You are not correct, they are not profiting from each singular student's work; instead, they are profiting from a knowledgebase that is comprised of the collective students' work.
Main Entry: copyright Function: noun : the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something (as a literary, musical, or artistic work)
They have no plans to do any of these actions with any student's work. They are merely compiling it into a larger database with which they can identify acts of plagiarism. The database, yes, what THEY put together, is what they profit from. There is no copyright infringement and no "licensing" fee necessary.
There is a service (I forget the company name, too lazy to look it up) that captures the text of news stories and shows on television and then sells information gained from it (ie. "Paris Hilton" was joked about on "The Daily Show", mentioned on The Late Show and referred to during Episode 16 of the television show "House"). Her agent may want to buy that information so he/she knows how and where her name is being used in popular culture. I can guarantee you that the television shows are copyrighted, yet there is no violation here. They are selling INFORMATION, not the actual content.
I agree, it's disgusting. She IS capable of working (and prefers to), but part-time would probably be better. However, she needs to stay full-time to keep the insurance, she works for a small company and their Long-Term Disability plan is very minimal. The biggest salt in the wound for me is, while her medical expenses are deductible, only the expenses above 7.5% of her annual income are tax-deductible. The first 7.5% of her $23,000/year that went to medical expenses are fully taxable.
Burns me up every year I do her taxes. We're not talking big numbers, but still.
"If Mr. Smith mazes out all his credit cards because he didn't buy proper insurance for little Suzy, and had zero savings, and then can't afford the minimum payments because he bought too much home and a new car, then he doesn't get a new job."
"Seems a pretty legit factor for employment to me."
Interesting point-of-view. I know a few people whose credit histories are marred, greatly, and none of them fit that scenario. The most interesting is my best friend, battling brain cancer. She makes $23,000/year. Her yearly out-of-pocket premiums are capped at $2000 (almost 10% of her salary). Her chemo is $230/month and she's been on it for two years. Her other prescriptions (anti-stroke medication, steroids, pills for nausea, etc) are another $100/mo. She puts out another $60 - $100 in doctor co-pays every month. It's obviously a struggle for her to pay her medical bills, she's been late before and sometimes gets underwater. Now every time she comes across a windfall (tax refund, christmas money) it goes into savings to get a jump-start on her yearly $2000 out-of-pocket premiums, because she maxes it out every year. She's had four brain surgeries, one devastating round of radiation and continuous chemo. She can't get another job to earn more money because her current employer is understanding of her need to go to all the doctor's appts and weeks off for surgery, not to mention the last 2 days of chemo every month which leave her sleeping 18 hrs/day.
I know what her credit report looks like, I've seen it. No surprises there. But let's say the cancer goes back into remission and she can dream of a real life for herself, including finding a better-paying job to pay for her living expenses. She was back at work with the bandage and staples still in her head. She insists on sharing the costs of any meals we have or paying me back for theater tickets, and I make five times her salary. She's full of integrity and a dedicated worker. But according to you, it would be fair to blackmark her because her credit history is failing to report her individual story to a prospective employer.
Personally, I have no consumer debt, one mortage with a 38% Loan-To-Value ratio, a 800+ FICO score and excellent credit and income. And I would never sign a consent form for any company to check my credit score for employment purposes, unless it was required for clearance. I would explain to whomever was asking for it that though my credit is excellent, I choose not share it, and if I am not offered the job based on my refusal, well, that would be fine with me.
If we like it, or we don't, Bill Gates is still among the great businessmen ever - if not the greatest. He's gathered more money than anyone anywhere. Personal worth is $50billion and rising. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates_house for crying out loud.
How depressing. Is that the only measurement for a great businessman? Money generated for oneself? No points for acting with honor? Integrity?
The guy was admittedly brilliant. One of the biggest money-makers out there to date, no question. Squashed the competition, absolutely ruthless about getting ahead. And I'm glad, on the other end of things, to see a philanthropic side finally take over. But let's face it, as much as he's made for himself, he's cost others.
I'll save my "World's Greatest" mug for a better businessman than Bill Gates.
