"Ask anyone who's been sent to prison for growing and selling plants."
I imagine you're talking about marijuana growth, right? I don't believe that's relevant in this argument. The number of people who ignore the **AA's and break their copyright laws would be hundreds, if not thousands of times larger than the number of people who grow marijuana, thusly making the idea of changing the laws based on what people, themselves, find acceptable, much more appealing in the anti-**AA case.
As much as the reasons for legalizing marijuana can be argued on the basis of it being so widespread and accepted socially, it just doesn't compare with the prevalence of people going against the rules of the **AA's.
That wasn't my argument. I was refuting the Parent's idea that saying that the almost cliche tremendous work ethic of Asian people isn't something to be proud of, and that saying that they have this great work ethic is somehow racist. You didn't read the context of my post, did you?
By the way, did your whole family work for 3-4 straight months, 24 hours a day, alongside you?
IANAL, and I'm really curious about this: How much evidence would be necessary to convict them on something akin to endangering the public by releasing notebooks that they knew could combust in a literal fireball?
I'm really hoping there is at least some legal protocol to protect consumer's from things like this that are rushed out the door at the (potential) expense of people's lives, other than class action suits.
"What I am getting at is that you are racist (even if it's your own race) if you think this is OK due to the fact that they are Chinese. The fact that people work this hard should not be something to be proud of, and should not have to be justified."
Not something to be proud of? Here's an example for you; a man owns a store about a block away from my house. He's Korean and since the store belongs to his family, the only employees are himself, his wife and his daughter. The store stays open 24 hours a day, meaning they each have to work an 8 hour shift every day of the week (or, more likely, someone has to work quite a bit more than that).
I had a conversation with him about a month ago about how hard I thought this must be, but he disagreed. He was terribly proud of how his whole family banded together to run the store and work such ridiculous hours in order to keep it going. His 16 year old daughter (a high school student) spent every day working, as well as studying and they had nothing but adoration and pride for her.
Where are you from that tremendous work ethic is not something to be admired?
Show me a society that didn't evolve from a farming culture. You may have to go back a bit further than with the Chinese, but that's kind of the basis of all of our modern societies.
Then again, based on your point, the argument could be made that since the Chinese were a farming culture so (relatively) recently, they retain the same extreme work ethic that our service-based culture lost a few centuries back and so, to us, their effort seems extraordinary.
While it's true that there is a certain cultural bias to work harder in many Asian cultures, one has to question whether it's an inherent trait, or if it's the result of living in a part of the world that is often exploited for the good of wealthier nations.
Do Asian people work harder because they have a much higher work ethic than Westerners, or do they have a much higher work ethic because the only jobs available for them are ones in which they have to work insane amounts of hours with little pay in order to provide Americans with luxury items (such as iPods)?
You forgot to mention their support of the draconic DRM policies that we've been seeing lately, their relentless pursuit of lawsuits designed to impoverish their customers and their blatant disregard for the respectability of the American judicial system.
"I see news reports about murders all the time, and last time I checked nobody wants murder to be legal."
Yes, that's true, people don't want murder to be legal. People DO, however, want to be able to burn a copy of a CD they enjoyed so that their friend can listen to (and enjoy) it too. They DO want to be able to make a mixtape(CD) to give their significant other for their anniversary. They DO want to be able to do whatever they want with music they bought, and that they consider to be a posession of theirs.
Murder is a completely different subject, and is not a valid comparison in regards to this argument.
The teenage demographic is their prime target. They want these kids to continue to consume the music they put out without questioning it, thusly creating a pattern for them to follow their entire lives.
Thankfully, these kids have decided that it's more reasonable to think that sharing music with friends of yours isn't a crime. This creates panic in the RIAA because if enough people come to think that way, it suddenly won't be illegal. As much as you can say that the law will still be on the books, if enough people are breaking the law, how well does that law hold up?
These kids are just exhibiting common sense, and common sense is the enemy of the **AA's.
Ok, but what does that have to do with the point that Bill Gates' money is doing more good by saving people from diseases in poor countries, than it would be if it was used for the space program?
We weren't talking about the average person (not that anyone who could spend $150m would be considered average...), and their theoretical selfishness has utterly nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Also, if I'm reading your comment correctly, you're upset with me for not realizing that people would want to spend tons of money on their own medical care instead of the medical care of others, right? Well that's just baffling. What are you even arguing there? I'm not even sure how I should respond to that, other than ask you if you're terribly sure that I'm the stupid one, Mr AC?
"The Russians haven't been doing much of anything in their space program lately. While they are smart by still using the workhorse of the Soyuz spacecraft and the Soyuz launch vehicle, they haven't done anything phenomenal in a long time. But I can't really blame them since the Russian space program has a budget of about $1 billion per year."
