Apparently it was after he'd watched a load of 9/11 conspiracy nut films, assuming the whole story is even true of course.
What's the bet though, true or not, this story will result in a Streisand type effect and before you know it the Whitehouse inbox will be full of "Prick", "Prick Prick Prick Prick Prick Prick", e-mails.
It's not unique, you see the people behind these types of schemes aren't doing it with the goal of groundbreaking news stories, they're doing it because generating a news story on sites like Slashdot, no matter how dull or inane simply by changing ever so slightly the method of selling means that they have increased their potential customer base by several orders of magnitude.
Indies aren't trying to do something groundbreaking here, they're cashing in on the fact that editors are sites like Slashdot are stupid enough to repeat the same tired old story and produce fuck loads of page hits and potential sales for them. The genius isn't the pricing mechanism itself, it's the pricing mechanism as an advert on the front page of some of the largest relevant news sites on the internet.
There are other similar tactics- write a blog post about how your game made x amount of sales because you ported to and gave away a free picture of a lolcat with it or whatever inane blog post indies are thinking up nowadays to get on the front page of sites like Slashdot. Realise that these people don't give a fuck about how interesting their blog post actually is, or how clever their pricing scheme is, they only need it to be just relevant enough for sites like Slashdot to post it and link to their site giving them massive amounts of traffic and sales as a result.
Ah, you're one of those with a very binary mindset, to you everything must be either black or white, there are no shades of grade. There can be no middle ground, a prediction is either right or wrong, it can't be a "reasonable guess".
No one sensible makes a prediction and assumes it will be 100% correct, but a prediction that isn't 100% correct isn't worthless. If someone predicted the RAZR would be the most popular phone in history in year one or two, then it wouldn't be too bad a prediction seeing as it was one of the most successful, and was certainly the most succesful out of the budget phones. If for example the prediction was made to a room of app developers and they based their development on that prediction and decided to target the RAZR for example then the platform would still have done well enough for the app developers to reap the rewards of it even if it didn't come number one in the end.
Similarly, if Android only takes 2nd place by 2014 then the prediction wasn't 100% accurate, but it was a reasonable guess, and anyone following it would still likely have seen the benefits of targetting the second place platform- more so if it still takes 1st place, albeit a year late for example.
Predictions are made based on weighing up the possibilities, and if there's a reasonable chance something can happen, then it's not wrong to predict it. People don't make predictions with the goal of being either 100% right, or 100% wrong, they make them as a reasonable guess as to the way things could be going.
Don't blame other people for your inability to see the shades of grey in something, this world isn't entirely binary I'm afraid. A prediction that was close but not quite correct can still be very valuable.
Predictions might pain you in your world of absolutes, because they can't ever be guaranteed to be absolutely correct, but providing a prediction is based upon reasonable understanding of the underlying facts, and the trends in the market place, then they're still an important tool. Whilst you may ignore it because it's of no worth to you and because to you anything that's not guaranteed to be correct is obviously stupid and not worth paying attention to, there will be plenty of people that do need to pay attention to such predictions and research further how well grounded they are as they are fundamental to setting future business direction and the like.
"Hell, Google's Nexus One direct customer sales only survived from January to July 2010. It's a volatile market, and products come and go very quickly."
That was very much a one off experiment by a single vendor in direct sales, so it's hardly a great example of a trend in the mobile industry.
"Look at the Motorola Razr. Kids all thought it was the coolest thing ever. Plenty of them hit the market. They only survived from the end of 2004 to mid 2007."
Might I suggest the take a look at how the RAZR did? I'll give you a hint- it achieved over 3 times the number of handset sales the iPhone did in a it's first 3 year period. Hardly a good example of a failed phone, it was one of the most succesful phones in history, coming only behind Nokia's ultra cheap handsets like the 1100 which have been lapped up by countries like China and India, as well as African nations.
If you're going to criticise mobile phone marketplace predictions it's generally a good idea to have a clue about it first. Citing one of the most succesful mobile phones of all time as an example of something that didn't do as well as predicted because it only lasted 3 years is silly because it clearly was a phenomenal success.
There's a good basis to the idea that Android will continue to grow and that's because it's got the support of so many vendors, and certainly it faces issues, but right now it's growth is incredible. Sustainable? who knows, but it's a better bet as the next contender to the crown in the mobile phone industry compared to other mobile phone OS' who are pretty much stagnant or are even in decline. Perhaps the best thing Android has going for it though because by nature of it's relative openness it's a candidate to replace the next generation of phones lapped up by the poorer markets like India, Africa, and China, whilst things like iOS and RIM's Blackberry OS, possible even Windows Mobile have no real cheap hardware platforms- effectively right now other than perhaps MeeGo or whatever Nokia is calling it this week, Android is the only real contender to Symbian dominated markets without detriment to being a strong player in the high end smartphone market too.
Well it had to end one way. In an ideal world you'd be smart enough to realise why this is an issue and why there is a tough decision that has to be made based on the pros and cons.
Instead it appears you'd just rather remain an ignorant retard incapable of comprehending basic logical arguments. Sucks to be you.
"No, that's not what free speech is. Free speech does not come without repercussions. I can tell my boss to go fuck himself -- perfectly legal speech in any civilized nation -- are you going to claim that I don't have free speech because he can fire me for having said that?"
Once again you're accepting there are limitations on free speech, but failing to acknowledge it explicitly. Have a look at the Wiki leak I posted for you previously- you'll see threatening behaviour listed under that as exempt from free speech laws. Well done though, you've just found another example of why we don't have uninhibited rights to free speech.
"He wasn't "just" exercising speech. He had a weapon and stated his intention to use it."
Intention is not enough under the law to justify arrest, my previous example involved a world where we took a literal interpretation of the right to bear arms with no restrictions which is how you've interpreted the right to free speech so possession of a weapon alone would also not break laws in said scenario- though you seem to accept that this is another example where putting limits on rights is in fact a good thing, so well done on once again recognising why we need limits on some rights.
"The action of burning books harms no one. The reaction to that book burning is the problem, but we don't restrain people from engaging in speech based on the inability of others to control themselves in the presence of that speech."
The action of pulling a trigger harms no one, it's the result of the bullet that flies out the barrel that's the problem. You see how that works? It doesn't matter what the act is, it's the overall effect of the act that has to be considered, and violence is one inevitable effect of this type of book burning. Again, the shouting fire in the crowded theatre analogy is the closest here- shouting fire harms no one, it's the rush of the crowd that leads to deaths- you mentioned reckless endagerment, burning the Koran could be interpreted similarly.
