It does seem to be that way in the US, but it wasn't a few years ago when I was doing my PhD in theoretical physics in the UK. I knew noone who worked anywhere approaching those hours. Yeah, some days you might do 10 hours to get something finished for a meeting or conference, but that's par for the course for any job really. I am currently doing a postdoc at an Ivy League college in the US, and the grad students here do seem to work longer hours; perhaps that is something to do with the US grad student culture.
They shut down websites because they go against the values of their leaders, we also shut down websites because they go against the values of our leaders, only in our case those values are measured in US dollars and the driving motivation is not a (perhaps misplaced) belief in a higher power but instead pure, unadulterated greed.
On the other hand, since when has it been a human right to go through life free of offense? The world does not, and should not, tiptoe around random individuals and their own personal sense of propriety.
Toughen up, Brits. You're making me damn well ashamed of my ancestry with limp wristed nonsensical horse shit like this.
I am a Brit and I support this statement. I fully intend to write to my MP, although I expect nothing but the usual pat response (yay, democracy).
I have been unable to watch Starship Troopers and enjoy it because it has about as much to do with the contents of the book as my comment has to do with whether or not there is ice on the moon. With Lord of the Rings, it was not so objectionable but Starship Troopers and not even a single mention of H&MP? History and Moral Philosophy was an absolutely central tenet of that book. It is not like leaving Tom Bombadil out (even though he was important to understanding some things).
I had the fortune not to have read the book before watching the movie. I later tried to read the book but found it too slow for my liking (I may appreciate it more now that I am older). I had a similar experience with Dune; I saw the film before reading the book so I did not have any preconceptions. Of course the book is far far better but I do not hate the film, even though it strays from the book in so many respects. Learning from these experiences I have tried wherever possible to watch the film before reading the books (Watchmen, Hunger Games), and if a film/television adaptation of my favourite books appears later I pretend it does not exist until I have heard a suitable amount of praise that I am able to approach it with an open mind (e.g. Game of Thrones).
That's the point though, they're not. The movie industry has been posting record box office profits every single year for the last few decades, with no sign of slowing down, despite the world going through a financial crisis.
That is true, although Hollywood accounting is notoriously unreliable.
Downloads cost them servers and bandwidth.
If you take away the cinemas, you lose the profits from the over priced food.
If you lower the price of your product, you lower the perceived value
If your customers are accustomed to a particular price point, selling below that point will lose you more profit than you'll recover by increased sales.
Mod poster Funny?
"Downloads cost them servers and bandwidth." - meanwhile everyone and their dogs are downloading their movies over bit-torrent at no additional cost to either them or the movie makers.
"If you lower the price of your product, you lower the perceived value" - for the last 10 years untold millions of people have been downloading their films for free. I think they're long past the point of having to worry about the 'perceived value' of their product!
"If your customers are accustomed to a particular price point, selling below that point will lose you more profit than you'll recover by increased sales." - addendum: If your customers are leaving you in droves and you refuse to change your pricing strategy, and instead try your very hardest to piss off the people who you should be trying to woo, then you deserve everything you get.
I agree, Starship Troopers is one of my all-time favourite films. Over-the-top with gore and it doesn't take itself too seriously, plus, as you say, it's dripping with satire.
(I'm looking forward to checking out Forever Free, I just learned about that in this thread.)
I wouldn't bother, seriously. It has an ending worse than the Dark Tower series' descent into 'Oh look these robots are flinging about Harry Potter (TM) snitches!'. I loved the Forever War, but this 'sequel' is one of the few books that has made me embarrassed for reading it.
On the other hand, Forever Peace, which is by the same author but is not a sequel (different universe, different take on war but similarly thought-provoking to the Forever War), is excellent and well worth reading. You can pick up all three Forever books in the Peace and War omnibus so you can make up your own mind, although Amazon do not appear to be selling them new anymore.
This sounds exactly like the technique used by renegade biochemist Vergil Ulam in Greg Bear's Blood Music. The Wikipedia article does not mention the fact that the protagonist's bio-engineered creations used tame viruses to communicate. It's always funny how science fiction becomes science fact; I just hope we do not make the same mistakes.
Google didn't kill anyone - hang the blame where it is deserved -- the religious idealists that actually committed the acts.
