It's always nice to think there is some benevolent fascist organization that is all powerful and somehow miraculously only targets the real bad guys.
I've always thought the CIA was a front organization for such a real organization-- surely no real intelligence agency could be that incompetant.
Unfortunately, without any known exception*, such powers always get turned against the people and the current politicians enemies. Likewise many only mildly illegal acts get defined as "real" bad things.
*Of course if there was such an agency, we wouldn't know about its doings since it would be so secret.
So then we could transplant that gene and 1) Give plants souls 2) Give animals souls 3) Give bacteria souls
We already have a clearly soulless population of humans (CEO's and Lawyers) so we could isolate the difference between their genes and the rest of the populace to isolate this cancer-causing soul making gene.
The people outside the party will protest when they have more power than those in the party and not before. Power follows the money so the next generation of rich merchant brats in China will probably either join the party or push for recognition of their power. The current older generation probably remembers the cultural revolution and blood to do more than just thank the party for giving them the freedom to make some money and have some fun without being re-educated.
It's a tough balance but so far China is pulling it off.
If you have a problem- just throw the transaction then the customer can just start over and reorder the item again. The problem being that my companies transactions can have 700 items on them and the bloody web programmers were just throwing them away left and right as a way of handling errors. (there were similar issues with data entry- the web server wants to time out if the person takes more than 30 minutes to update a screen.)
In all seriousness,
if they could somehow make subparts (thin end, thick end, vacuum port segment, spiny segment, rubber covered, magnetic segment, metal detecting segment, extra sensor peg segment) and randomly mix them- they might find different random configurations were more suitable to certain tasks.
It looks like Constitution > treaties == federal law > state & Local laws.
Apparently we are a bit unique in that treaties are like federal laws and our congress can change them like federal laws and other countries don't do that.
Good point... there were two moral components and they cancelled out.
7) outrage over the immoral indefinate extention of copyrights and stated goal to make me pay every time I view/listen to the entertainment. 8) guilt over taking something without paying for it.
(There is also irritation over rebuying something I already purchased on VHS and some others).
Anyway.. the many immoral actions by the Riaa & entertainment industry folks greatly reduce the moral pangs.
8) was also reduced more when I realized how many -legal- ways there were to get this product for free. For example- my "Incredibles" is a DVD burned from cable. Many of my songs are recorded off the radio (I mean just turn it on and record 8 hours while you are at work during the day and then peel out all the good songs).
However, since morality is in the equation-- I'd put it like this...
moralityfactor * (cost of obtaining illegally + (cost of punishment * chance of being caught)).
So if it is 3 dollars to get it illegally and only 5 dollars to get it legally, most folks will get it legally. Their "moralityfactor" holds as long as there is a reasonable balance.
However, if it is 3 dollars to get it illegally and 30 dollars to get it legally then you must have a very high morality factor to turn it down/purchase it legally.
Also... time pressure/desire enter in to it-- Apparently, I'm willing to wait 6 months and purchase many things legally. Also, I perceive "hot" material as having a much higher chance of being caught-- my torrents of choice are 1980's comic books and television shows. No movies. No current music (which I mostly get off the radio/satellite radio as I said above).
Which does bring up an interesting point-- if they ever jackboot down my doors and say I have all these mp3's with copyrighted songs- I guess I would have to have a record that I recorded off of 103.7 on january 12th, 2006- since they presume you are guilty rather than innocent in these cases.
Constitution > federal law == treaties > state and lower local laws.
Until 1930, federal law > local laws only if the power was explicitly federal. In 1930, they basically killed the 10th amendment reserving for the states everything not explicitly given to the federal government.
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
So yes, once we sign a treaty- it becomes law at the level of the constitution, overriding state laws- not sure about federal laws.
I disagree. It changed Han Solo quite a bit as a character to shoot first vs be shot at and react. Plus the CGI arm they inserted looks obvious and stupid to me.
If it costs me an hour of my time to download a show and burn it to a DVD (and the cost of hard drive storage- about $250 per 500gig now but double that last year) then that would weigh heavily on my decision to download or to purchase.
For example- I might buy just about everything I like if it was $5. At a price of $9.99 I would be a little more picky but still buy most things. At a price of $15, I would wait for it to get cheaper or download.
I think that these things would affect me if I were using torrent to download things: 1) The time cost of downloading. 2) The dollar cost of storing. 3) The time cost of burning backups to dvd 4) The risk of being caught. 5) The amount of content I already had* 6) The cost of getting the content legally.
--- *Changes in the last year have made a big shift in 5 and 6. I can frequently get content legally for 7.50 or less if I simply wait for 6 months. Since I am currently about a full 18 months behind -- waiting six months is no problem. The problem is-- I get even further behind each month. Stuff is coming out faster than I can watch it. My DVR is about 90% full and I have to watch those first so I can delete them. Friends season 10 took just about 100% of my free time for a couple weeks.