That was my first thought, but to be fair this guy is coming from one of Microsoft's most succesful divisons- the one that brings in one of the largest shares of Microsoft's profits, whilst Microsoft's attempts at entering the mobile market have not come from this division.
It's unlikely this fellow had much real involvement in Windows Mobile, but does have experience of running one of the most succesful divisions of the largest tech company in the world.
My biggest concern if anything would be that perhaps this background may leave him too business focussed, and with the current battle for mobile phones being more centred around fun and personal use he may end up just pushing dull handsets that only compete with the likes of the Blackberry and aren't interesting enough to challenge Android and iPhones in the hearts of consumers. Potentially though his skills are transferrable and working in a business focussed division doesn't mean he can't use his management skills on non-business focussed stuff too.
"It's not a justification, it's the truth. Reckless endangerment laws do not criminalize speech. They criminalize behavior that places other human beings in physical danger. I'm sorry that you can't see the difference but the fact remains that it's not illegal anywhere in the United States to scream "fire!""
I do see the difference, but you're still missing the fundamental point- however you frame those laws, the very fact that it is the act of speech that initiates those reckless endagerment laws means that that particular speech is not free. If anything it seems you just don't understand what free speech is- it's the ability to say what you want without fear of repercussions, but clearly shouting fire in a crowded theatre does have repercussions- it triggers reckless endagerment laws.
"Whether or not it's a "bluff" is irrelevant. If I point a gun (or a nuclear weapon, to use your absurd strawman) at your body and announce my intention to kill you then you can safely assume that your life is in danger and respond accordingly."
Exactly, you don't take the chance- despite the fact he was just exercising speech, you realise that it's not worth the risk to treat it as free speech, you wish to bring down repercussions on him for his speech because it's better than the alternative- risking the possibility that he's not bluffing. This is my point- you seem to implicitly realise we sometimes have to limit people's rights because the alternative is much worse, yet you're refusing to acknowledge explicitly that this is the case. You're agreeing with my point whilst claiming you're not- you recognise that we do sometimes need to limit and balance rights and freedoms without actually being willing to explicitly admit it. This is precisely the debate here- do we stop the pastor's book burning because it might potentially lead to otherwise needless deaths, just as shouting fire in a crowded theatre might?
"That example is really worn out. It's not illegal to shout "fire!" It's illegal to commit the crime of reckless endangerment. That crime is usually defined as engaging in acts which the actor knows (or should know) are likely to cause harm to others. It's absurd to draw the conclusion that such a law permits the infringement of speech. "
This is a laughably bad justification- you're effectively saying that providing you suggest they've been arrested for a different crime, the fundamental point that they have been punished for exercising their right to uninhibited free speech doesn't exist. You could make the same claim about this pastor- if they arrest him for anti-terrorism laws because he planned to cause a riot then that's okay, the riot act covers it. The fact is, in both cases although they've been able to exercise speech, they've been punished for it- their speech most certainly wasn't free.
In the second example you quoted, you seem to be accepting the fact that someone merely bearing arms and exercising free speech should be dealt with because you personally think they will do wrong, they might not, it might all be a bluff, it might simply be to make a point, the bomb may not even be real, it may be a parody- any number of things, but the point is you accept that the situation is serious enough to act against this person for simply exercising their rights if those rights were absolute.
So effectively with your justifications you accept that yes there are cases where speech is limited, you just refuse to realise that this contradiction means that even in the US, you don't really have absolute free speech. My arguments are not straw men arguments because they are valid, and follow logically, whilst yours are logical fallacies, they are contradictory, and they do not follow.
I'm not really sure why you're so scared of admitting that yes, even in America some freedoms are limited where it matters to protect others rights and freedoms- clearly this is the case, you even accept it yourself, although you try and separate it and justify it despite doing so being quite nonsensical.
If you think we're done then fair enough, I guess you'd just prefer to live in a world of ignorance where rights are never limited, except when they are- but when they are it's okay because you personally agree with that specific limitation. Well that's upto you, it's your problem, it doesn't make you any less wrong in reality though.
But is IT really that different from say engineering, finance, HR jobs in the way a transgender would be treated? What about retail and food sectors?
"That last one is a big consideration. Ask any transgender (either m2f or f2m) and they'll probably have more than one story about being physically assaulted just because they were "different"."
But is it a transgender specific problem? People have suffered the same for being fat, gay, ginger, jewish, black, white and many other things. It's because unfortunately, there's too many arseholes in the world and not strong enough repercussions for their actions.
"We don't submit our civil liberties to a cost benefit analysis."
Yes, we do. All countries, including the US do, there is not one country in the world that doesn't put limits on the civil liberties it allows. See here for some examples regarding free speech:
The view that a country like the US has completely uninhibited free speech is completely ignorant, it's not the case. We put limits on various civil liberties, and fundamental rights, and we do this for one very good reason- sometimes they conflict.
At issue, much like the case of shouting "fire" in a crowded feature we have a choice between allowing free speech/freedom of expression, and someone losing the fundamental right to life. There's simply not an option of protecting both people's civil liberties when they're in conflict- we have to choose one or the other, and this is when we effectively do a cost benefit analysis on that. In the UK an argument that's been going on for years is whether Catholic adoption agencies should have to allow gay couples to adopt- it's a question of whether gay couples have the same rights as straight couples and it's a conflict between the fundamental rights of gay couples and the fundamental right to practice religion, in this particular case it appears gay couples have won.
Taken literally, if rights were absolute, then in the US a muslim could walk into the centre of times square shouting "Allah akbar, death to the infidels" (freedom of speech) towing behind him a nuclear weapon (the right to bear arms) and no one could touch him, not until it was too late.
Obviously this wouldn't happen, because there are limits on what arms people are allowed- that is, we limit some civil liberties, we decide that sometimes, there are circumstances where they cannot be granted in full and must be limited, again, primarily when there is a risk of other's civil liberties being infringed.
This was all about Unity, which basically does exactly what Adobe's Flash packaging tool did for the most part. The Unity game tools have been used to develop some fairly popular iPhone games, and Apple knew it couldn't continue to authorise Unity based apps whilst denying apps created with Adobe's tools without falling foul of competition laws. Similarly, by kicking Unity off too they'd be throwing away from of the iPhone's most popular games.
