And, there are a few other options besides "shoot the asshole dead" anyway--like, say, not carrying around large amounts of cash
If muggers don't get your money or wallet until they successfully rob you, how will they possibly know who is carrying large vs small (vs no) amounts of cash? I imagine they'd go for an easy victim FIRST, and then hope that they're a lucrative victim.
this sounds perfect for the two-bit junkie, the most common of criminals. Brick the laptop, especially remotely, and suddenly it's worthless for him to offload for his fix
In the meantime, your laptop has still been stolen. As soon as they see it doesn't work, some thieves might even decide that they may as well scrap it for parts (screen, drives, etc) on EBay. I don't see this as helping to prevent thefts, but rather as a way to mitigate the damage of losing your data. Only after many of these are stolen (and bricked) will there be a deterrent effect... and junkies are likely to be the ones who don't know about it anyway.
Re:Can you have read the same book?
on
Anathem
·
· Score: 1
If you found it boring and you didn't find it extremely funny throughout then I guess he was expecting a little too much of you or you were under-estimating him.
How is this different from saying, "It's not book/art/painting was bad, you're just too dumb/uncultured to understand it"? Doesn't that seem like an empty argument?
She talked, off and on, for about three months....
Why, though, did she target *me*? I was a *poor* physics student at the time. And why did she spend so much time on it? We probably chatted a total of maybe 16-20 hours. In that time she could have made more money working at McDonalds than she'd have made out of *my* account...
Unless there are other identity-theft related uses for a genuine bank account belonging to a real human. With history.
(emphasis mine)
In the course of ~3 months, or ~13 work weeks, one has 65*8 hours (assuming a con artist would treat this like a "regular" job). So, in that same period she could have been chatting with 26-32 people (yourself included). If she were able to chat up multiple people at once (which, over IM, is a bit easier since we are more tolerant of delays), there'd be more. You're right, though -- I'm not sure how this would be financially viable. If she only managed to hoodwink 1 person (~4% success rate), that's still probably not a lot of money in those months. Then again, over the course of a year, she'd be trying to con 100-130 people. Perhaps she made enough out of that to make it lucrative.
I'd rather work a job for that year than spend all day trying to con people. Even if I felt it were morally OK to do, I don't see the profit in it. (Then again, if you're from a 3rd world country, even a few thousand dollars in a year might make it worth it? I don't know.)
While it wouldn't work for everything, I think I wouldn't mind trying a Nuka-Cola branded energy drink.;) (I wouldn't want the radioactive variety, of course...)
the guy who made this originally did the basics of it for a competition that he won, and then added on more components in his spare time to make the game being sold today. With 20,000 units sold, even with the claimed "90% piracy" rate the guy still would've made a huge chunk of money. It's not like this guy's pan handling out on main street now. He's got a well paying job, and he's getting rich off something he was doing in his spare time.
Whether or not the author is getting rich has NO BEARING on the ethics of pirating their creations. If they created a product worthy of you spending time with it (past a demo phase), they've created a product worthy of your money. Don't try to sugarcoat your actions by saying "well, he's rich anyways".
but television and radio advertising rarely affect my purchasing decisions, at least not in a way I can discern.
It's probable that some advertising DOES affect you, even if you don't realize it. Do you buy generic drugs, or name brand, for example? (I know I occasionally buy Alleve, despite knowing that it's the same thing as the generic naproxin right next to it. Why?? It's not logical.)
If you had to find car insurance, where would you go? The first thing that pops in my mind is Geico, Allstate, etc -- [i]despite[/i] my knowledge that there is the internet with which to compare services and the like.
Mind control is making someone think or believe something that you want. Targeted audio, teams of actors, torture -- all of these are means to achieve the end. So, if one has a device to target audio at a person, so that only they hear things -- one has a tool to make the person believe they are hearing things. This isn't mind control as in "I make you go to the store and buy broccoli", but more of "I make you believe that ___ is happening, and maybe influence you into believing that ___ is a good course of action".
I'll second the need for a good locking blade. I did enough dumb things with my pocketknives when I was younger, and had several close on my fingers. Clearly, you ALSO want to teach them "Don't Do Dumb Stuff", but a locking blade will help limit the accident potential. And, teach them how to keep a knife SHARP -- a sharp knife is less dangerous than a dull one.
