Maximizing profit to the exclusion of all other considerations is the very definition of greed. I'm not saying that's a bad thing in all cases, but in my personal opinion it's a shitty organizing principle, as it sets up an adversarial relationship between seller and buyer. The principal goal of a producer/provider (again, IMHO) should be to produce/provide quality items/services for the betterment of the buyer. (I use the term "betterment" not as a lofty moral judgement -- it encompasses everything from comfier La-Z-Boys to more effective AIDS treatments.) Profit is a nice side-effect.
Btw, saying that "consumers end up paying what they are comfortable with" completely writes off all the people who aren't comfortable with or can't afford the set price. But then, if they can't afford it I guess they're not consumers...
Since units sold at price x when supply is inelastic is dependent only on demand, all we have to do to determine profit is to find the area under the demand curve for whatever price we set. We can solve for maximum profit, and find the price point at which either increasing or decreasing price results in lower profits. What you'll see if you do this for shifted demand curves, you'll see that a higher demand results in a higher ideal price point.
The weather beaten trail wound ahead into the dust racked climes of the baren land which dominates large portions of the Norgolian empire. You mismatch tenses -- either the trail winds or the land dominated. Dust-wracked, and wracked isn't really the right word there. Barren.
Age worn hoof prints smothered by the sifting sands of time shone dully against the dust splattered crust of earth. If the prints are smothered, they're not shining, dully or otherwise. Dust doesn't "splatter."
The tireless sun cast its parching rays of incandescense from overhead, half way through its daily revolution. Incandescence. The sun doesn't revolve. Try "arc."
Dust sprayed over three heaving mounts in blinding clouds, while they bore the burdonsome cargoes of their struggling overseers. There's that liquid dust again. Burdensome.
Lastly, the dialogue is comically overwrought (especially for guys choking on a dust storm,) and it's unclear what you think "stead" means but it sure doesn't belong in that last sentence.
All the Ommegangs are good, but you shouldn't be paying more than five or six bucks a bottle for any of them -- maybe a little more if you're far from the Northeast. Anyone charging $40 for Rare Vos is a criminal or a hotel minifridge, or both.
Solaris should be on there. The Tarkovsky version, not Soderbergh's pointless remake. It does take some discipline to watch, but it's well worth it IMO.
They don't really define what constitures a "space movie," though. Does it take place in outer space? What if it's set entirely on another planet? Blade Runner is one of their candidates, but it hardly involved outer space at all. Are they using the term just to avoid the annoying flamewars about what defines "science fiction?"
The difference you're seeing is largely due to motion blur. When shooting film, motion blur is related to the frame rate and shutter angle of the camera. Of course there is no actual camera involved in 3D videogames, but with modern video cards motion blur can be added during rendering, simulating the look of 24fps while the actual framerate is much higher.
even webpage search engines are opt-in. Your website doesn't get indexed unless you submit it...
What on earth are you talking about? Any general search engine worth using is opt-out via robots.txt. Do you really think every page indexed by Google was actively submitted to them?
The real reason that publishers have to pursue this...is that copyright can be reneged if you are not seen to be defending your rights.
With the amount of IP-related discussion on Slashdot, it's amazing how often this misinformation is still expressed. It's only trademarks that may be forfeited for lack of defense. Not copyrights, not patents -- trademarks.
So your whole post boils down to "it's debatable." A trenchant analysis indeed.
IANAL, but I don't think being a public figure affects you vis-a-vis slander/libel. It might even make it easier to pursue slander/libel suits, since a public figure has more of a reputation to be damaged. (Plenty of people put gerbils up their asses, but Richard Gere is the only guy unfortunate enough to have his name associated with the practice.)
Being a public figure does affect your expectation of privacy, though. A celebrity has little recourse against paparazzi or obsessive fans with creepy websites, but a normal person has a reasonable expectation of not being hounded by photographers every time he goes out to eat.
Why the scare over labeling GM foods? Are they worried that people won't buy them? Homogenized milk is labeled. Olestra products have a warning about "anal leakage." Cigarettes prominently advertise that they're carcinogenic. People still buy all those things. All the parent is asking is that GM food be labeled too. If it's so harmless, why the resistance?
Genetically modified foods: traditional cross-breeding/cross-pollinization theory applied with more advanced tools on a wider scope.
Bullshit. No amount of cross-breeding is going to get a plant to express animal genes. So get your dick out of that pumpkin.
If you're a typical middle class white suburban man and you get wronged by your local police because they choose to be lazy and not do their job investigating a crime committed against you, writing to the ACLU will get you nowhere.