Thank you for your link; unfortunately, we could go round and round on what constitues a real statistic. From the link:
Hong Kong's wealth is a delusion and a per capita income of less than US$10,000 would provide a more accurate picture of the wealth of its community. Hong Kong is made of people with considerable less purchase power than it is generally believed. Its real per capita income is not that far above the per capita income of the middle class of its neighbors, Shenzhen and Guangdong, where per capita income are the highest of China at above US$6,000.
However, let's say our factory-to-factory wage comparison is right. Apple: $50/mo. Median for region: $87/mo. But the Apple workers pay half their wages for room and board. So how much does it cost to live in the region? It's very possible both groups have the same amount of disposable income left over after housing and food costs are covered.
This is the problem with using random statistics, they are a useless basis for forming opinions. I can't hang any company out to dry for their behavior in a foreign county without knowing what the local customs allow or dictate, except in obvious cases of abuse. Do the remainder of residents living in Shenzhen work 10-hour days? 12? How many days a week are they working? How about the Apple workers, how many days a week do they work? We just don't know, not from this article.
We need context to have an intelligent debate on this. The/. summary and TFA's summation just do not provide it.
The Longhua plant is in Shenzhen, where the median annual household income is about 24000 RMB, or about $3000 US, or $250/month.
Care to link your source? Or shall I do it for you? A median income of $80US / mo is a lot less than your stated $250.
In a somewhat related vein, I work with a lot of Indians who have moved to the US within the past 10 years to earn money to either send home now or save to retire back to India later. Many of them have told me that $12-$15K a year is a king's ransom in India, they could retire very easily on little money. When I asked why a business could not open a factory or office there and pay these "low" wages and provide good benefits, the response is always that the local governments and/or businesses would find a way to shut them down to prevent unrest from other workers who would want the same benefits. Every argument I put forward to counter this was shot down, explained with "it's a systemic problem".
While sympathetic to what is going on in China's manufacturing plants now, I know it's not a new or easily solvable problem. I don't see US citizens demanding products made solely in the US under US bylaws and protections, and am further unmoved by peoples' outcry (what was that you said? "Apple sucks"?) when they go half-cocked on a summary of an unread report of US labor law violations in a foreign country.
Your financial information is private, yet you have to turn that over to the IRS!
Your financial information is not, in fact, private, it is provided to the IRS by your employer. It is a condition to working in the US that you pay taxes on the income you earn, and that the amount of your earnings is reported to the IRS so it can account for your payment of said taxes.
However, it is NOT an expectation that your private transactions with a private (or public) company be supplied to the government except with a court order supplied by a judge presented with supporting evidence or fact that would justify it. Sadly, most people think the government has a right to that information.
I agree but I'd expand that to read we need an intelligent Supreme Court to stand up for American citizens and uphold the Constitution. Any verdict will be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court who can provide the "check" and the "balance" so many of us crave.
This is why Bush's ability to possibly get yet another one seated is so scary to us all.
I think it's great how you compare a local grocery chain (w/2500 locations) to Walmart's local presence in CA (just their SuperCenters!), then compare the price of strawberries in CA to TN from those two chains.
I think it's great how you compare Walmart's benefits package for an employee base of 90,000 full-timers and say they have "better" insurance, as opposed to the other 51% of "comparable" companies of 100 employees or LESS. Then, and this is really great, you dismissed the ineligible employees (most likely part-timers, BTW) as not even being capable of working there anyway so, what, it really doesn't matter, right?
And THEN, after all of those awesome comparisons, you state that Wal-mart doesn't suffer from the same corporate greed as all those other big bad companies, yet it's the 8th most profitable company in the United States, only behind Exxon, Citigroup, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Microsoft, with PROFITS (not revenues now!) of 11B for 2006.
I think it's great you didn't use logical basis or bother to form any sound arguments in your post. That's the kind of stuff that's +5 interesting! Forget like-kind comparisons, use conclusions based on feel-good economics warm fuzzy pink ponies instead!
Surely the only reason they have a monopoly is because people were going to Walmart rather than smaller shops? In that case, the PEOPLE have decided they want Walmart to have a monopoly. This is a great example of democracy and freedom.
This isn't an example of democracy and freedom, it's an example of capitalism. And Capitalism is what happens when people buy with their wallets, not their conscience. An example of this would be regular copy paper vs. recycled copy paper. The recycled is environmentally-friendly but more expensive, which is why it's not the dominant paper being sold today.
