"1. it is an entirely dependent relationship. Your loyalty is going to a brand.
1a. and that brand is managed for the market and the market alone. Genuine aesthetic decisions come in second at best, always. Those brands will be managed to generate the optimal revenue stream, always.
1b. this dependent relationship makes you rather powerless. Most fans will engage in a lot of apologetics for the franchise, brand, or producer that has earned their loyalty, and sometimes it even leads to advocacy of questionable policy if it is in the interest of their brand."
WTF? You're seriously trying to intellectualize someone's taste in geek entertainment and make a case for it as a bad thing?
Response to 1: What's the dependency you're refering to? Seems to me unless we're talking brand loyalty to a smack dealer, he's free to walk away from the relationship at anytime - namely, when something better comes along. He's no slave to anything, the brand needs him, and not the other way around.
1a: a product is absolutely managed for the market, you're 100% correct. Beyond that, the statement you're trying to make here is oversimplified to the point of being absurd. Every product has a market they're trying to reach, and every product wants to appeal to that market. Whether the revenue stream is measured in paid subscriptions (in the case of WoW) or increased community support (in the case of FSF projects), it doesn't matter. As for "genuine aesthetic decisions" not driven by market demand, well, unless we're discussing pure art, they're best left second to function. Again, it puzzles me why you say all these things as if they're bad.
1b: on the contrary, the consumer has all the power. As I said, the marketer needs you more than you need it. As for questionable policy, that's all about personal values, isn't it? I like Oreos and am willing to share when I have some. Some eat my Oreos, others don't because Nabisco uses animal products in production of Oreos. This is objectional to some, but not to me, because I am not a vegetarian. Does this mean I deserve to be slapped with some kind of label with negative conotations, such as neanderthal carnivore, because I don't share these beliefs? Or should I be free to call the vegetarians a bunch of hippy-dippy nut jobs because they don't think like I do? Neither, I think.
"2. It puts your role as "consumer" in front of an identity as "citizen," "thinker," "producer," or "critic." The "fan" is a very strange post-modern creation: it joins consumption with a kind of religious or spiritual devotion, or loyalty. It isn't exactly religion per se, but if consumer goods are the most dynamic and visible things in our environment - and I think they often are - then it isn't surprising that they can generate these kind of feelings. I find that troubling."
2: It sounds to me like you've spent waaaaay too much time in a graduate Humanities program. It's extremely presumptous (not to mention arrogant) of you to assume you know this person's motivations for purchasing and enjoying a video game. Personally, I fail to see how someone being a "fanboy" of Blizzard makes any kind of statement on their ability to think, reason, or act responsibly as a member of society. Even in the sole context of making a purchasing decision regarding a MMO video game, you assume this person hasn't played any other MMO games, read any reviews of other MMOs, or done any introspective thinking into what he actually enjoys spending his leisure time playing. He simply must've heard "Blizzard!" whispered to him in a dream, and out of pure compulsion, gave in to the irresistable urge to buy their products, and play their game!
"3. While one may have become a fan due to a positive experience of a product, the transference of value from the experience to the brand may make you resistant to experiences from outside the brand. An investment into the brand is made that is disproportionate to the value of that expe
One/.'er calling another one 'dork.' That's AWESOME! I think it's a pretty safe bet more than a handful of folks here actually do wear chain mail and plumed hats. Call it a hunch.
"Defense doesn't cost you anything if you're willing to forego a lawyer. Its pretty simple to say "I don't know - you'd have to ask So-and-so."
It's a civil suit. The jury is to decide based on perponderance of the evidence, and it's not as narrow as "beyond a reasonable doubt." All the RIAA has to do is convince a jury of their entitlement, and that the estate was more than likely the cause for damage, for them to win. Simply saying, "I don't know," may not cut it, depending on what the RIAA has on the deceased. A defense beyond ignorance would be wise, and still costly.
Finally, your fear of isolation is unfounded. Most reasonable people (including pacifists) don't want to turn our backs on the world at large. What we'd like is a real plan to achieve a stable, peaceful, humanitarian, global environment. What we're getting is a grab for short-term profits at the expense of the future. Evaluate what went wrong in Iran in the last century. It wasn't that the US wasn't violent enough; it was that the US installed an unpopular dictator. It did this so we'd be safe from Communism. Did it work? Is Iran no longer a threat?
Iran never had a shot at being any kind of communist power, as its government fell to fundamentalist zealots. Given the school of thought these people come from, it's likely they would've come to power regardless of anyone's involvement.
Your ideals are respectable, and I applaud them. This kind of open-source discrimination, however, is not the answer. The Orwellian reference is actually pretty spot on - terrorists with a hard-on to use this type of software are now free to do so, while any organized military is forbidden from touching it, if even to find and exploit weaknesses in self-defense. Not really "supporting the troops," in my mind - even those who joined for noble purposes such as defending their homes, saving lives, and making humanitarian efforts happen when no one else will (like the scientist in Antarctica who needed life-saving treatment to stave off cancer - thanks, USAF!).