The difference between "That's someting I agree with, and surprisingly few people realize" and "+1 Informative" seems very small to me. Am I doing it wrong? (I'll mod insightful or informative for things like that; I don't use it as "I agree!", but if I don't find myself agreeing that it's true, why would I mod it informative?)
similar to hobbyist game makers of just 20, 30 years ago, and how there is no way they could compete on the same footing with modern mainline game studios and the high end graphical renderings they crank out
I submit that developers such as Introversion (Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON) and Jonathan Blow (Braid) show that a well-crafted game can be financially viable and fruitful. Sure, it's not going to net as much as Madden 2009 or the like, but at the same time they are still profitable. If I made a game, and it got enough sales to pay for my lifestyle for the next N years (2, 3, 5...), I'd say that makes the game Successful and Competitive enough.
People in the EU shouldn't be questioning this, they should be up in arms over it....
I thought most EU countries disallowed citizens having guns? {Aside from stored-at-the-hunting-club type things.} Is "good luck with that" as a response that far off base? I can be wrong, but the overwhelming impression I got was that the European general populace doesn't have arms to be "up in".... not that I'm much better in the US, heh -- no guns in my house.
Exactly. Also, if all printers were able to use a generic driver, you wouldn't need special software or drivers which would enforce wasteful use of ink, and the like.
history - use it with grep if you forgot what you did
I rather wish that history tracking played nicely with multiple shells open at once. It never seemed to track what I'd done. I'd say,"what was that thing I got two weeks ago? I know used wget.... but can't find it!..."
history|grep wget
Strange, nothing shows. I know I did it, and my history file contains things that are older than 2 weeks.
They aren't suing their customers. They're suing the people who aren't customers.
I don't think that is entirely correct.
You're correct that many people that download music on p2p are not customers. Heck, I'm not a Customer, and all I do is listen to internet radio, if ever. However, there are also many people who are huge music fans, buy CDs, and yet also grab things off of p2p networks (and this are also infringing copyright). While my father, for example, buys lots of CDs, if he knew about p2p he's also be using that to find even MORE music.
As an anecdote, I have a pretty small music collection. (I prefer to read or play video games.;)) With the exceptions of Metallica, classical music, and the Phantom soundtrack, nearly every other CD I own was purchased after I'd downloaded the album (or substantial portions thereof). (Thank goodness for having done that before p2p was on the radar, hehe.) My general algorithm at the time was:
- discover band, or a single song. - listen to a friend's copy, OR - download as many of the band's songs as I could, since if I liked one song I might like the others. - if I like the music, I buy the CD, and perhaps rip a higher quality version to listen to. - If I don't like the music, I don't listen to it.
This is all a result of having bought a CD about a decade ago, where I really liked the artist's single... and then discovered that I absolutely detested the rest of the album. I will never again buy an album without having listened to it first.
If the music industry makes it risky enough to p2p music (and I feel it has) that I don't want to risk getting bankrupted, then I will (and have) simply stop downloading music. Unfortunately, since this means that I won't be able to listen to things easily anymore, I will thus not be buying more music either. Moreover, my time is valuable enough to me that I will not go to the local music store and sit at their "listening station". If I can't try music on my own time, whether via the internet or a friend's copy, I won't bother. Music is not a necessity to me, but a luxury... and one I rarely get to indulge. Thus, I feel nearly no loss by not buying it (just as I feel little loss by not buying DVDs of everything). I can live without buying the RIAA's wares, and their actions have alienated me as a customer.
So, the RIAA suing "downloaders" (who for that song transaction are not behaving as a customer) has effectively eliminated customers like me. Ex-customers like me, that is.
I'm not sure why my original post was marked as a troll. It could be that I worded it poorly, for which I apologize.
The grandparent suggested that governments should treat the problem of Kiddie porn by fining the makers, rather than censoring what people can download. My point was that while they'd LOVE to do this, they already aren't really able to. If they could fine the makers, they'd skip that step and just arrest them. As it is, they don't usually KNOW the maker of such porn, and therefore it's a somewhat pie-in-the-sky hope to suggest that governments could just go fining them. It's like suggesting that rather than arresting people for using drugs, the government should fine the dealers. While I certainly agree that fining drug dealers and child porn producers would be great, I think it isn't a reasonable thing to expect.
