And as for bands who pump out multi-platinum albums who don't make a dime? I'd really like to see the books in that case. If it's true than there is so swamp land I want to offer these people. If you really have a serious fan base and you're not smart enough to go in and say "I sell records, I want a cut or you won't get any more recordings out of me" than you deserve whatever you get.
Here is an 8 year old article by Courtney Love, that explains how this works. It seems to come down to the fact that most of the money that gets spent on the band is considered 'recoupable' after it all they come out in debt or even, without even owning the copyright for their work.
It asks you whenever some program tries set to auto start. Very nice. I've used it for about 6 months and I have yet you have one program auto start without me letting it. The only annoying thing is when doing updates you have to click 'Allow' like 5 times. YMMV of course.
and you start to wonder why medical equipment that performs simple functions costs tens of thousands of dollars. I work in the medical supply field and have put a lot of thought into this, here is my theory.
First off they do put more effort into testing of equipment, we NEVER get anything that is DOA, with the exception of items clearly damaged in shipping. Much better than the 3-5% that seems to be the norm. But that is not the main reason for the cost.
1) Insurance companies have what is called 'allowables' for items, they are the ones that determine the cost of items, not the companies that sell them. 1 Ex.) You go to a store to get a CPAP or wheelchair to be purchased thru your insurance. That store asks the insurance company for X dollars (normally MSRP), the insurance company promptly disregards that number and pays the store Y dollars, where Y is the insurance predetermined company's allowable amount for that item. (Which is based on a broad classification for item, which means that it is in the companies best interest to sell the cheapest product possible, they get the same amount of money no matter what it costs them.)
2) All insurance companies use 'Medicare Standard' as the basis for their guidelines. This means that Medicare determines the cost, qualification, limitations, etc. for all mainstream medical goods and services.
3) Medical companies, hospitals, etc. then lobby to Medicare to make sure that the allowables are set to a very high price, and that qualification is easy. Also, since everything is based on the rules set by one government agency they are not subject to things like competition and do not change easily. So costs get set to a already high amount. 5 years when the production cost of item drops to 1/5th of what it was before, they will still be paying the same amount that they did before.
This post is also a response to 'What is wrong with the health industry in the US?'
I think what the GP was trying to relay is the inherent irrationality of the research.
If you think of the human body as a machine that obeys the laws of thermodynamics, a "good" (as in high) metabolism is just the subject using more energy than is needed. Being efficient is a good thing for everyone. Decrease in human used energy == less food eaten == less food grown/transported == less time used growing/transport == more time to do something else.
Frankly attaching tiny weights to every cell in your body to make it work harder to do the same thing is just stupid. It is like (queue car metaphor) purposely scoring the pistons/valves in your engine so you get fewer MPG.
Yes, I know we need science like this. I'm all for science, I just think it is sad that we can do amazing things like this, yet we can't discover a simple way to put the burger down.
You're blaming the wrong people, the writers only write what they are told to by the producers. They are not responsible for the lack of imagination in movies/TV/video games/music these days.
But producers are only doing their job, and predict what people are going to like and pay for. They are not responsible for the lack of imagination in movies/TV/video games/music these days.
There is a enough 'original' out there, but people don't do original, people like safe. So instead of getting Primer/Firefly/Psychonauts/Too Many to List; we are stuck with Star Trek 11/Bionic Woman/Madden++;/Everything Else.
Sorry, I was being sardonic. I thought that was obvious by the use of the 'I for one welcome...' meme.
There is nothing good about a law like this:
- It allows parents to be lazy.
- It gives parents someone to blame when bad stuff happens.
- It attempts (and fails) to define a completely subjective word like obscene.
It's a sad state of affairs when a company that produces comic books has to remind the law-makers how to do their jobs.
I for one welcome this law surviving the law suit. Parenting these days is hard, you can't expect to even keep track of your children's location let alone the media they consume. Laws like this one provide assistance to parents by removing some of the unreasonable large burden of parenting.
The intro never explicitly states that genetically the people are getting less intelligent and they do mention natural selection. Natural selection talks a lot about 'favorable traits' being passed along and often are traits that facilitate the reproduction of the organism. In modern western society, where people normally don't stave to death or get eaten by bears and reproduction is more of a side-effect of having sex. It could be argued that the number one factor would be sexual desire by the opposite sex. What if the traits society found desirable for mating were, high metabolism and rapid muscle growth, and intelligence was anti-desirable? For every Trevor-type that came from a Clevon-Type, there could be 50 Clevon Jrs.
While this might be true with curtain game, but this is not the case with the systems. In the past I have worked at WalMart and Hastings (think GameStop+Blockbuster+Boarders). I'm not sure if it has changed (I seriously doubt it) but retail outlets do not make any real money on the system. The cost to the retail outlets is normally within a few dollars of the MSRP.
