I'm concerned that with all 77 pages of beaurocracy here, there's no decisive action one way or another towards getting VoiP providers to contribute to the Universal Service Fund... it just says, essentially, that they'll have a chat about it at the FCC and decide something later. Something tells me that anything firm on that issue is a long way off.
I have a copy of a book called "Get Even" (published sometime in the 80s, probably out of print now). Anyway, the book has Richard Nixon's actual SSN in it, which it recommends using on forms and such which demand an SSN for no good reason. I wouldn't actually do that, as it's probably some sort of federal crime or something to impersonate a deceased former president. But I imagine using the SSN of a dead relative would probably work instead. If the issue ever gets raised at school or wherever, just claim their database must be corrupt and offer to help them upgrade to FoxPro 2.6.
This got me thinking. Email spammers and other naughty types run web bots to scour web sites for email addresses and similar personal information. How hard could it be to write software to search one's own web server for lists of SSNs or whatever, and alert a webmaster so it can be quickly taken down? Doesn't sound like it would be particularly difficult at all. A quick search untility to parse publicly-accessable pages could save a lot of bad publicity later, as happened in this case.
I agree with you... there's definitely some really crappy doctors out there, who have no business being doctors at all. However, the profession has a way of weeding the truly awful ones out. They either lose their licence to practise, or are ousted by rising malpractice insurance costs. In PA, the situation is ludicrous: even a good doctor can pay up to $100,000 or more in malpractice insurance costs every single year!
My point, ultimately, is that being a doctor is an incredibly hard job, and it's easy for patients to overlook that. Anyone who's ever worked at any job has made some sort of mistake... for a doctor, even a tiny mistake could cost lives, or put him out of the medical profession for good.
And that's why this online complaints thing annoys me: as far as accountability is concerned, it's extremely one-sided. The doctor is always held fully accountable for whatever he says and does (and greedy lawyers are more than willing to twist words and actions to suit their case) while the online complainers share no such accountability. Though I agree there should be some sort of forum for public discussion, those public complaints about individual doctors should be verified with a real name and SS# on file at the site, and should sign the equivalent of an affadavit that they're telling the truth. That would cut down almost completely on the frivolous and untrue complaints. It's all about accountability.
I could probably argue this case from either side.
Doctors do have to put up with a lot of crap as it is. Patients seem to expect them to come in like magical paladins who can cure anything with a few magic words. A lot of patients don't even take their advice anyway... who hasn't thrown away the last few pills in the bottle because they're already feeling better? Take it on a full stomach? Don't take it with alcohol? Those warnings are for other people, right?
And that's just the small stuff. Your doctor tells you to start eating right, quit smoking, and exercise. But those Twinkies look so good, and there's a Mork and Mindy marathon on tonight. A few weeks later, cardiac arrest... but hey, the doctor should give a guy some warning next time!
Let's face it, folks... becoming a doctor requires a huge amount of time, money, and dedication. It truly is a lifetime commitment. And when you finally get there, it isn't particularly pleasant work. Sure, the money is decent, but there's also the constant threat of multi-million-dollar lawsuits and now these internet complaints. Most of us simply don't have what it takes to be a doctor, much less a magical awesome doctor who never makes mistakes.
On the other hand, I firmly believe that free speech is wonderful and lawsuits suck....but put yourself in the doctor's shoes and ask yourself what would you do?
Since adding DRM means that the Tivo device won't be able to do things that older versions could (and thus has less functionality), surely this means that they'll compensate customers by lowering prices. Right? Right? Right???
Simply put, for a competitive activity to catch on as a spectator sport, it must be physical and have a good deal of action. There are orgainsed competitions for all sorts of things, from chess to tiddlywinks to rock-paper-scissors, but people won't tune in unless there's action. Even golf and bowling have more action than watching someone peck at a keyboard or twiddle a joystick.
There's also the issue of charisma and looks. Athletes are successful only partly because of a certain celebrity appeal caused by physical good looks. Most of the "pro" gamers I've seen photos of have ranged from totally disgusting-looking to drab and average... I've yet to see one who could give, say, Anna Kournikova a run for her money. It could be because the practice involved with being a pro gamer prevents them from paying attention to their looks, or it could be that hardcore gaming just attracts a certain "type". I won't speculate because I genuinely don't know, but let's just say that I won't expect a "Girls of Pro Gaming Swimsuit Edition" at the newsstand anytime soon.