That's the free throwaway 10 pager they pass out by the subways. The articles are sub-par, even for a free fishwrap. This won't have an impact on a literate, decision making crowd.
I can't speak for New York, but just about everyone on the tubes in London has a copy of the "free throwaway 10 pager" during their morning commute. I wouldn't just dismiss the potential.
If they want to foster adoption, take out a quarter pager in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. People who have the clout to have their companies adopt a new and better office platform read those.
I'm not sure coroprate adoption is the priorty at this stage. While it would be a great thing, just about every IT employee from a sysad to the CIO should already be aware that OpenOffice is an option. Those people don't need the education of an ad as much as Joe User, who may not be able to afford MS Office.
Distribute the ad to typical PC users without $600 to spend on MS Office. Watch market share and popularity grow. Then let them go to work and say to their managers, "Hey, I use OpenOffice at home, can we start using it here?" Managers see OpenOffice is free, and suggest it as a "cost-cutting" measure to earn them their next promotion. Managers never listen to IT anyway, so in spite of IT's protests that MS Office works much better, they wind up having to deploy it regardless. That's the impact I'd shoot for.
The trick to finishing any creative project on schedule is to ship whatever is done by a given date.
Funny how he forgot to mention exploitation of labor as one of their "tricks." Not too terribly long ago, you could almost compare them to any sweatshop in China and find parallels. How'd that class-action a couple years back work out for ya, EA?
I admit, I don't know if the situation's improved for EA programmers since the lawsuit was settled. This is pure speculation on my part, but given their corporate culture, I don't doubt they're still working under "constant crunch" conditions. Any manager worth a damn can see this is counter-productive in terms of quality and turnover rates, but hey, make 'em code until they collapse anyway!
Here and here are a couple interesting articles on the aftermath.
It appears she didn't prove much of anything. In fact, it may have been decompression on her spinal cord that caused the short-term improvement, not stem cells at all.
not to mention disproportionaly difficult to hunt or harvest than other animals.
Difficult to hunt? Are you kidding me? Just stand on a corner, offer chocolate for passwords, and they line up like lambs to the slaughter. In fact, some US Postal workers have done quite well without using bait.
Really? I thought they were two countried divided by borders, an ocean, Texan presidents don't get on well with royalty, blah blah blah...
Amusing anticdote, slightly off-topic. I'm a US expat living in the UK, and was spending my Thanksgiving in the village pub. Being recently moved here, I was trying to get to know my fellow villagers and make friends. Started having a great conversation with one guy about New Orleans, the music scene, jazz, and all the wonderful culture there.
Then this older bloke comes in and hears us speaking. Immediately he picks up on my accent and the fact that we're talking about New Orleans and says, "Louisiana? Isn't that where they filmed that movie coming on Sky tonight? You know the one... the one with the banjo, oh, what's it called?"
"Deliverance?" I asked. "Yeah, that's it!" he said. "So you're from there, eh? Some of those people kin to you?" I kind of chuckled and said, "No, I'm not at all like those people. First, they're from Georgia, and second, I've still got all my teeth."
I then turned back to the chap I'd been talking to for a good hour about New Orleans and Jazz, and noticed he was no longer attentive, uninterested in talking further, and staring either straight ahead or into his pint. It was only when he turned to pay that I noticed he was a few incisors short of a full grille... whoops.
Absolutely. I also used to moonlight at a GameStop a few months back. No matter what the numbers looked like that week, we'd always card before selling or trading a game rated M - even if they were bringing in M rated games to trade. Those who didn't faced termination on the spot. As far as it being a deterant, well... I and my co-workers would card, the kid would always get a parent, and after telling the parent what's what, they'd still cave and buy the kid the game - I never had a case where mom said, "Pick something else, little Johnny, you're too young." Even after the whole Hot Coffee mess, I'd still get parents coming in asking for GTA:SA for their kids, and after explaining we didn't carry it because the rating had changed to AO, they'd still asked if I knew where they could get it.
Which further proves that this is already pretty much enforced among retailers... once a game is rated AO, good luck finding it, because I personally don't know of any brick n' mortar retailers that will carry them. In the case of GTA:SA, I don't know of any store that didn't immediately pull it from shelves once Hot Coffee hit the fan.
...is if the sequels were optioned as well. This is bound to get me flamed, but IMHO, the adaptation of the rest of the quartet would suck. 20+ pages of philosophical and scientific diatribe between two characters doesn't translate very well to the screen... and this is most of the last three books, especially Xenocide The screenplays would read more like transcripts of a talk show than science fiction flicks...
Weathermen are trained in prediction, geologists aren't.
And in the process, he wouldn't be at all aware of trends crucial to making predictions...
The way it works is that geologists measure past trends, and then experts on prediction and data analysis need to take over.
