Oh no, this is exactly why there have been a slew of international copyright groups formed who have successfully lobbied for national governments to enter in to treaties that cover cross-border copyright enforcement.
That really depends on the time period. During the late part of the 19th Century, The Eastman Dry Plate company was the only game in town if you were an American photographer. Yes, the higher quality European cameras were available, but at the price point, you could get an Eastman field camera in 8X10 for a quarter of the price of one of the lower quality Zeiss Anastigmat optics.
When Eastman Kodak brought Folmer & Schwing in to the company they started producing one of the most amazing and ubiquitous press cameras ever made, the Speed Graphic.
So, in the early days, professionals of all stripes used Kodak made cameras. The military in both World Wars relied on Kodak produced cameras and lenses.
You are right that Kodak made most of their money off consumables. That was their business model from the very start, but that doesn't mean they didn't produce some good, even if not quite great, cameras and optics.
Personally, I'm going to miss my Tri-X and hope that someone revives it, a la the Impossible Project.
Kodak invented the digital camera, so it is a bit false to claim that they had no expertise in the field. Where they went wrong was trying to protect their film business by sacrificing their early lead on development and licensing out the technology.
If a longer vision had prevailed at Kodak, people with Nikon and Canon cameras might be wistfully longing that they could afford one of the big boy Kodak cameras.
1986 - The movie Aliens features a scene where an android remotely pilots a drop ship to deliver supplies and evac a group of beleaguered Marines.
2012 - The United States Navy allocates funds to research a system where you can remotely call for a robotic helicopter to deliver supplies to beleaguered Marines via your Android phone.
Look around the comments section, there is a lot of snark about Russians and their stuff being held together with band-aids and chewing gum and the like.
As for their aversion to the new, I would have to disagree. The Russian people I have known certainly had a strong preference for methods that were known to work, but none of them were afraid of innovation or considering a new approach. But, I will admit that my sample size is relatively small.
Tanks during WW2 weren't reliable, no matter who made them. Still, the better reliability of the Sherman combined with the massive numbers in which they were manufactured them was probably a huge factor in why the US was so successful in wearing down the Wehrmacht. (obviously there were other factors, bombing of factories, fuel logistics issues, the German loss of mines producing metals vital for armor hardening, and etc.)
As for T-34 vs Sherman, it would really depend on which models of each tank you were comparing. I do have to say though, if you're engaging in armor vs armor combat, the only tank noise you ever hear is your own.
I too have some Russian friends, and by virtue of where I live, they are all part of or work for companies that support the space industry.
This is why I'm constantly bothered by all of the comments about Russian abilities, and how they are inept and somehow backwards when it comes to high technology.
Just because the Russians don't spend millions to develop some whiz-bang technology to do something in space a certain way that can already be accomplished by other means doesn't make them backwards. The whole anecdote about the Americans spending time and money to develop a pen that could write in space versus the Russians who just used pencils may be just a story, but it serves as an excellent illustration in the difference in approaches.
Russian technology just works. It may be big, it may be inelegant, but it gets the job done. When it breaks, you don't throw it out, you fix it.
Hell, in Estonia in 2007 some locals noticed old tank ruts leading in to a lake, and after some diving they discovered a buried Soviet T-34 tank of WW2 vintage. They were able to recover the tank from the water, found that it had German markings (the Germans put a premium on captured T-34s), drained the water, cleaned the silt out, and after some maintenance, were able to start the engine.
Ahhh, such a classic. I have a copy of Grimtooth's Traps that looks like it has gone through about half the traps in the book. It is so dog-eared, marked up, stained with things unknowable, and even burnt on the bottom left corner when a "mood lighting" candle got knocked over, that I'm amazed it is still in one piece.
That is a book that is getting passed down to my kids when they are ready to DM their first adventures.
After the few games of 4th I played I found that they had seemed to step back in complexity and flavor from even third edition. I felt like the classes were becoming muddied an balanced to the point where it didn't really matter what you played as long as you flipped your card over at the right time. Of course that may be because of the DM quality or my own bias.
As for the combat arguments, wasn't that the whole point?