In my case, there is no pressure at all to see new content for $15 (or higher) since I can simply wait and purchase it when it (almost inevitably) drops below $10 (and to be honest, these days I wait for $7.50- even Kill Bill was $7.50 last big holiday- and it is again in this sunday's ads).
So if hollywood charges a reasonable price to own and to replace my permanent copy (that is not sold to me on a rental model) then they will get my money. If they want some screwy price then I'll pass on purchasing it.
It's a social game- my daughter and her husband played it together in college (it's partially how they met-- it's partially how me and her mom met). They play in my game now that they are back in town. Unfortunately- her mom and I only made it about 10 years.
There were plenty of females in their college group.
My games have had a lot of females and couples over the years including a couple messy affairs.
My game was the basis for a sporting event (Ultimate frisbee) for close to a decade (if we didn't play- it didn't make). I still play ultimate twice a week and just last week they commented on my showing a bit of a six-pack.
As for me... well I've probably seen more action than you have unless you are an NBA star and none of it through clubs or with "club" girls. A surprising amount through Everquest including a couple trips to Vegas.
All of this takes money of course- which being a geek in the 80's made pretty easy to do in the 90's and now. I learned a lot of skills writing my D&D utilities in apple basic and cobol.
Are some D&D folks massive nerds? Sure-- but so are some Harley motorcycle fans. Are they happy? If so why pick on them unless it makes you feel better about your own life (which undoubtably lacks perfection in some way too).
I get 15 days PTO + 10 days holiday + 10 sick days (that accrue up to 45) + 05 days personal time (without pay)
I had cancer when I was 33, self diagnosed and was in chemo about 30 days after I first detected it.
Now at 45, I developed diabetes (which my native american blood makes me prone to) and high blood pressure (which my diabetes and my cancer make me prone to).
I agree-- it's hard to travel on the time we have which is why I negotiated for the extra five days of time off without pay.
PTO is usually a tradeoff. You get less sick days but more vacation.
So 10 vacation + 10 sick becomes 15 PTO. People who average over 5 days a year sick get hosed. Everyone else gets more vacation time.
I think microsoft office integration is a perfect counter-example to your point.
Integration was wonderful until your computer was networked- then the "storm" of pressure from outside forces caused many unforseen failures.
There are others. If software is -only- used in a static manner then your point holds. But in the real world, only dead software is used that way. Living software is constantly reused in unforeseen ways due to changing circumstances, legalalities, competition, etc.
But... I was a testicular cancer surviver so low Teste got me (and that's $200 a month). If you start getting night sweats, feeling anxious, thinking a bit fuzzy, etc. then you may have low Teste (It happens to normal guys too).
I was on that track til I developed medical issues at 45....Now I have to save an extra $50,000 minimum to kick off enough money to pay for the medications.
I was looking for the quote from Vacation (1985) - Tom Hanks but couldn't find it in the few seconds I have here during the day.
Basically Time is Money... or maybe Money is Cocaine and Cocaine is Power so Time is Power... er... anyway...
Time is Money so if you earn $300 per hour, it saves you money to buy characters and items that would take a lot of time to acquire. You could work one hour, then spend 19 hours doing fun stuff in the game instead of doing 19 hours of mindless stuff to get the stupid item.
Sort of... but the stock market is sort of gambling too then.
The difference is that in mmorgs, if you put in enough time, you will produce a certain amount of "product" that you can sell. The value of that product is related to the amount of time you spend.
The reason the "+5 Uber Sword" is worth $700 is because it takes 20 hours of work/playing to get one AND there is a matching lawyer/doctor/rich person who says, "Wow- I only have to spend two hours of my income to get an item taht would take me 20 hours to get in the game."
OTH, except for maybe poker, the more time you spend gambling, the less money you have.
So if you have the "uber rare sword +5" which is worth $20,000, then could the government charge you property tax? Then can you take a loss if the game closes (and as a result the item becomes worthless)?
Part of the reason these items can take these values is because taxes are not included in the transactions. Add back in taxes and the prices will drop.
The student who is working for RIAA is the student proposed for punishment.
---
It's like the government these days... They pass 20 laws. Everyone breaks at least one of them. The government only prosecutes the person who irritates them.
Likewise, the university could ignore all the students abusing the network in various ways yet expel the one student who was working for RIAA for abusing the network.
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It's always nice to think there is some benevolent fascist organization that is all powerful and somehow miraculously only targets the real bad guys.
I've always thought the CIA was a front organization for such a real organization-- surely no real intelligence agency could be that incompetant.
Unfortunately, without any known exception*, such powers always get turned against the people and the current politicians enemies. Likewise many only mildly illegal acts get defined as "real" bad things.
*Of course if there was such an agency, we wouldn't know about its doings since it would be so secret.
aye... everything has a scent except iocane poison.
