Here's a quick lesson in economics: if something costs more than you make, don't get it. If a house costs 10 times what you make in a year, you will never repay it (does not apply to extreme income levels). And don't ever, ever sign anything you don't understand. If you can't parse a mortgage agreement, keep renting. There's absolutely nothing wrong with renting.
You're essentially accusing the Pirate Party of lying on their main web site - at least, lying through omission. Considering that you make that claim, I'm waiting for some support for that accusation. It's also possible to turn that question on its head: since there is no evidence against the various Pirate parties being regional, independent organizations, what makes you think that they aren't?
I can also ask you about white crows, but I'll leave that philosophical exercise out for now.
Gah. Lost my post. Quick summary of my intended reply:
The Ares I rocket merely duplicates existing lift capabilities (both American and foreign). The Ares V rocket was at risk of never meeting its design targets, not to mention that it didn't account for existing infrastructure restrictions like the max weight of the crawlers at the Kennedy Space Center. The human capsules were a replica of the old moon lander or the Soyuz capsule.
In other words, the constellation program was a retread of existing launchers when it had a chance to succeed, and was unrealistic in its operational and budgetary projections for its new capabilities. Furthermore, the entire premise was pointless and vague: to go to the Moon, then Mars. We've done the Moon, and we have nothing set for Mars. Even the Constellation program had zero capabilities for getting anyone to Mars - never mind getting anyone back.
So the Constellation program was flawed not only in its technology, but in its goals as well. As a result, I fundamentally disagree with your assessment. In my opinion, it will be cheaper to start from scratch.
Your full quote was "Gutting the manned space program to save money". The point is not to save money here. Furthermore, we're talking about Constellation, which is not capable of manned space flight right now, and wasn't projected to be for several years to come - if it would work at all. As a result, nothing in the current NASA budget can be construed as gutting the manned space program to save money.
Gutting the manned space program to save money is shortsighted and idiotic policy. NASA is not the reason that Federal red ink is spiraling out of control.
Fortunately, the NASA budget got increased for 2010. Maybe not in real dollars (seems to be a wash), but that's not exactly "gutting the manned space program." It's "gutting a program that is on a road to nowhere and replacing it with something else". Could the new program also be on a road to nowhere? Sure. But from what I've seen, it's got a better chance than that welfare program that NASA was working on earlier.
According to the senators in whose states the program was creating jobs, 3 billion a year until it works. With no indication how many years that would be, or exactly how optimistic the senators' assessment is. Considering that the 2010 NASA budget was $18 billion, that's more than pocket change.
I love the space program and want it to succeed. But to me, this smelled like throwing good money after bad.
Armstrong is also an engineer and served on the Challenger shuttle accident investigation board. Up till now he has stayed clear of politics and has been on the board of directors of many companies so yes he is also a business person.
Lynn Swann, Nancy Reagan, Michael Jordan, and Lance Armstrong are or have been on the board of directors for various companies completely unrelated to their core competencies. Look up the concept of the celebrity director on a board. Not to say that Neil Armstrong is necessarily bad, but it also doesn't mean he's any good. Jim Lovell might have a business degree, but quite frankly, I'd need to know more before ascribing him business savvy.
Frankly these man have nothing to gain at this time. They have all done what a very select few people have done. They are all pretty much set for the rest of their lives so they don't need any more money. To dismiss them I think is the height of arrogance.
Conversely, to respect them in matters in which they have no experience is the height of hero worship. The fact that I'm questioning their ability to properly assess a business decision has no impact on their past achievements - I'm sure we can agree on that. We can listen to them, sure. But their arguments have to stand on their own merit. And from what I understand of the Constellation program, it was a financial disaster and an engineering nightmare. If these astronauts want to disagree, I'm all ears. But they better say something more convincing than "You're wrong".
And to make matter worse President Obama isn't saving money by killing the Ares he is changing it from a program with at some goals to a welfare program!
The Constellation program was already a welfare program. Or did you miss the argument with which Mark Udall (senator from Colorado) and Nelson (senator from Florida) want to preserve the Constellation program? That's right, jobs. The only question is whether the new program actually has a chance to produce something useful without sucking up about 20% of NASA's budget.
So to all those that willing to dismiss these three well educated, extremely brillant, and wise men I just want you to think about it long and hard.
