But it's the viewer's fault if they take the speech and absorb it at face value. For example, the last presidential address I watched was immediately followed up by a democratic rebuttal (which unfortunately, I believe to be written in advance since it speaks primarily on broad terms and references no details, making it an opposing speech rather than a direct rebuttal to the statements made).
The address itself gets taken apart the next day all over the media and is a simple google away for anyone looking for more.
And if it's propaganda, it sure as hell isn't working because opinion polls following that address announcing the troop surge showed that confidence in the President dropped rather than increased.
I would like to hear the President's piece if only to disagree with it.
I plan to play said videogames with my kid. More specifically AGAINST my kid. I will frag the hell out of them mercilessly and scream, "WHO'S YO DADDY?!?!!" while they cry and wait for their character to respawn. They will know/exactly/ what the videogame is:
It's a game where my child and I are moving puppets around competing to score points to "win" against each other. And boy, is he getting his ass kicked.
(But seriously, he'll know that this is just playing with a person, and that what's happening on the screen is a virtual medium for the competition between me and him for the sake of entertainment. It has no opportunity to become more "real" than that due to him being conscious that his dad is right there and what he's doing is spending time with dad.)
Parent is right on the money and deserves to be modded up.
Middle-eastern countries have a handy chunk of money in the form of OPEC. That oil can fetch them quite a bit of money but where is it going? The economy relies heavily on oil exports, but what about the other industries? That oil money can be used as capital to get other industries juiced up and making jobs that pay wages to their average citizen. Spend a little money on some serious educational infrastructure rather than anti-western dogma.
In the same way that the war on terror has helped mask important internal national issues. Perhaps the same can apply for the middleeast. When they all they've got is sand(I'm being facetious), it's easy to get pissed over something as superficial as a cartoon drawing. If they have economic opportunity, they have increased opportunity costs.
They can still get pissed if they have money, but they can just change the channel, take some night classes, go out to the club and party, or turn on the Xbox360 and frag some american n00bs while insulting their moms through the headset. Or heck, maybe read some exciting non-forbidden books.
I don't doubt that "The West" has created issues for them, but I find it hard to believe that "The West" could possibly be responsible for ALL the issues they face. Why aren't they mad at the ones in their country who control all their money, just like westerners are mad at the ones in their country who control their money?
It doesn't. Stab them to death quickly if that means it costs humans less. There's nothing good in harming an animal for no reason, if it's free or even beneficial the animal may as well receive an improvement in treatment.
We're the animals that get to dictate down at the other animals. I'm using "humans" instead of the term "Animals that are also animals, but dictate down at the other animals, by the way, also carbon-based". It's a simpler term. We set the terms. Yes, that included slaves in the past. Then people got self-conscious about slavery and decided they preferred to get rid of slaves instead of keeping them. So again, still within the human framework, they valued a secure conscious over the productive value of their slave(minus the upkeep costs of a slave-powered society). Which is not to say I think abolishing slavery was a mistake, I'm just pointing out the cost/benefit framework that was used.
Nothing sacred or spiritual is being indicated as significant beyond what the sacred or spiritual context relevant to the humans involved. Pointing out that humans can also be considered animals is about as useful as pointing out that both exist and are carbon-based. It's irrelevant that both can be considered animals. What's relevant is that humans have the power, and so it's up to humans to decide what to do with it.
I wonder if "America" as we know it can even exist in a world of full unchecked globalism. The net output of the world is almost undoubtedly higher in that scenario, but not everyone benefits equally from globalism. The company saves money hiring a lower wage worker, but the higher wage worker just got screwed, and will lose his standard of living.
3rd world countries who lack the capital to compete in the global market with modern industries have their corresponding industry undercut and wiped out.
An American losing his job to his immigrant may be able to find another job or go back to school and end up more productive and paid more. However, a farmer or fisher in the 3rd world whose industry gets destroyed is going to have a much harder time finding alternative employment or education for a new job.
For example, the Three Gorges Dam, an enormous project that will provide China with electricity to support its growing economic power. However, this same Three Gorges Dam involves relocation and destruction for the people living along the Yellow River on the scale of a man-made Hurricane Katrina. Fishermen along that river lose their trade and don't have the equivalent education of an American to find another job. Some obviously will, but the process is considerably harder.
In summary, globalism can be more productive, but not everyone benefits equally from that productivity and may even be harmed. And with that said, if an action is not in the best interests of the American voting populace, then I feel that it is wrong for the American government to pursue that action. Serving the (potentially) greater good of the global economy at the expense of the American citizen is not something the American government should be able to allow unless the American citizen advocates it.