Effective capitalism has no conscience or morals, but plenty of victims. Blaming the democracy and freedom of the people living in America for the victims of capitalism is just plain ridiculous.
In addition, patronizing a store does NOT translate into advocating it to have a monopoly.
And now the more I get into this response the more I realize I am responding to a troll marked +5 insightful.
No need for the "rat-tat-tat" sound effects... 'ole Bob, when he got excited about adding a highlight of color to a sunset or water effect, would fiercely whisper "fire it in there! Just fire it in!" Now that would get anyone's adrenaline going!
I don't know how this got to insightful.. can you not tell the difference between a corporation using its own data and the government attempting to access it?
Let's put it another way: If search engines were run by the government, on government servers, would you really use them in the same way? Of course not! You'd find other ways to get what you wanted from the internet - a list of IP addresses, a list of websites, a handwritten list of your most useful sites to find things. No need for the government to know everything you look for and are interested in on the internet, right?
Somehow how you twisted it around to Google abusing the privacy of its own users by publishing top 10 lists or publishing search results information. I guess if you had watched the superbowl this year you would have been suspicious of being included as one of the 65 million viewers of the event?
You are offended that a patron was looking at porn in a library. The point is to be offended that he was asked to leave by government employees for viewing porn in a library. They already point out in the article that this is not the typical use of the internet in libraries.
Actually, TFA is reported from Dublin and is more Euro-centric than US-specific. Also, I would imagine The Washington Post and NYT are less concerned about Google News than, say, USAToday, which has little original content and acts more as a "news aggregator" (I don't know the euro-equivalent).
As for smaller, local newpapers being featured over larger ones, it's all rotated by time, anyway. The most recent article about a subject hits the front page, then drops down as other sources report it and get front-page space, so one can't even argue bias since it's automated.
Well I think your assumption (that you can't afford housing) is incorrect.
Well I think your assumption that he can afford housing is incorrect, based on your clear lack of data such as his income, city/region of housing, debt obligations and local real estate market.
I thought it would be neat to take a path at lvl 60: if you are going to be hard-core, create a "hard-core only" section that, once you step through, you can never go back to the main world as you know it with your character, but you can raid all you want and pit epics against epics, do high-level instances, etc. That keeps the hard-core guys going after each other and making it more meaningful with their drops. Then keep the casual gamer busy (even with a level cap) by creating quests/instances at 60 that force cooperation between the two types of gamers, eg. the "epic" player needs something that only a "regular world" player can make/retrieve, sending the casual gamer off doing quests/explorations which is what seems to keep us happy, and the reward could be a hand-down of an epic/higher level piece of gear to the casual, and the epic gets whatever reward is promised him in epic-land.
Maybe help with server load, too, if you can port those guys doing massive raids off into their own area (server farm).
There's gotta be a way to meld the two distinct styles of players, hard-core and casual. A lot of casual 60s lollygag about all night waiting for an opposite faction to raid their area or to help the lowbies just for fun, much like hanging out at the local watering hole. And some casual 60s just want more content. Hard-core 60s can't get enough raid content because of the sheer repetition of doing what's available now. Separating the two but making them work together would allow content to be developed for both at the same time.
Deborah Howell just came into this job a few months ago. It's a daunting task to judge a renowned newspaper such as the Post, and though I am inclined to cut her a little slack for a rookie error, most will be unaware of this fact and quite frankly, wouldn't care if they knew of it anyway.
Secondly, her mis-step obliterated the rest of her message. She was actually reporting on the effectiveness of the Post in breaking the story, not the story itself. I've read quite a few comments already attacking her "facts" and "checking" of the actual story, not the reporters reporting it. It's not her job to check the facts, it's her task to respond to criticisms aimed at the Post from its readers by either rebuking or supporting the paper after performing her own research into the reporters' methods or angle, or judging the editors' decisions in how the facts were presented.
Thirdly, for those who say "good riddance" to the "old guard" (which I saw a surprising number of times), I have yet to see a viable business model for sustaining reporting through alternate outlets. Be thankful the newspapers are still around, we've all seen how reliable Fox News and CNN have been. Bloggers are great for discourse but mostly short on fact. Newspapers have brought down a few presidents, just as TV has brought down a few senators. Even with its problems the press is one of our last lines of defense in freedom, don't be so quick to shoot down the dinosaurs, they may yet beget the next generation, either through inspiration or perspiration.