Seriously though, I had been using miniatures in D&D and many other games for years, so I don't see how that is something unique to 4ed.
I am also fully willing to admit that I have become old and curmudgeonly in my game desires, and if I don't have to look up something on at least three charts then I don't see the value. You kids these days, having it so easy with your power cards and ipod apps. Back in my day, when the rocks fell EVERYONE died, and that's the way we liked it!
Have you seen 4th Edition? Too much information is exactly the opposite of what D&D has become. They list your "powers" on freaking cards for Bob's sake and part of the game mechanic is flipping your freaking cards over.
See, I played in plenty of games where the DM just made crap up on the fly and they were terrible.
I always liked a DM that hewed pretty close to the rules but was flexible enough to allow the players to do what the players did. He also rewarded good role playing rather than good roll playing.
Higher risks in this case meaning destruction of clean water supplies and arable land, two things that Kenya isn't exactly brimming with in the first place.
When a nuclear facility is decommissioned, most of the materials used to build it are either disposed of or have to sit for quite a while in a decontamination process. From the reactor vessel to the iron bars in the cement, every single item used in a nuclear facility ranges from just a little bit to incredibly hot for a long time. On top of that, construction materials get very brittle when exposed to EM flux, which is why nuclear plants require such an enormous amount of maintenance.
The chance of getting a permit to ship that stuff over the ocean would be next to impossible.
Oh, and my apologies, after re-reading your original comment I realized that my response seems sort of bizarre. I think I skimmed too much and didn't really get the meat of what you were saying.
Community R&D is funding provided through grants or gifts to non-corporately owned research groups, typically through universities or independent labs that get most of their funding through government programs (usually the National Science Foundation) and make up the short falls with funds from corporate donations foundations.
The work that comes out of these labs is usually publicly announced or contains research that would be difficult to capitalize but still has value as a starting point for further research.
I think we may be talking at cross purposes here. I understood the article to be more about the public side or perhaps even something like DARPA rather than purely corporate R&D efforts.
As an example, the Ford Motor Company has a pool of money reserved for a number of yearly grants and gifts for scientific research every year. This money is outside of their normal R&D efforts which are paid for by regular budgeting processes. Much like a company will make matching contributions to the United Way or other charity, Ford has supported a lot of independent research that has nothing to do with the automotive industry. Over the years though, that pool of money has shrunk, as have the pools normally available from other companies and foundations.
At the same time, the money the government invests in independent research has also shrunk, putting a huge squeeze on labs and scientists across the country.
And when was this? Because companies in the US currently enjoy some of the lowest tax rates in the developed world, and yet, still manage not to invest in community R&D projects.
Because everyone's darling "the free market" isn't stepping in to provide those dollars. And, word to the wise, the government never decides what a project researches unless the lab is completely owned by a branch of the government. NSF grants and the like do nothing of the sort.
A certain segment of the/. population loves to decry government involvement in anything, stating that business, unhindered, would naturally step-in to cure the various evils and ills that the government is so inept at dealing with, and the service would be better, people would be happier, and a modest profit could be made on the side.
Having seen the results of this sort of thinking first hand, I can honestly say that these people are delusional. Of course, I know that I won't ever convince them to change their minds (especially when I insult them), but I feel like typing, so here goes.
I used to be a lab assistant working in a large U.S. university's biomedical research facility. The area I worked was devoted to the keeping, raising, and study of cephalopods. We were the largest such facility in the US and among the top in the world for that type of science. Granted, it is a very specialized field, but the prestige was genuine and we attracted top talent.
Most of our funding came from government grants. The NSF and a few others were our bread and butter even though most of our research was directed toward marketable technologies and techniques. We also sold squid parts to commercial labs. Turns out, squid have a massive axion connecting their eye and the optical lobe of the brain. If humans had a T1 running from our eyes to our brains, squid have an OC-198. We also researched the color changing properties of cephalopod skin, their hydraulic muscle structure, their three heart circulatory system, their corneas and eye lenses (they match ours btw. If you've ever had eye surgery to replace a torn lens, thank a squid), their ink, and their behavior.