Again, hero worship. Well educated depends on more than a degree, general brilliance is not necessary to pilot a craft and strapping yourself to an exploding bomb to go somewhere where no one has gone before "just because" would certainly seem the exact opposite of wisdom. Could they still be all three things? Sure. But being a commander on a lunar mission does not necessarily mean any of them.
yeah, go to hell those who agreed into loans they know they couldn't afford if their "gamble" didn't pay off./me signs for loans he knows he can afford on a "worst case" scenario. (Yes, worst case for me means working at stop and shop, walmart, and mcdonalds. I'm not mexican, just ok with working "below" where my education has taken me.)
Why the hell is this modded troll? Nobody forced people into accepting loans that were ludicrous at first glance. Yes, I do blame a complete lack of financial literacy of the average population as being a significant portion of the current banking crisis. Yes, you who makes 60K a year cannot afford a 600K house. Ever. Even if the payment you sign up for initially is $50 a month. If you do apply for that loan, you are just as retarded as the person who gives you that loan.
* Make decisions beforehand with the key people. Most decisions don't really get made in the big meeting. Two or three key decision makers on the same page and the rest follow or simply refine the decision.
I can't stress this one enough. Meetings are not the place to hash out decisions - especially if they're cross-departmental meetings. I've had untold meetings wasted where we finally managed to get all the head honchos together in the same room, and we spend the hour trying to come to an agreement on point 1, sub-point a.
Instead, have an individual talk with the people who either sign the pay checks or who have some sort of authority to make things happen. Come to an agreement before the meeting, and then just present the conclusions. Yes, you should still listen to objections from others in the meeting - after all, everyone's there for a reason. But you should never, ever walk have a meeting without knowing exactly who is going to say what.
If you can make this happens, meetings are short, productive, and leave people happy. Everything else is icing on the cake.
Hopefully, that litmus test won't be applied. While I do have the utmost respect for Armstrong, Lovell and Cernan as people with brass balls the size of a Volkswagen bus, they are not accountants or business people. The number one financial rule in any project is: don't throw good money after bad money. It's gone. Don't make it worse. And from what I understand from the Constellation project, it was just not going to fly - not without pouring enough money and time into it to start from scratch. As a result, it makes sense to scratch it, even if this means short-term pain. What I'm hoping for is that the knowledge that we don't have a complete system for putting people and cargo into orbit spurs people into creating that system.
I really hope that the scratching of the Constellation project frees up the resources to create a real lifting program - or at least frees up resources to provide technical assistance to commercial ventures trying to do the same.
I'm not sure whether that is your point or not, but you make it sound as if the behavior of these European ISPs is due to their state history.
It isn't. What these ISPs have realized is that in the current Internet format, they are relegated to stodgy, low-growth, dumb-pipe company status. These types of companies stagnate in their share price and have CEOs who do not go anywhere, don't get golden parachutes and certainly do not get rock-star billing.
That's the problem right there. Every telecom CEO knows this. They know that they can make money and an honest living as a dumb-pipe infrastructure provider. But they don't want that. They didn't get to be CEO because they're happy with what they have. If they want to be hailed as a superhero CEO and get a $100 million compensation package, they know that they need to transform their companies into being at the core of the Internet. And the only way that that can possibly happen is through tiered pricing (where the tiers consist of sites, not data rates) and legalized protection racket for successful websites.
Down that road is madness. But these people don't care. This is exactly the fight that everyone was worried about: the fight to keep the intelligence on the edges of the network, and away from the inside.
There are certain changes in biosphere that I'd rather not experience. True, we could live in an environment where the atmosphere is 100% toxic, the flora is generally deadly to us and the fauna non-existent. However, humans would be clinging to life in that environment, rather than thriving in it.
I'm afraid I don't share your fatalistic view of human flexibility. I like living in luxury, thank you very much. And yes, the poorest beggar in San Francisco is still experiencing a level of luxury that was beyond the wildest dreams of kings and queens.
I see. You subscribe to the idea that stuff just happens, right? You really shouldn't comment on foreign or domestic policy then. For example:
The US president cannot just invalidate a law. A prison system cannot be just shut down without figuring out what to do with the inmates. You don't just get up and leave out of a country that is torn by sectarian violence. You don't just figure Afghanistan out. You might survive it. The economy is getting better, thank you very much. Or did you think the US President has a magic "Easy" button for the economy? You watched too many Staples commercials. You overestimate the trust that Eastern European countries and Israel put into the US.