So the question now is, does this mean if Adobe tries to release it's tools again that Apple is going to let it, or are they now going to try and find another excuse to deny Adobe access to the platform?
Apple stood to lose far more if it continued to stand by this policy, and if it stood by the policy whilst letting some apps through it also stood to face the DoJ, so it had to decide one way or the other.
I can only assume you're making that comment with the decision set clearly in stone in your head that absolute free speech is the only reasonable option, else I'm not really sure what your point is because it doesn't seem to be of any relevance.
If my assumption is correct then my point is that whether you agree with absolute free speech or not, people like this can cause harm to society and can use said free speech to incite violence that may or may not lead to deaths, as such the question must surely be asked whether such free speech really must be supported? The flip side as I've pointed out is that if you don't support free speech even in this case then has society lost a battle against extremist interpretations of Islam?
Please realise that I'm not saying that if my assumption about your viewpoint is correct that you're wrong, I'm saying I don't know what the solution is, but merely pointing out both sides- that sometimes free speech can actually be a bad thing, whilst not defending it even when bad can itself be potentially bad. It's a lose-lose situation, no one can win from it, so the question has to be who wins- do we let the Islamists win and avoid possibly fatal riots and actions, or do we let the pastor win and protect free speech and expression, but at the cost of the lives of both muslim protestors and US troops alike.
So the "so what" in response to your question, is that protecting this guy's free speech doesn't come at no cost, it comes at the potential expense of lives which could otherwise be saved by stifling this one particularly despicable individual's free speech- the question is whether the cost of free speech is always worth it, much like the classic question of whether one should be allowed to shout fire in a crowded theatre (which you should note, US citizens including Hitler were he reborn in the US don't have the right to do without punishment, because it's deemed not worth protecting over the risk of potential loss of life).
Again, I'm not trying to say what's right either way because as I said originally, I'm not sure myself what the best option is because neither is good. It would certainly seem quite ignorant to say outright that in this case free speech should be protected at all costs, even in the case of this pastor, without also justifying why the cost of the loss or potential loss in human life is worth it- obviously protection of free speech in itself is one justification, but is it enough of one? if so, why?
Whilst I agree that burning the Koran is probably not the smartest of moves, precisely because it will lead to violence, I do take issue with the double standards here.
We have for example countries like Malasia, Indonesia, and Afghanistan complaining about how someone burning the Koran is offence and insisting the US government step in to stop it, but where are these country's governments when people in these countries burn western flags, or effigies of foreign people? or even Christian bibles? or the star of David?
So I'll admit I'm not really sure what stance to take here, on one hand I agree that this pastor is clearly a little Hitler, but on the other, I'm concerned that no one is taking a step back and saying, well hang on, a lot of muslims burn sacred symbols from other religions and important symbols of other cultures, so are they now going to stop doing so if we stop this book burning?
I don't like this guy, in fact, I don't really like any religion at all if I'm honest, I think it's all a waste of time and money, but I'm concerned that the battle for freedom of speech and expression has already been lost- if we have the whole world condemning this pastor, whilst a blind eye is turned to the burnings of various things by muslim protestors, than hasn't the rest of the world effectively been forced to yield to Islamic values, whilst Islam as a religion has yielded nothing in return?
It's a difficult problem for sure, largely because both sides are just as bad as each other.
"On the other hand, I doubt that George would make the same joke over and over again in a venue where he knows that there are going to be a statistically much higher than average number of transgenders (such as the tech field in general, and programming in particular)."
I'm intrigued by this comment, do you have any evidence for this or are you just speculating? I'm wondering why there would be a higher than average number of transgenders working in technical jobs like programming over any other say, office based job.
So let me get this straight, you're attacking a certain group of people for being narrow minded, whilst making gross generalisations about that group of people?
Most people couldn't care if you're man, woman, rabbit or donkey, yet you seem to be quite anti-male, you seem to have quite strong opinions of this section of the population:
"There's the way that men treat women in general (which has its own share of dismissal, ridicule, and voilence)"
No, men in general do treat women like that, some arseholes do, but many treat them with nothing but respect. Of course, it's not as if all women are perfect, there are plenty out there that will fuck men around.
"Same as not asking for directions, leaving their dirty clothes on the floor, and not changing the toilet paper roll when they finish it - or leaving half a square neatly balanced on the roll so they can say they didn't "really" finish it. Come on you guys reading this, fess up, you do this all the time, and it bugs us that you think we're that stupid"
If you make assertions like that, then yes, you're probably correct in believing people think you're stupid, because it's a gross generalisation that absolutely isn't applicable to many "guys reading this". I can firmly say I've never done this, nor, as someone who frequents shared male toilets at work, have I ever seen any evidence of any other male doing this, it's clearly something that bothers you, but it's not something that most men do, even if some do.
Your attitude is akin to that of feminists who argue that men accused of rape don't deserve anonymity in even if they are actually innocent- you want your rights, you want people to treat you with respect, but you show absolutely no respect for others.
Clearly you have a problem with narrow minded people, which is fine, but then why are you being so utterly narrow minded yourself?
I have a lot of sympathy for the difficulties faced by many people who have some natural trait (such as homosexuality) that gets them labelled, judged, and hated and have even been involved politically in supporting gay rights, despite being straight and having no vested interest in it (other than not wanting to see gay friends treated like shit) primarily because I see it as big an injustice as racism has historically been. Yet when I see people like you saying the things you have, I often question myself whether bothering to help the situation is even worth it, when there is a sizable portion of homosexuals, transexuals and so on who are just as bigoted themselves about people who are straight and happy with their natural physical sex.
Do yourself a favour and reflect on your opinions about males, becoming a woman doesn't mean you have to take on bigoted feminist generalisations about males too. If you continue as is, you shouldn't be suprised to find people continuing to treat you like shit, and less and less people interested in helping you and people like you have an easier time of it. Your opinions of others are helping perpetuate the problems you face, which gives you little moral ground to stand on to complain about treatment of people in your situation- you are part the problem.
Even with that logic BP doesn't deserve all responsibility because they only held a 75% share in the well, a large portion of the remaining 25% of profits would've gone to Anadarko, a US company, amongst others, and yet they're trying to weasel out of it, and the US press and politicians are letting them.