And years and years of watching those trends, along with education and experience, wouldn't make them qualified at all to make an educated prediction. That's just asinine elitism at work... "It's not his intellictual turf, it's someone else's!" Don't tell me someone with a background in crunching numbers is better at predicting the behavior of the Earth than an actual student of it.
People like you believe whoever has impressive sounding academic credentials and happens to be preaching what you want to hear. Whether it makes sense or not is irrelevant.
Nah, I know there's plenty of folks with a graduate education serving my coffee at Starbucks... it takes more than a sheepskin to impress me. Peices of paper don't count nearly as much with me as accomplishments and experience. Yet another asinine assumption on your part... go you!
I'd like to see you tell that to the Iraqi people with a straight face. More relevantly, have you ever heard of the Kyoto Accord?
Iraq has nothing to do with partisan politics, as both parties showed overwhelming support while on the road to war. As for Kyoto, of course he's heard of it, as Australia has also refused to sign.
The world does revolve around American partisan politics in the sense that the Republicans stand in the way of global cooperation.
So Clinton also refusing to push the treaty to Congress for ratification was what you'd consider opening doors for international relationships?
...as the world's only remaining superpower destroying man's last hope (at working together to resolve our differences).
...with help from China and India, who are in agreement with the treaty but exempt from its framework, leaving the largest chunk of the global population free to pollute until their hearts are content. The whole treaty is flawed, and even Clinton recognized this. Hell, under Byrd-Hagel, it was illgeal for Gore to sign it in the first place. US partisan politics have absolutely nothing to do with the debate surrounding this treaty... you'll find people on both sides of the aisle who want nothing to do with it, to include two presidents representing both parties.
You can make Bush shoulder the blame for doing a lot of things unilaterally, but this isn't one of them.
Training and research in geology and related subjects only qualifies you to provide input data for climate models (including historical data and relevant geochemical data), not to make predictions.
And in the process, he wouldn't be at all aware of trends crucial to making predictions...
What you're saying is kind of like stating a weatherman can't predict a storm surge after a hurricane because he's not an oceanographer, and therfore, unqualified. What a troll.
I guess the most important peice of paper should be the experience section of the resume itself. HR should know what to look for, instead of filtering out resumes into a cert - no cert pile (or degree - no degree pile). Certainly with a little effort, knowledge, and common sense, you could get better job canidates by actually giving closer scrutiny to the accomplishments/job history section of a resume than you would filtering by education alone (gee, applicant A has 10 years in the field with the same company making things happen with no certs/degree, but we're going to interview the wet-behind-the-ears CS grad with his Phoenix Online degree crisp out of the printer instead).
So one peice of paper is a better judge of a person's knowledge and experience than another piece of paper?
While a degree takes significantly more time, effort, and cash to obtain, I can promise you that if you show up for your classes, remember to pick up your books at least once before tests, and do your work as you're supposed to, you're going to graduate. College educations are so prolific now that educational quality has dropped significantly, while universities continue flood the job-market with sheepskins. How many college graduates do you know of who stil write email liek this k thank you? There are plenty. Most of the best administrators and techs I know have very little college education, with a two-year degree at most.. and no certs. And some of the CS degree holders I've known couldn't write a "Hello, world!" program if their very lives depended on it.
I never said our opinions were equally valid. What you're missing here is the fact that nothing I have to say will do anything to influence your thinking, which really is the bottom line in any dispute. If I know you will walk away, thougts and opinions unchanged, what have I achieved? Nothing. I have accomplished the equivelant of exchanging my ideas with a pile of bricks. Your very matter-of-fact assessment of my position being "wrong," tells me anything I have to say has nearly zero chance of influence; you've already made up your mind. Even if I weren't "wrong," in your very objective opinion, any fact or point I bring forward to debate your position would be readily discounted by you as "western propaganda," and my sources of information you would find credible are extremely limited. It's kind of sad, really... you'll wander through life advocating a system that trades off limitless human potential so everyone can have the same scrap of bread, and if they're really thrifty, the same crappy car. But anyway... since you're so convinced you're right, why should I continue to discuss this with you? To what end? Perhaps I am being stubborn, but Sun Tsu sees this situation differently:
Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical. If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are. Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content.