One of my professors had an interesting approach to teaching Economic Growth.
He'd lecture basic concepts for the topic, and provide notes with greater detail for reading on our own time. The students would then choose from provided sub-topics of the general topic, research them, then present them to the class. The teacher was standing by to grill the presenter to both ensure they understood the material and to make sure the student hits key points that the teacher wants the rest of the class to hear. The presenter answers questions from the class, and the teacher chimes if the presenter is not answering the questions properly.
This ensured that students knew the material adequately, since plagiarizing or rote memorization has no chance of getting you past the questioning. And it gave the students experience in public speaking and communication which is a skill that will be useful to the students beyond the course itself.
This arrangement meant that the students were actively engaged in the educational process throughout. Everyone who took that course with him had a blast because it grew into a competition. The goal wasn't just to get a good grade, but to give better presentations than your peers. This helped the students become personally invested in their success(Which should already be the case, but sadly, it's not always happening).
I don't think there's anything good in harming an animal for no reason. But I don't agree with giving them any rights if it will cost humans money to do so, or if it stands in the way of research that helps a human. All cost/benefit comparisons will have to be framed from a human perspective to affect my opinion(for example, damage to the ecology which humans dwell in).
I don't care about any spiritual penalty it may have. Slippery slope stuff aside. It's an animal and I will prioritize it below the majority of humanity. I might give it a break if it's cute, but only because the cuteness is offering something to me, a human.
I had spoken with a friend about this sort of thing. I download tv shows because I don't want to watch tv shows on their schedule. And air times for shows are a constant battle of popularity. I don't even mind the commercials. I basically want the equivalent of free tivo. But all the TV shows are generally bittorrented without the commercials.
However, the tv shows need ad-revenue to keep going, even if the could offer the episodes with commercials, they still need to keep cycling the commercials for a flow of revenue. Plus bandwidth problems if using direct downloads for HD quality episodes.
I hoped for something like this. I loathe the current internet-based offerings on the network websites. Small resolutions, and constant re-buffering and queuing the next clip.
I just wonder if they will be able to pull this off without having the commercials easily circumvented. I have no doubt that the commercials can be circumvented, the key word here is/easily/. So that advertisers will still pay to keep the show going as long as those who don't want to go through the fuss of dodging commercials will still sit through it.
Lots of games have been held back for a year. Usually because of development deadlines having to get pushed back for a year. It's a different reason here, but the same effect. If the PS3 does badly over the course of its lifespan I don't think people will look back at Eidos's announcement as a key event. It already comes after a succession of games going multi-platform, which may be bad for the console, but good for the gamers.
The problem between development and install base has been discussed pretty thoroughly.
The Wii has some pretty nice games out, but it has a similar gap in games coming up. Though there was much speculation on how good the Wii would be, it doesn't seem like anyone had bet on it being the success that it is. Nintendo included, in light of the tight supply. So while it seems that there are a lot of developers interested in making Wii games, they would have had to begin developing a year or more ago to have a chance at filling the upcoming gap. But at least the games will come someday.
I'm imagining a 33%-ish share for each console after 4 years.
Yes, and I would think most people don't know that "free" things still cost money.
Why are TV shows free? How do all those websites offer so much content for free hosting all that bandwidth?
It still costs money, whether people pay via donation, credit card, or just out of the pocket of the creator's limited pocket, but mostly, these things come from advertising.
So to get music and movies as "free" as the above, you'd have to settle for advertising throughout it. The more attention-grabbing the advertising, the more the advertisers will pay for "free" music and movies in return. Which also makes it more annoying.
This isn't a trade-off everyone wants to make, they download TV shows to skip commercials. They use Adblock to stop internet ads. How many people watch commercials because they want to pay the show back? I think most people really do want these things for free without realizing that it still costs money.
If there's more ad-circumvention, there's less eyes are on those ads, giving that adspace/time less penetration. So less money will be paid to the shows you like to keep them going.
Something important here is that it's ok though. Even though most people don't know these things aren't free, the advertisers know that. Like the comment you're referencing. The consumer's behavior in this regard would be factored into the advertising paid for that show, and if the show can't support itself on that model then it will be replaced with one that can. This exchange between the consumer's eyes, the tv show, and the advertiser will self-correct. The fact that advertisers are still paying for TV to keep it free means that they are still getting their money's worth and that system is working.
This has been a great enabler for me. One of the problems with my incredibly bad running ability is difficulty in pacing myself.