Moreover, child porn is something that most nations consider a crime worthy of more than a mere fine (or even a large fine), and therefore attach jail time to the idea. It's somewhat akin to suggesting that we add a fine for people who commit armed robbery.
10. This is a classified information you were not authorised to obtain. Please lay on the ground face down and place your hands on your head.
11. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Make no further attempt to leave the testing area. Assume the "Party Escort Submission Position" or you will miss the party.
I think it WOULD greatly resemble a frontier, even if more Mad-Max-ian than Enclish Colonial. Early settlers would likely not have the raw materials, and perhaps not the know-how, to build good transportation; lack of spare parts (aside from regular shipments) and a limited machine shop means that people trying to set off on their own (and I'm sure there would be some eventually) might have a hard time at first.
The rate at which the on-planet tech accelerates would be faster, of course, as it depends merely in infrastructure and knowledge (and materials), rather than discovery.
I haven't gotten the chills from a game since Doom2. Thinking back, I wonder if now I would get the same feeling. I guess part of it's realism, but as/more important is the immersion. I've not been able to turn up the volume, shit the door and leave the real world in a while.
My biggest problem is that many developers mistake fear with being startled. The game engines often "cheat" (especially the Doom series), spawning enemies, etc. It's easy to go too far -- witness Doom3. Ironically, F.E.A.R. did this... and actually managed to do it well. Usually it was your standard shooter, with not-bad enemy AI, but every now and then you'd get a non-sequitur, "holyshitwhatwasthat" moment. Playing that game at night was very stressful -- just because I knew that the game WOULD occasionally "cheat" in a non-harmful way (so it was fun rather than threatening, but still startling as hell).
Another important thing in scaring someone is that there has to be some negative outcome that they are genuinely concerned about... If I am not afraid to die, to lose something I've worked for, I'll just think it's cool.
To me, zombie-horror style games seem to fit this mold well. So go games with relatively distant checkpoints, where I will need to replay stuff. The thing is, it has to also reward cautious/fearful gameplay. If the game will periodically drop a roomful of enemies on me, with no chance to avoid them, it's annoying. If, however, I CAN avoid the grisly deaths they have planned for me -- if I don't fuck up or get careless -- then I actually get more careful in my gameplay. Otherwise, it's quickload, run, gun, die, repeat until I get lucky... and that's not really promoting fear.
The best examples are games where I almost never need to save or load, but have numerous close calls. I can't think of many like that, though. Splinter Cell and early Rainbow Six games come close, since you CAN'T save... and thus I'm always on pins and needles of "dont screw up".. but they aren't really meant to scare you. I'm hoping I can get my hands on a Cthulu game this winter, as that ought to do a good job, I hope.:)
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If muggers don't get your money or wallet until they successfully rob you, how will they possibly know who is carrying large vs small (vs no) amounts of cash? I imagine they'd go for an easy victim FIRST, and then hope that they're a lucrative victim.
Reminds me of Starship Troopers.
In the meantime, your laptop has still been stolen. As soon as they see it doesn't work, some thieves might even decide that they may as well scrap it for parts (screen, drives, etc) on EBay. I don't see this as helping to prevent thefts, but rather as a way to mitigate the damage of losing your data. Only after many of these are stolen (and bricked) will there be a deterrent effect ... and junkies are likely to be the ones who don't know about it anyway.
How is this different from saying, "It's not book/art/painting was bad, you're just too dumb/uncultured to understand it"? Doesn't that seem like an empty argument?
And, in accordance with the current meme, the obilgatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/331/ ;)
The subsequent people who worked there are grateful for the fact that you gave them the same choice as well.
(emphasis mine)
In the course of ~3 months, or ~13 work weeks, one has 65*8 hours (assuming a con artist would treat this like a "regular" job). So, in that same period she could have been chatting with 26-32 people (yourself included). If she were able to chat up multiple people at once (which, over IM, is a bit easier since we are more tolerant of delays), there'd be more. You're right, though -- I'm not sure how this would be financially viable. If she only managed to hoodwink 1 person (~4% success rate), that's still probably not a lot of money in those months. Then again, over the course of a year, she'd be trying to con 100-130 people. Perhaps she made enough out of that to make it lucrative.
