This is the "silent velcro" from Garden State. Their product placement and marketing is just way ahead of the game, advertising before the product is even invented!
Removing federal loans just means private institutions will make up some the difference. The problem is that private loans will demand a higher rate (because they're looking to make a profit).
The problem is that Ron's looking at this from the student's perspective; but that's not the typical case. Most students are paying for college with help from their parents (indeed, most middle-class parents start college funds for their children earlier and earlier). Even with help from mom & dad loans are usually required.
It's not like schools are just making up tuition costs, they have bills to pay; and the price isn't just set wherever they feel like setting it; they have a budget, of which tuition and fees is only one source of income among many. If the demand suddenly decreases that likely means costs per student will increase (as many of the fixed costs are now carried by a smaller population).
I'd recommend narrowing "economics" down to just of the sub-field of microeconomics; behavioral economics in particular. These focus on the actions of a single agent (or small number of agents).
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics
Most of macroeconomics looks at the systems that result out of a large number of agents acting independently, which isn't what I infer the OP is looking for (there's little overlap between AI and things like: theory of money; aggregate supply / demand; role of government; international trade; etc). There are certainly people looking at simulating these with multiple AI players... but I doubt the field is that far along yet as we're still working to model the AI of a single individual.
From TFA:
The tiny crustaceans graze on phytoplankton, which keeps the carbon in the food chain and prevents it from being stored in the ocean sink.
The goal was to get the carbon out of the food chain and dormant on the ocean floor.
I agree this demographic exists, I'd argue it's how they define it that's the problem.
18-34 is (imo) the wrong age range. When looking at heavy gaming they need to look at college age (18-24) and filter out the age most people become working professionals (24-34).
I know from my experience (which is not a very sound statistical tool) my play time dropped significantly around the same time the paychecks started rolling in. Skipping class/study to play games is not the same as skipping work to play games (people notice when I skip work...)
To back this up with more sound statistical reasoning... amount of time playing video games is likely directly related to the amount of disposable time a person has. Anyone can tell you a college student has more disposable free time than a salaried employee (at least as a general rule of thumb). Grouping these two catagories together is sure to give you measurement bias in your results... which means the conclusion they come to in the article are not sound sicne it is based only on this one measurement.
I can't provide you with a lawsuit resulting from a "positive" ethical choice.
But where do I classify all these failed business ventures and companies which have been bought out by less scroupulous competitors?
Remember when all the manufacturing jobs moved overseas (or to latin America)? How many American firms closed their doors?
While we can all argue whether the loss of jobs to the working class was morally reprehensible, the companies that outsourced manufacturing to China sure made a lot more money than the ones that went under.
Labeling censorship as evil is qualitative... I'm in no position to say whether it's right or wrong. I only argue that not entering the Chinese market is a bad business decision for companies like Google, MSN and Yahoo.
Players in the market must let government decide things that "should" and "should not" be allowed (although they can lobby the government to change). For the most part the players in the market don't get to make up the rules, they just follow them. In China that means censorship. If it's "wrong" to censor information the (Chinese) people & government should decide so, not big corporations. I (personally) think it'd be a horrible idea to let big corporations and market forces dictate our morals...
That being said; any corporation which foregoes profits due to their morals/opinions will (all else being equal) be overtaken by a competitor who takes the profit.
Wikipedia is non-profit, where the others (Google, Yahoo, etc) are profit seeking organizations (at least, they're listed on market exchanges).
So while wikipedia can take the high ground and just not exist in China, for-profit companies have to justify this to their shareholders. If you were invested in Google and heard they decided not to expand into the large & growing market of China... well you can see how one could begin to question if the company's leadership had the shareholder's interests in mind.
First of all I think it's a very narrow view to call WoW the MMO leader. Lineage 2 has far more players / revenue / you name it.
WoW is the most popular MMO here in America (one might say in the English speaking market)... but to place it in some high regard and label it "unbeatable" by other games is a little short sighted.
Games are HIGHLY subject to fads, although MMOs have a longer cycle than single players just due to the length of time involved to play the game and consume all the content. Beyond that as technology improves WoW will eventually become out-dated on levels of graphics, capacity & such (even with expansions).