- Sun Tzu
Not seeing the value added in using my time to engage in this discussion further doesn't make me stubborn; it makes me a capitalist. No profit? No point!;)
You're also missing the fact that not everything is so truly black and white. Right/wrong, better/worse... rarely are things so neatly categorized when considered in proper context. Perhaps your experience leads you to believe something different. So be it. The fact is your government failed where mine hasn't even hiccuped. Capitalism is a thriving reality while the Soviet Union is a chapter in history books. The fact is you lost when you said no country should respect the IP rights of others, as I believe our original discussion was about innovations. See, an truly innovative society doesn't have to rip-off, or lay foundations with, ideas from other nations. It comes up with its own. Unfortunately for you, it's difficult to gauge the true innovativeness of the USSR, as most of the Soviet Union was built on science and technology developed by Americans:
Essay on propaganda in the early Soviet Union - "Energetic factory workers sometimes got written up in local papers as our Russian-Americans. These propaganda terms of praise encouraged others to copy the "Americanisms": speedy, efficient work skills and willingness to adapt to new ways of doing things. Pravda, long the written propaganda bellwether noted in 1935, "Comrade Stalin teaches us to combine the broad scope of the Russian Revolution with American efficiency...For us America ought to be that standard according to which we can constantly test our technical attainments.""source = (note: PBS = Public Broadcasting System, or Public TV. About as left-thinking as you can get here in the USA)
So you were in space first. Whoopie. Innovation is about who's doing it better. If the Soviets were equally (remember, that's the context of this discussion... equally) innovative to their capitalist counterparts, what were they sharing with the rest of the world that was so great? What brand recognition did the Soviet Union enjoy? Perhaps the USSR did a fair share of business in bringing its puppet satellite nations outside of Eastern Europe out of the stone age, but never in the West did anyone ever say, "Hey, the Soviets build a better light bulb!" Fact of the matter is, if the Soviets were doing it better, they'd still be running the show over there. Sadly the short-sightedness of Soviet leadership and the narrow scope of a communist agenda prevented any chance the USSR had of sustaining itself before the horse even left the gate.
As an exercise (to see whether you can see through the fog of propaganda), please think of at least one factor that greatly benefited the United States (and European countries), which was not present in either Russia or the Soviet Union and of one huge shortcoming that Russia/Soviet Union had, which most of the other countries didn't (and don't).
That's easy. The New York Yankees.:D
We're both equally brainwashed by the ideologies of our respective nations, so I'm letting this thing lie.
Ah, now I completely understand. I've met a few other Russians who also say that capitalism ruined everything, and the Soviet form of communism was the greatest thing ever. Yeah, I guess I can understand why you would have that perspective when one day you have bread, and the next, none.
But a free market economy's still the way to go. Capitalist nations are the global spearheads of innovation. I grant you that the USSR had one or two milestones of invention. The eye surgery that corrected my vision was developed by a Russian who's still practicing today. They were first to put a man in space. They've the only national airline in the world flying zero aircraft built in the U.S. I could be mistaken, but I can't think of anyone outside of Aeroflot not flying something made by Boeing or MD (if there's an airline that's 100% airbus, I do apologize). But because, as you say yourself, the Soviet Union (and China) had zero respect for IP rights, how many of those innovations can they honestly take full credit for without having to thank some hard-working western scientist or engineer or programmer for? Who's more motivated to invent, the guy with the job security and food on the table, or the person with both a fat bonus and a pink slip dangled in front of him at the same time?
"Today the average welfare recipient lives better than the kings of Europe did 250 years ago. Our poor people are fat sitting in air conditioned trailors watching color TV instead of dying in the gutters."
"12% of Americans live below the poverty line. As opposed to 10% in China, BTW."
And you trust facts and figures released by the Chinese government? Wow. (by the way, the 10% on the CIA's "factbook" was provided by the Chinese) That aside, how were your calculations made? What sources are you using?
Just FYI, 10% of over one billion > 12% of 285 million, so whatever point you were trying to make with this handy little factoid totally escapes me. But because you seem to think Lennin had it right where the US founding fathers did not, I ask you why China is bar none the world's biggest violator of copyright and intellictual property law if they're so capable of an economy full of technological innovation. This isn't to mention their extremely large and active network of information gatherers (read: spies) trying to "aquire" military, nuclear, engineering, and other secrets. If they're as great as you tout, why don't they just build this stuff themselves, instead of stealing it? This is just as good as the Chinese sending a Nigerian chain letter...
"Most honorable nuclear engineer, if you could just share the superuser info for the FTP you keep your most super-secret uranium refinement data on..."
Sometimes I wonder if there is a limit to how much this figure can be exaggerated. Real story: several millions died because of very bad harvest (remember, climate sucks in Russia) and destruction of economy by the Civil War. A few more millions died directly in Civil War.
Again, I'd like to know your source for the "real story." I don't doubt millions of Russians were killed during World War II, but again, I doubt you're considering the source of your information and the fact that most of the BS to come out of communist nations is propaganda.
BTW, if you meant other countries, such as Cambogia, it would have been nice of you to mention that carpet bombing by US Air Forces killed more Cambogians than Pol Pot did (news to you?)
Yes, actually, it probably is news to him, considering the high estimates for Cambodian (you did mean CamboDia, didn't you?) killed are around 500,000 (sources here or here) vs. 1.5 million killed by Pol Pot. And that's Pol Pot's low figures.
"..and total misery for the poor bastards forced to live under communist rule."
"I dunno, I rather enjoyed it. Certainly was better than having half the population living in poverty and a quarter of the population starving."