I run too hard and fast for my body to support and I find that I can't keep running for more than a few minutes before I need to slow down and catch my breath. My pace keeps creeping up faster and faster because I'm too impatient. On the treadmill I can adjust speed in small steady increments so that I can run at the fastest pace that I can maintain without having to take breaks because the pace is shown in plain numbers in front of me.
This topic has been around for centuries. One of the most prominent starting points is Thomas Malthus's thought(yours is somewhat similar) and it is also in Wikipedia, but I'll summarize here.
He assumes population grows geometrically, while food supply is linear. Given this premise, at some point those two lines are going to cross, and at that point, there will be just enough food to keep everyone at the minimum amount needed to survive at that level of population and widespread poverty. Too many extra people, they starve to death until you're back at the equilibrium, too few people, and they keep breeding until it raises to the equilibrium.
However, technology was not accounted for(rightfully so, since he was not around to witness the bounty of the industrial revolution make food supply explode). So the "Malthusian" situation will not occur so long as a sufficient level of technological growth is sustained to tweak that linear food supply line upwards to keep ahead of the geometric population growth.
Also, that population growth rate is not fixed.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a wikipedia entry on this topic since I don't recall the name used for this topic. Generally population growth rates and death rates were fairly regular throughout human history, and only in very recent years it changed. Technological spurts like the plow and such caused agricultural booms that allowed for larger population. Eventually the industrial revolution hit Great Britain.
This results in a huge increase in food supply so that the population growth rate and death rate leaped. Eventually the death rate drops, and then the population growth rate drops, and they straighten out once more. This happened repeatedly as the industrial revolution spread across Europe.
Africa for example, may not have had this phenomenon occur yet. Their birth and death rates are very very high. However, in modern countries birth and death rates and slowed nearly to a standstill without crashing into Malthusian poverty. Why?
One of the best explanation is the concept of Human Capital. What is a human worth? If we're living in an agricultural society, children can help me manage the farm and produce more and work less. Children help me live through retirement. However, since I'm poor, I have to produce more children since the children are also dying often. The above population phenomenon hits where technology grants abundance. I'm healthier and I can support a larger family so population spikes. My children are surviving from this abundance so the death rate drops. Since I have children who are surviving, that I have to care for, the population growth drops too.
Now I've got a stable family size and a stable population growth rate. Since the economy is filling with opportunities thanks to the new technology(there's different kinds of technology in economics, in this case, we're talking about the kind that make more jobs than they remove). This expanded economy can allow me to do more than just farm. If I invest in education I can get more money! So I go get a non-agricultural job. Families won't need so many kids with less human-labor needed on farms so the family size decreases. As opportunities for women to get jobs they have less children too(women in the west are now going to college, maybe grad school, and have children later and later in their lives.)
Education is expensive, increasing the human capital of myself costs money, doing the same for my wife and kids, it racks up to a large investment. So I actually have a disincentive for having a large family, since I can't put money into all of them without lowering the investment level in each.
If I have the opportunity, I may not even want to invest in making a child so that they can take care of me in retirement. I can have less children or no children at all and instead put that effort into my own Human Capital and focus o
No you cannot have kbm/mouse. Microsoft has made statements that they will not support kbm/mouse(it's trivial for them to allow them to be connected, it's just their interface license that keeps them from working natively). You can google for this.
The implementation varies from game to game. In the case of the first FPS crossplatform multiplayer game Shadowrun, they are giving console player auto-aim, while implementing cursor-speed penalties to handicap mouse twitch speeds so that there will be less value in fast and precision aiming and more emphasis on other factors.
I have little doubt that this could damage CC's bottom line if it was successfully executed on a large enough scale.
The article has just demonstrated what happens when CC's profits are threatened. The ones who you're trying to get at are not the ones who will bear the brunt of this retaliation. The working employees will be collateral damage from such an attack, not the management.
Also, I believe here are legal problems regarding salary manipulation that can make this a tricky process. Why fire people and offer them the chance to be rehired at a lower wage 10-weeks later like in the article summary? Why not just offer them the choice between the lower wage and being fired right off the bat? I think it was done this way because it dodges these laws. But I have no examples or sources to back up this speculation. Perhaps someone who has worked in HR can clarify.
The American Dream of white-picket fences and two-car garages on a single working man's income wasn't really the case for the majority at any point for America, though it may have been the case for some. It has always been just that, a dream. Through the years there has been varying levels of success through the population ranging from poor to rich. I don't believe that it has improved significantly in recent years either.