Seriously.... with those kind of comments you merely demonstrated that you are even more naive than the people you rail against. Well, it's either naive, or you're knowingly setting up straw men. Your call.
How are all those Obama promises of change working out for you folks that supported him and voted for him?
Better than what I expected from the opposition. Yes, it sucks that he isn't the Messiah - but really, if you were expecting the Second Coming, I can't help you. So far, his unconditional support of Big Media is a disappointing, yet not entirely unsurprising development. After all, there were signs of this during his presidential campaign.
It matters to me. If tomorrow's biosphere doesn't support my existence, you can bet your ass that I care about the continuation of today's biosphere. It's nice that you support the grand scale view that ultimately, life will continue, but I'm kinda selfishly interested in the continued existence of me and that of my off-spring. Which, you know, happens to be the mechanism behind every life form that ever existed.
I can guarantee you that Traci Lords didn't start in porn just like that. As for teenagers sending pictures of themselves - I think that is not what people have in mind when they talk about child porn. And it certainly doesn't fit my definition of child porn.
Maybe we should just stick to calling this child abuse. It would make it a lot clearer what the issue is, and remove the entire crap about 16-year olds being allowed to have sex, but where videotaping it becomes a crime for which they are punished for life.
As for wikipedia, it does NOT have images of child pornography (sex). It has images of nudity, and a nude animal (which includes us) is not something to fear. Stop being afraid of bodies and their true appearance. Stop being afraid of Nature in its natural form. Nudity is also not a crime except in the minds of demented, sick people who have body phobia (i.e. they are mentally ill).
This is worth repeating: whoever says that the depiction of a nude child is porn is himself a pedophile. No one else looks at that image and goes "Man I'd like to bone that!" The most you get out of normal people is "Ohhhh... how adorable."
Undoing some mods here, but this is too important....
Or more accurately, even if viewing child porn causes not additional harm to the child depicted if people in a position to create child porn are aware there is a demand for it - which they are if people are downloading material from web sites they control - then it's much more likely that they will invest the time and resources to set up a camera and get a child to act in front of it. In many cases, the child is far from a willing participant.
Really? You got a source for that? Every child porn case I've come across started as abuse first, and then turned into a video production. Furthermore, you completely neglect a very obvious hole in your argument: that of barriers of entry. Why would anyone in their right mind fill the demand created by cartoons of child porn (which is at the very least still a grey area, thank god) with actual child porn? One involves hiring a graphic artist with a strong stomach, the other involves raping children. Really? You're telling me that there are people out there weighing those two approaches and who go "Yes, but the market for live-action child porn is under-served. I should fill that gap!"?? Yes, I agree, there are people out there who will fill that niche - but that's because they're already pedophiles, and already have victims!
There is absolutely no economic model for the creation of child porn (and it seems I'm forced to specify live-action childporn) that doesn't require pre-existing child abusers and a child.
Finally, this is an incredibly dangerous attitude to take: it implies that child porn is a regular economic industry that a) has its roots in capitalism and b) responds to capitalist levers. It completely neglects the hard truth that child rape is to 70% a family affair, performed by people who largely have themselves been abused.
Could the regular masturbating to child porn create a lower psychological barrier, and associate the release of endorphins with the graphical cues of an prepubescent child? It probably does. I can guarantee you though that whoever is jerking off to child porn already gets off on it. There's no gateway masturbation that leads from adult porn being a turn-on to child-porn being a turn on. Humans don't function like that.
In 20 years, indie studios in video gaming are starting to get a real grip on the industry. Extrapolate that. So, I say, give it a decade or so. Being at the grips of some big, monolithic evil publisher won't be an issue anymore.
Good point. Personally, I see the seeds starting now: hardware and tools are powerful enough that even without a budget, you can create a polished game experience. You don't have to code a physics engine by hand, you don't have to be a graphics wizard to create a colorful world with great draw distance, and you don't have to ration your CPU-cycles to have some sort of believable AI and pathfinding.
Since the biggest difference between blockbusters with 50 million dollar budgets and those with 50k budgets will be how many content creators and how many hair-physics creators they employ, there's a good chance that indie developers can actually be very successful. See Portal and Castle Crashers, for example.
That's because being creative and original doesn't pay. Guitar Hero, GTA and Modern Warfare spawn sequels because each sequel is HUGELY profitable. Brutal Legends won't, as it maybe broke even. Furthermore, every original game that is wildly successful will spawn a sequel - guaranteed. See Portal, for example. This means that sequels, spin-offs and expansions are guaranteed to outnumber successful original games.