Let's put aside the fact that you claim you actually enjoyed living in nations where the thought police not only exist, but thrive, and human rights are non-existant. Didn't you just say that only 12% of Americans are living below the poverty line? In what capitalist nation have you lived where 50% of the people are poor and 25% are starving? I'm curious.
Slashdot Mirror
1a. and that brand is managed for the market and the market alone. Genuine aesthetic decisions come in second at best, always. Those brands will be managed to generate the optimal revenue stream, always.
1b. this dependent relationship makes you rather powerless. Most fans will engage in a lot of apologetics for the franchise, brand, or producer that has earned their loyalty, and sometimes it even leads to advocacy of questionable policy if it is in the interest of their brand."
WTF? You're seriously trying to intellectualize someone's taste in geek entertainment and make a case for it as a bad thing?
Response to 1: What's the dependency you're refering to? Seems to me unless we're talking brand loyalty to a smack dealer, he's free to walk away from the relationship at anytime - namely, when something better comes along. He's no slave to anything, the brand needs him, and not the other way around.
1a: a product is absolutely managed for the market, you're 100% correct. Beyond that, the statement you're trying to make here is oversimplified to the point of being absurd. Every product has a market they're trying to reach, and every product wants to appeal to that market. Whether the revenue stream is measured in paid subscriptions (in the case of WoW) or increased community support (in the case of FSF projects), it doesn't matter. As for "genuine aesthetic decisions" not driven by market demand, well, unless we're discussing pure art, they're best left second to function. Again, it puzzles me why you say all these things as if they're bad.
1b: on the contrary, the consumer has all the power. As I said, the marketer needs you more than you need it. As for questionable policy, that's all about personal values, isn't it? I like Oreos and am willing to share when I have some. Some eat my Oreos, others don't because Nabisco uses animal products in production of Oreos. This is objectional to some, but not to me, because I am not a vegetarian. Does this mean I deserve to be slapped with some kind of label with negative conotations, such as neanderthal carnivore, because I don't share these beliefs? Or should I be free to call the vegetarians a bunch of hippy-dippy nut jobs because they don't think like I do? Neither, I think.
"2. It puts your role as "consumer" in front of an identity as "citizen," "thinker," "producer," or "critic." The "fan" is a very strange post-modern creation: it joins consumption with a kind of religious or spiritual devotion, or loyalty. It isn't exactly religion per se, but if consumer goods are the most dynamic and visible things in our environment - and I think they often are - then it isn't surprising that they can generate these kind of feelings. I find that troubling."
2: It sounds to me like you've spent waaaaay too much time in a graduate Humanities program. It's extremely presumptous (not to mention arrogant) of you to assume you know this person's motivations for purchasing and enjoying a video game. Personally, I fail to see how someone being a "fanboy" of Blizzard makes any kind of statement on their ability to think, reason, or act responsibly as a member of society. Even in the sole context of making a purchasing decision regarding a MMO video game, you assume this person hasn't played any other MMO games, read any reviews of other MMOs, or done any introspective thinking into what he actually enjoys spending his leisure time playing. He simply must've heard "Blizzard!" whispered to him in a dream, and out of pure compulsion, gave in to the irresistable urge to buy their products, and play their game!
"3. While one may have become a fan due to a positive experience of a product, the transference of value from the experience to the brand may make you resistant to experiences from outside the brand. An investment into the brand is made that is disproportionate to the value of that expe
One /.'er calling another one 'dork.' That's AWESOME! I think it's a pretty safe bet more than a handful of folks here actually do wear chain mail and plumed hats. Call it a hunch.
It's a civil suit. The jury is to decide based on perponderance of the evidence, and it's not as narrow as "beyond a reasonable doubt." All the RIAA has to do is convince a jury of their entitlement, and that the estate was more than likely the cause for damage, for them to win. Simply saying, "I don't know," may not cut it, depending on what the RIAA has on the deceased. A defense beyond ignorance would be wise, and still costly.
Iran never had a shot at being any kind of communist power, as its government fell to fundamentalist zealots. Given the school of thought these people come from, it's likely they would've come to power regardless of anyone's involvement.
Your ideals are respectable, and I applaud them. This kind of open-source discrimination, however, is not the answer. The Orwellian reference is actually pretty spot on - terrorists with a hard-on to use this type of software are now free to do so, while any organized military is forbidden from touching it, if even to find and exploit weaknesses in self-defense. Not really "supporting the troops," in my mind - even those who joined for noble purposes such as defending their homes, saving lives, and making humanitarian efforts happen when no one else will (like the scientist in Antarctica who needed life-saving treatment to stave off cancer - thanks, USAF!).
I can't speak for New York, but just about everyone on the tubes in London has a copy of the "free throwaway 10 pager" during their morning commute. I wouldn't just dismiss the potential.
