridges and taking cyanide pills as soon as they find out the truth.
That opinion piece uses arguments similar to those being used to ram government funded Wi-Fi down our throats. I'm sorry, but no one has the right to have broadband.
No one has the right to information. Or water... Or clean air. Or hell... No one has the right to food. Go buy it yourself you lazy bastards. While we are at it... No one has the right to life. Go jump a bridge and keep me from paying taxes. [sarcasm disegaged]
But seriously, I live in Philadelphia and we have some of the highest city taxes in the nation, but you know what... I'm not one bit pissed off about the city wide wifi... Wanna know why?
Because it means money it being directed towards technology and not something usless. Hell it means I can have my faster broad band connection (and hopefully FiOS if damn verizon would roll it out) and I could spend $20 a month and get my laptop a wifi connection anywhere in the city regardless of hotspot.
Do you see my complaining? Government spends your money regardless... Lets just aim the cash flow on something useful.
If you were paying a little more attention to the debate you would know that Google is the one asking the government to ban this type of discrimination.
Hrm... You mean like government regulated anarchism?
Local apps give us a lot of freedom. It might be nice to be able to also have such a centralised system available, but even with access on planes, there are always times and places you'll be cut off.
I couldn't work without email or internet access (i use google for 50% of my job) and if nothing else I need intranet access.
So if I don't have network access I'm pretty much dead in the water. I can run my apps fine locally, but I might as well be go take a coffee break when the internet is down. And come to think of it... The 2 years I've worked there, the internet has never been down. Maybe because heads would roll if it ever did.
Infected rats tend to be more active and less afraid of novelty, both of which behaviours are likely to place the rat at increased risk of predation by cats.
Hrm... I grew up with wild cats that ate more mice than I can count and I used to play with the dead reates by poking them with a stick.
Yet, I observe, I don't fear cat piss nor am I afraid of novelty and I am more active than my standard human brethern.
So does this mean I'm infected? I mean is this a bad thing? Baring being invaded by 20ft tall alien cats that is.
Wow, public shaming is as severe as hitting those offenders with a wet bus ticket or a tap on the knuckles.
;)
Hrm... I've heard that in Japan, that public shaming is usually followed by ritual suicide.
Perhaps we should encourage the practice
For example, is a piece of software that "phones home" for ANY reason considered spyware?
If it is without the knowledge of the user, then yes, that is pretty much the definition of spyware.
If a program pops a dialog up and says, it wants to know if its ok to send DoubleClick all my history urls and cookies and then I click yes and it phones home... Then well... I'm just dumb, but thats not spyware.
I, personally, have several ideas that I think are "patent-worthy". I cannot afford a patent let alone the costs of (pre-)production. So let's say I scrape together enough cash to make a patent ($400-$5000 depending on the route you go), now what do I do with it? My options are to produce the product (I have already established that this is out of question financially), wait for someone to infringe on my patent and sue them (expensive and risky, especially for an individual trying to feed a family), or sell my patent to someone else.
The original point of patents was not to feed the inventors family, but rather to promote scientific innovations that benefit the society (or at least American society) in general. The goal was as sort of a carrot on a stick to grant inventors temporary monopolies so that they could bring their market to product and reap the benefits of that and then afterwards anyone could copy that invention.
If you can't do that in 17 years, then your invention was most likley not that innovative.
Help me out here. If it was warmer in 800 AD, what 'human interferance' caused the global warming in the 9th century?
The Vikings were killing too many Pirates on the open seas.
Bad Movie Physics Review of Day After Tomorrow
And I quote...
Click on the link I posted before the quote... Lots more of interesting tidbits about why this movie would never happen in real life.
Really? What does the Kool-Aid man say?
I dunno. Maybe we should ask Jim Jones.
I think you'll find a lot of people who have "wasted" that money who would disagree. There is a reason they advertise. There is a reason why they invest so much to produce and air a commercial. It's for return on investment. Does targetted advertising have a higher return on investment? Probably. But the only way to currently do targetted advertising is on the web (well you could advertise on certain shows/channels/times on tv/radio), whereas the vast majority of people still use the tv and radio for entertainment.
Sure this works, but it is highly inefficent as your bleeding money while the company selling you add space is trying to prove something to you that could possibly have no relation. Kind of like writing AI routines to try all possible combinations instead of one that can recognize the obvious pattern.
You know what... I have seen AARP ads on Cartoon network.
Does that make sense? No it does not and I bet they paid $50,000 per second of that ad.
Back when TV and radio first started, there were only a handful of stations and handful of channels. If you advertised you pretty much hit everyone that watched or listen and this made economic sense.
But now we've got it so that people have hundreds of channels and a dial full of stations (which many people don't bother to listen to anymore) and hundreds of other media outlets such as the net, dvds, pd casting, and whatever you watch or listen to for entertainment.
People need to target their ads and many ad companies know this. Why do you think they are spending millions of dollars with data mining operations in order to deliver ads to the persons eyes. Because if you blanket like you did with old school radio and TV then you are just blowing your money on people who would never buy your product anyways.
Eventually, even TV will monitor your buying habbits based on information bought by companies you buy from and only show you commercials based on your tendancies.
The reason why internet radio isn't working with the old school model of selling ads. I bet they are only using local advertisers and not getting people from around the world to buy ads. Secondly, they could even use IP local to determine where people are and sell different commericals based off that.
Who's your auto/home/life insurer? How did you choose that company?
The same one I got in 1995 with state farm. I got them because my parents had me under their policy before that. They haven't given me any greif and my payments are cheep so I keep them on.
