If you RTFA, it looks like the cops are saying that they should get counseling because the kid and parents were upset by the incident.
Regardless of whether the search was reasonable, do you realize how misled you (and many others, including those who've responded to you) have been by the summary's "scare quotes"? The summary makes it sounds like the kid is being sent in for "reprogramming".
I'm probably wasting my time typing this, because it won't change anything anyway. Slashdotters will primarily continue to curse the way the government misleads the citizens, then turn around and fall for this kind of crap.
Why is it that anyone who's learned the slightest bit of game theory suddenly thinks everything is a Prisoner's Dilemma?
In a (1-shot) Prisoner's Dilemma, one action is always better for you than another, leaving little to analyze.
In the Bacteria's game, the bacteria are obviously programmed to do what is best to ensure the survival of the species. (FTFA: "bacteria usually do not cheat their friends and inform them by sending chemical messages about their true intensions.") Whether a bacterium should spore or not depends on the proportion of other bacteria doing each action. This is not the structure of a P.D. It's one thing for journalists to make a bad reference, but the physicist himself refers to Prisoner's Dilemma.
"The procedure is being temporarily implemented and will only be effective until February 28, 2010. Upon review, the Office may extend the procedure in time or may extend the set of applicants that will be able to file for special status under the procedure."
Just vague enough to allow the possibility of another round of this procedure. It could just mean they retain the option to extend the Feb 28 filing deadline. Or, it could mean that they extend the Oct 1 cutoff, the possibility of which does give incentive for multi-filing. I'm guessing they are intentionally vague, wanting to discourage abuse of this policy, yet keeping their future options open.
The above comment disregarding the fact that a US jury is almost certainly likely to be biased against a foreigner
Yeah, how typical of those Americans to pre-judge someone from another country. Fortunately, people like you are above that, as evidenced by your comment.
GM is stupid because they're charging too much, and the customers are stupid because they're paying it? You can't have your cake and eat it too:
GM is sinking faster than an anvil in a swimming pool....1000 bucks for 472 dollar rally stripes and some tacky emblems applied in a couple of spots?
First you're ripping GM for charging a lot. You want them to price at cost instead? Yeah, that'd make a tidy profit!
Or are you saying that at $1000, no one is going to buy this option? I'll take that bet in a heartbeat.
Or are you making the naive argument that "they'd sell more if they lowered the price."? (Suppose they could sell 700 units of these at 1000 bucks a pop, or they could sell twice as many, 1400 units, at your price of 472 units a pop. Which is better?)
WOW....HOW about 472 bucks for rally stripes and 500 bucks into a decent aftermarket exhaust?
Second your beef is with the customers who buy this option, not with the company who charges an arm and a leg for it. You realize this has nothing to do with the competence of GM management, right?
Its obvious they are smoking the good shit in Detroit...
I can spot at least 5 moderators who were down wind.
That's a clever thought. But how long would it take to write a program that figures out how to decode your permutation using a dictionary? And if you're doing anything more complicated than one-for-one substitution, you're basically back to what can already be done with flash, graphics, etc.
These kind of studies are largely pointless. We already know this, and the media industry will not believe it regardless of how many studies come to this conclusion.
It is equally pointless to post a summary of this economic paper to slashdot. Everyone here "already knows" the answers.
Let me explain what it means when an economist says "society benefits". (By the way, I am one.) If a policy change causes Person A to lose $1 and Person B to gain $2, then "society benefits". If a policy change causes Persons A and B and C each to lose $1,000, but Person D gains $5,000, then "society benefits".
If you RTFpdf, you'll notice one argument they make: While file sharing may have caused the music industry (including artists) to lose money, sales of MP3 players skyrocketed! Therefore, it is plausible that "society benefited."
Now, see why it's not so simple? We may prefer artists to get $1, rather than Apple and Sandisk to get $2.