To keep all of these critters in one building took a lot of large equipment and a lot of highly skilled people; people that could have made buckets of cash in a commercial setting but chose the lab because we were figuring out thinks like why squid don't get cancer or suffer nearly as many degenerative diseases of the eye. We were trying to figure out why squid and octopuses suffered dementia near the end of their lives and how we could help prevent it. See, once we do that in squid, the way to doing it in people is considerably shorter.
Anyway, all that work took money and that meant begging Uncle Sam for more and more cash which seemed to take more and more paperwork every year. What the government couldn't or wouldn't fund, we supplemented with corporate donations and gifts. The whammy here is that a bunch of biologists who would rather be in 30 feet of water in the Caribbean watching squid fuck are notoriously terrible at convincing others of the need for their research. Still, it had to get done, and done it got. Once you knew the way to fill everything out for the government, it was much easier. They were concerned that you weren't fucking off with the money, that you weren't engaged in monkey torture or feeding rat poison to children, and that you were accounting for every penny. If they were going to give you money, they wanted to know what you did with it. Ok, cool, keep our receipts and stop feeding rat poison to the local children, easily done. The corporate "gifts" and donations were another kettle of squid. They too wanted to know that you weren't fucking off with the money, and wanted it accounted down to the penny, but they were neutral on most ethical subjects. They also wanted to give suggestions. Hey, it would really help out BigCo. if you could figure out a way to reliably and cheaply extract or synthesize cephalotoxin or some tetrodotoxin. In fact, it would help so much that your grant rides on your ability to do so.
And there is the hook. Sure, it is the corporation's money to do as they see fit, but when they step in to "help" they don't want base research, they don't want behavior studies, and they don't give a shit about learning to understand cephalopod communications or the possibility of sentience, they want something that will help their bottom line and they want it right god damn now.
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Oh no, this is exactly why there have been a slew of international copyright groups formed who have successfully lobbied for national governments to enter in to treaties that cover cross-border copyright enforcement.
I am. I buy Tri-X film and XTOL developer in quantity, especially now that I might not be able to get any more.
That really depends on the time period. During the late part of the 19th Century, The Eastman Dry Plate company was the only game in town if you were an American photographer. Yes, the higher quality European cameras were available, but at the price point, you could get an Eastman field camera in 8X10 for a quarter of the price of one of the lower quality Zeiss Anastigmat optics.
When Eastman Kodak brought Folmer & Schwing in to the company they started producing one of the most amazing and ubiquitous press cameras ever made, the Speed Graphic.
So, in the early days, professionals of all stripes used Kodak made cameras. The military in both World Wars relied on Kodak produced cameras and lenses.
You are right that Kodak made most of their money off consumables. That was their business model from the very start, but that doesn't mean they didn't produce some good, even if not quite great, cameras and optics.
Personally, I'm going to miss my Tri-X and hope that someone revives it, a la the Impossible Project.
Kodak invented the digital camera, so it is a bit false to claim that they had no expertise in the field. Where they went wrong was trying to protect their film business by sacrificing their early lead on development and licensing out the technology.
If a longer vision had prevailed at Kodak, people with Nikon and Canon cameras might be wistfully longing that they could afford one of the big boy Kodak cameras.
Obviously you're not a photographer.
1986 - The movie Aliens features a scene where an android remotely pilots a drop ship to deliver supplies and evac a group of beleaguered Marines.
2012 - The United States Navy allocates funds to research a system where you can remotely call for a robotic helicopter to deliver supplies to beleaguered Marines via your Android phone.
Look around the comments section, there is a lot of snark about Russians and their stuff being held together with band-aids and chewing gum and the like.
As for their aversion to the new, I would have to disagree. The Russian people I have known certainly had a strong preference for methods that were known to work, but none of them were afraid of innovation or considering a new approach. But, I will admit that my sample size is relatively small.
Tanks during WW2 weren't reliable, no matter who made them. Still, the better reliability of the Sherman combined with the massive numbers in which they were manufactured them was probably a huge factor in why the US was so successful in wearing down the Wehrmacht. (obviously there were other factors, bombing of factories, fuel logistics issues, the German loss of mines producing metals vital for armor hardening, and etc.)