What kind of car/truck/motorcycle do you drive (if any)? What makes you think that car/whatever is better than another (better enough to buy, at least)?
It is a used honda. I got because it was cheap (free). It gets me to place A and B and has high gas mileage so I have no need to get a new one.
What's your favorite breakfast cereal?
I hate cereal.
What kind of shoes are you wearing?
I don't know. I've had them since 2003. They say sketchers at the bottom. I choose them because I think I needed new shoes and walked into a shop and picked the first ones that felt good. I've been needing new shoes and probaly will just pick the ones that feel the best next time I walk into a store.
What's your favorite soft drink?
I hate soft drinks. I drink a lot of water though. As far as I remember it happens to be whatever Target has on their shelves and not
Do you own an iPod?
Yes. It was a Christmas gift so hence free and I didn't ask for it. So indirectly, I suppose the person got it for me might have been influenced by ads or maybe it was because I have a mac.
I just realized, maybe I am an exception to this being average human rule and I am the corporations worst nightmare because I tend to not actually go buy things unless I need them and when I do I just go to the store and say "you there product... you don't cost more than the money in my wallet. I shall aquire thee!" and then buy it. I do spend a great deal of money on hardware, software, anime, and hard liquor alcohol (not beer) and as far as I know I hardly see any mainstream ads for any of those products (unless you count dell).
Still, I think everyone should aspire to be me in at least in a sense that you don't buy everything you see on tv (then again I only watch Commedy Central, Cartoon Network and History Channel). No wonder this nation is in debt if I am the exception and not the rule of the average person.
It means that they realized people don't want to listen to advertisment and if you are listening to internet radio, you might as well listen to non-crap non-commercialized radio.
The problem is that radio stations have to fool advertisers that people are listening to them with contests and call in campaigns and sheer speculation. There is no way to prove how many people are listening at any given time. Just a big assumuption. With internet streaming, you have stastics and logs of who is actually listening. As with the problem with click through ads, people discovered that people ignore ads and have been for years.
I've personally never bought or been influenced by an add on a TV or radio. Mostly because 99% of the products don't apply to a geek other than laughing at Geico commercials.
However, I have bought plenty of things because of Adsense and searching on google because it interests me or I was actually looking for comparable products. Brute force advertising is just a waste of money.
Yeah? And? Where are the flying cars we were all supposed to have?
This is a policital/societal reason and not a technological one. Do you really think it would be wise to have flying cars? Drunk drivers and old ladies flying at high velocity into buildings. I mean... I thank god we don't have flying cars today. We won't get them until all our cars are totally automated and unable to be manually controled.
Where's our fusion energy?
2015. You've got 10 years. Its like complaining to someone in 1935 that we haven't invented the atomic bomb yet.
Where's our moonbase? Where's our Mars colony?
This is economical reasons... We could have people on mars in 6 months, but it require every person and business to do nothing but devote their lives to the project and do nothing else. Do you really see the benefit of sending people to a barren and uninhabital place just to sit at the rocks?
Where's my fucking robot sex toy?
I'm sure a Japanese man is working on this as we speak... Trying to Asimo and a real doll to mate. Just be a bit more patient.
Independent invention is neither a license nor a defence.
It should be. Why not make it only Paten infrignment if the party can prove that the other stole it from them or reversed engineered their product.
Back before plumbing, people had to get buckets of water out of wells and bring them inside before they could use water. Would we consider this practice absurd?
Working with technological limitations isn't absurd, but accepting the limiation is.
Otherwise, we'd still be carrying buckets of water and not taking showers as much as we should be.
But where and how do mom and pop recruit and pay for the essential creative talent? They will need artists to conceive, build and populate their world. They will need writers to bring that world to life. They will need designers who know how to translate stories into game-play.
;)
But if the technology and tools made the engine and art easy enough to create, you wouldn't need to hire teams of people to do this and you'd only need a handful or just a single person like the old days who would write the story, do the art, and everything else.
Or at best low paid eager interns
However, this would require years of maxing out technology with no improvements at the high end (I mean once you created a game engine so real you can't tell the difference between it and live video, how much more can you improve?). Or rather when technology and game development tools got so advanced, that you could just install a dev kit and after 30 minutes reading a manual you'd have all the knowledge you need to create a game.
Like I said previously this will be a long time in the making. Make 10-20 years...
I'll provide references on request (I'd have to dig them out of my files). I don't deny at all that the Koreans, Vietnamese, Germans, and Japanese did it.
I recall a story but a US vet that was fighting in Italy in 43-44 and he was wounded and taken captive by Germans. He had gotten hit in the leg and needed medical attention so they put him with the rest of the captured wounded and put him in a truck and sent him north. He remembered it being clearly marked with red cross emblems and they even had a symbol on top.
As they were traveling an American fighter and started straffing the road. The Italian driver jumped out and fled leaving the Americans alone in the truck. Unable to get up and move he stayed there while the plane made several passes shooting at them and all he could do was curse at the sky.
But apparently the plane was either a bad shot or didn't intend to actual shoot because no one was hit inside the truck, but it made them wonder.
Secondly, Russians/Soviets were notorious for breaking Geneva conventions during WWII so I bet they often would should at German medics (and vice versa).
or ask Albert Gentile, 84th Infantry Division, Company B, 333 Infantry, why he carried a service .45 automatic.
I wish I could find the sources online, but I think it was in a book I read.
During the battle of Stalingrad, a Soviet female nurse was awarded the Order of Lenin (or something similar) for rescusing 10 wounded male comrades by carrying them on her back through the city ruins, but at the same time killing 8 (or so) Germans in the process with PPsH machine gun in the same process.