This happens when a populace starts caring more about iPods and celebrities than making sure their government isn't corrupt.
I know this is such a nitpick but can you please save your derision and resist picking the most popular pop culture items versus the more destructive ones, such as misbehaving celebrities, overpaid professional athletes and all of reality television? I'm no Mac fanboy but when you point to an iPod (works, useful, adds value) as an example of what is wrong with America today, it diminishes the return on the rest of your insightful comment.
Yes, but I haven't got the time. My money goes to the man who finds what I want, sticks whatever profit I'll bear on in, and makes the actual transaction as simple as possible. I'm not planning on keeping up with which labels use which DRM and so on, and if it has to go on record that thanks to Sony, I won't now buy a CD from any label, so be it.
You've blown your own argument. Your "money" goes nowhere, it is not supporting the entity with the best service or business model. You have arbitrarily decided to ignore all the laws because of the misdeeds of one record company, Sony, to justify your own illegal behavior.
But that's the american way... be unaware, give away all your rights at the slightest startle,... then wonder why the special police aren't letting you, an innocent person even contact your family, let alone tell you why you've been arrested.
I take exception to your blanket statement "that's the american way". That is not the American way. If it were, we would still have no rights left from the McCarthy era and this type of event would have resulted in the student's expulsion and a hearing before Congress.
I am hoping that America, like it has done many times before, pulls back from the dangerous edge we are on and once again values the liberties and freedoms afforded its people through our laws and Constitution. As some people so enthusiastically point out, history repeats itself. If we are doomed to walk to the edge, are we not doomed to pull back from it before falling over?
I'm not going to bother with the rest of your comments re: outside our borders, as they imply a cruelty and savageness among Americans which we just do not possess.
Next time you decide to attack an entire country, try to make your point without using the word "you". All you did was make it personal. And please, if you are in this country, feel free to find your way out of it.
Slashdot Mirror
You are not correct, they are not profiting from each singular student's work; instead, they are profiting from a knowledgebase that is comprised of the collective students' work.
Main Entry: copyright
Function: noun
: the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something (as a literary, musical, or artistic work)
They have no plans to do any of these actions with any student's work. They are merely compiling it into a larger database with which they can identify acts of plagiarism. The database, yes, what THEY put together, is what they profit from. There is no copyright infringement and no "licensing" fee necessary.
There is a service (I forget the company name, too lazy to look it up) that captures the text of news stories and shows on television and then sells information gained from it (ie. "Paris Hilton" was joked about on "The Daily Show", mentioned on The Late Show and referred to during Episode 16 of the television show "House"). Her agent may want to buy that information so he/she knows how and where her name is being used in popular culture. I can guarantee you that the television shows are copyrighted, yet there is no violation here. They are selling INFORMATION, not the actual content.
I agree, it's disgusting. She IS capable of working (and prefers to), but part-time would probably be better. However, she needs to stay full-time to keep the insurance, she works for a small company and their Long-Term Disability plan is very minimal. The biggest salt in the wound for me is, while her medical expenses are deductible, only the expenses above 7.5% of her annual income are tax-deductible. The first 7.5% of her $23,000/year that went to medical expenses are fully taxable.
Burns me up every year I do her taxes. We're not talking big numbers, but still.
T.
"If Mr. Smith mazes out all his credit cards because he didn't buy proper insurance for little Suzy, and had zero savings, and then can't afford the minimum payments because he bought too much home and a new car, then he doesn't get a new job."
"Seems a pretty legit factor for employment to me."
Interesting point-of-view. I know a few people whose credit histories are marred, greatly, and none of them fit that scenario. The most interesting is my best friend, battling brain cancer. She makes $23,000/year. Her yearly out-of-pocket premiums are capped at $2000 (almost 10% of her salary). Her chemo is $230/month and she's been on it for two years. Her other prescriptions (anti-stroke medication, steroids, pills for nausea, etc) are another $100/mo. She puts out another $60 - $100 in doctor co-pays every month. It's obviously a struggle for her to pay her medical bills, she's been late before and sometimes gets underwater. Now every time she comes across a windfall (tax refund, christmas money) it goes into savings to get a jump-start on her yearly $2000 out-of-pocket premiums, because she maxes it out every year. She's had four brain surgeries, one devastating round of radiation and continuous chemo. She can't get another job to earn more money because her current employer is understanding of her need to go to all the doctor's appts and weeks off for surgery, not to mention the last 2 days of chemo every month which leave her sleeping 18 hrs/day.