I'd stake my life on it.
Last I heard, private companies can't put people in jail for 18 months-- only the government can.
That's kinda cool.
So then we could transplant that gene and
1) Give plants souls
2) Give animals souls
3) Give bacteria souls
We already have a clearly soulless population of humans (CEO's and Lawyers) so we could isolate the difference between their genes and the rest of the populace to isolate this cancer-causing soul making gene.
The people outside the party will protest when they have more power than those in the party and not before. Power follows the money so the next generation of rich merchant brats in China will probably either join the party or push for recognition of their power. The current older generation probably remembers the cultural revolution and blood to do more than just thank the party for giving them the freedom to make some money and have some fun without being re-educated.
It's a tough balance but so far China is pulling it off.
I've seen the mentality in web coding too.
If you have a problem- just throw the transaction then the customer can just start over and reorder the item again. The problem being that my companies transactions can have 700 items on them and the bloody web programmers were just throwing them away left and right as a way of handling errors. (there were similar issues with data entry- the web server wants to time out if the person takes more than 30 minutes to update a screen.)
I work with AS/400's -- have been on IBM hardware since the system 3.
With an AS/400, you are talking about 2 hours of unscheduled downtime per year.
Windows computers win because they are cheap- not because they are fast or reliable.
Also mainframes are typically built to deal with phenominal amounts of data in ways that intel architecture PC's just can't handle.
In all seriousness,
if they could somehow make subparts (thin end, thick end, vacuum port segment, spiny segment, rubber covered, magnetic segment, metal detecting segment, extra sensor peg segment) and randomly mix them- they might find different random configurations were more suitable to certain tasks.
It cannot overrule the US constitution-- treaties must be made "pursuant to" i.e. "limited by" the constitution.
I spoke a bit hastily on this...
It looks like
Constitution > treaties == federal law > state & Local laws.
Apparently we are a bit unique in that treaties are like federal laws and our congress can change them like federal laws and other countries don't do that.
Good point... there were two moral components and they cancelled out.
7) outrage over the immoral indefinate extention of copyrights and stated goal to make me pay every time I view/listen to the entertainment.
8) guilt over taking something without paying for it.
(There is also irritation over rebuying something I already purchased on VHS and some others).
Anyway.. the many immoral actions by the Riaa & entertainment industry folks greatly reduce the moral pangs.
8) was also reduced more when I realized how many -legal- ways there were to get this product for free. For example- my "Incredibles" is a DVD burned from cable. Many of my songs are recorded off the radio (I mean just turn it on and record 8 hours while you are at work during the day and then peel out all the good songs).
However, since morality is in the equation-- I'd put it like this...
moralityfactor * (cost of obtaining illegally + (cost of punishment * chance of being caught)).
So if it is 3 dollars to get it illegally and only 5 dollars to get it legally, most folks will get it legally. Their "moralityfactor" holds as long as there is a reasonable balance.
However, if it is 3 dollars to get it illegally and 30 dollars to get it legally then you must have a very high morality factor to turn it down/purchase it legally.
Also... time pressure/desire enter in to it-- Apparently, I'm willing to wait 6 months and purchase many things legally. Also, I perceive "hot" material as having a much higher chance of being caught-- my torrents of choice are 1980's comic books and television shows. No movies. No current music (which I mostly get off the radio/satellite radio as I said above).
Which does bring up an interesting point-- if they ever jackboot down my doors and say I have all these mp3's with copyrighted songs- I guess I would have to have a record that I recorded off of 103.7 on january 12th, 2006- since they presume you are guilty rather than innocent in these cases.
Constitution > federal law == treaties > state and lower local laws.
Until 1930, federal law > local laws only if the power was explicitly federal. In 1930, they basically killed the 10th amendment reserving for the states everything not explicitly given to the federal government.
I think this part of Article six applies:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
So yes, once we sign a treaty- it becomes law at the level of the constitution, overriding state laws- not sure about federal laws.
I disagree. It changed Han Solo quite a bit as a character to shoot first vs be shot at and react. Plus the CGI arm they inserted looks obvious and stupid to me.
And then there is the irony of computer -nerds- riding on dnd -nerds- about being geeky.
If it costs me an hour of my time to download a show and burn it to a DVD (and the cost of hard drive storage- about $250 per 500gig now but double that last year) then that would weigh heavily on my decision to download or to purchase.
For example- I might buy just about everything I like if it was $5. At a price of $9.99 I would be a little more picky but still buy most things. At a price of $15, I would wait for it to get cheaper or download.
I think that these things would affect me if I were using torrent to download things:
1) The time cost of downloading.
2) The dollar cost of storing.
3) The time cost of burning backups to dvd
4) The risk of being caught.
5) The amount of content I already had*
6) The cost of getting the content legally.