I'd rather work a job for that year than spend all day trying to con people. Even if I felt it were morally OK to do, I don't see the profit in it. (Then again, if you're from a 3rd world country, even a few thousand dollars in a year might make it worth it? I don't know.)
While it wouldn't work for everything, I think I wouldn't mind trying a Nuka-Cola branded energy drink. ;) (I wouldn't want the radioactive variety, of course...)
God help those poor soldiers when the games start to crash. (:
Whether or not the author is getting rich has NO BEARING on the ethics of pirating their creations. If they created a product worthy of you spending time with it (past a demo phase), they've created a product worthy of your money. Don't try to sugarcoat your actions by saying "well, he's rich anyways".
but television and radio advertising rarely affect my purchasing decisions, at least not in a way I can discern.
It's probable that some advertising DOES affect you, even if you don't realize it. Do you buy generic drugs, or name brand, for example? (I know I occasionally buy Alleve, despite knowing that it's the same thing as the generic naproxin right next to it. Why?? It's not logical.)
If you had to find car insurance, where would you go? The first thing that pops in my mind is Geico, Allstate, etc -- [i]despite[/i] my knowledge that there is the internet with which to compare services and the like.
Mind control is making someone think or believe something that you want. Targeted audio, teams of actors, torture -- all of these are means to achieve the end. So, if one has a device to target audio at a person, so that only they hear things -- one has a tool to make the person believe they are hearing things. This isn't mind control as in "I make you go to the store and buy broccoli", but more of "I make you believe that ___ is happening, and maybe influence you into believing that ___ is a good course of action".
I'll second the need for a good locking blade. I did enough dumb things with my pocketknives when I was younger, and had several close on my fingers. Clearly, you ALSO want to teach them "Don't Do Dumb Stuff", but a locking blade will help limit the accident potential. And, teach them how to keep a knife SHARP -- a sharp knife is less dangerous than a dull one.
The difference between "That's someting I agree with, and surprisingly few people realize" and "+1 Informative" seems very small to me. Am I doing it wrong? (I'll mod insightful or informative for things like that; I don't use it as "I agree!", but if I don't find myself agreeing that it's true, why would I mod it informative?)
I submit that developers such as Introversion (Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON) and Jonathan Blow (Braid) show that a well-crafted game can be financially viable and fruitful. Sure, it's not going to net as much as Madden 2009 or the like, but at the same time they are still profitable. If I made a game, and it got enough sales to pay for my lifestyle for the next N years (2, 3, 5...), I'd say that makes the game Successful and Competitive enough.
I thought most EU countries disallowed citizens having guns? {Aside from stored-at-the-hunting-club type things.} Is "good luck with that" as a response that far off base? I can be wrong, but the overwhelming impression I got was that the European general populace doesn't have arms to be "up in". ... not that I'm much better in the US, heh -- no guns in my house.
Exactly. Also, if all printers were able to use a generic driver, you wouldn't need special software or drivers which would enforce wasteful use of ink, and the like.
history - use it with grep if you forgot what you did
I rather wish that history tracking played nicely with multiple shells open at once. It never seemed to track what I'd done. I'd say,"what was that thing I got two weeks ago? I know used wget .... but can't find it!..."
history|grep wget
Strange, nothing shows. I know I did it, and my history file contains things that are older than 2 weeks.
Is there something I should be doing instead?
Given that most of us have no idea about Schools of Economics, how are we to judge? What other schools are there, and how do their viewpoints differ?
Howe are ANY schools of economics vetted vs reality/history? Does the scientific method even apply?
I don't think that is entirely correct.
You're correct that many people that download music on p2p are not customers. Heck, I'm not a Customer, and all I do is listen to internet radio, if ever. However, there are also many people who are huge music fans, buy CDs, and yet also grab things off of p2p networks (and this are also infringing copyright). While my father, for example, buys lots of CDs, if he knew about p2p he's also be using that to find even MORE music.
As an anecdote, I have a pretty small music collection. (I prefer to read or play video games. ;)) With the exceptions of Metallica, classical music, and the Phantom soundtrack, nearly every other CD I own was purchased after I'd downloaded the album (or substantial portions thereof). (Thank goodness for having done that before p2p was on the radar, hehe.) My general algorithm at the time was:
- discover band, or a single song.