However, here's something you can do to help: when an original game comes along, and it might not be the bee's knees - buy it anyway. Consider it a charity donation for Developers Taking Risks. For me, I'm pretty much set on buying every Tim Schafer game there is. They are not always magic, and often have some significant flaws, but $60 every 2-3 years is worth it to give him a chance to keep making games.
It seems to me that Vodafone will simply be another repository for android apps - except that they decide what apps to show. What would prevent anybody else from just duplicating everything but the apps over which Vodafone has copyright control?
To me, this seems more like Vodafone creating a windows app store: yes, they control what is shown, but I can still go to download.com, private sites and individual developers to get Windows apps. Same thing for Android. Well, except for those who have Vodafone phones... I'm sure there'll be some trickery on there to prevent users from getting apps from anywhere but the Vodafone store.
For fucks-sake, my 20 year old friend had a $150,000 mortgage on $30,000 of income for a house that is now worth $40,000.
One thing that I never see in these discussions is the lack of financial literacy of the general public. Who the fuck buys anything that is worth a) more than 5 times their yearly income, and b) was worth 50% the price paid for about 2-3 years ago?
I don't care what the interest rate is that you pay the first 6 months. If you make x per year and something costs 5x, you're not going to pay it off, ever. Unless you make about 10 million a year and have a golden parachute for 50 million. But then, the rules don't apply anyway.
Regulation isn't going to solve that problem. I really, really wish these people will get hit so hard by that problem that their grandkids will hear about it. Otherwise, they won't learn.
Correction - they're charging again for complete access. They used to be completely closed, then completely free, and now I'm not sure what they're charging for. I don't know what's missing though from the online edition.... I haven't read the print edition in years, but I didn't see a change in stories that are available. World, News, Politics, Business, Stats, Opinion, KAL's Cartoons.... maybe the archives are not accessible?
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a quick lesson in economics: if something costs more than you make, don't get it. If a house costs 10 times what you make in a year, you will never repay it (does not apply to extreme income levels). And don't ever, ever sign anything you don't understand. If you can't parse a mortgage agreement, keep renting. There's absolutely nothing wrong with renting.
You're essentially accusing the Pirate Party of lying on their main web site - at least, lying through omission. Considering that you make that claim, I'm waiting for some support for that accusation. It's also possible to turn that question on its head: since there is no evidence against the various Pirate parties being regional, independent organizations, what makes you think that they aren't?
I can also ask you about white crows, but I'll leave that philosophical exercise out for now.
Gah. Lost my post. Quick summary of my intended reply:
The Ares I rocket merely duplicates existing lift capabilities (both American and foreign). The Ares V rocket was at risk of never meeting its design targets, not to mention that it didn't account for existing infrastructure restrictions like the max weight of the crawlers at the Kennedy Space Center.
The human capsules were a replica of the old moon lander or the Soyuz capsule.
In other words, the constellation program was a retread of existing launchers when it had a chance to succeed, and was unrealistic in its operational and budgetary projections for its new capabilities. Furthermore, the entire premise was pointless and vague: to go to the Moon, then Mars. We've done the Moon, and we have nothing set for Mars. Even the Constellation program had zero capabilities for getting anyone to Mars - never mind getting anyone back.
So the Constellation program was flawed not only in its technology, but in its goals as well. As a result, I fundamentally disagree with your assessment. In my opinion, it will be cheaper to start from scratch.
Your full quote was "Gutting the manned space program to save money". The point is not to save money here. Furthermore, we're talking about Constellation, which is not capable of manned space flight right now, and wasn't projected to be for several years to come - if it would work at all. As a result, nothing in the current NASA budget can be construed as gutting the manned space program to save money.
Gutting the manned space program to save money is shortsighted and idiotic policy. NASA is not the reason that Federal red ink is spiraling out of control.
Fortunately, the NASA budget got increased for 2010. Maybe not in real dollars (seems to be a wash), but that's not exactly "gutting the manned space program." It's "gutting a program that is on a road to nowhere and replacing it with something else". Could the new program also be on a road to nowhere? Sure. But from what I've seen, it's got a better chance than that welfare program that NASA was working on earlier.
As I recall it was only a few billion.