But there are other fundamental problems with your line of thought- sure the likes of Halliburton and Transocean don't profit directly from the oil itself, but they most certainly profit from the oil indirectly- they sure as hell don't do all that work for BP for free, and this in itself begs questions- was the wrong cement used because BP wanted to increase it's profit margins by having the job done on the cheap, or was the wrong cement used because Halliburton wanted to increase it's profit margins on the contract to do the work for BP?
It doesn't really matter how you try and justify it- responsibility, profits, personnel, ultimately BP wasn't the only stakeholder in any of these regions, so in every case the responsibility must go to companies other than just BP.
It's simply not just BP at fault here, a lot of companies are to blame, yet ironically BP is the only one thus far that has accepted responsibility for it's share of the problem.
Not to mention that to get to the point where bail is being decided the police have to have a reasonable degree of evidence in the first place to justify the arrest. Similarly, the police can't search your house without a warrant, where again, they need to provide some evidence to justify that.
Even in the case of searches and arrests there is presumptions of innocence until the police have some justifiable reason to even carry out the arrest and issue the charges.
It sounds like the GP is just a run of the mill idiot who doesn't have the first clue about the justice system, which is ironic, seeing as he was slagging someone else off for just that.
As I mentioned in my original post, ensuring backwards/forwards compatibility was one issue DirectX was designed to solve, you've pointed out another. The GP was wrong to assert it was designed to solve just that one problem he mentioned, it wasn't. DirectX was very much designed with the goal of solving quite a few problems at once, 3 of which have been discussed here.
Indeed, in fact, this was precisely one of the problems DirectX was always designed to solve from the start, it was designed to provide a multimedia API that could both move with the times and retain backwards compatibility.
Issues with older games tend to come down to hardware specific optimisations, obsolete libraries such as Glide, or OS specific code.
For the most part, stuff written with Microsoft's officially provided Windows APIs even back to Windows 95 (and sometimes even further back than that) tends to still run. It's the stuff that doesn't use those APIs that often causes the problems.
For better or worse, backwards compatbility is one thing that Microsoft certainly does tend to get right most the time. It's just that companies often ignore backwards compatibility when building new apps and just build for the now. Sometimes this is excused, i.e. game companies doing low level optimisations to improve performance, other times it's some MBA falling hook line and sinker for the sales pitch of some fly by night company providing an obscure set of code libraries and mandating all his developers use it.
I still have apps I wrote in C using the raw Win32 API back in 1995/1996 that work absolutely fine to this day.
Chances are if a game doesn't run, DirectX version is the least of it's troubles.
Perhaps not suprisingly due to both evolving under the same sun, lights that make people feel happy and stay healthy work on the same wavelengths as lights that keep plants healthy to some extent- certainly use of the blue wavelengths is shared, although plants get no real benefit from the green wavelength whilst humans do.
You don't need grow lights for plants (I grow cacti under normal fluorescent tubes in British winters without etiolation and plenty healthy enough), most tubes you find in offices are in fact not that great for humans OR plants.
If you're trying to light an environment to keep staff happy and healthy, then emulating lighting that most closely mimics the wavelengths and levels of ambient brightness provided by the sun will not only keep employees feeling comfortable, but will allow you to grow plants healthily.
Even if you are going for cheap lighting though there are still plants adapted well enough to grow in that instead.
I fully agree with the GP, live plants are a very good thing to have in this kind of environment, fake plants just don't cut it.
So you agree that if someone steals your car, and runs someone over for it, you're liable for manslaughter right?
Just because it's more difficult to prove the connection, doesn't mean we throw justice out the window and just say, yeah, fuck it, there's a possibility their guilty so let's class them as the victim.
Just becomes someone owns something doesn't mean they should be held responsible for criminal use of it, particularly if they have know knowledge that it's being used in that manner (i.e. a car stolen whilst they're asleep).
Precisely because, unless you're sat witnessing the individual carrying out the file sharing or have some equally damning evidence, then you can't actually match 5,000 IPs to people. You can at best match them to an internet connection which may or may not be shared amongst multiple people, and where the subscriber to the connection may or may not be victim of a trojan horse, wifi hijacking, or other unauthorised use of his/her system(s). There's also the question as to whether ISP logs are reliable and valid too, and whether the people checking those logs are supportive enough of the sentiment and care about their jobs enough to pass the right data along.
It is your assertion that they are matching IPs to people, rather than connections that is causing you confusion in understanding why they cannot prove this (at least in the vast majority of cases). Thus far these sorts of lawsuits have also relied on coercing people into admitting guilty, sometimes if they are guilty, sometimes if not, because even if not guilty defending yourself can be prohibitively expensive and is no guarantee of success when certain cowboy courts and jurys are allowed to pass sentencing without understanding why someone could very well not be guilty.
I have no problem with companies defending their film with legal action, providing it's actually done in a manner where justice can be decidedly served. The method being used, whether acceptable to the courts in the US or not is not justice- this is probably also why this method is only used in a select few countries, because even those companies doing this type of mass suing know that many jurisdictions simply wouldn't entertain such abysmal standards of "evidence", and might in fact punish them for even trying to extort money from the innocent in some cases. Even the RIAA in the US in the end accepted this was the wrong method of enforcement because it was both ineffective, costly, and could often go very wrong.
Saying filesharers caused the lacklustre sales makes no sense either, as other films are breaking records all the time- Avatar, Toy Story 3 etc. broke new records this year but also similarly suffer the piracy problem.
As you say, there was more to this films poor sales than simply filesharing, see my other post in this thread for one possible reason, your point is also a good reason.
Really this film had such a poor financial showing because of management mistakes, it's as simple as that. Sure piracy problem does take a chunk out of film profits, but nowhere near enough to cause too many problems else if it did the afformentioned films such as Avatar and Toy Story 3 would never have been able to break the box office records they did compared to previous all time record breakers like Titanic that came around before filesharing movie piracy was even a problem.
Let's be honest, the executives responsible for the management fuckups behind this films lacklustre profits know full well they fucked up, these lawsuits are just about ass-covering so that these execs can fool some other gullable film maker into running the business end of their production in future. "Oh, yeah, the Hurt Locker, it wasn't abysmal marketing that led to it's poor showing, it was the file sharers. Honest.".
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, the word was "prick".
Apparently it was after he'd watched a load of 9/11 conspiracy nut films, assuming the whole story is even true of course.