Finally, (and please note that I'm a moderate-to-hardcore gamer myself), competitive/pro gaming just isn't something that most gamers care about. I get most of the mainstream gaming mags (EGM, Game Informer, PSM, etc.) and gaming tournaments and such aren't given much coverage. Most gamers would rather read about hot new games coming out than some dude in Peoria getting such a high score in Pac-Man that the motherboard melted. Pro gaming attracts a certain crowd, and probably won't go away anytime soon, but will never find an audience as a mainstream spectator sport.
We must remember that realism is a ceiling. Once a photorealistic 3D gaming engine achieved, there's really nowhere else to go but towards new realms of style and pushing the boundaries of gameplay. I'm fascinated to think what games are going to look like in 15 years... I'm still waiting for a game which looks like a 3D moving impresionist painting. But that's just me.
I see no particular "better" or "worse" in the realism vs. style debate. Realism draws the player in and helps to create a sense of connection with the player's real life and world... great for horror games and driving games in particular. An interesting visual style, on the other hand, helps a game stand out from the crowd and be memorable... there's a zillion realistic and serious games, but we tend to remember ones like Mario, and Katamari Damacy which create whole universes of their own. River City Ransom is recalled as a classic, while Double Dragon is scarcely remembered at all these days.
I see no reason at all why realism and style must be mutually-exclusive even within the same series. Final Fantasy games tend to be on the realistic side, but most gamers also enjoyed the chibi-ism found in Final Fantasy Tactics. Developers: pick whatever suits your game and go with it.
I like the boldness behind this concept... DRM and software patents, much like spam, tend to be the sort of things that nearly everyone hates about but few actually do anything about them.
On the other hand, I worry that it might be a deterrent to large companies adopting free software if they believe that the "free" software will restrict their business practices in some way. What's next, witholding software to companies that pollute the invironment? That pay less to female employees? That don't have casual Fridays?
To rid ourselves of software patents and DRM, we need to show that those things are bad business models (*cough* $300 Million wasted on DIVX DVDs *cough*) not by adopting a holier-than-thou attitude and pretending to take the high moral ground.
In theory, the web is 24/7, but I've noticed that web traffic seems to more-or-less follow business hours. I'm sure there's some variance there depending on the type of site, etc, but I've always had noticably more hits at 12 noon than at 3AM, and always less on major holidays. There's also a little less traffic on the weekends. The web does work 24x7... but sometimes it works harder than others.
As for "AND you can continue to work at McDonalds", I suppose that would depend on the type of content. Content certainly comes in every imaginable shape, size, and quality. If we're talking content that is actually paid for, I think it's safe to say that we're not talking about extremely quick-to-make content. To go back to my Homestarrunner example, I've heard that it's basically a full-time job for two people to make a cartoon of that quality each week, and the creators presumably couldn't take a second job at McDonalds even if they wanted to (for some free fries, maybe). And keep in mind that while a lot of people like Homestar, it's debatable how many would actually pay for it each week. If they took considerably less time in making it, quality would suffer, and even fewer people would be willing to spend money and time on it.
It's already fairly obvious why "penny" micropayments haven't been embraced by consumers (inconvenience, privacy, annoyance factor) as well as why they're unattractive to transaction service providers (costs of disputes, etc.).
Much rarer are discussions of the topic from the content-creator's (artist/writer/cartoonist/musician/poet/whatever) point of view. Minimum wage is roughly $5/hour in the US and $10 in the UK. You'd need 500-1000 visitors paying a penny EACH HOUR just to equal the princely sum you'd make behind the grill at McDonalds. And that isn't even figuring in the transaction fees, advertising, taxes, hosting fees, bandwidth, DRM, software, customer service, etc. Obviously, not an attractive concept to most artists.
One response might be "Okay, you won't make much, but it's better than giving it away!" Not necessarily. Free content has a great deal of fluidity: it can be linked, quoted, forwarded, blogged, passed around the office, etc. Achieve a certain level of success in offering free content, and one can make up a tidy living selling merch and other residuals... Homestarrunner is a good example of this business model.
Given the staggering amount of transactions needed just to compete with minumum wage, I can't see penny or nickel-level micropayments ever taking off.