As for T-34 vs Sherman, it would really depend on which models of each tank you were comparing. I do have to say though, if you're engaging in armor vs armor combat, the only tank noise you ever hear is your own.
I too have some Russian friends, and by virtue of where I live, they are all part of or work for companies that support the space industry.
This is why I'm constantly bothered by all of the comments about Russian abilities, and how they are inept and somehow backwards when it comes to high technology.
Just because the Russians don't spend millions to develop some whiz-bang technology to do something in space a certain way that can already be accomplished by other means doesn't make them backwards. The whole anecdote about the Americans spending time and money to develop a pen that could write in space versus the Russians who just used pencils may be just a story, but it serves as an excellent illustration in the difference in approaches.
Russian technology just works. It may be big, it may be inelegant, but it gets the job done. When it breaks, you don't throw it out, you fix it.
Hell, in Estonia in 2007 some locals noticed old tank ruts leading in to a lake, and after some diving they discovered a buried Soviet T-34 tank of WW2 vintage. They were able to recover the tank from the water, found that it had German markings (the Germans put a premium on captured T-34s), drained the water, cleaned the silt out, and after some maintenance, were able to start the engine.
THAT is built to last.
Ahhh, such a classic. I have a copy of Grimtooth's Traps that looks like it has gone through about half the traps in the book. It is so dog-eared, marked up, stained with things unknowable, and even burnt on the bottom left corner when a "mood lighting" candle got knocked over, that I'm amazed it is still in one piece.
That is a book that is getting passed down to my kids when they are ready to DM their first adventures.
I... don't.
dammit!
After the few games of 4th I played I found that they had seemed to step back in complexity and flavor from even third edition. I felt like the classes were becoming muddied an balanced to the point where it didn't really matter what you played as long as you flipped your card over at the right time. Of course that may be because of the DM quality or my own bias.
As for the combat arguments, wasn't that the whole point?
Seriously though, I had been using miniatures in D&D and many other games for years, so I don't see how that is something unique to 4ed.
I am also fully willing to admit that I have become old and curmudgeonly in my game desires, and if I don't have to look up something on at least three charts then I don't see the value. You kids these days, having it so easy with your power cards and ipod apps. Back in my day, when the rocks fell EVERYONE died, and that's the way we liked it!
So uhhh, when are you running next...
Have you seen 4th Edition? Too much information is exactly the opposite of what D&D has become. They list your "powers" on freaking cards for Bob's sake and part of the game mechanic is flipping your freaking cards over.
See, I played in plenty of games where the DM just made crap up on the fly and they were terrible.
I always liked a DM that hewed pretty close to the rules but was flexible enough to allow the players to do what the players did. He also rewarded good role playing rather than good roll playing.
Higher risks in this case meaning destruction of clean water supplies and arable land, two things that Kenya isn't exactly brimming with in the first place.
When a nuclear facility is decommissioned, most of the materials used to build it are either disposed of or have to sit for quite a while in a decontamination process. From the reactor vessel to the iron bars in the cement, every single item used in a nuclear facility ranges from just a little bit to incredibly hot for a long time. On top of that, construction materials get very brittle when exposed to EM flux, which is why nuclear plants require such an enormous amount of maintenance.
The chance of getting a permit to ship that stuff over the ocean would be next to impossible.
Oh, and my apologies, after re-reading your original comment I realized that my response seems sort of bizarre. I think I skimmed too much and didn't really get the meat of what you were saying.
Community R&D is funding provided through grants or gifts to non-corporately owned research groups, typically through universities or independent labs that get most of their funding through government programs (usually the National Science Foundation) and make up the short falls with funds from corporate donations foundations.
The work that comes out of these labs is usually publicly announced or contains research that would be difficult to capitalize but still has value as a starting point for further research.
I think we may be talking at cross purposes here. I understood the article to be more about the public side or perhaps even something like DARPA rather than purely corporate R&D efforts.