Yes, the operative word is "lately". I was referring to their great successes back when they were a world power, not their work after their entire country fell apart.
Maybe I'm of the minority opinion, but curing someone of malaria (and saving their life) is of greater immediate importance than sending a shuttle up to look at some rocks. Mr Gates has been doing this on such a large scale that his money is quite literally saving entire villages of people.
Next time I'm in Africa, I'll stop to ask whether they'd rather have a space shuttle launch than to live through the week.
There is a lot to be said for a smaller, focused, agile group of people with a unified dream. They can often do amazing things that (as evidenced by TFA) larger, more cumbersome groups who are weighed down by the inherent bureaucracy of a large group of people (and large amounts of government/corporate money) simply can not.
This sort of thing should be applauded and promoted. The American space industry has become one of "throw money at the issue until it's fixed" while the Russians, with much less money, were having pretty comparable successes for quite some time by just being more efficient and clever about their problems. We need to get back to a "less is more" approach whereby the simplest, easiest, cheapest solutions are the ones that we use, both because they work and because they allow for much greater flexibility and rapid growth for a program that is ailing, to say the least.
Personally, I find the entire issue of legislating video games to be an attention-grab by the folks in Washington who need a wide-reaching platform on which to get re-elected. This, along with Net Neutrality have become my two big voting issues. Anyone who has enough free time to start railing against video games, could be doing something much better with their time than running a state or (gasp!) the country.
What I would really like to see is an article that gives a side by side comparison of the legal battles video games have had to endure with the similar ones thrown at comic books and rock and roll in the past. I think that a well written article on the subject could sway a lot of uninformed voters as to how ridiculous this all really is.
Ah, but you're missing the most important part of TFA.
As our resources become less and less in the next few decades this sort of business will become much more important. These are the precursors to what very well could be a huge industry boom in the near future.
Also, you don't find the fact that their business relies on the refuse of other businesses instead of using new resources to be interesting? Wow. How jaded you have become!
I've never understood why the government (whose inefficiency in regards to monetary spending has become almost cliche) doesn't set up a system for these sorts of big projects where the funds for it ARE someone's money.
As you said, there would be much more motivation if it wasn't just taxpayer money, so why couldn't they use a system whereby they have several firms fund and set up different solutions and then the best solution gets a predetermined amount of money from the government?
Since the firms would be initially shelling out their own money on the projects without a guarantee of reimbursement, you had better believe they would be busting their asses to make sure the products did what they needed to do quickly and efficiently.
Once I got past that and started to pick up some useful magical weapons, and people started having reactions to me based on what I had done in the past, I found the story to be really engrossing and the quests to be both fun and rewarding. It becomes the kind of game where you keep telling yourself that you'll play for "just 5 more minutes". Of course, those 5 minutes turn into a couple hours.
For anyone who wants to know if they should check this game out, I think you should, but give it some time to grow on you. The beginning is definitely the least cool part of it.
I think Google's improved relationship with the media companies has more to do with the viability of Google as a company as opposed to the viability of the internet as a distribution platform.
It's hard to ignore the kind of success they've had.
The problem with the idea of setting up large-scale real-world games as an alternative to video games is that they go against what makes video games so attractive in the first place.
In a (good) video game, you are taken out of your reality and allowed to live out a great fantasy world. Whether it be World Of Warcraft, or Madden or Halo, these are simply not scenarios that you can recreate without either a huge financial investment, time investment or by creating very real danger to yourself. A video game gives you all of this without requiring much of any of those.
I could see two things coming from his company; Fun games: That are insanely expensive to participate in, and take days of real time to participate in
or Boring games: With little time or money investment and little in the way of actual fun (see Pacmanhattan)
Maybe my brain is just to rotted out by years of gaming, but I can't see this working out.
While I agree with you that it SHOULD include those games, in a perfect world, here in reality, Sega is only legally allowed to put out a compilation of it's own IP's and certain games that it published. Almost all of the games you mentioned aren't Sega properties, and thusly couldn't be included.
Though, I will heartily agree that we need to see some Shining Force action soon! Preferably a collection that includes all of the Genesis games and the all versions of SF3, including the ones we didn't get here in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
""Creative is very fortunate to have been granted this early patent," Apple's CEO Steve Jobs said in a press release.`"
You can almost hear him whispering "motherfuckers!" under his breath after saying this.
And if someone dies?
I think there should be some jail time involved for someone if their purposeful negligence causes a death.
"Ask anyone who's been sent to prison for growing and selling plants."