According to the senators in whose states the program was creating jobs, 3 billion a year until it works. With no indication how many years that would be, or exactly how optimistic the senators' assessment is. Considering that the 2010 NASA budget was $18 billion, that's more than pocket change.
I love the space program and want it to succeed. But to me, this smelled like throwing good money after bad.
Armstrong is also an engineer and served on the Challenger shuttle accident investigation board. Up till now he has stayed clear of politics and has been on the board of directors of many companies so yes he is also a business person.
Lynn Swann, Nancy Reagan, Michael Jordan, and Lance Armstrong are or have been on the board of directors for various companies completely unrelated to their core competencies. Look up the concept of the celebrity director on a board. Not to say that Neil Armstrong is necessarily bad, but it also doesn't mean he's any good.
Jim Lovell might have a business degree, but quite frankly, I'd need to know more before ascribing him business savvy.
Frankly these man have nothing to gain at this time. They have all done what a very select few people have done. They are all pretty much set for the rest of their lives so they don't need any more money. To dismiss them I think is the height of arrogance.
Conversely, to respect them in matters in which they have no experience is the height of hero worship. The fact that I'm questioning their ability to properly assess a business decision has no impact on their past achievements - I'm sure we can agree on that. We can listen to them, sure. But their arguments have to stand on their own merit. And from what I understand of the Constellation program, it was a financial disaster and an engineering nightmare. If these astronauts want to disagree, I'm all ears. But they better say something more convincing than "You're wrong".
And to make matter worse President Obama isn't saving money by killing the Ares he is changing it from a program with at some goals to a welfare program!
The Constellation program was already a welfare program. Or did you miss the argument with which Mark Udall (senator from Colorado) and Nelson (senator from Florida) want to preserve the Constellation program? That's right, jobs. The only question is whether the new program actually has a chance to produce something useful without sucking up about 20% of NASA's budget.
So to all those that willing to dismiss these three well educated, extremely brillant, and wise men I just want you to think about it long and hard.
Again, hero worship. Well educated depends on more than a degree, general brilliance is not necessary to pilot a craft and strapping yourself to an exploding bomb to go somewhere where no one has gone before "just because" would certainly seem the exact opposite of wisdom. Could they still be all three things? Sure. But being a commander on a lunar mission does not necessarily mean any of them.
yeah, go to hell those who agreed into loans they know they couldn't afford if their "gamble" didn't pay off. /me signs for loans he knows he can afford on a "worst case" scenario. (Yes, worst case for me means working at stop and shop, walmart, and mcdonalds. I'm not mexican, just ok with working "below" where my education has taken me.)
Why the hell is this modded troll? Nobody forced people into accepting loans that were ludicrous at first glance. Yes, I do blame a complete lack of financial literacy of the average population as being a significant portion of the current banking crisis. Yes, you who makes 60K a year cannot afford a 600K house. Ever. Even if the payment you sign up for initially is $50 a month. If you do apply for that loan, you are just as retarded as the person who gives you that loan.
* Make decisions beforehand with the key people. Most decisions don't really get made in the big meeting. Two or three key decision makers on the same page and the rest follow or simply refine the decision.
I can't stress this one enough. Meetings are not the place to hash out decisions - especially if they're cross-departmental meetings. I've had untold meetings wasted where we finally managed to get all the head honchos together in the same room, and we spend the hour trying to come to an agreement on point 1, sub-point a.
Instead, have an individual talk with the people who either sign the pay checks or who have some sort of authority to make things happen. Come to an agreement before the meeting, and then just present the conclusions. Yes, you should still listen to objections from others in the meeting - after all, everyone's there for a reason. But you should never, ever walk have a meeting without knowing exactly who is going to say what.
If you can make this happens, meetings are short, productive, and leave people happy. Everything else is icing on the cake.
Hopefully, that litmus test won't be applied. While I do have the utmost respect for Armstrong, Lovell and Cernan as people with brass balls the size of a Volkswagen bus, they are not accountants or business people. The number one financial rule in any project is: don't throw good money after bad money. It's gone. Don't make it worse. And from what I understand from the Constellation project, it was just not going to fly - not without pouring enough money and time into it to start from scratch. As a result, it makes sense to scratch it, even if this means short-term pain. What I'm hoping for is that the knowledge that we don't have a complete system for putting people and cargo into orbit spurs people into creating that system.
I really hope that the scratching of the Constellation project frees up the resources to create a real lifting program - or at least frees up resources to provide technical assistance to commercial ventures trying to do the same.