I know what her credit report looks like, I've seen it. No surprises there. But let's say the cancer goes back into remission and she can dream of a real life for herself, including finding a better-paying job to pay for her living expenses. She was back at work with the bandage and staples still in her head. She insists on sharing the costs of any meals we have or paying me back for theater tickets, and I make five times her salary. She's full of integrity and a dedicated worker. But according to you, it would be fair to blackmark her because her credit history is failing to report her individual story to a prospective employer.
Personally, I have no consumer debt, one mortage with a 38% Loan-To-Value ratio, a 800+ FICO score and excellent credit and income. And I would never sign a consent form for any company to check my credit score for employment purposes, unless it was required for clearance. I would explain to whomever was asking for it that though my credit is excellent, I choose not share it, and if I am not offered the job based on my refusal, well, that would be fine with me.
Which is the philosophy of most IBM PC users. If it works, it doesn't need to be pretty.
I thought that was the philosophy of most Linux users!
<ducks and runs>
There are female ones, too...
pkginfo | less
pkginfo -l | more
fuser
pkgadd
pkgrm
pkgadd
pkgrm
pkgadd
pkgrm
iostat
split
reboot -- -s
Are you sure it's not:
o -- Joke
o
/\
-|-
<-- You
If we like it, or we don't, Bill Gates is still among the great businessmen ever - if not the greatest. He's gathered more money than anyone anywhere. Personal worth is $50billion and rising. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates_house for crying out loud.
How depressing. Is that the only measurement for a great businessman? Money generated for oneself? No points for acting with honor? Integrity?
The guy was admittedly brilliant. One of the biggest money-makers out there to date, no question. Squashed the competition, absolutely ruthless about getting ahead. And I'm glad, on the other end of things, to see a philanthropic side finally take over. But let's face it, as much as he's made for himself, he's cost others.
I'll save my "World's Greatest" mug for a better businessman than Bill Gates.
Thank you for your link; unfortunately, we could go round and round on what constitues a real statistic. From the link:
Hong Kong's wealth is a delusion and a per capita income of less than US$10,000 would provide a more accurate picture of the wealth of its community. Hong Kong is made of people with considerable less purchase power than it is generally believed. Its real per capita income is not that far above the per capita income of the middle class of its neighbors, Shenzhen and Guangdong, where per capita income are the highest of China at above US$6,000.
However, let's say our factory-to-factory wage comparison is right. Apple: $50/mo. Median for region: $87/mo. But the Apple workers pay half their wages for room and board. So how much does it cost to live in the region? It's very possible both groups have the same amount of disposable income left over after housing and food costs are covered.
This is the problem with using random statistics, they are a useless basis for forming opinions. I can't hang any company out to dry for their behavior in a foreign county without knowing what the local customs allow or dictate, except in obvious cases of abuse. Do the remainder of residents living in Shenzhen work 10-hour days? 12? How many days a week are they working? How about the Apple workers, how many days a week do they work? We just don't know, not from this article.
We need context to have an intelligent debate on this. The /. summary and TFA's summation just do not provide it.
The Longhua plant is in Shenzhen, where the median annual household income is about 24000 RMB, or about $3000 US, or $250/month.
Care to link your source? Or shall I do it for you? A median income of $80US / mo is a lot less than your stated $250.
In a somewhat related vein, I work with a lot of Indians who have moved to the US within the past 10 years to earn money to either send home now or save to retire back to India later. Many of them have told me that $12-$15K a year is a king's ransom in India, they could retire very easily on little money. When I asked why a business could not open a factory or office there and pay these "low" wages and provide good benefits, the response is always that the local governments and/or businesses would find a way to shut them down to prevent unrest from other workers who would want the same benefits. Every argument I put forward to counter this was shot down, explained with "it's a systemic problem".