As always it's best to view history and use that as a judge. What are some of the past games that were king of their tier? Everquest used to be "the" MMO game that "dominated" the market... where is it now? Branching out from the MMO genre: Quake? Unreal? Starcraft? Civ? Super Mario Bros? (so many more)
All games still have a player base, but I'd argue they're all past their prime and on the way out.
I have no doubt that WoW will still have a significant player base in several years (heck, people still play Ultima Online and Meridian 59)... but it WILL eventually lose it's title as the #1 hot and talked about game.
Now guessing what a game will have to do to replace WoW's spot at the top of the hill.... that's another matter.
Okay, I'm all for throwing out the old schol bulbs and going with the "new hotness"... but I've got quite a bone to pick with the quote form the article:
"if every one of 110 million American households bought just one [CFL], took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads."
First of all the comparisons just don't make sense, there's no time period on anything. Say instead you compare the power saved by replacing 1 light bulb over the course of a million years and it could power a city of 10,000 for a day. Take away our time periods and suddenly we have one light bulb saving enough energy to power a city of 10,000! If you want to convince me of the evironmental / economic benefits of something, don't just throw out random numbers!
On top of that comparisons are supposed to make things easy to understand (because people can't comprehend how much is in a ton of co2?). Just how much greenhouse gas comes from 1.3 million cars?...I have no idea! I can't visualize the significance of this impact! A good comparison would be to tell me the monetary value that you'd save off the electric bill (the average home saves X dollars per year on their electrib bill for each 60 watt bulb exchanged). Or the ACTUAL reduction in gallons / barrels of oil burned. That makes sense to Mr. Average Joe... 1.3 million cars makes me think of rush hour, not environmentalism.
Why is it people generalize games saying "all games with stories are inferior to games without" or vice versa.
People play games for different reasons. To me it's like you're comparing reading a book with playing a sport.
Read a book: there's story, character involvement, emotion, closure, etc...
Play a sport: there's competition, victory / loss, teamwork, patience, dedication, joy / sorrow / regret, etc...
Sometime I want to play a game like counterstrike, where it's fun to try and get a high score, or just blow off some steam.
Other times I want to play a game like Final Fantasy, where there's characters to learn about, a world to explore, motives to uncover...
Anyone spouting commentary that all video games should conform to one playstyle is building a picture with half of the puzzle pieces:( Video games should not be homogeneous... that more than anything else would alienate players. Variety is the spice of life right?
It's important to distinguish the actual work being done (at that company) from the type of work (in general) the person does.
If I'm passionate about my work, it doesn't matter so much if I'm at my current company or say... one of it's competitors, where I'd be doing pretty much the same job.
This is where compensation will always be important. You can't go to someone and say "you love doing this so much we won't pay you" unless you're a monopsony. If you love writing music (as an example); Atlantic records can't keep you around w/out paying you since other record labels would love to steal you away, pay you slightly more than nothing and let you write music for them instead.
"Companies can exist, thrive and even excel without taking advantage of every opportunity to maximize profit."
Think about why there are so few of such companies? Because in the marketplace, when such companies exist, they often lose to the more aggressive profit-seeking competitors.
Sometimes a company (like Craigslist) will dominate, but more often (far more often) they'll get bought out, or a company will just invest in advertising to steal their client base.
I do whole-heartedly agree with the statements that a small number of people create the most value, and a large number of people in most companies deliver little "bang for the buck".
You're thinking of Progress Quest... that's the game that's all about time sink.
People play to have fun; for some people that means spending the time to get something others don't have. For others it means hitting the "I win" button.
I'm reminded of the god mode cheat codes in the original Wolfenstein.
Some people felt the game sucked without the cheat, others felt the game was ruined if you use it.
I think we should solve this with a two tier internet!
One "slow" tier would be for all the people who actually reply to spam (thus giving the spammers money) or get their computers infected with bots and fail to clean them.
The other "fast" tier would be for poeple who know better than to click on everything in their email box and instead delete the spam / trojans.
I'd disagree this is theft of service, unless they specify it's limited to one free access per person.