I was pondering such thoughts earlier. I imagined a caged tiger pacing around its cage and some guy deliberately acting to enrage it. The tiger breaks out of the cage and attacks nearby innocent people. There are several key players: the tiger, the guy antagonising the tiger, the people responsible for the security of the cage, the park personnel who allowed the guy to piss off the tiger, and the punters who were attacked (who clearly should not be blamed).
We ask: who do we blame for the attacks?
On the one hand we have the guy antagonising the tiger. Yes he knew that he was making the tiger really really mad, and probably had a good laugh doing so. He maybe even had a vague notion that unpleasant things would happen should the tiger escape. Chronologically he was certainly the person who instigated the whole thing, and yes he was an asshole, so perhaps he should be blamed? I guess, but people pissing off the animals is pretty common in zoos.
What about the people in charge of cage security? Certainly their negligence allowed the tiger to escape. With the knowledge that a surprisingly large number of people take great pleasure in irritating their charges, and that tigers are particularly irritable creatures, they should have done a much better job of securing the cage.
What about the park personnel who allowed the guy to continue antagonising the tiger. They could have easily prevented it from happening by giving the guy a firm scolding for his antics. However it is probably not in their job descriptions to prevent people from having a good time at the zoo. I expect that they would not be keen to kick out irritating people, lest they attract undue attention for being party-poopers and hence drive off all customers. Some might say that it is the punters right to do what he wants within the zoo providing he does not deliberately sabotage the cages or other such purposeful acts of vandalism.
Lastly we have the tiger. Here's where the analogy breaks down. One cannot blame a tiger for doing what tigers do. However the murderers in the real scenario are supposedly intelligent creatures who must be held responsible for their actions, even if they choose to act like animals.
I concluded that the blame should be divided between the animal and the people in charge of cage security for their negligence. The irritating guy should be criticised for being an asshole but not blamed for the attacks.
If only the religious zealots realized all they had to do was lodge a false DMCA claim through a bot...
Interesting idea. They should also consider applying for copyrights and trademarks on the Prophet Muhammad and associated works, then they can use the power of the courts to strike down anyone depicting the Prophet for violating their rights.
Now people know that the law is being enforced they will quickly educate themselves on the trivial ways to avoid being caught, which in turn will make it virtually impossible to enforce and will give further evidence to the claim that these three-strikes laws are pointless and ineffective.
In a luxury apartment building (i.e. gym, door and laundry service, concierge, rooftop garden), yes, that's about right. However in places like the East Village - which is considered quite expensive in Manhattan standards - most decent one-bedroom places go for around $2200 and you can pick up a two-bedroom for $2500.
Or I could continue to live in my 5 bedroom house with a significantly cheaper mortgage payment, building equity, and deciding which fruit trees I should plant in the yard. I really don't understand all the suburb hate. Sure, I have to drive to get a number of places, but because I have a car I can go downtown, or out into the rural, or wherever else, and it takes about as long. Plus I get more/nicer living space, a nice yard, and nice neighbors, with essentially zero crime.
I've got nothing much against suburbs, although if I had a choice I would live in the country. Having a yard and a larger place are definitely plus points. The problem with driving into NYC is the prohibitive cost and difficulty of finding parking, not to mention the bridge tolls and the insane way that people drive on the streets there.
Well as a personal anecdote, I am currently living in a luxury apartment building (with gym, pool, concierge, doorman, laundry service and rooftop garden) on the Upper East Side and I am paying $3225 split between my girlfriend and I for a 1-br on the 30th floor with a view of central park. When searching for this place last month we saw at least 10 similar apartments in the same price range.
Look, please don't take offense to this. I'm not trying to be mean. But there is no way that exists. You're telling me you live in Central Park East and you're only paying $3225 for a 1 bedroom? I'd want to see the lease documents on that. That's quite frankly even more rare than seeing a unicorn. And to see 10 of them? Hogwash. And the excuse about the economy can't be used. NYC is the only one that was exempt on the housing market values.
I have no reason to lie. It's not on Central Park, its on 96th and Lexington, but as we are on the 30th floor we see over the park - lovely sunsets too. Here is a website with the availabilities in our building: The Monterey, there are plenty on there to choose from around $3200. If you want to come live in the building please email us as we get a $1000 bonus for enticing new tenants.
Also, the East Village is no-longer the shithole it was in the 80's - sure it has NYU kids but it also has a bounty of small local shops and restaurants, and also a great sense of community, that really can't be found elsewhere in the city (apart from maybe the West Village).