I'm not sure whether that is your point or not, but you make it sound as if the behavior of these European ISPs is due to their state history.
It isn't. What these ISPs have realized is that in the current Internet format, they are relegated to stodgy, low-growth, dumb-pipe company status. These types of companies stagnate in their share price and have CEOs who do not go anywhere, don't get golden parachutes and certainly do not get rock-star billing.
That's the problem right there. Every telecom CEO knows this. They know that they can make money and an honest living as a dumb-pipe infrastructure provider. But they don't want that. They didn't get to be CEO because they're happy with what they have. If they want to be hailed as a superhero CEO and get a $100 million compensation package, they know that they need to transform their companies into being at the core of the Internet. And the only way that that can possibly happen is through tiered pricing (where the tiers consist of sites, not data rates) and legalized protection racket for successful websites.
Down that road is madness. But these people don't care. This is exactly the fight that everyone was worried about: the fight to keep the intelligence on the edges of the network, and away from the inside.
There are certain changes in biosphere that I'd rather not experience. True, we could live in an environment where the atmosphere is 100% toxic, the flora is generally deadly to us and the fauna non-existent. However, humans would be clinging to life in that environment, rather than thriving in it.
I'm afraid I don't share your fatalistic view of human flexibility. I like living in luxury, thank you very much. And yes, the poorest beggar in San Francisco is still experiencing a level of luxury that was beyond the wildest dreams of kings and queens.
I see. You subscribe to the idea that stuff just happens, right? You really shouldn't comment on foreign or domestic policy then. For example:
The US president cannot just invalidate a law.
A prison system cannot be just shut down without figuring out what to do with the inmates.
You don't just get up and leave out of a country that is torn by sectarian violence.
You don't just figure Afghanistan out. You might survive it.
The economy is getting better, thank you very much. Or did you think the US President has a magic "Easy" button for the economy? You watched too many Staples commercials.
You overestimate the trust that Eastern European countries and Israel put into the US.
Seriously.... with those kind of comments you merely demonstrated that you are even more naive than the people you rail against. Well, it's either naive, or you're knowingly setting up straw men. Your call.
How are all those Obama promises of change working out for you folks that supported him and voted for him?
Better than what I expected from the opposition. Yes, it sucks that he isn't the Messiah - but really, if you were expecting the Second Coming, I can't help you. So far, his unconditional support of Big Media is a disappointing, yet not entirely unsurprising development. After all, there were signs of this during his presidential campaign.
Does it matter?
It matters to me. If tomorrow's biosphere doesn't support my existence, you can bet your ass that I care about the continuation of today's biosphere. It's nice that you support the grand scale view that ultimately, life will continue, but I'm kinda selfishly interested in the continued existence of me and that of my off-spring. Which, you know, happens to be the mechanism behind every life form that ever existed.
I can guarantee you that Traci Lords didn't start in porn just like that. As for teenagers sending pictures of themselves - I think that is not what people have in mind when they talk about child porn. And it certainly doesn't fit my definition of child porn.
Maybe we should just stick to calling this child abuse. It would make it a lot clearer what the issue is, and remove the entire crap about 16-year olds being allowed to have sex, but where videotaping it becomes a crime for which they are punished for life.
As for wikipedia, it does NOT have images of child pornography (sex). It has images of nudity, and a nude animal (which includes us) is not something to fear. Stop being afraid of bodies and their true appearance. Stop being afraid of Nature in its natural form. Nudity is also not a crime except in the minds of demented, sick people who have body phobia (i.e. they are mentally ill).
This is worth repeating: whoever says that the depiction of a nude child is porn is himself a pedophile. No one else looks at that image and goes "Man I'd like to bone that!" The most you get out of normal people is "Ohhhh... how adorable."
Undoing some mods here, but this is too important....
Or more accurately, even if viewing child porn causes not additional harm to the child depicted if people in a position to create child porn are aware there is a demand for it - which they are if people are downloading material from web sites they control - then it's much more likely that they will invest the time and resources to set up a camera and get a child to act in front of it. In many cases, the child is far from a willing participant.