I'm not sure coroprate adoption is the priorty at this stage. While it would be a great thing, just about every IT employee from a sysad to the CIO should already be aware that OpenOffice is an option. Those people don't need the education of an ad as much as Joe User, who may not be able to afford MS Office.
Distribute the ad to typical PC users without $600 to spend on MS Office. Watch market share and popularity grow. Then let them go to work and say to their managers, "Hey, I use OpenOffice at home, can we start using it here?" Managers see OpenOffice is free, and suggest it as a "cost-cutting" measure to earn them their next promotion. Managers never listen to IT anyway, so in spite of IT's protests that MS Office works much better, they wind up having to deploy it regardless. That's the impact I'd shoot for.
Funny how he forgot to mention exploitation of labor as one of their "tricks." Not too terribly long ago, you could almost compare them to any sweatshop in China and find parallels. How'd that class-action a couple years back work out for ya, EA?
I admit, I don't know if the situation's improved for EA programmers since the lawsuit was settled. This is pure speculation on my part, but given their corporate culture, I don't doubt they're still working under "constant crunch" conditions. Any manager worth a damn can see this is counter-productive in terms of quality and turnover rates, but hey, make 'em code until they collapse anyway!
Now if we can work on the rest of China's exports, we'll be back on top!
It appears she didn't prove much of anything. In fact, it may have been decompression on her spinal cord that caused the short-term improvement, not stem cells at all.
...um, for my wife... because she watches... yeah, that's it...
Um... am I the only one who pegged the OP as satire? Or are people just that easy to inflame anymore?
not to mention disproportionaly difficult to hunt or harvest than other animals.
Difficult to hunt? Are you kidding me? Just stand on a corner, offer chocolate for passwords, and they line up like lambs to the slaughter. In fact, some US Postal workers have done quite well without using bait.
Really? I thought they were two countried divided by borders, an ocean, Texan presidents don't get on well with royalty, blah blah blah...
Amusing anticdote, slightly off-topic. I'm a US expat living in the UK, and was spending my Thanksgiving in the village pub. Being recently moved here, I was trying to get to know my fellow villagers and make friends. Started having a great conversation with one guy about New Orleans, the music scene, jazz, and all the wonderful culture there.
Then this older bloke comes in and hears us speaking. Immediately he picks up on my accent and the fact that we're talking about New Orleans and says, "Louisiana? Isn't that where they filmed that movie coming on Sky tonight? You know the one... the one with the banjo, oh, what's it called?"
"Deliverance?" I asked. "Yeah, that's it!" he said. "So you're from there, eh? Some of those people kin to you?" I kind of chuckled and said, "No, I'm not at all like those people. First, they're from Georgia, and second, I've still got all my teeth."
I then turned back to the chap I'd been talking to for a good hour about New Orleans and Jazz, and noticed he was no longer attentive, uninterested in talking further, and staring either straight ahead or into his pint. It was only when he turned to pay that I noticed he was a few incisors short of a full grille... whoops.
Absolutely. I also used to moonlight at a GameStop a few months back. No matter what the numbers looked like that week, we'd always card before selling or trading a game rated M - even if they were bringing in M rated games to trade. Those who didn't faced termination on the spot. As far as it being a deterant, well... I and my co-workers would card, the kid would always get a parent, and after telling the parent what's what, they'd still cave and buy the kid the game - I never had a case where mom said, "Pick something else, little Johnny, you're too young." Even after the whole Hot Coffee mess, I'd still get parents coming in asking for GTA:SA for their kids, and after explaining we didn't carry it because the rating had changed to AO, they'd still asked if I knew where they could get it.
Which further proves that this is already pretty much enforced among retailers... once a game is rated AO, good luck finding it, because I personally don't know of any brick n' mortar retailers that will carry them. In the case of GTA:SA, I don't know of any store that didn't immediately pull it from shelves once Hot Coffee hit the fan.
...is if the sequels were optioned as well. This is bound to get me flamed, but IMHO, the adaptation of the rest of the quartet would suck. 20+ pages of philosophical and scientific diatribe between two characters doesn't translate very well to the screen... and this is most of the last three books, especially Xenocide The screenplays would read more like transcripts of a talk show than science fiction flicks...
Maybe they could shorten it...
"The trees are made out of pequeninos!!!"
Keep reading... he's one of the, "Hate the sin, love the sinner," camp.
Weathermen are trained in prediction, geologists aren't.
And in the process, he wouldn't be at all aware of trends crucial to making predictions...
The way it works is that geologists measure past trends, and then experts on prediction and data analysis need to take over.
And years and years of watching those trends, along with education and experience, wouldn't make them qualified at all to make an educated prediction. That's just asinine elitism at work... "It's not his intellictual turf, it's someone else's!" Don't tell me someone with a background in crunching numbers is better at predicting the behavior of the Earth than an actual student of it.
People like you believe whoever has impressive sounding academic credentials and happens to be preaching what you want to hear. Whether it makes sense or not is irrelevant.