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I'm concerned that with all 77 pages of beaurocracy here, there's no decisive action one way or another towards getting VoiP providers to contribute to the Universal Service Fund... it just says, essentially, that they'll have a chat about it at the FCC and decide something later. Something tells me that anything firm on that issue is a long way off.
I have a copy of a book called "Get Even" (published sometime in the 80s, probably out of print now). Anyway, the book has Richard Nixon's actual SSN in it, which it recommends using on forms and such which demand an SSN for no good reason. I wouldn't actually do that, as it's probably some sort of federal crime or something to impersonate a deceased former president. But I imagine using the SSN of a dead relative would probably work instead. If the issue ever gets raised at school or wherever, just claim their database must be corrupt and offer to help them upgrade to FoxPro 2.6.
This got me thinking. Email spammers and other naughty types run web bots to scour web sites for email addresses and similar personal information. How hard could it be to write software to search one's own web server for lists of SSNs or whatever, and alert a webmaster so it can be quickly taken down? Doesn't sound like it would be particularly difficult at all. A quick search untility to parse publicly-accessable pages could save a lot of bad publicity later, as happened in this case.
I agree with you... there's definitely some really crappy doctors out there, who have no business being doctors at all. However, the profession has a way of weeding the truly awful ones out. They either lose their licence to practise, or are ousted by rising malpractice insurance costs. In PA, the situation is ludicrous: even a good doctor can pay up to $100,000 or more in malpractice insurance costs every single year!
My point, ultimately, is that being a doctor is an incredibly hard job, and it's easy for patients to overlook that. Anyone who's ever worked at any job has made some sort of mistake... for a doctor, even a tiny mistake could cost lives, or put him out of the medical profession for good.
And that's why this online complaints thing annoys me: as far as accountability is concerned, it's extremely one-sided. The doctor is always held fully accountable for whatever he says and does (and greedy lawyers are more than willing to twist words and actions to suit their case) while the online complainers share no such accountability. Though I agree there should be some sort of forum for public discussion, those public complaints about individual doctors should be verified with a real name and SS# on file at the site, and should sign the equivalent of an affadavit that they're telling the truth. That would cut down almost completely on the frivolous and untrue complaints. It's all about accountability.
I could probably argue this case from either side.
...but put yourself in the doctor's shoes and ask yourself what would you do?
Doctors do have to put up with a lot of crap as it is. Patients seem to expect them to come in like magical paladins who can cure anything with a few magic words. A lot of patients don't even take their advice anyway... who hasn't thrown away the last few pills in the bottle because they're already feeling better? Take it on a full stomach? Don't take it with alcohol? Those warnings are for other people, right?
And that's just the small stuff. Your doctor tells you to start eating right, quit smoking, and exercise. But those Twinkies look so good, and there's a Mork and Mindy marathon on tonight. A few weeks later, cardiac arrest... but hey, the doctor should give a guy some warning next time!
Let's face it, folks... becoming a doctor requires a huge amount of time, money, and dedication. It truly is a lifetime commitment. And when you finally get there, it isn't particularly pleasant work. Sure, the money is decent, but there's also the constant threat of multi-million-dollar lawsuits and now these internet complaints. Most of us simply don't have what it takes to be a doctor, much less a magical awesome doctor who never makes mistakes.
On the other hand, I firmly believe that free speech is wonderful and lawsuits suck.
Since adding DRM means that the Tivo device won't be able to do things that older versions could (and thus has less functionality), surely this means that they'll compensate customers by lowering prices. Right? Right? Right???
Simply put, for a competitive activity to catch on as a spectator sport, it must be physical and have a good deal of action. There are orgainsed competitions for all sorts of things, from chess to tiddlywinks to rock-paper-scissors, but people won't tune in unless there's action. Even golf and bowling have more action than watching someone peck at a keyboard or twiddle a joystick.
There's also the issue of charisma and looks. Athletes are successful only partly because of a certain celebrity appeal caused by physical good looks. Most of the "pro" gamers I've seen photos of have ranged from totally disgusting-looking to drab and average... I've yet to see one who could give, say, Anna Kournikova a run for her money. It could be because the practice involved with being a pro gamer prevents them from paying attention to their looks, or it could be that hardcore gaming just attracts a certain "type". I won't speculate because I genuinely don't know, but let's just say that I won't expect a "Girls of Pro Gaming Swimsuit Edition" at the newsstand anytime soon.