What's the bet though, true or not, this story will result in a Streisand type effect and before you know it the Whitehouse inbox will be full of "Prick", "Prick Prick Prick Prick Prick Prick", e-mails.
It's not unique, you see the people behind these types of schemes aren't doing it with the goal of groundbreaking news stories, they're doing it because generating a news story on sites like Slashdot, no matter how dull or inane simply by changing ever so slightly the method of selling means that they have increased their potential customer base by several orders of magnitude.
Indies aren't trying to do something groundbreaking here, they're cashing in on the fact that editors are sites like Slashdot are stupid enough to repeat the same tired old story and produce fuck loads of page hits and potential sales for them. The genius isn't the pricing mechanism itself, it's the pricing mechanism as an advert on the front page of some of the largest relevant news sites on the internet.
There are other similar tactics- write a blog post about how your game made x amount of sales because you ported to and gave away a free picture of a lolcat with it or whatever inane blog post indies are thinking up nowadays to get on the front page of sites like Slashdot. Realise that these people don't give a fuck about how interesting their blog post actually is, or how clever their pricing scheme is, they only need it to be just relevant enough for sites like Slashdot to post it and link to their site giving them massive amounts of traffic and sales as a result.
Ah, you're one of those with a very binary mindset, to you everything must be either black or white, there are no shades of grade. There can be no middle ground, a prediction is either right or wrong, it can't be a "reasonable guess".
No one sensible makes a prediction and assumes it will be 100% correct, but a prediction that isn't 100% correct isn't worthless. If someone predicted the RAZR would be the most popular phone in history in year one or two, then it wouldn't be too bad a prediction seeing as it was one of the most successful, and was certainly the most succesful out of the budget phones. If for example the prediction was made to a room of app developers and they based their development on that prediction and decided to target the RAZR for example then the platform would still have done well enough for the app developers to reap the rewards of it even if it didn't come number one in the end.
Similarly, if Android only takes 2nd place by 2014 then the prediction wasn't 100% accurate, but it was a reasonable guess, and anyone following it would still likely have seen the benefits of targetting the second place platform- more so if it still takes 1st place, albeit a year late for example.
Predictions are made based on weighing up the possibilities, and if there's a reasonable chance something can happen, then it's not wrong to predict it. People don't make predictions with the goal of being either 100% right, or 100% wrong, they make them as a reasonable guess as to the way things could be going.
Don't blame other people for your inability to see the shades of grey in something, this world isn't entirely binary I'm afraid. A prediction that was close but not quite correct can still be very valuable.
Predictions might pain you in your world of absolutes, because they can't ever be guaranteed to be absolutely correct, but providing a prediction is based upon reasonable understanding of the underlying facts, and the trends in the market place, then they're still an important tool. Whilst you may ignore it because it's of no worth to you and because to you anything that's not guaranteed to be correct is obviously stupid and not worth paying attention to, there will be plenty of people that do need to pay attention to such predictions and research further how well grounded they are as they are fundamental to setting future business direction and the like.
"Hell, Google's Nexus One direct customer sales only survived from January to July 2010. It's a volatile market, and products come and go very quickly."
That was very much a one off experiment by a single vendor in direct sales, so it's hardly a great example of a trend in the mobile industry.
"Look at the Motorola Razr. Kids all thought it was the coolest thing ever. Plenty of them hit the market. They only survived from the end of 2004 to mid 2007."
Might I suggest the take a look at how the RAZR did? I'll give you a hint- it achieved over 3 times the number of handset sales the iPhone did in a it's first 3 year period. Hardly a good example of a failed phone, it was one of the most succesful phones in history, coming only behind Nokia's ultra cheap handsets like the 1100 which have been lapped up by countries like China and India, as well as African nations.
If you're going to criticise mobile phone marketplace predictions it's generally a good idea to have a clue about it first. Citing one of the most succesful mobile phones of all time as an example of something that didn't do as well as predicted because it only lasted 3 years is silly because it clearly was a phenomenal success.
There's a good basis to the idea that Android will continue to grow and that's because it's got the support of so many vendors, and certainly it faces issues, but right now it's growth is incredible. Sustainable? who knows, but it's a better bet as the next contender to the crown in the mobile phone industry compared to other mobile phone OS' who are pretty much stagnant or are even in decline. Perhaps the best thing Android has going for it though because by nature of it's relative openness it's a candidate to replace the next generation of phones lapped up by the poorer markets like India, Africa, and China, whilst things like iOS and RIM's Blackberry OS, possible even Windows Mobile have no real cheap hardware platforms- effectively right now other than perhaps MeeGo or whatever Nokia is calling it this week, Android is the only real contender to Symbian dominated markets without detriment to being a strong player in the high end smartphone market too.
Well it had to end one way. In an ideal world you'd be smart enough to realise why this is an issue and why there is a tough decision that has to be made based on the pros and cons.
Instead it appears you'd just rather remain an ignorant retard incapable of comprehending basic logical arguments. Sucks to be you.
"No, that's not what free speech is. Free speech does not come without repercussions. I can tell my boss to go fuck himself -- perfectly legal speech in any civilized nation -- are you going to claim that I don't have free speech because he can fire me for having said that?"
Once again you're accepting there are limitations on free speech, but failing to acknowledge it explicitly. Have a look at the Wiki leak I posted for you previously- you'll see threatening behaviour listed under that as exempt from free speech laws. Well done though, you've just found another example of why we don't have uninhibited rights to free speech.
"He wasn't "just" exercising speech. He had a weapon and stated his intention to use it."
Intention is not enough under the law to justify arrest, my previous example involved a world where we took a literal interpretation of the right to bear arms with no restrictions which is how you've interpreted the right to free speech so possession of a weapon alone would also not break laws in said scenario- though you seem to accept that this is another example where putting limits on rights is in fact a good thing, so well done on once again recognising why we need limits on some rights.
"The action of burning books harms no one. The reaction to that book burning is the problem, but we don't restrain people from engaging in speech based on the inability of others to control themselves in the presence of that speech."
The action of pulling a trigger harms no one, it's the result of the bullet that flies out the barrel that's the problem. You see how that works? It doesn't matter what the act is, it's the overall effect of the act that has to be considered, and violence is one inevitable effect of this type of book burning. Again, the shouting fire in the crowded theatre analogy is the closest here- shouting fire harms no one, it's the rush of the crowd that leads to deaths- you mentioned reckless endagerment, burning the Koran could be interpreted similarly.