Still, while it is good to hear that you're working hard to have a better future, I'm saddened to hear that you lack hope for reward. I believe that if you work hard you can improve your circumstances and I would rather have hope than despair, if only for the sake of having hope. I'm "making it" alright for now, and I am still confident that I can do better. Despite all the troubles that have befallen America, by its own hand or otherwise, I still value my life here and I'm happy to be here.
Same here, I liked how GW handled a lot of things, but I did not like the total instancing of everything outside towns. It felt very empty as a result. A blend between a persistent world and an instanced one is just more entertaining for me personally.
Because now they can charge you the extra money for the 120gb drive instead of 20gb. Sale price isn't necessarily related to costs of manufacturing. They want to sell at the most profitable price, and if that means selling at a higher price with a low difference in cost, they'll want to do just that. People who want to pay more for the 120gb will be paying the company the extra mark-up for that feature.
Assuming I didn't already have an XBox360, if I was offered the choice of buying an Xbox360 premium or Xbox360 Elite, I would buy the Xbox360 premium because I play on my LCD monitor, and watch video content through the PC which is also connected to that monitor. The 20gb harddrive is only used for demos and XBLA. And I download every single one that I'm interested in. I haven't used more than a gig or two of harddrive space(Aside from the 7ish gigs that are filled by default), so I wouldn't see any benefit from paying more money to get more space.
So apparently they're assuming(and they may be wrong) that there is a segmentation of the market for an Xbox360 where some use HDTVs to play lots of downloaded video content, and another who just plays games with their Xbox360. Enough segmentation to warrant a seperate product which will allow them to target each segment with greater accuracy. They're assuming that this targeting will draw greater profits(and they may be wrong.
And this applies to both consoles equally. It's why you still see all those different storage sizes in mp3 players too.
"That is the common use. If you want to redefine the term and then apply it to common usage and expect people to know what the hell you're talking about, then you are..."
That thought would have incurred an insightful mod point from me. It mirrored my response to his words.
But the namecalling at the top and bottom of the post caused me to make this post describing my dilemma instead. The namecalling is only harming your argument by obscuring any valuable points through insults which generate an emotional rather than an intellectual response.
What is the purpose of making this communication? To shame and insult the other person for gratification? You can skip the rest of the post in that event and just call him an idiot and a moron. If the purpose is to educate him, then you would be able to achieve this goal more efficiently by shedding the insults. Choosing both goals simultaneously is possible, just know that they are at odds with each other.
If anything, I would have called him "misguided" because his reasoning did not seem idiotic nor moronic to me, just fundamentally flawed for the reason you had provided.
How are you determining a shill? Someone who likes something you don't? I have no doubt that there are shills out on the internet, particularly in product reviews, but on slashdot? I don't see a "lot" of pro-microsoft here.
If slashdot has a "lot" of microsoft shills, what news/forum site are you comparing it to that has less that doesn't contain open/linux/google/etc. in the URL?
I'm reminded of a thought that dawned on me when watching that Discovery Channel show "Future Weapons".
These are some awesome pieces of equipment that we can bring to bear, but it's discouraging to think that we spend a million or more on a missile to blow up 2-3 insurgents. $250 dollar insurgents equipped with shirt, pants, and an AK. Or just a homemade bomb with some debris pulled over it.
I am in complete agreement with the entirety of your post.
That said, what constitutes artistic merit? What is the value of having it? What purpose does music serve?
To be honest, "artistic merit" to me is just a differentiating feature that makes that product suit the tastes of a particular audience. Originality, complexity of composition, exclusive appreciation, take any of those factors, isolate, and maximize them in an absurd fashion and they don't seem very valuable in and of themselves. In more practical blends of these factors, we each enjoy them according to our preference.
Anyone can make original music, but it won't necessarily be good music just because it's original. People have been entertained by simplicity in the music as well, "Taps" for instance. You can complicate the composition increasingly until you have what amounts to white-noise for the listener. And exclusive appreciation is the hardest measure to appreciate a piece of music with. What if a song was only appreciated by one person, not even the originator, and no one else? Does appealing to an exclusive "elite" audience make that music and its genre better?
It seems to me, that the best measure for a song's success and value is how many people enjoy it, to what degree, and its significance on culture/history(I can't say how many historical events have a song as a major cause outside of music history.) And for me personally, how much/I/ enjoy a song will always be the ultimate measure of a song's quality, and needing no more justification than that.
I think the last time someone died in an RIAA case they gave notice that the family would have 60 days to grieve before they start suing them instead of the deceased.
Slashdot Mirror
But it's the viewer's fault if they take the speech and absorb it at face value. For example, the last presidential address I watched was immediately followed up by a democratic rebuttal (which unfortunately, I believe to be written in advance since it speaks primarily on broad terms and references no details, making it an opposing speech rather than a direct rebuttal to the statements made).