Really? You got a source for that? Every child porn case I've come across started as abuse first, and then turned into a video production. Furthermore, you completely neglect a very obvious hole in your argument: that of barriers of entry. Why would anyone in their right mind fill the demand created by cartoons of child porn (which is at the very least still a grey area, thank god) with actual child porn? One involves hiring a graphic artist with a strong stomach, the other involves raping children. Really? You're telling me that there are people out there weighing those two approaches and who go "Yes, but the market for live-action child porn is under-served. I should fill that gap!"?? Yes, I agree, there are people out there who will fill that niche - but that's because they're already pedophiles, and already have victims!
There is absolutely no economic model for the creation of child porn (and it seems I'm forced to specify live-action childporn) that doesn't require pre-existing child abusers and a child.
Finally, this is an incredibly dangerous attitude to take: it implies that child porn is a regular economic industry that a) has its roots in capitalism and b) responds to capitalist levers. It completely neglects the hard truth that child rape is to 70% a family affair, performed by people who largely have themselves been abused.
Could the regular masturbating to child porn create a lower psychological barrier, and associate the release of endorphins with the graphical cues of an prepubescent child? It probably does. I can guarantee you though that whoever is jerking off to child porn already gets off on it. There's no gateway masturbation that leads from adult porn being a turn-on to child-porn being a turn on. Humans don't function like that.
In 20 years, indie studios in video gaming are starting to get a real grip on the industry. Extrapolate that. So, I say, give it a decade or so. Being at the grips of some big, monolithic evil publisher won't be an issue anymore.
Good point. Personally, I see the seeds starting now: hardware and tools are powerful enough that even without a budget, you can create a polished game experience. You don't have to code a physics engine by hand, you don't have to be a graphics wizard to create a colorful world with great draw distance, and you don't have to ration your CPU-cycles to have some sort of believable AI and pathfinding.
Since the biggest difference between blockbusters with 50 million dollar budgets and those with 50k budgets will be how many content creators and how many hair-physics creators they employ, there's a good chance that indie developers can actually be very successful. See Portal and Castle Crashers, for example.
That's because being creative and original doesn't pay. Guitar Hero, GTA and Modern Warfare spawn sequels because each sequel is HUGELY profitable. Brutal Legends won't, as it maybe broke even. Furthermore, every original game that is wildly successful will spawn a sequel - guaranteed. See Portal, for example. This means that sequels, spin-offs and expansions are guaranteed to outnumber successful original games.
However, here's something you can do to help: when an original game comes along, and it might not be the bee's knees - buy it anyway. Consider it a charity donation for Developers Taking Risks. For me, I'm pretty much set on buying every Tim Schafer game there is. They are not always magic, and often have some significant flaws, but $60 every 2-3 years is worth it to give him a chance to keep making games.
It seems to me that Vodafone will simply be another repository for android apps - except that they decide what apps to show. What would prevent anybody else from just duplicating everything but the apps over which Vodafone has copyright control?
To me, this seems more like Vodafone creating a windows app store: yes, they control what is shown, but I can still go to download.com, private sites and individual developers to get Windows apps. Same thing for Android. Well, except for those who have Vodafone phones... I'm sure there'll be some trickery on there to prevent users from getting apps from anywhere but the Vodafone store.
For fucks-sake, my 20 year old friend had a $150,000 mortgage on $30,000 of income for a house that is now worth $40,000.
One thing that I never see in these discussions is the lack of financial literacy of the general public. Who the fuck buys anything that is worth a) more than 5 times their yearly income, and b) was worth 50% the price paid for about 2-3 years ago?
I don't care what the interest rate is that you pay the first 6 months. If you make x per year and something costs 5x, you're not going to pay it off, ever. Unless you make about 10 million a year and have a golden parachute for 50 million. But then, the rules don't apply anyway.
Regulation isn't going to solve that problem. I really, really wish these people will get hit so hard by that problem that their grandkids will hear about it. Otherwise, they won't learn.
Queue the theme from Jaws:
Cue. It's cue. As in "This is my cue to pipe in the theme for Jaws". Granted, queue can make sense in a CS-type queuing up the theme, but....
Ah, fuck it. Go mangle the English language. I'll be curled up in bed, sucking on my language-nazi thumb.
Correction - they're charging again for complete access. They used to be completely closed, then completely free, and now I'm not sure what they're charging for. I don't know what's missing though from the online edition.... I haven't read the print edition in years, but I didn't see a change in stories that are available. World, News, Politics, Business, Stats, Opinion, KAL's Cartoons.... maybe the archives are not accessible?
Sure, but then he has a legitimate complaint. In the meantime, he's bitching that Google is doing exactly what the site says it should be doing.