Nah, I know there's plenty of folks with a graduate education serving my coffee at Starbucks... it takes more than a sheepskin to impress me. Peices of paper don't count nearly as much with me as accomplishments and experience. Yet another asinine assumption on your part... go you!
I'd like to see you tell that to the Iraqi people with a straight face. More relevantly, have you ever heard of the Kyoto Accord?
...as the world's only remaining superpower destroying man's last hope (at working together to resolve our differences).
Iraq has nothing to do with partisan politics, as both parties showed overwhelming support while on the road to war. As for Kyoto, of course he's heard of it, as Australia has also refused to sign.
The world does revolve around American partisan politics in the sense that the Republicans stand in the way of global cooperation.
So Clinton also refusing to push the treaty to Congress for ratification was what you'd consider opening doors for international relationships?
...with help from China and India, who are in agreement with the treaty but exempt from its framework, leaving the largest chunk of the global population free to pollute until their hearts are content. The whole treaty is flawed, and even Clinton recognized this. Hell, under Byrd-Hagel, it was illgeal for Gore to sign it in the first place. US partisan politics have absolutely nothing to do with the debate surrounding this treaty... you'll find people on both sides of the aisle who want nothing to do with it, to include two presidents representing both parties.
You can make Bush shoulder the blame for doing a lot of things unilaterally, but this isn't one of them.
Training and research in geology and related subjects only qualifies you to provide input data for climate models (including historical data and relevant geochemical data), not to make predictions.
And in the process, he wouldn't be at all aware of trends crucial to making predictions...
What you're saying is kind of like stating a weatherman can't predict a storm surge after a hurricane because he's not an oceanographer, and therfore, unqualified. What a troll.
Forgot to add:
I guess the most important peice of paper should be the experience section of the resume itself. HR should know what to look for, instead of filtering out resumes into a cert - no cert pile (or degree - no degree pile). Certainly with a little effort, knowledge, and common sense, you could get better job canidates by actually giving closer scrutiny to the accomplishments/job history section of a resume than you would filtering by education alone (gee, applicant A has 10 years in the field with the same company making things happen with no certs/degree, but we're going to interview the wet-behind-the-ears CS grad with his Phoenix Online degree crisp out of the printer instead).
So one peice of paper is a better judge of a person's knowledge and experience than another piece of paper?
While a degree takes significantly more time, effort, and cash to obtain, I can promise you that if you show up for your classes, remember to pick up your books at least once before tests, and do your work as you're supposed to, you're going to graduate. College educations are so prolific now that educational quality has dropped significantly, while universities continue flood the job-market with sheepskins. How many college graduates do you know of who stil write email liek this k thank you? There are plenty. Most of the best administrators and techs I know have very little college education, with a two-year degree at most.. and no certs. And some of the CS degree holders I've known couldn't write a "Hello, world!" program if their very lives depended on it.
I noticed you said jobs.. as in, plural.. you think you'd notice less turnover if you actually knew what you were certified for?
I never said our opinions were equally valid. What you're missing here is the fact that nothing I have to say will do anything to influence your thinking, which really is the bottom line in any dispute. If I know you will walk away, thougts and opinions unchanged, what have I achieved? Nothing. I have accomplished the equivelant of exchanging my ideas with a pile of bricks. Your very matter-of-fact assessment of my position being "wrong," tells me anything I have to say has nearly zero chance of influence; you've already made up your mind. Even if I weren't "wrong," in your very objective opinion, any fact or point I bring forward to debate your position would be readily discounted by you as "western propaganda," and my sources of information you would find credible are extremely limited. It's kind of sad, really... you'll wander through life advocating a system that trades off limitless human potential so everyone can have the same scrap of bread, and if they're really thrifty, the same crappy car. But anyway... since you're so convinced you're right, why should I continue to discuss this with you? To what end? Perhaps I am being stubborn, but Sun Tsu sees this situation differently:
;)
Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical. If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are. Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. - Sun Tzu
Not seeing the value added in using my time to engage in this discussion further doesn't make me stubborn; it makes me a capitalist. No profit? No point!