That was my first thought, but to be fair this guy is coming from one of Microsoft's most succesful divisons- the one that brings in one of the largest shares of Microsoft's profits, whilst Microsoft's attempts at entering the mobile market have not come from this division.
It's unlikely this fellow had much real involvement in Windows Mobile, but does have experience of running one of the most succesful divisions of the largest tech company in the world.
My biggest concern if anything would be that perhaps this background may leave him too business focussed, and with the current battle for mobile phones being more centred around fun and personal use he may end up just pushing dull handsets that only compete with the likes of the Blackberry and aren't interesting enough to challenge Android and iPhones in the hearts of consumers. Potentially though his skills are transferrable and working in a business focussed division doesn't mean he can't use his management skills on non-business focussed stuff too.
"It's not a justification, it's the truth. Reckless endangerment laws do not criminalize speech. They criminalize behavior that places other human beings in physical danger. I'm sorry that you can't see the difference but the fact remains that it's not illegal anywhere in the United States to scream "fire!""
I do see the difference, but you're still missing the fundamental point- however you frame those laws, the very fact that it is the act of speech that initiates those reckless endagerment laws means that that particular speech is not free. If anything it seems you just don't understand what free speech is- it's the ability to say what you want without fear of repercussions, but clearly shouting fire in a crowded theatre does have repercussions- it triggers reckless endagerment laws.
"Whether or not it's a "bluff" is irrelevant. If I point a gun (or a nuclear weapon, to use your absurd strawman) at your body and announce my intention to kill you then you can safely assume that your life is in danger and respond accordingly."
Exactly, you don't take the chance- despite the fact he was just exercising speech, you realise that it's not worth the risk to treat it as free speech, you wish to bring down repercussions on him for his speech because it's better than the alternative- risking the possibility that he's not bluffing. This is my point- you seem to implicitly realise we sometimes have to limit people's rights because the alternative is much worse, yet you're refusing to acknowledge explicitly that this is the case. You're agreeing with my point whilst claiming you're not- you recognise that we do sometimes need to limit and balance rights and freedoms without actually being willing to explicitly admit it. This is precisely the debate here- do we stop the pastor's book burning because it might potentially lead to otherwise needless deaths, just as shouting fire in a crowded theatre might?
"That example is really worn out. It's not illegal to shout "fire!" It's illegal to commit the crime of reckless endangerment. That crime is usually defined as engaging in acts which the actor knows (or should know) are likely to cause harm to others. It's absurd to draw the conclusion that such a law permits the infringement of speech. "
This is a laughably bad justification- you're effectively saying that providing you suggest they've been arrested for a different crime, the fundamental point that they have been punished for exercising their right to uninhibited free speech doesn't exist. You could make the same claim about this pastor- if they arrest him for anti-terrorism laws because he planned to cause a riot then that's okay, the riot act covers it. The fact is, in both cases although they've been able to exercise speech, they've been punished for it- their speech most certainly wasn't free.
In the second example you quoted, you seem to be accepting the fact that someone merely bearing arms and exercising free speech should be dealt with because you personally think they will do wrong, they might not, it might all be a bluff, it might simply be to make a point, the bomb may not even be real, it may be a parody- any number of things, but the point is you accept that the situation is serious enough to act against this person for simply exercising their rights if those rights were absolute.
So effectively with your justifications you accept that yes there are cases where speech is limited, you just refuse to realise that this contradiction means that even in the US, you don't really have absolute free speech. My arguments are not straw men arguments because they are valid, and follow logically, whilst yours are logical fallacies, they are contradictory, and they do not follow.
I'm not really sure why you're so scared of admitting that yes, even in America some freedoms are limited where it matters to protect others rights and freedoms- clearly this is the case, you even accept it yourself, although you try and separate it and justify it despite doing so being quite nonsensical.
If you think we're done then fair enough, I guess you'd just prefer to live in a world of ignorance where rights are never limited, except when they are- but when they are it's okay because you personally agree with that specific limitation. Well that's upto you, it's your problem, it doesn't make you any less wrong in reality though.
But is IT really that different from say engineering, finance, HR jobs in the way a transgender would be treated? What about retail and food sectors?
"That last one is a big consideration. Ask any transgender (either m2f or f2m) and they'll probably have more than one story about being physically assaulted just because they were "different"."
But is it a transgender specific problem? People have suffered the same for being fat, gay, ginger, jewish, black, white and many other things. It's because unfortunately, there's too many arseholes in the world and not strong enough repercussions for their actions.
"We don't submit our civil liberties to a cost benefit analysis."
Yes, we do. All countries, including the US do, there is not one country in the world that doesn't put limits on the civil liberties it allows. See here for some examples regarding free speech:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States#Special_exceptions
The view that a country like the US has completely uninhibited free speech is completely ignorant, it's not the case. We put limits on various civil liberties, and fundamental rights, and we do this for one very good reason- sometimes they conflict.
At issue, much like the case of shouting "fire" in a crowded feature we have a choice between allowing free speech/freedom of expression, and someone losing the fundamental right to life. There's simply not an option of protecting both people's civil liberties when they're in conflict- we have to choose one or the other, and this is when we effectively do a cost benefit analysis on that. In the UK an argument that's been going on for years is whether Catholic adoption agencies should have to allow gay couples to adopt- it's a question of whether gay couples have the same rights as straight couples and it's a conflict between the fundamental rights of gay couples and the fundamental right to practice religion, in this particular case it appears gay couples have won.
Taken literally, if rights were absolute, then in the US a muslim could walk into the centre of times square shouting "Allah akbar, death to the infidels" (freedom of speech) towing behind him a nuclear weapon (the right to bear arms) and no one could touch him, not until it was too late.
Obviously this wouldn't happen, because there are limits on what arms people are allowed- that is, we limit some civil liberties, we decide that sometimes, there are circumstances where they cannot be granted in full and must be limited, again, primarily when there is a risk of other's civil liberties being infringed.
This was all about Unity, which basically does exactly what Adobe's Flash packaging tool did for the most part. The Unity game tools have been used to develop some fairly popular iPhone games, and Apple knew it couldn't continue to authorise Unity based apps whilst denying apps created with Adobe's tools without falling foul of competition laws. Similarly, by kicking Unity off too they'd be throwing away from of the iPhone's most popular games.