As an example, the Ford Motor Company has a pool of money reserved for a number of yearly grants and gifts for scientific research every year. This money is outside of their normal R&D efforts which are paid for by regular budgeting processes. Much like a company will make matching contributions to the United Way or other charity, Ford has supported a lot of independent research that has nothing to do with the automotive industry. Over the years though, that pool of money has shrunk, as have the pools normally available from other companies and foundations.
At the same time, the money the government invests in independent research has also shrunk, putting a huge squeeze on labs and scientists across the country.
My god.... The Canadian Defense has been explained! I hope you realize what you've just unleashed on the world sir.
I guess its the Buddhist in me, but I would definitely agree. Balance in all things is the way to go.
And when was this? Because companies in the US currently enjoy some of the lowest tax rates in the developed world, and yet, still manage not to invest in community R&D projects.
Because everyone's darling "the free market" isn't stepping in to provide those dollars. And, word to the wise, the government never decides what a project researches unless the lab is completely owned by a branch of the government. NSF grants and the like do nothing of the sort.
A certain segment of the /. population loves to decry government involvement in anything, stating that business, unhindered, would naturally step-in to cure the various evils and ills that the government is so inept at dealing with, and the service would be better, people would be happier, and a modest profit could be made on the side.
Having seen the results of this sort of thinking first hand, I can honestly say that these people are delusional. Of course, I know that I won't ever convince them to change their minds (especially when I insult them), but I feel like typing, so here goes.
I used to be a lab assistant working in a large U.S. university's biomedical research facility. The area I worked was devoted to the keeping, raising, and study of cephalopods. We were the largest such facility in the US and among the top in the world for that type of science. Granted, it is a very specialized field, but the prestige was genuine and we attracted top talent.
Most of our funding came from government grants. The NSF and a few others were our bread and butter even though most of our research was directed toward marketable technologies and techniques. We also sold squid parts to commercial labs. Turns out, squid have a massive axion connecting their eye and the optical lobe of the brain. If humans had a T1 running from our eyes to our brains, squid have an OC-198. We also researched the color changing properties of cephalopod skin, their hydraulic muscle structure, their three heart circulatory system, their corneas and eye lenses (they match ours btw. If you've ever had eye surgery to replace a torn lens, thank a squid), their ink, and their behavior.
To keep all of these critters in one building took a lot of large equipment and a lot of highly skilled people; people that could have made buckets of cash in a commercial setting but chose the lab because we were figuring out thinks like why squid don't get cancer or suffer nearly as many degenerative diseases of the eye. We were trying to figure out why squid and octopuses suffered dementia near the end of their lives and how we could help prevent it. See, once we do that in squid, the way to doing it in people is considerably shorter.
Anyway, all that work took money and that meant begging Uncle Sam for more and more cash which seemed to take more and more paperwork every year. What the government couldn't or wouldn't fund, we supplemented with corporate donations and gifts. The whammy here is that a bunch of biologists who would rather be in 30 feet of water in the Caribbean watching squid fuck are notoriously terrible at convincing others of the need for their research. Still, it had to get done, and done it got. Once you knew the way to fill everything out for the government, it was much easier. They were concerned that you weren't fucking off with the money, that you weren't engaged in monkey torture or feeding rat poison to children, and that you were accounting for every penny. If they were going to give you money, they wanted to know what you did with it. Ok, cool, keep our receipts and stop feeding rat poison to the local children, easily done. The corporate "gifts" and donations were another kettle of squid. They too wanted to know that you weren't fucking off with the money, and wanted it accounted down to the penny, but they were neutral on most ethical subjects. They also wanted to give suggestions. Hey, it would really help out BigCo. if you could figure out a way to reliably and cheaply extract or synthesize cephalotoxin or some tetrodotoxin. In fact, it would help so much that your grant rides on your ability to do so.
And there is the hook. Sure, it is the corporation's money to do as they see fit, but when they step in to "help" they don't want base research, they don't want behavior studies, and they don't give a shit about learning to understand cephalopod communications or the possibility of sentience, they want something that will help their bottom line and they want it right god damn now.
No
:D
Hey there fellow dorkroom buddy!