The address itself gets taken apart the next day all over the media and is a simple google away for anyone looking for more.
And if it's propaganda, it sure as hell isn't working because opinion polls following that address announcing the troop surge showed that confidence in the President dropped rather than increased.
I would like to hear the President's piece if only to disagree with it.
I plan to play said videogames with my kid. More specifically AGAINST my kid. I will frag the hell out of them mercilessly and scream, "WHO'S YO DADDY?!?!!" while they cry and wait for their character to respawn. They will know /exactly/ what the videogame is:
It's a game where my child and I are moving puppets around competing to score points to "win" against each other. And boy, is he getting his ass kicked.
(But seriously, he'll know that this is just playing with a person, and that what's happening on the screen is a virtual medium for the competition between me and him for the sake of entertainment. It has no opportunity to become more "real" than that due to him being conscious that his dad is right there and what he's doing is spending time with dad.)
Parent is right on the money and deserves to be modded up.
Middle-eastern countries have a handy chunk of money in the form of OPEC. That oil can fetch them quite a bit of money but where is it going? The economy relies heavily on oil exports, but what about the other industries? That oil money can be used as capital to get other industries juiced up and making jobs that pay wages to their average citizen. Spend a little money on some serious educational infrastructure rather than anti-western dogma.
In the same way that the war on terror has helped mask important internal national issues. Perhaps the same can apply for the middleeast. When they all they've got is sand(I'm being facetious), it's easy to get pissed over something as superficial as a cartoon drawing. If they have economic opportunity, they have increased opportunity costs.
They can still get pissed if they have money, but they can just change the channel, take some night classes, go out to the club and party, or turn on the Xbox360 and frag some american n00bs while insulting their moms through the headset. Or heck, maybe read some exciting non-forbidden books.
I don't doubt that "The West" has created issues for them, but I find it hard to believe that "The West" could possibly be responsible for ALL the issues they face. Why aren't they mad at the ones in their country who control all their money, just like westerners are mad at the ones in their country who control their money?
It doesn't. Stab them to death quickly if that means it costs humans less. There's nothing good in harming an animal for no reason, if it's free or even beneficial the animal may as well receive an improvement in treatment.
We're the animals that get to dictate down at the other animals. I'm using "humans" instead of the term "Animals that are also animals, but dictate down at the other animals, by the way, also carbon-based". It's a simpler term. We set the terms. Yes, that included slaves in the past. Then people got self-conscious about slavery and decided they preferred to get rid of slaves instead of keeping them. So again, still within the human framework, they valued a secure conscious over the productive value of their slave(minus the upkeep costs of a slave-powered society). Which is not to say I think abolishing slavery was a mistake, I'm just pointing out the cost/benefit framework that was used.
Nothing sacred or spiritual is being indicated as significant beyond what the sacred or spiritual context relevant to the humans involved. Pointing out that humans can also be considered animals is about as useful as pointing out that both exist and are carbon-based. It's irrelevant that both can be considered animals. What's relevant is that humans have the power, and so it's up to humans to decide what to do with it.
Sounds a little like what Hurley did on Lost rolling the van down the hill to start it.
I wonder if "America" as we know it can even exist in a world of full unchecked globalism. The net output of the world is almost undoubtedly higher in that scenario, but not everyone benefits equally from globalism. The company saves money hiring a lower wage worker, but the higher wage worker just got screwed, and will lose his standard of living.
3rd world countries who lack the capital to compete in the global market with modern industries have their corresponding industry undercut and wiped out.
An American losing his job to his immigrant may be able to find another job or go back to school and end up more productive and paid more. However, a farmer or fisher in the 3rd world whose industry gets destroyed is going to have a much harder time finding alternative employment or education for a new job.
For example, the Three Gorges Dam, an enormous project that will provide China with electricity to support its growing economic power. However, this same Three Gorges Dam involves relocation and destruction for the people living along the Yellow River on the scale of a man-made Hurricane Katrina. Fishermen along that river lose their trade and don't have the equivalent education of an American to find another job. Some obviously will, but the process is considerably harder.
In summary, globalism can be more productive, but not everyone benefits equally from that productivity and may even be harmed. And with that said, if an action is not in the best interests of the American voting populace, then I feel that it is wrong for the American government to pursue that action. Serving the (potentially) greater good of the global economy at the expense of the American citizen is not something the American government should be able to allow unless the American citizen advocates it.