If I had a laptop and a desktop would it be theft of service to link each up seperately? If I then decide to download some files on my laptop, and some on my desktop, then share the files between the two I'm suddently stealing (assuming it's legal to DL these files in the first place).
Besides, preaching to internet users about theft is roughly equivilent to asking a baby not to cry (do I need to remind you about the whole P2P music sharing fiasco that's been ongoing for the past ~7 years since Napster hit). If it is more economically fesible to buy multiple devices and use them in parallel for free compared to buying one device and using it at a higher capacity for a fee... someone's bound to do it. Now if the access point costs $250 and the higher bandwidth service is $5 / mo then it's pretty obvious this won't be economically feasible for most individuals. One the other hand if acess points are $20 and the higher bandwidth costs $40 / mo... well, use whatever numbers you like; at this point it's speculation on if this service will even exist.
The sync of the transponders needs to be coordinated only so that when there are multiple *independent* request / reply packets they are distributed amongst the input / output channels (instead of sending 5 packets through a single device you send 3 through one and 2 through the other). If these wireless devices are designed correctly there shouldn't be interferance from other devices being nearby (otherwise I'd just as likely be colliding with my neighbors, which wouldn't be nice at all). Think of two people standing next to each other on cell phones... they don't interfere with each other's signals to the tower to they? But of course they do interefere with any nearby speakerphones:(
As to the other poster asking for links I don't know any because ever since I got broadband I lost interest in trying this. I do know there are programs like netants (http://www.netants.com/) which do this same sort of thing in principal, but across a single access medium.
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This is the "silent velcro" from Garden State. Their product placement and marketing is just way ahead of the game, advertising before the product is even invented!
Removing federal loans just means private institutions will make up some the difference. The problem is that private loans will demand a higher rate (because they're looking to make a profit).
The problem is that Ron's looking at this from the student's perspective; but that's not the typical case. Most students are paying for college with help from their parents (indeed, most middle-class parents start college funds for their children earlier and earlier). Even with help from mom & dad loans are usually required.
It's not like schools are just making up tuition costs, they have bills to pay; and the price isn't just set wherever they feel like setting it; they have a budget, of which tuition and fees is only one source of income among many. If the demand suddenly decreases that likely means costs per student will increase (as many of the fixed costs are now carried by a smaller population).
I'd recommend narrowing "economics" down to just of the sub-field of microeconomics; behavioral economics in particular. These focus on the actions of a single agent (or small number of agents). Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics Most of macroeconomics looks at the systems that result out of a large number of agents acting independently, which isn't what I infer the OP is looking for (there's little overlap between AI and things like: theory of money; aggregate supply / demand; role of government; international trade; etc). There are certainly people looking at simulating these with multiple AI players... but I doubt the field is that far along yet as we're still working to model the AI of a single individual.
From TFA: The tiny crustaceans graze on phytoplankton, which keeps the carbon in the food chain and prevents it from being stored in the ocean sink. The goal was to get the carbon out of the food chain and dormant on the ocean floor.
They'er going to have my favorite game: resell on eBay for double the price!
The sequel is also good: Buy another a few weeks later.
That's odd... from my experience there's MORE racial slurs and degredation in online games than elsewhere in society.
There also seem to be a disproportionate amount of schoolgirls...
I agree this demographic exists, I'd argue it's how they define it that's the problem.
18-34 is (imo) the wrong age range. When looking at heavy gaming they need to look at college age (18-24) and filter out the age most people become working professionals (24-34).
I know from my experience (which is not a very sound statistical tool) my play time dropped significantly around the same time the paychecks started rolling in. Skipping class/study to play games is not the same as skipping work to play games (people notice when I skip work...)
To back this up with more sound statistical reasoning... amount of time playing video games is likely directly related to the amount of disposable time a person has. Anyone can tell you a college student has more disposable free time than a salaried employee (at least as a general rule of thumb). Grouping these two catagories together is sure to give you measurement bias in your results... which means the conclusion they come to in the article are not sound sicne it is based only on this one measurement.
I'm tired of having script kiddies join my DOTA games & WOW groups, only to utter obscenities and leave the first time they die.
Parents: take your kids outside, I'm trying to play a game here!