I imagine you're talking about marijuana growth, right? I don't believe that's relevant in this argument. The number of people who ignore the **AA's and break their copyright laws would be hundreds, if not thousands of times larger than the number of people who grow marijuana, thusly making the idea of changing the laws based on what people, themselves, find acceptable, much more appealing in the anti-**AA case.
As much as the reasons for legalizing marijuana can be argued on the basis of it being so widespread and accepted socially, it just doesn't compare with the prevalence of people going against the rules of the **AA's.
That wasn't my argument. I was refuting the Parent's idea that saying that the almost cliche tremendous work ethic of Asian people isn't something to be proud of, and that saying that they have this great work ethic is somehow racist. You didn't read the context of my post, did you?
By the way, did your whole family work for 3-4 straight months, 24 hours a day, alongside you?
IANAL, and I'm really curious about this: How much evidence would be necessary to convict them on something akin to endangering the public by releasing notebooks that they knew could combust in a literal fireball?
I'm really hoping there is at least some legal protocol to protect consumer's from things like this that are rushed out the door at the (potential) expense of people's lives, other than class action suits.
"What I am getting at is that you are racist (even if it's your own race) if you think this is OK due to the fact that they are Chinese. The fact that people work this hard should not be something to be proud of, and should not have to be justified."
Not something to be proud of? Here's an example for you; a man owns a store about a block away from my house. He's Korean and since the store belongs to his family, the only employees are himself, his wife and his daughter. The store stays open 24 hours a day, meaning they each have to work an 8 hour shift every day of the week (or, more likely, someone has to work quite a bit more than that).
I had a conversation with him about a month ago about how hard I thought this must be, but he disagreed. He was terribly proud of how his whole family banded together to run the store and work such ridiculous hours in order to keep it going. His 16 year old daughter (a high school student) spent every day working, as well as studying and they had nothing but adoration and pride for her.
Where are you from that tremendous work ethic is not something to be admired?
Show me a society that didn't evolve from a farming culture. You may have to go back a bit further than with the Chinese, but that's kind of the basis of all of our modern societies.
Then again, based on your point, the argument could be made that since the Chinese were a farming culture so (relatively) recently, they retain the same extreme work ethic that our service-based culture lost a few centuries back and so, to us, their effort seems extraordinary.
While it's true that there is a certain cultural bias to work harder in many Asian cultures, one has to question whether it's an inherent trait, or if it's the result of living in a part of the world that is often exploited for the good of wealthier nations.
Do Asian people work harder because they have a much higher work ethic than Westerners, or do they have a much higher work ethic because the only jobs available for them are ones in which they have to work insane amounts of hours with little pay in order to provide Americans with luxury items (such as iPods)?
You forgot to mention their support of the draconic DRM policies that we've been seeing lately, their relentless pursuit of lawsuits designed to impoverish their customers and their blatant disregard for the respectability of the American judicial system.
Also, they kick puppies.
"I see news reports about murders all the time, and last time I checked nobody wants murder to be legal."
Yes, that's true, people don't want murder to be legal. People DO, however, want to be able to burn a copy of a CD they enjoyed so that their friend can listen to (and enjoy) it too. They DO want to be able to make a mixtape(CD) to give their significant other for their anniversary. They DO want to be able to do whatever they want with music they bought, and that they consider to be a posession of theirs.
Murder is a completely different subject, and is not a valid comparison in regards to this argument.
The teenage demographic is their prime target. They want these kids to continue to consume the music they put out without questioning it, thusly creating a pattern for them to follow their entire lives.
Thankfully, these kids have decided that it's more reasonable to think that sharing music with friends of yours isn't a crime. This creates panic in the RIAA because if enough people come to think that way, it suddenly won't be illegal. As much as you can say that the law will still be on the books, if enough people are breaking the law, how well does that law hold up?
These kids are just exhibiting common sense, and common sense is the enemy of the **AA's.
Ok, but what does that have to do with the point that Bill Gates' money is doing more good by saving people from diseases in poor countries, than it would be if it was used for the space program?
We weren't talking about the average person (not that anyone who could spend $150m would be considered average...), and their theoretical selfishness has utterly nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Also, if I'm reading your comment correctly, you're upset with me for not realizing that people would want to spend tons of money on their own medical care instead of the medical care of others, right? Well that's just baffling. What are you even arguing there? I'm not even sure how I should respond to that, other than ask you if you're terribly sure that I'm the stupid one, Mr AC?
Friends don't let friends drink and format.