One of my professors had an interesting approach to teaching Economic Growth.
He'd lecture basic concepts for the topic, and provide notes with greater detail for reading on our own time. The students would then choose from provided sub-topics of the general topic, research them, then present them to the class. The teacher was standing by to grill the presenter to both ensure they understood the material and to make sure the student hits key points that the teacher wants the rest of the class to hear. The presenter answers questions from the class, and the teacher chimes if the presenter is not answering the questions properly.
This ensured that students knew the material adequately, since plagiarizing or rote memorization has no chance of getting you past the questioning. And it gave the students experience in public speaking and communication which is a skill that will be useful to the students beyond the course itself.
This arrangement meant that the students were actively engaged in the educational process throughout. Everyone who took that course with him had a blast because it grew into a competition. The goal wasn't just to get a good grade, but to give better presentations than your peers. This helped the students become personally invested in their success(Which should already be the case, but sadly, it's not always happening).
I don't think there's anything good in harming an animal for no reason. But I don't agree with giving them any rights if it will cost humans money to do so, or if it stands in the way of research that helps a human. All cost/benefit comparisons will have to be framed from a human perspective to affect my opinion(for example, damage to the ecology which humans dwell in).
I don't care about any spiritual penalty it may have. Slippery slope stuff aside. It's an animal and I will prioritize it below the majority of humanity. I might give it a break if it's cute, but only because the cuteness is offering something to me, a human.
I had spoken with a friend about this sort of thing. I download tv shows because I don't want to watch tv shows on their schedule. And air times for shows are a constant battle of popularity. I don't even mind the commercials. I basically want the equivalent of free tivo. But all the TV shows are generally bittorrented without the commercials.
/easily/. So that advertisers will still pay to keep the show going as long as those who don't want to go through the fuss of dodging commercials will still sit through it.
However, the tv shows need ad-revenue to keep going, even if the could offer the episodes with commercials, they still need to keep cycling the commercials for a flow of revenue. Plus bandwidth problems if using direct downloads for HD quality episodes.
I hoped for something like this. I loathe the current internet-based offerings on the network websites. Small resolutions, and constant re-buffering and queuing the next clip.
I just wonder if they will be able to pull this off without having the commercials easily circumvented. I have no doubt that the commercials can be circumvented, the key word here is
Lots of games have been held back for a year. Usually because of development deadlines having to get pushed back for a year. It's a different reason here, but the same effect. If the PS3 does badly over the course of its lifespan I don't think people will look back at Eidos's announcement as a key event. It already comes after a succession of games going multi-platform, which may be bad for the console, but good for the gamers.
The problem between development and install base has been discussed pretty thoroughly.
The Wii has some pretty nice games out, but it has a similar gap in games coming up. Though there was much speculation on how good the Wii would be, it doesn't seem like anyone had bet on it being the success that it is. Nintendo included, in light of the tight supply. So while it seems that there are a lot of developers interested in making Wii games, they would have had to begin developing a year or more ago to have a chance at filling the upcoming gap. But at least the games will come someday.
I'm imagining a 33%-ish share for each console after 4 years.
Yes, and I would think most people don't know that "free" things still cost money.
Why are TV shows free? How do all those websites offer so much content for free hosting all that bandwidth?
It still costs money, whether people pay via donation, credit card, or just out of the pocket of the creator's limited pocket, but mostly, these things come from advertising.
So to get music and movies as "free" as the above, you'd have to settle for advertising throughout it. The more attention-grabbing the advertising, the more the advertisers will pay for "free" music and movies in return. Which also makes it more annoying.
This isn't a trade-off everyone wants to make, they download TV shows to skip commercials. They use Adblock to stop internet ads. How many people watch commercials because they want to pay the show back? I think most people really do want these things for free without realizing that it still costs money.
If there's more ad-circumvention, there's less eyes are on those ads, giving that adspace/time less penetration. So less money will be paid to the shows you like to keep them going.
Something important here is that it's ok though. Even though most people don't know these things aren't free, the advertisers know that. Like the comment you're referencing. The consumer's behavior in this regard would be factored into the advertising paid for that show, and if the show can't support itself on that model then it will be replaced with one that can. This exchange between the consumer's eyes, the tv show, and the advertiser will self-correct. The fact that advertisers are still paying for TV to keep it free means that they are still getting their money's worth and that system is working.
This has been a great enabler for me. One of the problems with my incredibly bad running ability is difficulty in pacing myself.