I can't provide you with a lawsuit resulting from a "positive" ethical choice. But where do I classify all these failed business ventures and companies which have been bought out by less scroupulous competitors? Remember when all the manufacturing jobs moved overseas (or to latin America)? How many American firms closed their doors? While we can all argue whether the loss of jobs to the working class was morally reprehensible, the companies that outsourced manufacturing to China sure made a lot more money than the ones that went under.
Labeling censorship as evil is qualitative... I'm in no position to say whether it's right or wrong. I only argue that not entering the Chinese market is a bad business decision for companies like Google, MSN and Yahoo.
Players in the market must let government decide things that "should" and "should not" be allowed (although they can lobby the government to change). For the most part the players in the market don't get to make up the rules, they just follow them. In China that means censorship. If it's "wrong" to censor information the (Chinese) people & government should decide so, not big corporations.
I (personally) think it'd be a horrible idea to let big corporations and market forces dictate our morals...
That being said; any corporation which foregoes profits due to their morals/opinions will (all else being equal) be overtaken by a competitor who takes the profit.
Wikipedia is non-profit, where the others (Google, Yahoo, etc) are profit seeking organizations (at least, they're listed on market exchanges).
So while wikipedia can take the high ground and just not exist in China, for-profit companies have to justify this to their shareholders. If you were invested in Google and heard they decided not to expand into the large & growing market of China... well you can see how one could begin to question if the company's leadership had the shareholder's interests in mind.
Soon we'll find out this is all really funded by Blizzard... getting kids addicted to WoW at an early age.
I also suspect that's why they use cartoon-like characters just like the cigarette companies did.
If I remember correctly, I wasn't given anything. I had to buy my own paper and #2 pencils!
It's a wonder I ever learned anything!
First of all I think it's a very narrow view to call WoW the MMO leader. Lineage 2 has far more players / revenue / you name it.
WoW is the most popular MMO here in America (one might say in the English speaking market)... but to place it in some high regard and label it "unbeatable" by other games is a little short sighted.
Games are HIGHLY subject to fads, although MMOs have a longer cycle than single players just due to the length of time involved to play the game and consume all the content. Beyond that as technology improves WoW will eventually become out-dated on levels of graphics, capacity & such (even with expansions).
As always it's best to view history and use that as a judge. What are some of the past games that were king of their tier?
Everquest used to be "the" MMO game that "dominated" the market... where is it now?
Branching out from the MMO genre: Quake? Unreal? Starcraft? Civ? Super Mario Bros? (so many more)
All games still have a player base, but I'd argue they're all past their prime and on the way out.
I have no doubt that WoW will still have a significant player base in several years (heck, people still play Ultima Online and Meridian 59)... but it WILL eventually lose it's title as the #1 hot and talked about game.
Now guessing what a game will have to do to replace WoW's spot at the top of the hill.... that's another matter.
Okay, I'm all for throwing out the old schol bulbs and going with the "new hotness"... but I've got quite a bone to pick with the quote form the article:
...I have no idea! I can't visualize the significance of this impact! A good comparison would be to tell me the monetary value that you'd save off the electric bill (the average home saves X dollars per year on their electrib bill for each 60 watt bulb exchanged). Or the ACTUAL reduction in gallons / barrels of oil burned. That makes sense to Mr. Average Joe... 1.3 million cars makes me think of rush hour, not environmentalism.
"if every one of 110 million American households bought just one [CFL], took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads."
First of all the comparisons just don't make sense, there's no time period on anything. Say instead you compare the power saved by replacing 1 light bulb over the course of a million years and it could power a city of 10,000 for a day. Take away our time periods and suddenly we have one light bulb saving enough energy to power a city of 10,000! If you want to convince me of the evironmental / economic benefits of something, don't just throw out random numbers!
On top of that comparisons are supposed to make things easy to understand (because people can't comprehend how much is in a ton of co2?). Just how much greenhouse gas comes from 1.3 million cars?
According to an email I just got, you can have both an MS degree and an MBA in under 2 weeks!!!
How's that for supply and demand!?
I think the voiceover covers how you get out of an infite loop:
"If at first you don't succeed, you die."