- listen to a friend's copy, OR
- download as many of the band's songs as I could, since if I liked one song I might like the others.
- if I like the music, I buy the CD, and perhaps rip a higher quality version to listen to.
- If I don't like the music, I don't listen to it.
This is all a result of having bought a CD about a decade ago, where I really liked the artist's single ... and then discovered that I absolutely detested the rest of the album. I will never again buy an album without having listened to it first.
If the music industry makes it risky enough to p2p music (and I feel it has) that I don't want to risk getting bankrupted, then I will (and have) simply stop downloading music. Unfortunately, since this means that I won't be able to listen to things easily anymore, I will thus not be buying more music either. Moreover, my time is valuable enough to me that I will not go to the local music store and sit at their "listening station". If I can't try music on my own time, whether via the internet or a friend's copy, I won't bother. Music is not a necessity to me, but a luxury... and one I rarely get to indulge. Thus, I feel nearly no loss by not buying it (just as I feel little loss by not buying DVDs of everything). I can live without buying the RIAA's wares, and their actions have alienated me as a customer.
So, the RIAA suing "downloaders" (who for that song transaction are not behaving as a customer) has effectively eliminated customers like me. Ex-customers like me, that is.
I'm not sure why my original post was marked as a troll. It could be that I worded it poorly, for which I apologize.
The grandparent suggested that governments should treat the problem of Kiddie porn by fining the makers, rather than censoring what people can download. My point was that while they'd LOVE to do this, they already aren't really able to. If they could fine the makers, they'd skip that step and just arrest them. As it is, they don't usually KNOW the maker of such porn, and therefore it's a somewhat pie-in-the-sky hope to suggest that governments could just go fining them. It's like suggesting that rather than arresting people for using drugs, the government should fine the dealers. While I certainly agree that fining drug dealers and child porn producers would be great, I think it isn't a reasonable thing to expect.
Moreover, child porn is something that most nations consider a crime worthy of more than a mere fine (or even a large fine), and therefore attach jail time to the idea. It's somewhat akin to suggesting that we add a fine for people who commit armed robbery.
11. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Make no further attempt to leave the testing area. Assume the "Party Escort Submission Position" or you will miss the party.
"Fine the people that make it"
If governments kne who was MAKING the child porn, they'd go and arrest them. Fining is small potatoes by comparison.
I think it WOULD greatly resemble a frontier, even if more Mad-Max-ian than Enclish Colonial. Early settlers would likely not have the raw materials, and perhaps not the know-how, to build good transportation; lack of spare parts (aside from regular shipments) and a limited machine shop means that people trying to set off on their own (and I'm sure there would be some eventually) might have a hard time at first.
The rate at which the on-planet tech accelerates would be faster, of course, as it depends merely in infrastructure and knowledge (and materials), rather than discovery.
My biggest problem is that many developers mistake fear with being startled. The game engines often "cheat" (especially the Doom series), spawning enemies, etc. It's easy to go too far -- witness Doom3. Ironically, F.E.A.R. did this ... and actually managed to do it well. Usually it was your standard shooter, with not-bad enemy AI, but every now and then you'd get a non-sequitur, "holyshitwhatwasthat" moment. Playing that game at night was very stressful -- just because I knew that the game WOULD occasionally "cheat" in a non-harmful way (so it was fun rather than threatening, but still startling as hell).
To me, zombie-horror style games seem to fit this mold well. So go games with relatively distant checkpoints, where I will need to replay stuff. The thing is, it has to also reward cautious/fearful gameplay. If the game will periodically drop a roomful of enemies on me, with no chance to avoid them, it's annoying. If, however, I CAN avoid the grisly deaths they have planned for me -- if I don't fuck up or get careless -- then I actually get more careful in my gameplay. Otherwise, it's quickload, run, gun, die, repeat until I get lucky... and that's not really promoting fear.
The best examples are games where I almost never need to save or load, but have numerous close calls. I can't think of many like that, though. Splinter Cell and early Rainbow Six games come close, since you CAN'T save... and thus I'm always on pins and needles of "dont screw up".. but they aren't really meant to scare you. I'm hoping I can get my hands on a Cthulu game this winter, as that ought to do a good job, I hope. :)