I run too hard and fast for my body to support and I find that I can't keep running for more than a few minutes before I need to slow down and catch my breath. My pace keeps creeping up faster and faster because I'm too impatient. On the treadmill I can adjust speed in small steady increments so that I can run at the fastest pace that I can maintain without having to take breaks because the pace is shown in plain numbers in front of me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth
This topic has been around for centuries. One of the most prominent starting points is Thomas Malthus's thought(yours is somewhat similar) and it is also in Wikipedia, but I'll summarize here.
He assumes population grows geometrically, while food supply is linear. Given this premise, at some point those two lines are going to cross, and at that point, there will be just enough food to keep everyone at the minimum amount needed to survive at that level of population and widespread poverty. Too many extra people, they starve to death until you're back at the equilibrium, too few people, and they keep breeding until it raises to the equilibrium.
However, technology was not accounted for(rightfully so, since he was not around to witness the bounty of the industrial revolution make food supply explode). So the "Malthusian" situation will not occur so long as a sufficient level of technological growth is sustained to tweak that linear food supply line upwards to keep ahead of the geometric population growth.
Also, that population growth rate is not fixed.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a wikipedia entry on this topic since I don't recall the name used for this topic. Generally population growth rates and death rates were fairly regular throughout human history, and only in very recent years it changed. Technological spurts like the plow and such caused agricultural booms that allowed for larger population. Eventually the industrial revolution hit Great Britain.
This results in a huge increase in food supply so that the population growth rate and death rate leaped. Eventually the death rate drops, and then the population growth rate drops, and they straighten out once more. This happened repeatedly as the industrial revolution spread across Europe.
Africa for example, may not have had this phenomenon occur yet. Their birth and death rates are very very high. However, in modern countries birth and death rates and slowed nearly to a standstill without crashing into Malthusian poverty. Why?
One of the best explanation is the concept of Human Capital. What is a human worth? If we're living in an agricultural society, children can help me manage the farm and produce more and work less. Children help me live through retirement. However, since I'm poor, I have to produce more children since the children are also dying often. The above population phenomenon hits where technology grants abundance. I'm healthier and I can support a larger family so population spikes. My children are surviving from this abundance so the death rate drops. Since I have children who are surviving, that I have to care for, the population growth drops too.
Now I've got a stable family size and a stable population growth rate. Since the economy is filling with opportunities thanks to the new technology(there's different kinds of technology in economics, in this case, we're talking about the kind that make more jobs than they remove). This expanded economy can allow me to do more than just farm. If I invest in education I can get more money! So I go get a non-agricultural job. Families won't need so many kids with less human-labor needed on farms so the family size decreases. As opportunities for women to get jobs they have less children too(women in the west are now going to college, maybe grad school, and have children later and later in their lives.)
Education is expensive, increasing the human capital of myself costs money, doing the same for my wife and kids, it racks up to a large investment. So I actually have a disincentive for having a large family, since I can't put money into all of them without lowering the investment level in each.
If I have the opportunity, I may not even want to invest in making a child so that they can take care of me in retirement. I can have less children or no children at all and instead put that effort into my own Human Capital and focus o
No you cannot have kbm/mouse. Microsoft has made statements that they will not support kbm/mouse(it's trivial for them to allow them to be connected, it's just their interface license that keeps them from working natively). You can google for this.
The implementation varies from game to game. In the case of the first FPS crossplatform multiplayer game Shadowrun, they are giving console player auto-aim, while implementing cursor-speed penalties to handicap mouse twitch speeds so that there will be less value in fast and precision aiming and more emphasis on other factors.
I am not very comfortable with this idea.
I have little doubt that this could damage CC's bottom line if it was successfully executed on a large enough scale.
The article has just demonstrated what happens when CC's profits are threatened. The ones who you're trying to get at are not the ones who will bear the brunt of this retaliation. The working employees will be collateral damage from such an attack, not the management.
Also, I believe here are legal problems regarding salary manipulation that can make this a tricky process. Why fire people and offer them the chance to be rehired at a lower wage 10-weeks later like in the article summary? Why not just offer them the choice between the lower wage and being fired right off the bat? I think it was done this way because it dodges these laws. But I have no examples or sources to back up this speculation. Perhaps someone who has worked in HR can clarify.
The American Dream of white-picket fences and two-car garages on a single working man's income wasn't really the case for the majority at any point for America, though it may have been the case for some. It has always been just that, a dream. Through the years there has been varying levels of success through the population ranging from poor to rich. I don't believe that it has improved significantly in recent years either.