That's very true. It's actually a nice, fun area. Though for me it kinda stinks. No interest in dating a 18 year old who is out drinking until 4 am at the local lounge every night. But yes it does have character. But the point still stands. If you're actually living and *working* in the city (students with mommy and daddy paying the rent don't count), no one wants to live in the E. village because it negates any conveniences living and working in the city offers.
You seem fixated on the idea that the East Village is inconvenient for traveling in the city, which I have never found to be the case. As far as I can tell, Midtown is the only place in the city that would satisfy your 'on-the-doorstep-of-everything' criteria, in which case fair enough, I hope you like noise and elbowing through flocks of tourists in order to get out of your building. The East Village is far more trendy and interesting, and has much better bars and restaurants, i.e. not stupidly expensive tourist traps.
Lastly, NYC can NOT be traversed in the time u mention. Hell, I had a co-worker long time ago who lived in the Village and had a 45 minute commute (using a quick 1 train ride) to Wall St. So unless you live right next to work, you are "commuting" in Manhattan as well.
Dude, was your co-worker commuting on horse-and-carriage? You can *walk* from both the East Village and West Village to Wall St. in less than 45 minutes. I would regularly travel from the top of the Upper West Side down to the East Village and that would take only 45 minutes.
Haha, maybe.:) I'm just going by what she told me. 45 minutes, with a train ride. Don't forget Wall St is pretty big. Walking 45 min to the beginning of Wall *area* by the Seaport *maybe*. But I gotta call you out on walking from the Upper West to the East village. No way, train or walk, did you make it in 45 minutes.
When I said I traveled from the Upper West Side to the East Village, I meant by train. I did this at least twice a week for a year. I lived on 103rd and Broadway (until last month) - just take the 1 to 96th st., hop on the 2/3 (express) to 14th st then transfer to the L to get to 1st avenue in the East Village. My gf lived on 11th and 1st and my trip never took longer than 45 mins, often it would be quicker if I was lucky with the trains.
And of course you know, 1 bedrooms start at $3,200/mo
In a luxury apartment building (i.e. gym, door and laundry service, concierge, rooftop garden), yes, that's about right. However in places like the East Village - which is considered quite expensive in Manhattan standards - most decent one-bedroom places go for around $2200 and you can pick up a two-bedroom for $2500.
I'm sure you can find places that cheap, but I doubt that they're no less than super-rare. All my friends live in the city for years, and I've never even heard of rent that cheap unless it was for a shitty walk-up studio. And it's the East Village. Who wants to live there? It's not close to anything. Part of why people live in NYC to live within walking distance to work. It would take 45 minute commute to get anywhere from the E. Village. And no, it's $3,200 for a place with no amenities like you mentioned. And a walk-up. And no doorman. I don't know how you get the places you do, but to all reading this, let me assure you it's not the norm.
Well as a personal anecdote, I am currently living in a luxury apartment building (with gym, pool, concierge, doorman, laundry service and rooftop garden) on the Upper East Side and I am paying $3225 split between my girlfriend and I for a 1-br on the 30th floor with a view of central park. When searching for this place last month we saw at least 10 similar apartments in the same price range.
Also, the East Village is no-longer the shithole it was in the 80's - sure it has NYU kids but it also has a bounty of small local shops and restaurants, and also a great sense of community, that really can't be found elsewhere in the city (apart from maybe the West Village).
Lastly, NYC can NOT be traversed in the time u mention. Hell, I had a co-worker long time ago who lived in the Village and had a 45 minute commute (using a quick 1 train ride) to Wall St. So unless you live right next to work, you are "commuting" in Manhattan as well.
Dude, was your co-worker commuting on horse-and-carriage? You can *walk* from both the East Village and West Village to Wall St. in less than 45 minutes. I would regularly travel from the top of the Upper West Side down to the East Village and that would take only 45 minutes.
And of course you know, 1 bedrooms start at $3,200/mo
In a luxury apartment building (i.e. gym, door and laundry service, concierge, rooftop garden), yes, that's about right. However in places like the East Village - which is considered quite expensive in Manhattan standards - most decent one-bedroom places go for around $2200 and you can pick up a two-bedroom for $2500.