Assuming it didn't evolve that resistance on its own, yes. But saying that "it was designed to resist Purple People Eater attacks" is misleading, as that implies that it was designed specifically to resist that particular type of attack. On the other hand, saying "this system wasn't designed to resist Purple People Eater attacks!" implies that the system is vulnerable to them even though it is in fact designed to withstand attacks by any Eaters at all, regardless of hue or dietary preference.
I'm with you, though, it would be preferable to say "ARPANET was designed to withstand widespread outages" just to dodge this little semantic paradox where a statement and its inverse are both untrue.
Analogies draw parallels between different situations. There is no parallel between a broad generalization about dogs and the intent of the designers of ARPANET. Your analogy makes no sense.
It was designed to survive the loss of parts of the network. A nuclear attack is one thing that would result in such a loss, so nuclear attack is part of the larger set of losses. You might as well say that a George Foreman grill wasn't designed to handle bagels -- it may be true in that the designers did not make specific accomodations for bagels when designing it, but the parameters they did design it for do happen to include bagels. So saying that ARPANET was not designed to survive a nuclear attack is just as misleading as saying that it was.
Then I guess you can't own a dog either, since you're not allowed to torture it to death and sell the meat at a roadside barbeque stand. Can't own a car, since you're not allowed to rip out the muffler and drive 90mph through a school zone. Chainsaws? Propane tanks? Forget it.
The unfettered ability to do whatever you want with a thing is not a necessary condition to "ownership." You may be thinking of "0wnage."
They're not "grossly distorted," they're distorted for clarity. If they weren't, they'd have to either be about six times bigger to cover the distant lands of Queens and Staten Island (which shouldn't be on the subway map to begin with since it has its own system, disconnected from the rest) or all the stations in midtown Manhattan would have to be smooshed together in overlapping 3-point type. The NYC subway map is famously considered to be a usable balance between legibility and actual geography, unlike for instance the London tube map, which blows off geography altogether.
What they should do is dump the ill-advised redesign of a few years ago (the one that introduced the pointless yellow background, the clutter of useless bus stop connection lists, and Staten Island.)
Formats don't support players, players support formats.
Furthermore, not all AACs are DRMed, only the ".m4p" type purchased from the iTunes Music Store. When you rip your own CDs to AAC you can do whatever you want with them, forever. AAC isn't owned by Apple, it's an open format. True, AAC support is not nearly as widespread as MP3 support, but you could say the same for Ogg Vorbis, or VBR MP3 five years ago.
Eschew AAC all you want, but the format isn't "crippled" just because Rio and Sony choose not to support it.
Will you people quit with the formal fallacy links? We've all read them already, and they generally apply to questions in the realm of pure logic, a realm that doesn't have much overlap with politics. In real life, it's perfectly valid to take someone's background into account when considering their argument. It's not the only thing to consider, but it's a shortcut, similar to resorting to an Appeal To Numbers ("99.9% of biologists agree...") instead of presenting a whole graduate-level curriculum to show why evolution is considered fact.
Did you even notice that the poster's "but they are right" is the opposite of an attempt to falsify the argument? No, what am I thinking, a Debate Team ace like you would never miss such a subtle ruse.
Evil isn't some mystical inherent fixed property that exists within the souls of Bad Men. It's simply a description (admittedly, a judgemental one) of behavior and motives. Since corporations, as collective bodies, do have behaviors and motives, there's no reason for them to be exempt from that descriptor.
"Evil" basically means ultimate selfishness -- pursuing your own benefit at the expense of all other considerations. (Dumping toxic waste in a residential area because it would be more expensive to dispose of it properly is an evil act.)
So a corporation (or any entity) that does evil things can itself be described as evil. If it stops doing those things, it stops being evil.
...four of the states legally refer to themselves as a "commonwealth".
They also refer to themselves as states -- they have "state senators" and "state police" and "state parks" etcetera etcetera. In any case, the word "commonwealth" does not appear anywhere in the U.S. Constitution, so in a "strict legal sense" they are indeed states, no matter what they call themselves.
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Btw, saying that "consumers end up paying what they are comfortable with" completely writes off all the people who aren't comfortable with or can't afford the set price. But then, if they can't afford it I guess they're not consumers...
"Greedy" is so much more succinct.
Good lord! Thanks... I guess...
The weather beaten trail wound ahead into the dust racked climes of the baren land which dominates large portions of the Norgolian empire. You mismatch tenses -- either the trail winds or the land dominated. Dust-wracked, and wracked isn't really the right word there. Barren.
Age worn hoof prints smothered by the sifting sands of time shone dully against the dust splattered crust of earth. If the prints are smothered, they're not shining, dully or otherwise. Dust doesn't "splatter."
The tireless sun cast its parching rays of incandescense from overhead, half way through its daily revolution. Incandescence. The sun doesn't revolve. Try "arc."
Dust sprayed over three heaving mounts in blinding clouds, while they bore the burdonsome cargoes of their struggling overseers. There's that liquid dust again. Burdensome.