While sympathetic to what is going on in China's manufacturing plants now, I know it's not a new or easily solvable problem. I don't see US citizens demanding products made solely in the US under US bylaws and protections, and am further unmoved by peoples' outcry (what was that you said? "Apple sucks"?) when they go half-cocked on a summary of an unread report of US labor law violations in a foreign country.
Your financial information is not, in fact, private, it is provided to the IRS by your employer. It is a condition to working in the US that you pay taxes on the income you earn, and that the amount of your earnings is reported to the IRS so it can account for your payment of said taxes.
However, it is NOT an expectation that your private transactions with a private (or public) company be supplied to the government except with a court order supplied by a judge presented with supporting evidence or fact that would justify it. Sadly, most people think the government has a right to that information.
I agree but I'd expand that to read we need an intelligent Supreme Court to stand up for American citizens and uphold the Constitution. Any verdict will be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court who can provide the "check" and the "balance" so many of us crave.
This is why Bush's ability to possibly get yet another one seated is so scary to us all.
T.I think it's great how you compare a local grocery chain (w/2500 locations) to Walmart's local presence in CA (just their SuperCenters!), then compare the price of strawberries in CA to TN from those two chains.
I think it's great how you compare Walmart's benefits package for an employee base of 90,000 full-timers and say they have "better" insurance, as opposed to the other 51% of "comparable" companies of 100 employees or LESS. Then, and this is really great, you dismissed the ineligible employees (most likely part-timers, BTW) as not even being capable of working there anyway so, what, it really doesn't matter, right?
And THEN, after all of those awesome comparisons, you state that Wal-mart doesn't suffer from the same corporate greed as all those other big bad companies, yet it's the 8th most profitable company in the United States, only behind Exxon, Citigroup, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Microsoft, with PROFITS (not revenues now!) of 11B for 2006.
I think it's great you didn't use logical basis or bother to form any sound arguments in your post. That's the kind of stuff that's +5 interesting! Forget like-kind comparisons, use conclusions based on feel-good economics warm fuzzy pink ponies instead!
Tell me, do you post on Wikipedia, too?
Surely the only reason they have a monopoly is because people were going to Walmart rather than smaller shops? In that case, the PEOPLE have decided they want Walmart to have a monopoly. This is a great example of democracy and freedom.
This isn't an example of democracy and freedom, it's an example of capitalism. And Capitalism is what happens when people buy with their wallets, not their conscience. An example of this would be regular copy paper vs. recycled copy paper. The recycled is environmentally-friendly but more expensive, which is why it's not the dominant paper being sold today.
Effective capitalism has no conscience or morals, but plenty of victims. Blaming the democracy and freedom of the people living in America for the victims of capitalism is just plain ridiculous.
In addition, patronizing a store does NOT translate into advocating it to have a monopoly.
And now the more I get into this response the more I realize I am responding to a troll marked +5 insightful.
No need for the "rat-tat-tat" sound effects... 'ole Bob, when he got excited about adding a highlight of color to a sunset or water effect, would fiercely whisper "fire it in there! Just fire it in!" Now that would get anyone's adrenaline going!
I'll take care of this:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=181917&cid= 15041803
I don't know how this got to insightful.. can you not tell the difference between a corporation using its own data and the government attempting to access it?
Let's put it another way: If search engines were run by the government, on government servers, would you really use them in the same way? Of course not! You'd find other ways to get what you wanted from the internet - a list of IP addresses, a list of websites, a handwritten list of your most useful sites to find things. No need for the government to know everything you look for and are interested in on the internet, right?
Somehow how you twisted it around to Google abusing the privacy of its own users by publishing top 10 lists or publishing search results information. I guess if you had watched the superbowl this year you would have been suspicious of being included as one of the 65 million viewers of the event?
You are offended that a patron was looking at porn in a library. The point is to be offended that he was asked to leave by government employees for viewing porn in a library. They already point out in the article that this is not the typical use of the internet in libraries.
Actually, TFA is reported from Dublin and is more Euro-centric than US-specific. Also, I would imagine The Washington Post and NYT are less concerned about Google News than, say, USAToday, which has little original content and acts more as a "news aggregator" (I don't know the euro-equivalent).