I dare to disagree. TR was at least something new. It was one of the few games where you could actually see people cooperate "by chance" rather than after hours of group assembly. You'd just go down to one of the contested outposts and sure enough you'd eventually notice how people came by and joined the fight until you had the numbers to overcome the opposition. If anyone knows of a game that has a similar approach to gameplay, I'd love to hear it.
The Guild Wars 2 dynamic event system is very similar. Just wandering around you often come across one of these events, and you can just hop right in and join - no need to party up. The last stages of the event typically feature a mini-boss, and often have 20 or 30 people joining the fight who came together by just happening to be in the area and getting the notice that a nearby event is in progress.
During my undergraduate in Physics at Oxford, most of the lecturers would write on the blackboard and expect you to copy it down word for word. They would not always supply a printed course summary so your copied notes were the material you learnt from. Of course you would have books as well, but without the notes to guide you, you would not know what parts of the book to concentrate on and what parts to skip.
I found this worked very well for me. I would pick up almost nothing during the lecture, but somehow something would sink in because when I came to study the material in more detail I would find it familiar. My strategy was to take my notes and summarise them into about 10 pages per course. I would then take that summary and make very short, 1-2 page crib notes. Somehow by repeated copying of the material I would absorb it and retain it. Aside from the homework problems I would also work through 4 or 5 years of past exam questions (we were given these by the lecturers as a matter of course, but for some reason in the US people seem to consider this cheating). Clearly this strategy worked as I am now an academic researcher!
Public money is the only way of funding blue-sky research. No company is going to invest large enough sums in a long-term research project that may or may not pan out. However sometimes those projects result in major leaps that would not have happened otherwise. It cannot be argued that government funding has not resulted in significant breakthroughs in energy generation; just read up on the history of nuclear, wind, wave, and even hydroelectric power (you think the Hoover Dam was a private enterprise?). Whether the subsidies are effective or not is another matter, and I will be happy to examine the facts that you mention.
Hold on so what this article is saying is that once again the free market is taking care of us where the government has failed miserably? But thats not what the democrats tell me. The liberals keep telling me how bad the free market is at responding to, well, anything.
The free market is doing what it does best; taking existing technology and improving it in order to make money. However without the government most of these technologies wouldn't exist in the first place as very few companies are willing to invest in long-term research projects. Nuclear power was obviously developed with government funding, but (large scale) wind power technology was also (by the US DoE and NASA). Solar power developments are not so clear-cut, but the large-scale adoption and falling costs of these technologies are likely due to government incentive programs. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the role of the government.
You bring up a good point about the cops hanging out in pedo forums etc. The way I see it, that's where the real action is for law enforcement. You will never nab the sickos by poaching exit nodes and putting people in jail because some kiddy porn or whatever went through it. That would be stupid as the real criminals are the ones actually consuming and creating that content. The government should be happy that tor exists. It gives them a honeypot where they can do real police work. Go to a pedo forum and blend in. Get people to trust you and get some pics with identifying exif data, or whatever and make a bust. Rinse and repeat. You'd be a fool to go after the exit nodes. It would be like busting your informants. The bottom line is many criminals are stupid and despite using tor they will fuck up. Old fashioned police work does not mean being stupid and taking down the exits. I hope I haven't been unclear.
It's true that you will not nab the sickos by poaching exit nodes. However if you make people scared enough that they are afraid to host exit nodes for fear of being thrown in jail for trafficking kiddie porn then the Tor network becomes less usable and the sickos are forced out into the open where it is much easier to find them. This is a much easier strategy than the elaborate tactics you describe.
"You don't have to abuse the end user to have a gaming platform that allows developers to make money."
Is asking the user to actually pay for their software abusive? And there is a large number of people who do live their lives with a sense of entitlement. People who want free games, free applications, free OS, free music, and free movies.
If they're not paying then the software is not priced correctly. Most people would pay for software if they consider it worth the money. The real underlying problem is that the software developers / music labels / movie studios believe their product to be worth more than people are willing to pay, and many also believe that suing the public and imposing draconian restrictions on what they are allowed to do with their hardware will somehow make everyone see the error of their ways and start paying them what they want. They are mistaken, although I doubt they will realise before its too late.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just a job; it's an indenture.