So the question now is, does this mean if Adobe tries to release it's tools again that Apple is going to let it, or are they now going to try and find another excuse to deny Adobe access to the platform?
Apple stood to lose far more if it continued to stand by this policy, and if it stood by the policy whilst letting some apps through it also stood to face the DoJ, so it had to decide one way or the other.
I can only assume you're making that comment with the decision set clearly in stone in your head that absolute free speech is the only reasonable option, else I'm not really sure what your point is because it doesn't seem to be of any relevance.
If my assumption is correct then my point is that whether you agree with absolute free speech or not, people like this can cause harm to society and can use said free speech to incite violence that may or may not lead to deaths, as such the question must surely be asked whether such free speech really must be supported? The flip side as I've pointed out is that if you don't support free speech even in this case then has society lost a battle against extremist interpretations of Islam?
Please realise that I'm not saying that if my assumption about your viewpoint is correct that you're wrong, I'm saying I don't know what the solution is, but merely pointing out both sides- that sometimes free speech can actually be a bad thing, whilst not defending it even when bad can itself be potentially bad. It's a lose-lose situation, no one can win from it, so the question has to be who wins- do we let the Islamists win and avoid possibly fatal riots and actions, or do we let the pastor win and protect free speech and expression, but at the cost of the lives of both muslim protestors and US troops alike.
So the "so what" in response to your question, is that protecting this guy's free speech doesn't come at no cost, it comes at the potential expense of lives which could otherwise be saved by stifling this one particularly despicable individual's free speech- the question is whether the cost of free speech is always worth it, much like the classic question of whether one should be allowed to shout fire in a crowded theatre (which you should note, US citizens including Hitler were he reborn in the US don't have the right to do without punishment, because it's deemed not worth protecting over the risk of potential loss of life).
Again, I'm not trying to say what's right either way because as I said originally, I'm not sure myself what the best option is because neither is good. It would certainly seem quite ignorant to say outright that in this case free speech should be protected at all costs, even in the case of this pastor, without also justifying why the cost of the loss or potential loss in human life is worth it- obviously protection of free speech in itself is one justification, but is it enough of one? if so, why?
Whilst I agree that burning the Koran is probably not the smartest of moves, precisely because it will lead to violence, I do take issue with the double standards here.
We have for example countries like Malasia, Indonesia, and Afghanistan complaining about how someone burning the Koran is offence and insisting the US government step in to stop it, but where are these country's governments when people in these countries burn western flags, or effigies of foreign people? or even Christian bibles? or the star of David?
So I'll admit I'm not really sure what stance to take here, on one hand I agree that this pastor is clearly a little Hitler, but on the other, I'm concerned that no one is taking a step back and saying, well hang on, a lot of muslims burn sacred symbols from other religions and important symbols of other cultures, so are they now going to stop doing so if we stop this book burning?
I don't like this guy, in fact, I don't really like any religion at all if I'm honest, I think it's all a waste of time and money, but I'm concerned that the battle for freedom of speech and expression has already been lost- if we have the whole world condemning this pastor, whilst a blind eye is turned to the burnings of various things by muslim protestors, than hasn't the rest of the world effectively been forced to yield to Islamic values, whilst Islam as a religion has yielded nothing in return?
It's a difficult problem for sure, largely because both sides are just as bad as each other.
"On the other hand, I doubt that George would make the same joke over and over again in a venue where he knows that there are going to be a statistically much higher than average number of transgenders (such as the tech field in general, and programming in particular)."
I'm intrigued by this comment, do you have any evidence for this or are you just speculating? I'm wondering why there would be a higher than average number of transgenders working in technical jobs like programming over any other say, office based job.
So let me get this straight, you're attacking a certain group of people for being narrow minded, whilst making gross generalisations about that group of people?
Most people couldn't care if you're man, woman, rabbit or donkey, yet you seem to be quite anti-male, you seem to have quite strong opinions of this section of the population:
"There's the way that men treat women in general (which has its own share of dismissal, ridicule, and voilence)"
No, men in general do treat women like that, some arseholes do, but many treat them with nothing but respect. Of course, it's not as if all women are perfect, there are plenty out there that will fuck men around.
"Same as not asking for directions, leaving their dirty clothes on the floor, and not changing the toilet paper roll when they finish it - or leaving half a square neatly balanced on the roll so they can say they didn't "really" finish it. Come on you guys reading this, fess up, you do this all the time, and it bugs us that you think we're that stupid"
If you make assertions like that, then yes, you're probably correct in believing people think you're stupid, because it's a gross generalisation that absolutely isn't applicable to many "guys reading this". I can firmly say I've never done this, nor, as someone who frequents shared male toilets at work, have I ever seen any evidence of any other male doing this, it's clearly something that bothers you, but it's not something that most men do, even if some do.
Your attitude is akin to that of feminists who argue that men accused of rape don't deserve anonymity in even if they are actually innocent- you want your rights, you want people to treat you with respect, but you show absolutely no respect for others.
Clearly you have a problem with narrow minded people, which is fine, but then why are you being so utterly narrow minded yourself?
I have a lot of sympathy for the difficulties faced by many people who have some natural trait (such as homosexuality) that gets them labelled, judged, and hated and have even been involved politically in supporting gay rights, despite being straight and having no vested interest in it (other than not wanting to see gay friends treated like shit) primarily because I see it as big an injustice as racism has historically been. Yet when I see people like you saying the things you have, I often question myself whether bothering to help the situation is even worth it, when there is a sizable portion of homosexuals, transexuals and so on who are just as bigoted themselves about people who are straight and happy with their natural physical sex.
Do yourself a favour and reflect on your opinions about males, becoming a woman doesn't mean you have to take on bigoted feminist generalisations about males too. If you continue as is, you shouldn't be suprised to find people continuing to treat you like shit, and less and less people interested in helping you and people like you have an easier time of it. Your opinions of others are helping perpetuate the problems you face, which gives you little moral ground to stand on to complain about treatment of people in your situation- you are part the problem.
Even with that logic BP doesn't deserve all responsibility because they only held a 75% share in the well, a large portion of the remaining 25% of profits would've gone to Anadarko, a US company, amongst others, and yet they're trying to weasel out of it, and the US press and politicians are letting them.