Still, while it is good to hear that you're working hard to have a better future, I'm saddened to hear that you lack hope for reward. I believe that if you work hard you can improve your circumstances and I would rather have hope than despair, if only for the sake of having hope. I'm "making it" alright for now, and I am still confident that I can do better. Despite all the troubles that have befallen America, by its own hand or otherwise, I still value my life here and I'm happy to be here.
Same here, I liked how GW handled a lot of things, but I did not like the total instancing of everything outside towns. It felt very empty as a result. A blend between a persistent world and an instanced one is just more entertaining for me personally.
Why?
Because now they can charge you the extra money for the 120gb drive instead of 20gb. Sale price isn't necessarily related to costs of manufacturing. They want to sell at the most profitable price, and if that means selling at a higher price with a low difference in cost, they'll want to do just that. People who want to pay more for the 120gb will be paying the company the extra mark-up for that feature.
Assuming I didn't already have an XBox360, if I was offered the choice of buying an Xbox360 premium or Xbox360 Elite, I would buy the Xbox360 premium because I play on my LCD monitor, and watch video content through the PC which is also connected to that monitor. The 20gb harddrive is only used for demos and XBLA. And I download every single one that I'm interested in. I haven't used more than a gig or two of harddrive space(Aside from the 7ish gigs that are filled by default), so I wouldn't see any benefit from paying more money to get more space.
So apparently they're assuming(and they may be wrong) that there is a segmentation of the market for an Xbox360 where some use HDTVs to play lots of downloaded video content, and another who just plays games with their Xbox360. Enough segmentation to warrant a seperate product which will allow them to target each segment with greater accuracy. They're assuming that this targeting will draw greater profits(and they may be wrong.
And this applies to both consoles equally. It's why you still see all those different storage sizes in mp3 players too.
"That is the common use. If you want to redefine the term and then apply it to common usage and expect people to know what the hell you're talking about, then you are..."
That thought would have incurred an insightful mod point from me. It mirrored my response to his words.
But the namecalling at the top and bottom of the post caused me to make this post describing my dilemma instead. The namecalling is only harming your argument by obscuring any valuable points through insults which generate an emotional rather than an intellectual response.
What is the purpose of making this communication? To shame and insult the other person for gratification? You can skip the rest of the post in that event and just call him an idiot and a moron. If the purpose is to educate him, then you would be able to achieve this goal more efficiently by shedding the insults. Choosing both goals simultaneously is possible, just know that they are at odds with each other.
If anything, I would have called him "misguided" because his reasoning did not seem idiotic nor moronic to me, just fundamentally flawed for the reason you had provided.
How are you determining a shill? Someone who likes something you don't? I have no doubt that there are shills out on the internet, particularly in product reviews, but on slashdot? I don't see a "lot" of pro-microsoft here.
If slashdot has a "lot" of microsoft shills, what news/forum site are you comparing it to that has less that doesn't contain open/linux/google/etc. in the URL?
I'm reminded of a thought that dawned on me when watching that Discovery Channel show "Future Weapons".
These are some awesome pieces of equipment that we can bring to bear, but it's discouraging to think that we spend a million or more on a missile to blow up 2-3 insurgents. $250 dollar insurgents equipped with shirt, pants, and an AK. Or just a homemade bomb with some debris pulled over it.
Well, posts farther down on this article make remarks about skintight suits, even one imagining a spray-on suit.
Toss in well-toned female astronauts, and you've go lots, and lots of captured imagination for NASA.
I am in complete agreement with the entirety of your post.
/I/ enjoy a song will always be the ultimate measure of a song's quality, and needing no more justification than that.
That said, what constitutes artistic merit? What is the value of having it? What purpose does music serve?
To be honest, "artistic merit" to me is just a differentiating feature that makes that product suit the tastes of a particular audience. Originality, complexity of composition, exclusive appreciation, take any of those factors, isolate, and maximize them in an absurd fashion and they don't seem very valuable in and of themselves. In more practical blends of these factors, we each enjoy them according to our preference.
Anyone can make original music, but it won't necessarily be good music just because it's original. People have been entertained by simplicity in the music as well, "Taps" for instance. You can complicate the composition increasingly until you have what amounts to white-noise for the listener. And exclusive appreciation is the hardest measure to appreciate a piece of music with. What if a song was only appreciated by one person, not even the originator, and no one else? Does appealing to an exclusive "elite" audience make that music and its genre better?
It seems to me, that the best measure for a song's success and value is how many people enjoy it, to what degree, and its significance on culture/history(I can't say how many historical events have a song as a major cause outside of music history.) And for me personally, how much
I think the last time someone died in an RIAA case they gave notice that the family would have 60 days to grieve before they start suing them instead of the deceased.