It does seem to be that way in the US, but it wasn't a few years ago when I was doing my PhD in theoretical physics in the UK. I knew noone who worked anywhere approaching those hours. Yeah, some days you might do 10 hours to get something finished for a meeting or conference, but that's par for the course for any job really. I am currently doing a postdoc at an Ivy League college in the US, and the grad students here do seem to work longer hours; perhaps that is something to do with the US grad student culture.
They shut down websites because they go against the values of their leaders, we also shut down websites because they go against the values of our leaders, only in our case those values are measured in US dollars and the driving motivation is not a (perhaps misplaced) belief in a higher power but instead pure, unadulterated greed.
On the other hand, since when has it been a human right to go through life free of offense? The world does not, and should not, tiptoe around random individuals and their own personal sense of propriety.
Toughen up, Brits. You're making me damn well ashamed of my ancestry with limp wristed nonsensical horse shit like this.
I am a Brit and I support this statement. I fully intend to write to my MP, although I expect nothing but the usual pat response (yay, democracy).
I have been unable to watch Starship Troopers and enjoy it because it has about as much to do with the contents of the book as my comment has to do with whether or not there is ice on the moon. With Lord of the Rings, it was not so objectionable but Starship Troopers and not even a single mention of H&MP? History and Moral Philosophy was an absolutely central tenet of that book. It is not like leaving Tom Bombadil out (even though he was important to understanding some things).
I had the fortune not to have read the book before watching the movie. I later tried to read the book but found it too slow for my liking (I may appreciate it more now that I am older). I had a similar experience with Dune; I saw the film before reading the book so I did not have any preconceptions. Of course the book is far far better but I do not hate the film, even though it strays from the book in so many respects. Learning from these experiences I have tried wherever possible to watch the film before reading the books (Watchmen, Hunger Games), and if a film/television adaptation of my favourite books appears later I pretend it does not exist until I have heard a suitable amount of praise that I am able to approach it with an open mind (e.g. Game of Thrones).
If your customers are leaving you in droves
That's the point though, they're not. The movie industry has been posting record box office profits every single year for the last few decades, with no sign of slowing down, despite the world going through a financial crisis.
That is true, although Hollywood accounting is notoriously unreliable.
Downloads cost them servers and bandwidth. If you take away the cinemas, you lose the profits from the over priced food. If you lower the price of your product, you lower the perceived value If your customers are accustomed to a particular price point, selling below that point will lose you more profit than you'll recover by increased sales.
Mod poster Funny?
"Downloads cost them servers and bandwidth." - meanwhile everyone and their dogs are downloading their movies over bit-torrent at no additional cost to either them or the movie makers.
"If you lower the price of your product, you lower the perceived value" - for the last 10 years untold millions of people have been downloading their films for free. I think they're long past the point of having to worry about the 'perceived value' of their product!
"If your customers are accustomed to a particular price point, selling below that point will lose you more profit than you'll recover by increased sales." - addendum: If your customers are leaving you in droves and you refuse to change your pricing strategy, and instead try your very hardest to piss off the people who you should be trying to woo, then you deserve everything you get.
No sympathy from me.
I agree, Starship Troopers is one of my all-time favourite films. Over-the-top with gore and it doesn't take itself too seriously, plus, as you say, it's dripping with satire.
(I'm looking forward to checking out Forever Free, I just learned about that in this thread.)
I wouldn't bother, seriously. It has an ending worse than the Dark Tower series' descent into 'Oh look these robots are flinging about Harry Potter (TM) snitches!'. I loved the Forever War, but this 'sequel' is one of the few books that has made me embarrassed for reading it.
On the other hand, Forever Peace, which is by the same author but is not a sequel (different universe, different take on war but similarly thought-provoking to the Forever War), is excellent and well worth reading. You can pick up all three Forever books in the Peace and War omnibus so you can make up your own mind, although Amazon do not appear to be selling them new anymore.
This sounds exactly like the technique used by renegade biochemist Vergil Ulam in Greg Bear's Blood Music. The Wikipedia article does not mention the fact that the protagonist's bio-engineered creations used tame viruses to communicate. It's always funny how science fiction becomes science fact; I just hope we do not make the same mistakes.
Google didn't kill anyone - hang the blame where it is deserved -- the religious idealists that actually committed the acts.