"The Russians haven't been doing much of anything in their space program lately. While they are smart by still using the workhorse of the Soyuz spacecraft and the Soyuz launch vehicle, they haven't done anything phenomenal in a long time. But I can't really blame them since the Russian space program has a budget of about $1 billion per year." Yes, the operative word is "lately". I was referring to their great successes back when they were a world power, not their work after their entire country fell apart.
Maybe I'm of the minority opinion, but curing someone of malaria (and saving their life) is of greater immediate importance than sending a shuttle up to look at some rocks. Mr Gates has been doing this on such a large scale that his money is quite literally saving entire villages of people.
Next time I'm in Africa, I'll stop to ask whether they'd rather have a space shuttle launch than to live through the week.
There is a lot to be said for a smaller, focused, agile group of people with a unified dream. They can often do amazing things that (as evidenced by TFA) larger, more cumbersome groups who are weighed down by the inherent bureaucracy of a large group of people (and large amounts of government/corporate money) simply can not.
This sort of thing should be applauded and promoted. The American space industry has become one of "throw money at the issue until it's fixed" while the Russians, with much less money, were having pretty comparable successes for quite some time by just being more efficient and clever about their problems. We need to get back to a "less is more" approach whereby the simplest, easiest, cheapest solutions are the ones that we use, both because they work and because they allow for much greater flexibility and rapid growth for a program that is ailing, to say the least.
Personally, I find the entire issue of legislating video games to be an attention-grab by the folks in Washington who need a wide-reaching platform on which to get re-elected. This, along with Net Neutrality have become my two big voting issues. Anyone who has enough free time to start railing against video games, could be doing something much better with their time than running a state or (gasp!) the country.
What I would really like to see is an article that gives a side by side comparison of the legal battles video games have had to endure with the similar ones thrown at comic books and rock and roll in the past. I think that a well written article on the subject could sway a lot of uninformed voters as to how ridiculous this all really is.
Ah, but you're missing the most important part of TFA.
As our resources become less and less in the next few decades this sort of business will become much more important. These are the precursors to what very well could be a huge industry boom in the near future.
Also, you don't find the fact that their business relies on the refuse of other businesses instead of using new resources to be interesting? Wow. How jaded you have become!
I've never understood why the government (whose inefficiency in regards to monetary spending has become almost cliche) doesn't set up a system for these sorts of big projects where the funds for it ARE someone's money.
As you said, there would be much more motivation if it wasn't just taxpayer money, so why couldn't they use a system whereby they have several firms fund and set up different solutions and then the best solution gets a predetermined amount of money from the government?
Since the firms would be initially shelling out their own money on the projects without a guarantee of reimbursement, you had better believe they would be busting their asses to make sure the products did what they needed to do quickly and efficiently.
I'm living in a magical dream world, aren't I?
I thought so too, for the first hour and a half.
Once I got past that and started to pick up some useful magical weapons, and people started having reactions to me based on what I had done in the past, I found the story to be really engrossing and the quests to be both fun and rewarding. It becomes the kind of game where you keep telling yourself that you'll play for "just 5 more minutes". Of course, those 5 minutes turn into a couple hours.
For anyone who wants to know if they should check this game out, I think you should, but give it some time to grow on you. The beginning is definitely the least cool part of it.
I think Google's improved relationship with the media companies has more to do with the viability of Google as a company as opposed to the viability of the internet as a distribution platform.
It's hard to ignore the kind of success they've had.
So that means we're only ~10 years away from being able to climb around in sewers and eat mushrooms, right?
I can't wait!
The problem with the idea of setting up large-scale real-world games as an alternative to video games is that they go against what makes video games so attractive in the first place.
In a (good) video game, you are taken out of your reality and allowed to live out a great fantasy world. Whether it be World Of Warcraft, or Madden or Halo, these are simply not scenarios that you can recreate without either a huge financial investment, time investment or by creating very real danger to yourself. A video game gives you all of this without requiring much of any of those.
I could see two things coming from his company;
Fun games: That are insanely expensive to participate in, and take days of real time to participate in
or
Boring games: With little time or money investment and little in the way of actual fun (see Pacmanhattan)
Maybe my brain is just to rotted out by years of gaming, but I can't see this working out.
While I agree with you that it SHOULD include those games, in a perfect world, here in reality, Sega is only legally allowed to put out a compilation of it's own IP's and certain games that it published. Almost all of the games you mentioned aren't Sega properties, and thusly couldn't be included.
Though, I will heartily agree that we need to see some Shining Force action soon! Preferably a collection that includes all of the Genesis games and the all versions of SF3, including the ones we didn't get here in the US.
Agreed. If I could get a full compilation of Phantasy Star 1-4 (hopefully on the DS), I would be the happiest pony in all of ponyville.