---
*Changes in the last year have made a big shift in 5 and 6. I can frequently get content legally for 7.50 or less if I simply wait for 6 months. Since I am currently about a full 18 months behind -- waiting six months is no problem. The problem is-- I get even further behind each month. Stuff is coming out faster than I can watch it. My DVR is about 90% full and I have to watch those first so I can delete them. Friends season 10 took just about 100% of my free time for a couple weeks.
In my case, there is no pressure at all to see new content for $15 (or higher) since I can simply wait and purchase it when it (almost inevitably) drops below $10 (and to be honest, these days I wait for $7.50- even Kill Bill was $7.50 last big holiday- and it is again in this sunday's ads).
So if hollywood charges a reasonable price to own and to replace my permanent copy (that is not sold to me on a rental model) then they will get my money. If they want some screwy price then I'll pass on purchasing it.
All kidding aside...
It's a social game- my daughter and her husband played it together in college (it's partially how they met-- it's partially how me and her mom met). They play in my game now that they are back in town. Unfortunately- her mom and I only made it about 10 years.
There were plenty of females in their college group.
My games have had a lot of females and couples over the years including a couple messy affairs.
My game was the basis for a sporting event (Ultimate frisbee) for close to a decade (if we didn't play- it didn't make). I still play ultimate twice a week and just last week they commented on my showing a bit of a six-pack.
As for me... well I've probably seen more action than you have unless you are an NBA star and none of it through clubs or with "club" girls. A surprising amount through Everquest including a couple trips to Vegas.
All of this takes money of course- which being a geek in the 80's made pretty easy to do in the 90's and now. I learned a lot of skills writing my D&D utilities in apple basic and cobol.
Are some D&D folks massive nerds? Sure-- but so are some Harley motorcycle fans. Are they happy? If so why pick on them unless it makes you feel better about your own life (which undoubtably lacks perfection in some way too).
I get
15 days PTO +
10 days holiday +
10 sick days (that accrue up to 45) +
05 days personal time (without pay)
I had cancer when I was 33, self diagnosed and was in chemo about 30 days after I first detected it.
Now at 45, I developed diabetes (which my native american blood makes me prone to) and high blood pressure (which my diabetes and my cancer make me prone to).
I agree-- it's hard to travel on the time we have which is why I negotiated for the extra five days of time off without pay.
PTO is usually a tradeoff. You get less sick days but more vacation.
So 10 vacation + 10 sick becomes 15 PTO. People who average over 5 days a year sick get hosed. Everyone else gets more vacation time.
I think microsoft office integration is a perfect counter-example to your point.
Integration was wonderful until your computer was networked- then the "storm" of pressure from outside forces caused many unforseen failures.
There are others. If software is -only- used in a static manner then your point holds. But in the real world, only dead software is used that way. Living software is constantly reused in unforeseen ways due to changing circumstances, legalalities, competition, etc.
Stay away from breads, potatoes and sugar.
But... I was a testicular cancer surviver so low Teste got me (and that's $200 a month). If you start getting night sweats, feeling anxious, thinking a bit fuzzy, etc. then you may have low Teste (It happens to normal guys too).
I was on that track til I developed medical issues at 45....Now I have to save an extra $50,000 minimum to kick off enough money to pay for the medications.
I was looking for the quote from Vacation (1985) - Tom Hanks
but couldn't find it in the few seconds I have here during the day.
Basically
Time is Money... or maybe Money is Cocaine and Cocaine is Power so Time is Power... er... anyway...
Time is Money so if you earn $300 per hour, it saves you money to buy characters and items that would take a lot of time to acquire. You could work one hour, then spend 19 hours doing fun stuff in the game instead of doing 19 hours of mindless stuff to get the stupid item.
Sort of... but the stock market is sort of gambling too then.
The difference is that in mmorgs, if you put in enough time, you will produce a certain amount of "product" that you can sell. The value of that product is related to the amount of time you spend.
The reason the "+5 Uber Sword" is worth $700 is because it takes 20 hours of work/playing to get one AND there is a matching lawyer/doctor/rich person who says, "Wow- I only have to spend two hours of my income to get an item taht would take me 20 hours to get in the game."
OTH, except for maybe poker, the more time you spend gambling, the less money you have.
They change in value over time.
So if you have the "uber rare sword +5" which is worth $20,000, then could the government charge you property tax? Then can you take a loss if the game closes (and as a result the item becomes worthless)?
Part of the reason these items can take these values is because taxes are not included in the transactions. Add back in taxes and the prices will drop.
You misread the parent article.
The student who is working for RIAA is the student proposed for punishment.
---
It's like the government these days...
They pass 20 laws.
Everyone breaks at least one of them.
The government only prosecutes the person who irritates them.
Likewise, the university could ignore all the students abusing the network in various ways yet expel the one student who was working for RIAA for abusing the network.