I was pondering such thoughts earlier. I imagined a caged tiger pacing around its cage and some guy deliberately acting to enrage it. The tiger breaks out of the cage and attacks nearby innocent people. There are several key players: the tiger, the guy antagonising the tiger, the people responsible for the security of the cage, the park personnel who allowed the guy to piss off the tiger, and the punters who were attacked (who clearly should not be blamed).
We ask: who do we blame for the attacks?
On the one hand we have the guy antagonising the tiger. Yes he knew that he was making the tiger really really mad, and probably had a good laugh doing so. He maybe even had a vague notion that unpleasant things would happen should the tiger escape. Chronologically he was certainly the person who instigated the whole thing, and yes he was an asshole, so perhaps he should be blamed? I guess, but people pissing off the animals is pretty common in zoos.
What about the people in charge of cage security? Certainly their negligence allowed the tiger to escape. With the knowledge that a surprisingly large number of people take great pleasure in irritating their charges, and that tigers are particularly irritable creatures, they should have done a much better job of securing the cage.
What about the park personnel who allowed the guy to continue antagonising the tiger. They could have easily prevented it from happening by giving the guy a firm scolding for his antics. However it is probably not in their job descriptions to prevent people from having a good time at the zoo. I expect that they would not be keen to kick out irritating people, lest they attract undue attention for being party-poopers and hence drive off all customers. Some might say that it is the punters right to do what he wants within the zoo providing he does not deliberately sabotage the cages or other such purposeful acts of vandalism.
Lastly we have the tiger. Here's where the analogy breaks down. One cannot blame a tiger for doing what tigers do. However the murderers in the real scenario are supposedly intelligent creatures who must be held responsible for their actions, even if they choose to act like animals.
I concluded that the blame should be divided between the animal and the people in charge of cage security for their negligence. The irritating guy should be criticised for being an asshole but not blamed for the attacks.
My two cents.
If only the religious zealots realized all they had to do was lodge a false DMCA claim through a bot...
Interesting idea. They should also consider applying for copyrights and trademarks on the Prophet Muhammad and associated works, then they can use the power of the courts to strike down anyone depicting the Prophet for violating their rights.
Now people know that the law is being enforced they will quickly educate themselves on the trivial ways to avoid being caught, which in turn will make it virtually impossible to enforce and will give further evidence to the claim that these three-strikes laws are pointless and ineffective.
In a luxury apartment building (i.e. gym, door and laundry service, concierge, rooftop garden), yes, that's about right. However in places like the East Village - which is considered quite expensive in Manhattan standards - most decent one-bedroom places go for around $2200 and you can pick up a two-bedroom for $2500.
Or I could continue to live in my 5 bedroom house with a significantly cheaper mortgage payment, building equity, and deciding which fruit trees I should plant in the yard. I really don't understand all the suburb hate. Sure, I have to drive to get a number of places, but because I have a car I can go downtown, or out into the rural, or wherever else, and it takes about as long. Plus I get more/nicer living space, a nice yard, and nice neighbors, with essentially zero crime.
I've got nothing much against suburbs, although if I had a choice I would live in the country. Having a yard and a larger place are definitely plus points. The problem with driving into NYC is the prohibitive cost and difficulty of finding parking, not to mention the bridge tolls and the insane way that people drive on the streets there.
Well as a personal anecdote, I am currently living in a luxury apartment building (with gym, pool, concierge, doorman, laundry service and rooftop garden) on the Upper East Side and I am paying $3225 split between my girlfriend and I for a 1-br on the 30th floor with a view of central park. When searching for this place last month we saw at least 10 similar apartments in the same price range.
Look, please don't take offense to this. I'm not trying to be mean. But there is no way that exists. You're telling me you live in Central Park East and you're only paying $3225 for a 1 bedroom? I'd want to see the lease documents on that. That's quite frankly even more rare than seeing a unicorn. And to see 10 of them? Hogwash. And the excuse about the economy can't be used. NYC is the only one that was exempt on the housing market values.
I have no reason to lie. It's not on Central Park, its on 96th and Lexington, but as we are on the 30th floor we see over the park - lovely sunsets too. Here is a website with the availabilities in our building: The Monterey, there are plenty on there to choose from around $3200. If you want to come live in the building please email us as we get a $1000 bonus for enticing new tenants.
Also, the East Village is no-longer the shithole it was in the 80's - sure it has NYU kids but it also has a bounty of small local shops and restaurants, and also a great sense of community, that really can't be found elsewhere in the city (apart from maybe the West Village).