Finally, (and please note that I'm a moderate-to-hardcore gamer myself), competitive/pro gaming just isn't something that most gamers care about. I get most of the mainstream gaming mags (EGM, Game Informer, PSM, etc.) and gaming tournaments and such aren't given much coverage. Most gamers would rather read about hot new games coming out than some dude in Peoria getting such a high score in Pac-Man that the motherboard melted. Pro gaming attracts a certain crowd, and probably won't go away anytime soon, but will never find an audience as a mainstream spectator sport.
I can't wait for the rackmounted server version of this, I need two of them to power my Holodeck.
We must remember that realism is a ceiling. Once a photorealistic 3D gaming engine achieved, there's really nowhere else to go but towards new realms of style and pushing the boundaries of gameplay. I'm fascinated to think what games are going to look like in 15 years... I'm still waiting for a game which looks like a 3D moving impresionist painting. But that's just me.
I see no particular "better" or "worse" in the realism vs. style debate. Realism draws the player in and helps to create a sense of connection with the player's real life and world... great for horror games and driving games in particular. An interesting visual style, on the other hand, helps a game stand out from the crowd and be memorable... there's a zillion realistic and serious games, but we tend to remember ones like Mario, and Katamari Damacy which create whole universes of their own. River City Ransom is recalled as a classic, while Double Dragon is scarcely remembered at all these days.
I see no reason at all why realism and style must be mutually-exclusive even within the same series. Final Fantasy games tend to be on the realistic side, but most gamers also enjoyed the chibi-ism found in Final Fantasy Tactics. Developers: pick whatever suits your game and go with it.
I like the boldness behind this concept... DRM and software patents, much like spam, tend to be the sort of things that nearly everyone hates about but few actually do anything about them.
On the other hand, I worry that it might be a deterrent to large companies adopting free software if they believe that the "free" software will restrict their business practices in some way. What's next, witholding software to companies that pollute the invironment? That pay less to female employees? That don't have casual Fridays?
To rid ourselves of software patents and DRM, we need to show that those things are bad business models (*cough* $300 Million wasted on DIVX DVDs *cough*) not by adopting a holier-than-thou attitude and pretending to take the high moral ground.
I both agree and disagree with your statements.
In theory, the web is 24/7, but I've noticed that web traffic seems to more-or-less follow business hours. I'm sure there's some variance there depending on the type of site, etc, but I've always had noticably more hits at 12 noon than at 3AM, and always less on major holidays. There's also a little less traffic on the weekends. The web does work 24x7... but sometimes it works harder than others.
As for "AND you can continue to work at McDonalds", I suppose that would depend on the type of content. Content certainly comes in every imaginable shape, size, and quality. If we're talking content that is actually paid for, I think it's safe to say that we're not talking about extremely quick-to-make content. To go back to my Homestarrunner example, I've heard that it's basically a full-time job for two people to make a cartoon of that quality each week, and the creators presumably couldn't take a second job at McDonalds even if they wanted to (for some free fries, maybe). And keep in mind that while a lot of people like Homestar, it's debatable how many would actually pay for it each week. If they took considerably less time in making it, quality would suffer, and even fewer people would be willing to spend money and time on it.
It's already fairly obvious why "penny" micropayments haven't been embraced by consumers (inconvenience, privacy, annoyance factor) as well as why they're unattractive to transaction service providers (costs of disputes, etc.).
Much rarer are discussions of the topic from the content-creator's (artist/writer/cartoonist/musician/poet/whatever) point of view. Minimum wage is roughly $5/hour in the US and $10 in the UK. You'd need 500-1000 visitors paying a penny EACH HOUR just to equal the princely sum you'd make behind the grill at McDonalds. And that isn't even figuring in the transaction fees, advertising, taxes, hosting fees, bandwidth, DRM, software, customer service, etc. Obviously, not an attractive concept to most artists.
One response might be "Okay, you won't make much, but it's better than giving it away!" Not necessarily. Free content has a great deal of fluidity: it can be linked, quoted, forwarded, blogged, passed around the office, etc. Achieve a certain level of success in offering free content, and one can make up a tidy living selling merch and other residuals... Homestarrunner is a good example of this business model.
Given the staggering amount of transactions needed just to compete with minumum wage, I can't see penny or nickel-level micropayments ever taking off.