As for smaller, local newpapers being featured over larger ones, it's all rotated by time, anyway. The most recent article about a subject hits the front page, then drops down as other sources report it and get front-page space, so one can't even argue bias since it's automated.
T.
Well I think your assumption that he can afford housing is incorrect, based on your clear lack of data such as his income, city/region of housing, debt obligations and local real estate market.
I assume you do not have this data.
T.
I thought it would be neat to take a path at lvl 60: if you are going to be hard-core, create a "hard-core only" section that, once you step through, you can never go back to the main world as you know it with your character, but you can raid all you want and pit epics against epics, do high-level instances, etc. That keeps the hard-core guys going after each other and making it more meaningful with their drops. Then keep the casual gamer busy (even with a level cap) by creating quests/instances at 60 that force cooperation between the two types of gamers, eg. the "epic" player needs something that only a "regular world" player can make/retrieve, sending the casual gamer off doing quests/explorations which is what seems to keep us happy, and the reward could be a hand-down of an epic/higher level piece of gear to the casual, and the epic gets whatever reward is promised him in epic-land.
Maybe help with server load, too, if you can port those guys doing massive raids off into their own area (server farm).
There's gotta be a way to meld the two distinct styles of players, hard-core and casual. A lot of casual 60s lollygag about all night waiting for an opposite faction to raid their area or to help the lowbies just for fun, much like hanging out at the local watering hole. And some casual 60s just want more content. Hard-core 60s can't get enough raid content because of the sheer repetition of doing what's available now. Separating the two but making them work together would allow content to be developed for both at the same time.
A couple notes:
Deborah Howell just came into this job a few months ago. It's a daunting task to judge a renowned newspaper such as the Post, and though I am inclined to cut her a little slack for a rookie error, most will be unaware of this fact and quite frankly, wouldn't care if they knew of it anyway.
Secondly, her mis-step obliterated the rest of her message. She was actually reporting on the effectiveness of the Post in breaking the story, not the story itself. I've read quite a few comments already attacking her "facts" and "checking" of the actual story, not the reporters reporting it. It's not her job to check the facts, it's her task to respond to criticisms aimed at the Post from its readers by either rebuking or supporting the paper after performing her own research into the reporters' methods or angle, or judging the editors' decisions in how the facts were presented.
Thirdly, for those who say "good riddance" to the "old guard" (which I saw a surprising number of times), I have yet to see a viable business model for sustaining reporting through alternate outlets. Be thankful the newspapers are still around, we've all seen how reliable Fox News and CNN have been. Bloggers are great for discourse but mostly short on fact. Newspapers have brought down a few presidents, just as TV has brought down a few senators. Even with its problems the press is one of our last lines of defense in freedom, don't be so quick to shoot down the dinosaurs, they may yet beget the next generation, either through inspiration or perspiration.
T.
That's the first thing on Slashdot to ever turn me on.
This happens when a populace starts caring more about iPods and celebrities than making sure their government isn't corrupt.
I know this is such a nitpick but can you please save your derision and resist picking the most popular pop culture items versus the more destructive ones, such as misbehaving celebrities, overpaid professional athletes and all of reality television? I'm no Mac fanboy but when you point to an iPod (works, useful, adds value) as an example of what is wrong with America today, it diminishes the return on the rest of your insightful comment.
You've blown your own argument. Your "money" goes nowhere, it is not supporting the entity with the best service or business model. You have arbitrarily decided to ignore all the laws because of the misdeeds of one record company, Sony, to justify your own illegal behavior.
I take exception to your blanket statement "that's the american way". That is not the American way. If it were, we would still have no rights left from the McCarthy era and this type of event would have resulted in the student's expulsion and a hearing before Congress.
I am hoping that America, like it has done many times before, pulls back from the dangerous edge we are on and once again values the liberties and freedoms afforded its people through our laws and Constitution. As some people so enthusiastically point out, history repeats itself. If we are doomed to walk to the edge, are we not doomed to pull back from it before falling over?
I'm not going to bother with the rest of your comments re: outside our borders, as they imply a cruelty and savageness among Americans which we just do not possess.
Next time you decide to attack an entire country, try to make your point without using the word "you". All you did was make it personal. And please, if you are in this country, feel free to find your way out of it.