That's very true. It's actually a nice, fun area. Though for me it kinda stinks. No interest in dating a 18 year old who is out drinking until 4 am at the local lounge every night. But yes it does have character. But the point still stands. If you're actually living and *working* in the city (students with mommy and daddy paying the rent don't count), no one wants to live in the E. village because it negates any conveniences living and working in the city offers.
You seem fixated on the idea that the East Village is inconvenient for traveling in the city, which I have never found to be the case. As far as I can tell, Midtown is the only place in the city that would satisfy your 'on-the-doorstep-of-everything' criteria, in which case fair enough, I hope you like noise and elbowing through flocks of tourists in order to get out of your building. The East Village is far more trendy and interesting, and has much better bars and restaurants, i.e. not stupidly expensive tourist traps.
Lastly, NYC can NOT be traversed in the time u mention. Hell, I had a co-worker long time ago who lived in the Village and had a 45 minute commute (using a quick 1 train ride) to Wall St. So unless you live right next to work, you are "commuting" in Manhattan as well.
Dude, was your co-worker commuting on horse-and-carriage? You can *walk* from both the East Village and West Village to Wall St. in less than 45 minutes. I would regularly travel from the top of the Upper West Side down to the East Village and that would take only 45 minutes.
Haha, maybe. :) I'm just going by what she told me. 45 minutes, with a train ride. Don't forget Wall St is pretty big. Walking 45 min to the beginning of Wall *area* by the Seaport *maybe*. But I gotta call you out on walking from the Upper West to the East village. No way, train or walk, did you make it in 45 minutes.
When I said I traveled from the Upper West Side to the East Village, I meant by train. I did this at least twice a week for a year. I lived on 103rd and Broadway (until last month) - just take the 1 to 96th st., hop on the 2/3 (express) to 14th st then transfer to the L to get to 1st avenue in the East Village. My gf lived on 11th and 1st and my trip never took longer than 45 mins, often it would be quicker if I was lucky with the trains.
And of course you know, 1 bedrooms start at $3,200/mo
In a luxury apartment building (i.e. gym, door and laundry service, concierge, rooftop garden), yes, that's about right. However in places like the East Village - which is considered quite expensive in Manhattan standards - most decent one-bedroom places go for around $2200 and you can pick up a two-bedroom for $2500.
I'm sure you can find places that cheap, but I doubt that they're no less than super-rare. All my friends live in the city for years, and I've never even heard of rent that cheap unless it was for a shitty walk-up studio. And it's the East Village. Who wants to live there? It's not close to anything. Part of why people live in NYC to live within walking distance to work. It would take 45 minute commute to get anywhere from the E. Village. And no, it's $3,200 for a place with no amenities like you mentioned. And a walk-up. And no doorman. I don't know how you get the places you do, but to all reading this, let me assure you it's not the norm.
Well as a personal anecdote, I am currently living in a luxury apartment building (with gym, pool, concierge, doorman, laundry service and rooftop garden) on the Upper East Side and I am paying $3225 split between my girlfriend and I for a 1-br on the 30th floor with a view of central park. When searching for this place last month we saw at least 10 similar apartments in the same price range.
Also, the East Village is no-longer the shithole it was in the 80's - sure it has NYU kids but it also has a bounty of small local shops and restaurants, and also a great sense of community, that really can't be found elsewhere in the city (apart from maybe the West Village).
Lastly, NYC can NOT be traversed in the time u mention. Hell, I had a co-worker long time ago who lived in the Village and had a 45 minute commute (using a quick 1 train ride) to Wall St. So unless you live right next to work, you are "commuting" in Manhattan as well.
Dude, was your co-worker commuting on horse-and-carriage? You can *walk* from both the East Village and West Village to Wall St. in less than 45 minutes. I would regularly travel from the top of the Upper West Side down to the East Village and that would take only 45 minutes.
And of course you know, 1 bedrooms start at $3,200/mo
In a luxury apartment building (i.e. gym, door and laundry service, concierge, rooftop garden), yes, that's about right. However in places like the East Village - which is considered quite expensive in Manhattan standards - most decent one-bedroom places go for around $2200 and you can pick up a two-bedroom for $2500.