It gets even worse. The main argument of the paper is on page 6:
Three conditions need to hold for [file sharing] to undermine the incentives for artistic production: [1] original works and copies on file-sharing networks must be reasonably close substitutes; [2] artists and the entertainment industry must not be able to shift from previous sources of income to the (similarly profitable) sale of complements; and [3] falling incomes must be an important-enough motivator for artists to reduce production. Only if all three conditions hold will file sharing hurt social welfare.
Translation: Social welfare goes down if: [1] the mp3's you share are just as good as the one's you'd rip yourself. [2] the extra concert/tshirt revenues you make are less than the revenue lost to file sharing. [3] Some artists would have to quit the business if their pay goes down.
[1] and [3] are laughably true. One could debate whether [2] is true, but certainly there are artists who make good music, but would not survive when the music execs tell them they have to bring in more revenue from concerts.
I am in favor of higher gas taxes. However, this needs to be coupled with fuel efficiency regulations. You cannot just use one or the other.
Better fuel efficiency means less fuel used and more miles driven. Taxes mean less fuel used and less miles driven.
The first one sounds a lot better! So, we should not just use taxes.
OTOH, of course better fuel efficiency can have the perverse effect of making people want to buy even more gas because they can get so much use out of it. (Think RV's.) For this reason, we cannot just increase fuel efficiency, we must also use taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
No string bets please. The pot stands at one 4th amendment plus the justice is blinds.
If you RTFA, it looks like the cops are saying that they should get counseling because the kid and parents were upset by the incident.
Regardless of whether the search was reasonable, do you realize how misled you (and many others, including those who've responded to you) have been by the summary's "scare quotes"? The summary makes it sounds like the kid is being sent in for "reprogramming".
I'm probably wasting my time typing this, because it won't change anything anyway. Slashdotters will primarily continue to curse the way the government misleads the citizens, then turn around and fall for this kind of crap.
Why is it that anyone who's learned the slightest bit of game theory suddenly thinks everything is a Prisoner's Dilemma?
In a (1-shot) Prisoner's Dilemma, one action is always better for you than another, leaving little to analyze.
In the Bacteria's game, the bacteria are obviously programmed to do what is best to ensure the survival of the species. (FTFA: "bacteria usually do not cheat their friends and inform them by sending chemical messages about their true intensions.") Whether a bacterium should spore or not depends on the proportion of other bacteria doing each action. This is not the structure of a P.D. It's one thing for journalists to make a bad reference, but the physicist himself refers to Prisoner's Dilemma.
True, but ...
"The procedure is being temporarily implemented and will only be effective until February 28, 2010. Upon review, the Office may extend the procedure in time or may extend the set of applicants that will be able to file for special status under the procedure."
Just vague enough to allow the possibility of another round of this procedure. It could just mean they retain the option to extend the Feb 28 filing deadline. Or, it could mean that they extend the Oct 1 cutoff, the possibility of which does give incentive for multi-filing. I'm guessing they are intentionally vague, wanting to discourage abuse of this policy, yet keeping their future options open.
The above comment disregarding the fact that a US jury is almost certainly likely to be biased against a foreigner
Yeah, how typical of those Americans to pre-judge someone from another country. Fortunately, people like you are above that, as evidenced by your comment.
Except in this case, there was already theory and evidence. See citations here.
OP is right; this is not novel, but merely adds to existing evidence.
Mmmm.... breaded bacteria in a gown.....*drool* *drool*
And this, boys and girls, was the story of how "*boing*" became the first copyrighted cartone.
I agree, those prices look low to my layperson eyes. Let's see what they actually go for.
By the way, it's actually a pair of triceratops(-like) for half a million. Team up with a friend!
I had that dream too!
GM is stupid because they're charging too much, and the customers are stupid because they're paying it? You can't have your cake and eat it too:
GM is sinking faster than an anvil in a swimming pool....1000 bucks for 472 dollar rally stripes and some tacky emblems applied in a couple of spots?
First you're ripping GM for charging a lot. You want them to price at cost instead? Yeah, that'd make a tidy profit!
Or are you saying that at $1000, no one is going to buy this option? I'll take that bet in a heartbeat.