You're also missing the fact that not everything is so truly black and white. Right/wrong, better/worse... rarely are things so neatly categorized when considered in proper context. Perhaps your experience leads you to believe something different. So be it. The fact is your government failed where mine hasn't even hiccuped. Capitalism is a thriving reality while the Soviet Union is a chapter in history books. The fact is you lost when you said no country should respect the IP rights of others, as I believe our original discussion was about innovations. See, an truly innovative society doesn't have to rip-off, or lay foundations with, ideas from other nations. It comes up with its own. Unfortunately for you, it's difficult to gauge the true innovativeness of the USSR, as most of the Soviet Union was built on science and technology developed by Americans:
Essay on propaganda in the early Soviet Union - "Energetic factory workers sometimes got written up in local papers as our Russian-Americans. These propaganda terms of praise encouraged others to copy the "Americanisms": speedy, efficient work skills and willingness to adapt to new ways of doing things. Pravda, long the written propaganda bellwether noted in 1935, "Comrade Stalin teaches us to combine the broad scope of the Russian Revolution with American efficiency...For us America ought to be that standard according to which we can constantly test our technical attainments."" source = (note: PBS = Public Broadcasting System, or Public TV. About as left-thinking as you can get here in the USA)
So you were in space first. Whoopie. Innovation is about who's doing it better. If the Soviets were equally (remember, that's the context of this discussion... equally) innovative to their capitalist counterparts, what were they sharing with the rest of the world that was so great? What brand recognition did the Soviet Union enjoy? Perhaps the USSR did a fair share of business in bringing its puppet satellite nations outside of Eastern Europe out of the stone age, but never in the West did anyone ever say, "Hey, the Soviets build a better light bulb!" Fact of the matter is, if the Soviets were doing it better, they'd still be running the show over there. Sadly the short-sightedness of Soviet leadership and the narrow scope of a communist agenda prevented any chance the USSR had of sustaining itself before the horse even left the gate.
As an exercise (to see whether you can see through the fog of propaganda), please think of at least one factor that greatly benefited the United States (and European countries), which was not present in either Russia or the Soviet Union and of one huge shortcoming that Russia/Soviet Union had, which most of the other countries didn't (and don't).
:D
That's easy. The New York Yankees.
We're both equally brainwashed by the ideologies of our respective nations, so I'm letting this thing lie.
Ah, now I completely understand. I've met a few other Russians who also say that capitalism ruined everything, and the Soviet form of communism was the greatest thing ever. Yeah, I guess I can understand why you would have that perspective when one day you have bread, and the next, none.
But a free market economy's still the way to go. Capitalist nations are the global spearheads of innovation. I grant you that the USSR had one or two milestones of invention. The eye surgery that corrected my vision was developed by a Russian who's still practicing today. They were first to put a man in space. They've the only national airline in the world flying zero aircraft built in the U.S. I could be mistaken, but I can't think of anyone outside of Aeroflot not flying something made by Boeing or MD (if there's an airline that's 100% airbus, I do apologize). But because, as you say yourself, the Soviet Union (and China) had zero respect for IP rights, how many of those innovations can they honestly take full credit for without having to thank some hard-working western scientist or engineer or programmer for? Who's more motivated to invent, the guy with the job security and food on the table, or the person with both a fat bonus and a pink slip dangled in front of him at the same time?
"Today the average welfare recipient lives better than the kings of Europe did 250 years ago. Our poor people are fat sitting in air conditioned trailors watching color TV instead of dying in the gutters."
:D
"12% of Americans live below the poverty line. As opposed to 10% in China, BTW."
And you trust facts and figures released by the Chinese government? Wow. (by the way, the 10% on the CIA's "factbook" was provided by the Chinese) That aside, how were your calculations made? What sources are you using?
Just FYI, 10% of over one billion > 12% of 285 million, so whatever point you were trying to make with this handy little factoid totally escapes me. But because you seem to think Lennin had it right where the US founding fathers did not, I ask you why China is bar none the world's biggest violator of copyright and intellictual property law if they're so capable of an economy full of technological innovation. This isn't to mention their extremely large and active network of information gatherers (read: spies) trying to "aquire" military, nuclear, engineering, and other secrets. If they're as great as you tout, why don't they just build this stuff themselves, instead of stealing it? This is just as good as the Chinese sending a Nigerian chain letter...
"Most honorable nuclear engineer, if you could just share the superuser info for the FTP you keep your most super-secret uranium refinement data on..."
Sometimes I wonder if there is a limit to how much this figure can be exaggerated. Real story: several millions died because of very bad harvest (remember, climate sucks in Russia) and destruction of economy by the Civil War. A few more millions died directly in Civil War.
Again, I'd like to know your source for the "real story." I don't doubt millions of Russians were killed during World War II, but again, I doubt you're considering the source of your information and the fact that most of the BS to come out of communist nations is propaganda.
BTW, if you meant other countries, such as Cambogia, it would have been nice of you to mention that carpet bombing by US Air Forces killed more Cambogians than Pol Pot did (news to you?)
Yes, actually, it probably is news to him, considering the high estimates for Cambodian (you did mean CamboDia, didn't you?) killed are around 500,000 (sources here or here) vs. 1.5 million killed by Pol Pot. And that's Pol Pot's low figures.
"..and total misery for the poor bastards forced to live under communist rule."
"I dunno, I rather enjoyed it. Certainly was better than having half the population living in poverty and a quarter of the population starving."
Let's put aside the fact that you claim you actually enjoyed living in nations where the thought police not only exist, but thrive, and human rights are non-existant. Didn't you just say that only 12% of Americans are living below the poverty line? In what capitalist nation have you lived where 50% of the people are poor and 25% are starving? I'm curious.
I look forward to the troll mod for this.