I dare to disagree. TR was at least something new. It was one of the few games where you could actually see people cooperate "by chance" rather than after hours of group assembly. You'd just go down to one of the contested outposts and sure enough you'd eventually notice how people came by and joined the fight until you had the numbers to overcome the opposition. If anyone knows of a game that has a similar approach to gameplay, I'd love to hear it.
The Guild Wars 2 dynamic event system is very similar. Just wandering around you often come across one of these events, and you can just hop right in and join - no need to party up. The last stages of the event typically feature a mini-boss, and often have 20 or 30 people joining the fight who came together by just happening to be in the area and getting the notice that a nearby event is in progress.
What are the alternatives to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security? Let the old, poor and jobless just die? Are you comfortable with this?
Fantasy rather than science fiction, but truly excellent books and rather depressing.
I forgot to name the author: Robin Hobb.
Fantasy rather than science fiction, but truly excellent books and rather depressing.
During my undergraduate in Physics at Oxford, most of the lecturers would write on the blackboard and expect you to copy it down word for word. They would not always supply a printed course summary so your copied notes were the material you learnt from. Of course you would have books as well, but without the notes to guide you, you would not know what parts of the book to concentrate on and what parts to skip.
I found this worked very well for me. I would pick up almost nothing during the lecture, but somehow something would sink in because when I came to study the material in more detail I would find it familiar. My strategy was to take my notes and summarise them into about 10 pages per course. I would then take that summary and make very short, 1-2 page crib notes. Somehow by repeated copying of the material I would absorb it and retain it. Aside from the homework problems I would also work through 4 or 5 years of past exam questions (we were given these by the lecturers as a matter of course, but for some reason in the US people seem to consider this cheating). Clearly this strategy worked as I am now an academic researcher!
Public money is the only way of funding blue-sky research. No company is going to invest large enough sums in a long-term research project that may or may not pan out. However sometimes those projects result in major leaps that would not have happened otherwise. It cannot be argued that government funding has not resulted in significant breakthroughs in energy generation; just read up on the history of nuclear, wind, wave, and even hydroelectric power (you think the Hoover Dam was a private enterprise?). Whether the subsidies are effective or not is another matter, and I will be happy to examine the facts that you mention.
Hold on so what this article is saying is that once again the free market is taking care of us where the government has failed miserably? But thats not what the democrats tell me. The liberals keep telling me how bad the free market is at responding to, well, anything.
The free market is doing what it does best; taking existing technology and improving it in order to make money. However without the government most of these technologies wouldn't exist in the first place as very few companies are willing to invest in long-term research projects. Nuclear power was obviously developed with government funding, but (large scale) wind power technology was also (by the US DoE and NASA). Solar power developments are not so clear-cut, but the large-scale adoption and falling costs of these technologies are likely due to government incentive programs. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the role of the government.
You bring up a good point about the cops hanging out in pedo forums etc. The way I see it, that's where the real action is for law enforcement. You will never nab the sickos by poaching exit nodes and putting people in jail because some kiddy porn or whatever went through it. That would be stupid as the real criminals are the ones actually consuming and creating that content. The government should be happy that tor exists. It gives them a honeypot where they can do real police work. Go to a pedo forum and blend in. Get people to trust you and get some pics with identifying exif data, or whatever and make a bust. Rinse and repeat. You'd be a fool to go after the exit nodes. It would be like busting your informants. The bottom line is many criminals are stupid and despite using tor they will fuck up. Old fashioned police work does not mean being stupid and taking down the exits. I hope I haven't been unclear.
It's true that you will not nab the sickos by poaching exit nodes. However if you make people scared enough that they are afraid to host exit nodes for fear of being thrown in jail for trafficking kiddie porn then the Tor network becomes less usable and the sickos are forced out into the open where it is much easier to find them. This is a much easier strategy than the elaborate tactics you describe.
"You don't have to abuse the end user to have a gaming platform that allows developers to make money." Is asking the user to actually pay for their software abusive? And there is a large number of people who do live their lives with a sense of entitlement. People who want free games, free applications, free OS, free music, and free movies.
If they're not paying then the software is not priced correctly. Most people would pay for software if they consider it worth the money. The real underlying problem is that the software developers / music labels / movie studios believe their product to be worth more than people are willing to pay, and many also believe that suing the public and imposing draconian restrictions on what they are allowed to do with their hardware will somehow make everyone see the error of their ways and start paying them what they want. They are mistaken, although I doubt they will realise before its too late.