Lastly, the dialogue is comically overwrought (especially for guys choking on a dust storm,) and it's unclear what you think "stead" means but it sure doesn't belong in that last sentence.
No, you're only subject to the law of the state in which you are doing the recording. You don't even know for sure where the other party is located.
People do plenty of things for reasons other than profit. You're conflating profit with value, but profit is only a small subset of value.
All the Ommegangs are good, but you shouldn't be paying more than five or six bucks a bottle for any of them -- maybe a little more if you're far from the Northeast. Anyone charging $40 for Rare Vos is a criminal or a hotel minifridge, or both.
They don't really define what constitures a "space movie," though. Does it take place in outer space? What if it's set entirely on another planet? Blade Runner is one of their candidates, but it hardly involved outer space at all. Are they using the term just to avoid the annoying flamewars about what defines "science fiction?"
The difference you're seeing is largely due to motion blur. When shooting film, motion blur is related to the frame rate and shutter angle of the camera. Of course there is no actual camera involved in 3D videogames, but with modern video cards motion blur can be added during rendering, simulating the look of 24fps while the actual framerate is much higher.
What on earth are you talking about? Any general search engine worth using is opt-out via robots.txt. Do you really think every page indexed by Google was actively submitted to them?
The real reason that publishers have to pursue this...is that copyright can be reneged if you are not seen to be defending your rights.
With the amount of IP-related discussion on Slashdot, it's amazing how often this misinformation is still expressed. It's only trademarks that may be forfeited for lack of defense. Not copyrights, not patents -- trademarks.
So your whole post boils down to "it's debatable." A trenchant analysis indeed.
Being a public figure does affect your expectation of privacy, though. A celebrity has little recourse against paparazzi or obsessive fans with creepy websites, but a normal person has a reasonable expectation of not being hounded by photographers every time he goes out to eat.
Genetically modified foods: traditional cross-breeding/cross-pollinization theory applied with more advanced tools on a wider scope.
Bullshit. No amount of cross-breeding is going to get a plant to express animal genes. So get your dick out of that pumpkin.
It took all of five seconds on their site to find the ACLU Annual Report.
If you're a typical middle class white suburban man and you get wronged by your local police because they choose to be lazy and not do their job investigating a crime committed against you, writing to the ACLU will get you nowhere.
Please cite references.
I'm with you, though, it would be preferable to say "ARPANET was designed to withstand widespread outages" just to dodge this little semantic paradox where a statement and its inverse are both untrue.
Analogies draw parallels between different situations.
There is no parallel between a broad generalization about dogs and the intent of the designers of ARPANET.
Your analogy makes no sense.
It was designed to survive the loss of parts of the network. A nuclear attack is one thing that would result in such a loss, so nuclear attack is part of the larger set of losses. You might as well say that a George Foreman grill wasn't designed to handle bagels -- it may be true in that the designers did not make specific accomodations for bagels when designing it, but the parameters they did design it for do happen to include bagels. So saying that ARPANET was not designed to survive a nuclear attack is just as misleading as saying that it was.
The unfettered ability to do whatever you want with a thing is not a necessary condition to "ownership." You may be thinking of "0wnage."
What they should do is dump the ill-advised redesign of a few years ago (the one that introduced the pointless yellow background, the clutter of useless bus stop connection lists, and Staten Island.)
This would be the ideal actor to cast as Carnage. He's even got that red color scheme going on.
Furthermore, not all AACs are DRMed, only the ".m4p" type purchased from the iTunes Music Store. When you rip your own CDs to AAC you can do whatever you want with them, forever. AAC isn't owned by Apple, it's an open format. True, AAC support is not nearly as widespread as MP3 support, but you could say the same for Ogg Vorbis, or VBR MP3 five years ago.
Eschew AAC all you want, but the format isn't "crippled" just because Rio and Sony choose not to support it.
If he drives a Hummer, he's an asshole.
Do you make a lot of judgements based solely on your asshole boss' vacation slides, or just this one?
Did you even notice that the poster's "but they are right" is the opposite of an attempt to falsify the argument? No, what am I thinking, a Debate Team ace like you would never miss such a subtle ruse.
"Evil" basically means ultimate selfishness -- pursuing your own benefit at the expense of all other considerations. (Dumping toxic waste in a residential area because it would be more expensive to dispose of it properly is an evil act.)
So a corporation (or any entity) that does evil things can itself be described as evil. If it stops doing those things, it stops being evil.
They also refer to themselves as states -- they have "state senators" and "state police" and "state parks" etcetera etcetera. In any case, the word "commonwealth" does not appear anywhere in the U.S. Constitution, so in a "strict legal sense" they are indeed states, no matter what they call themselves.