But there are other fundamental problems with your line of thought- sure the likes of Halliburton and Transocean don't profit directly from the oil itself, but they most certainly profit from the oil indirectly- they sure as hell don't do all that work for BP for free, and this in itself begs questions- was the wrong cement used because BP wanted to increase it's profit margins by having the job done on the cheap, or was the wrong cement used because Halliburton wanted to increase it's profit margins on the contract to do the work for BP?
It doesn't really matter how you try and justify it- responsibility, profits, personnel, ultimately BP wasn't the only stakeholder in any of these regions, so in every case the responsibility must go to companies other than just BP.
It's simply not just BP at fault here, a lot of companies are to blame, yet ironically BP is the only one thus far that has accepted responsibility for it's share of the problem.
Not to mention that to get to the point where bail is being decided the police have to have a reasonable degree of evidence in the first place to justify the arrest. Similarly, the police can't search your house without a warrant, where again, they need to provide some evidence to justify that.
Even in the case of searches and arrests there is presumptions of innocence until the police have some justifiable reason to even carry out the arrest and issue the charges.
It sounds like the GP is just a run of the mill idiot who doesn't have the first clue about the justice system, which is ironic, seeing as he was slagging someone else off for just that.
As I mentioned in my original post, ensuring backwards/forwards compatibility was one issue DirectX was designed to solve, you've pointed out another. The GP was wrong to assert it was designed to solve just that one problem he mentioned, it wasn't. DirectX was very much designed with the goal of solving quite a few problems at once, 3 of which have been discussed here.
Indeed, in fact, this was precisely one of the problems DirectX was always designed to solve from the start, it was designed to provide a multimedia API that could both move with the times and retain backwards compatibility.
Issues with older games tend to come down to hardware specific optimisations, obsolete libraries such as Glide, or OS specific code.
For the most part, stuff written with Microsoft's officially provided Windows APIs even back to Windows 95 (and sometimes even further back than that) tends to still run. It's the stuff that doesn't use those APIs that often causes the problems.
For better or worse, backwards compatbility is one thing that Microsoft certainly does tend to get right most the time. It's just that companies often ignore backwards compatibility when building new apps and just build for the now. Sometimes this is excused, i.e. game companies doing low level optimisations to improve performance, other times it's some MBA falling hook line and sinker for the sales pitch of some fly by night company providing an obscure set of code libraries and mandating all his developers use it.
I still have apps I wrote in C using the raw Win32 API back in 1995/1996 that work absolutely fine to this day.
Chances are if a game doesn't run, DirectX version is the least of it's troubles.
Yeah, except you're making the fundamentally flawed assumption that he's guilty.
The fact is, neither you or I know whether he is guilty or not yet, and yet you seem to be implying that he is.
Perhaps not suprisingly due to both evolving under the same sun, lights that make people feel happy and stay healthy work on the same wavelengths as lights that keep plants healthy to some extent- certainly use of the blue wavelengths is shared, although plants get no real benefit from the green wavelength whilst humans do.
You don't need grow lights for plants (I grow cacti under normal fluorescent tubes in British winters without etiolation and plenty healthy enough), most tubes you find in offices are in fact not that great for humans OR plants.
If you're trying to light an environment to keep staff happy and healthy, then emulating lighting that most closely mimics the wavelengths and levels of ambient brightness provided by the sun will not only keep employees feeling comfortable, but will allow you to grow plants healthily.
Even if you are going for cheap lighting though there are still plants adapted well enough to grow in that instead.
I fully agree with the GP, live plants are a very good thing to have in this kind of environment, fake plants just don't cut it.
So you agree that if someone steals your car, and runs someone over for it, you're liable for manslaughter right?
Just because it's more difficult to prove the connection, doesn't mean we throw justice out the window and just say, yeah, fuck it, there's a possibility their guilty so let's class them as the victim.
Just becomes someone owns something doesn't mean they should be held responsible for criminal use of it, particularly if they have know knowledge that it's being used in that manner (i.e. a car stolen whilst they're asleep).
Precisely because, unless you're sat witnessing the individual carrying out the file sharing or have some equally damning evidence, then you can't actually match 5,000 IPs to people. You can at best match them to an internet connection which may or may not be shared amongst multiple people, and where the subscriber to the connection may or may not be victim of a trojan horse, wifi hijacking, or other unauthorised use of his/her system(s). There's also the question as to whether ISP logs are reliable and valid too, and whether the people checking those logs are supportive enough of the sentiment and care about their jobs enough to pass the right data along.
It is your assertion that they are matching IPs to people, rather than connections that is causing you confusion in understanding why they cannot prove this (at least in the vast majority of cases). Thus far these sorts of lawsuits have also relied on coercing people into admitting guilty, sometimes if they are guilty, sometimes if not, because even if not guilty defending yourself can be prohibitively expensive and is no guarantee of success when certain cowboy courts and jurys are allowed to pass sentencing without understanding why someone could very well not be guilty.
I have no problem with companies defending their film with legal action, providing it's actually done in a manner where justice can be decidedly served. The method being used, whether acceptable to the courts in the US or not is not justice- this is probably also why this method is only used in a select few countries, because even those companies doing this type of mass suing know that many jurisdictions simply wouldn't entertain such abysmal standards of "evidence", and might in fact punish them for even trying to extort money from the innocent in some cases. Even the RIAA in the US in the end accepted this was the wrong method of enforcement because it was both ineffective, costly, and could often go very wrong.
Saying filesharers caused the lacklustre sales makes no sense either, as other films are breaking records all the time- Avatar, Toy Story 3 etc. broke new records this year but also similarly suffer the piracy problem.
As you say, there was more to this films poor sales than simply filesharing, see my other post in this thread for one possible reason, your point is also a good reason.
Really this film had such a poor financial showing because of management mistakes, it's as simple as that. Sure piracy problem does take a chunk out of film profits, but nowhere near enough to cause too many problems else if it did the afformentioned films such as Avatar and Toy Story 3 would never have been able to break the box office records they did compared to previous all time record breakers like Titanic that came around before filesharing movie piracy was even a problem.
Let's be honest, the executives responsible for the management fuckups behind this films lacklustre profits know full well they fucked up, these lawsuits are just about ass-covering so that these execs can fool some other gullable film maker into running the business end of their production in future. "Oh, yeah, the Hurt Locker, it wasn't abysmal marketing that led to it's poor showing, it was the file sharers. Honest.".