Or are you making the naive argument that "they'd sell more if they lowered the price."? (Suppose they could sell 700 units of these at 1000 bucks a pop, or they could sell twice as many, 1400 units, at your price of 472 units a pop. Which is better?)
WOW....HOW about 472 bucks for rally stripes and 500 bucks into a decent aftermarket exhaust?
Second your beef is with the customers who buy this option, not with the company who charges an arm and a leg for it. You realize this has nothing to do with the competence of GM management, right?
Its obvious they are smoking the good shit in Detroit...
I can spot at least 5 moderators who were down wind.
That's a clever thought. But how long would it take to write a program that figures out how to decode your permutation using a dictionary? And if you're doing anything more complicated than one-for-one substitution, you're basically back to what can already be done with flash, graphics, etc.
Plus I can fit 5,000 pictures in my pocket on a thumb drive without having to carry 500 lbs. of photo albums over to someone's house to look at them.
To summarize: the two main advantages to digital are (i) backups, and (ii) the ability to bore your friends conveniently.
According to the summary, it appears they didn't.
From http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/steal :
steal transitive verb 1 a: to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully.
Sounds like an accurate use to me.
These kind of studies are largely pointless. We already know this, and the media industry will not believe it regardless of how many studies come to this conclusion.
It is equally pointless to post a summary of this economic paper to slashdot. Everyone here "already knows" the answers.
Let me explain what it means when an economist says "society benefits". (By the way, I am one.) If a policy change causes Person A to lose $1 and Person B to gain $2, then "society benefits". If a policy change causes Persons A and B and C each to lose $1,000, but Person D gains $5,000, then "society benefits".
If you RTFpdf, you'll notice one argument they make: While file sharing may have caused the music industry (including artists) to lose money, sales of MP3 players skyrocketed! Therefore, it is plausible that "society benefited."
Now, see why it's not so simple? We may prefer artists to get $1, rather than Apple and Sandisk to get $2.
It gets even worse. The main argument of the paper is on page 6:
Three conditions need to hold for [file sharing] to undermine the
incentives for artistic production: [1] original works and copies on file-sharing networks
must be reasonably close substitutes; [2] artists and the entertainment industry must not be
able to shift from previous sources of income to the (similarly profitable) sale of
complements; and [3] falling incomes must be an important-enough motivator for artists to
reduce production. Only if all three conditions hold will file sharing hurt social welfare.
Translation: Social welfare goes down if:
[1] the mp3's you share are just as good as the one's you'd rip yourself.
[2] the extra concert/tshirt revenues you make are less than the revenue lost to file sharing.
[3] Some artists would have to quit the business if their pay goes down.
[1] and [3] are laughably true. One could debate whether [2] is true, but certainly there are artists who make good music, but would not survive when the music execs tell them they have to bring in more revenue from concerts.
Considering they can't even prevent former employees from doing it, I'd say yeah, you're right. (Google NioNio if you don't know the story.)
Optionally, make the adult world understand...
Ok, hold on a sec.
*Waves Anti-Idiot Wand +5*
There, that should do it. Keep in mind about 3% of the population probably made their save.
I am in favor of higher gas taxes. However, this needs to be coupled with fuel efficiency regulations. You cannot just use one or the other.
Better fuel efficiency means less fuel used and more miles driven.
Taxes mean less fuel used and less miles driven.
The first one sounds a lot better! So, we should not just use taxes.
OTOH, of course better fuel efficiency can have the perverse effect of making people want to buy even more gas because they can get so much use out of it. (Think RV's.) For this reason, we cannot just increase fuel efficiency, we must also use taxes.
Today's moderators are from Spain.
Come to think of it, it's not just today.
I see these spiders all the time, i use a broom to get them out of the house.
Do you mind if I use that for a submission?
4. Introspective, enumerated reflections on the tendencies of nerds.
No, it's a cultural issue, like GP said. Need a counterexample for your claim? Oy vey, I bet I can think of one.
Well that depends. Are they African or European?
Not to mention D&D and heavy metal music.