Why is it people generalize games saying "all games with stories are inferior to games without" or vice versa.
:( Video games should not be homogeneous... that more than anything else would alienate players. Variety is the spice of life right?
People play games for different reasons. To me it's like you're comparing reading a book with playing a sport.
Read a book: there's story, character involvement, emotion, closure, etc...
Play a sport: there's competition, victory / loss, teamwork, patience, dedication, joy / sorrow / regret, etc...
Sometime I want to play a game like counterstrike, where it's fun to try and get a high score, or just blow off some steam.
Other times I want to play a game like Final Fantasy, where there's characters to learn about, a world to explore, motives to uncover...
Anyone spouting commentary that all video games should conform to one playstyle is building a picture with half of the puzzle pieces
It's important to distinguish the actual work being done (at that company) from the type of work (in general) the person does.
If I'm passionate about my work, it doesn't matter so much if I'm at my current company or say... one of it's competitors, where I'd be doing pretty much the same job.
This is where compensation will always be important. You can't go to someone and say "you love doing this so much we won't pay you" unless you're a monopsony. If you love writing music (as an example); Atlantic records can't keep you around w/out paying you since other record labels would love to steal you away, pay you slightly more than nothing and let you write music for them instead.
"Companies can exist, thrive and even excel without taking advantage of every opportunity to maximize profit."
Think about why there are so few of such companies? Because in the marketplace, when such companies exist, they often lose to the more aggressive profit-seeking competitors.
Sometimes a company (like Craigslist) will dominate, but more often (far more often) they'll get bought out, or a company will just invest in advertising to steal their client base.
I do whole-heartedly agree with the statements that a small number of people create the most value, and a large number of people in most companies deliver little "bang for the buck".
You could have two bongos, maybe somehow work in the donkey kong theme.
There could even be a secret bonus level: "law suit hero" (pen & paper attachment sold seperately)!
You're thinking of Progress Quest... that's the game that's all about time sink.
People play to have fun; for some people that means spending the time to get something others don't have. For others it means hitting the "I win" button.
I'm reminded of the god mode cheat codes in the original Wolfenstein.
Some people felt the game sucked without the cheat, others felt the game was ruined if you use it.
Odd isn't it, that you can't please everyone?
I, for one, welcome our new botnet overlords.
I think we should solve this with a two tier internet!
One "slow" tier would be for all the people who actually reply to spam (thus giving the spammers money) or get their computers infected with bots and fail to clean them.
The other "fast" tier would be for poeple who know better than to click on everything in their email box and instead delete the spam / trojans.
I'd disagree this is theft of service, unless they specify it's limited to one free access per person.
:(
If I had a laptop and a desktop would it be theft of service to link each up seperately? If I then decide to download some files on my laptop, and some on my desktop, then share the files between the two I'm suddently stealing (assuming it's legal to DL these files in the first place).
Besides, preaching to internet users about theft is roughly equivilent to asking a baby not to cry (do I need to remind you about the whole P2P music sharing fiasco that's been ongoing for the past ~7 years since Napster hit). If it is more economically fesible to buy multiple devices and use them in parallel for free compared to buying one device and using it at a higher capacity for a fee... someone's bound to do it. Now if the access point costs $250 and the higher bandwidth service is $5 / mo then it's pretty obvious this won't be economically feasible for most individuals. One the other hand if acess points are $20 and the higher bandwidth costs $40 / mo... well, use whatever numbers you like; at this point it's speculation on if this service will even exist.
The sync of the transponders needs to be coordinated only so that when there are multiple *independent* request / reply packets they are distributed amongst the input / output channels (instead of sending 5 packets through a single device you send 3 through one and 2 through the other). If these wireless devices are designed correctly there shouldn't be interferance from other devices being nearby (otherwise I'd just as likely be colliding with my neighbors, which wouldn't be nice at all). Think of two people standing next to each other on cell phones... they don't interfere with each other's signals to the tower to they? But of course they do interefere with any nearby speakerphones
As to the other poster asking for links I don't know any because ever since I got broadband I lost interest in trying this. I do know there are programs like netants (http://www.netants.com/) which do this same sort of thing in principal, but across a single access medium.