If you have any trouble believing this, just ask yourself when was the last time you saw a new console on sale for less than the MSRP? The stores make a ton profit on controllers, accessories and to a lesser extent games. If they were able to they would cut into the profit of the system in order to encourage people to buy the profitable components from their business.
Street Fighter 2 created the fighting game genre (yeah yeah, SF1 and that kung fu game whose name escapes me, they sucked). Also created the competitive arcade scene.
I would also put Final Fantasy 7 on the list. RPGs up to that point were much different. FF7 brought about modern cinematic RPGs.
I believe it's Konami (Namco maybe?) that owns the patent on having a mini game while a game is loading. No other company is allowed to have them. It's a shame, because you know if anyone was allowed to, it would be pretty common.
I just upgraded to SP2 yesterday, at windowsupdate they wouldn't let me advance without installing an 'important system update'. I had two options, install or leave.
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And as for bands who pump out multi-platinum albums who don't make a dime? I'd really like to see the books in that case. If it's true than there is so swamp land I want to offer these people. If you really have a serious fan base and you're not smart enough to go in and say "I sell records, I want a cut or you won't get any more recordings out of me" than you deserve whatever you get.
Here is an 8 year old article by Courtney Love, that explains how this works. It seems to come down to the fact that most of the money that gets spent on the band is considered 'recoupable' after it all they come out in debt or even, without even owning the copyright for their work.
http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/index.html
Startup monitor should help.
http://www.mlin.net/StartupMonitor.shtml
It asks you whenever some program tries set to auto start. Very nice. I've used it for about 6 months and I have yet you have one program auto start without me letting it. The only annoying thing is when doing updates you have to click 'Allow' like 5 times. YMMV of course.
First off they do put more effort into testing of equipment, we NEVER get anything that is DOA, with the exception of items clearly damaged in shipping. Much better than the 3-5% that seems to be the norm. But that is not the main reason for the cost.
1) Insurance companies have what is called 'allowables' for items, they are the ones that determine the cost of items, not the companies that sell them.
1 Ex.) You go to a store to get a CPAP or wheelchair to be purchased thru your insurance. That store asks the insurance company for X dollars (normally MSRP), the insurance company promptly disregards that number and pays the store Y dollars, where Y is the insurance predetermined company's allowable amount for that item. (Which is based on a broad classification for item, which means that it is in the companies best interest to sell the cheapest product possible, they get the same amount of money no matter what it costs them.)
2) All insurance companies use 'Medicare Standard' as the basis for their guidelines. This means that Medicare determines the cost, qualification, limitations, etc. for all mainstream medical goods and services.
3) Medical companies, hospitals, etc. then lobby to Medicare to make sure that the allowables are set to a very high price, and that qualification is easy. Also, since everything is based on the rules set by one government agency they are not subject to things like competition and do not change easily. So costs get set to a already high amount. 5 years when the production cost of item drops to 1/5th of what it was before, they will still be paying the same amount that they did before.
This post is also a response to 'What is wrong with the health industry in the US?'
Why is it that I never find comments like this when I have mod points? Anyways, you would get a +1 insightful from me.
I've heard a few people describe Grave of the Fireflies as so moving, "If you don't cry, you have no soul."
:/
I have the movie around here somewhere, but since I don't want hard proof I've never watched it.
I think what the GP was trying to relay is the inherent irrationality of the research.
If you think of the human body as a machine that obeys the laws of thermodynamics, a "good" (as in high) metabolism is just the subject using more energy than is needed. Being efficient is a good thing for everyone. Decrease in human used energy == less food eaten == less food grown/transported == less time used growing/transport == more time to do something else.
Frankly attaching tiny weights to every cell in your body to make it work harder to do the same thing is just stupid. It is like (queue car metaphor) purposely scoring the pistons/valves in your engine so you get fewer MPG.
Yes, I know we need science like this. I'm all for science, I just think it is sad that we can do amazing things like this, yet we can't discover a simple way to put the burger down.
You're blaming the wrong people, the writers only write what they are told to by the producers. They are not responsible for the lack of imagination in movies/TV/video games/music these days.
But producers are only doing their job, and predict what people are going to like and pay for. They are not responsible for the lack of imagination in movies/TV/video games/music these days.
There is a enough 'original' out there, but people don't do original, people like safe. So instead of getting Primer/Firefly/Psychonauts/Too Many to List; we are stuck with Star Trek 11/Bionic Woman/Madden++;/Everything Else.
Sorry, I was being sardonic. I thought that was obvious by the use of the 'I for one welcome...' meme.
There is nothing good about a law like this:
- It allows parents to be lazy.
- It gives parents someone to blame when bad stuff happens.
- It attempts (and fails) to define a completely subjective word like obscene.
It's a sad state of affairs when a company that produces comic books has to remind the law-makers how to do their jobs.
I for one welcome this law surviving the law suit. Parenting these days is hard, you can't expect to even keep track of your children's location let alone the media they consume. Laws like this one provide assistance to parents by removing some of the unreasonable large burden of parenting.
The intro never explicitly states that genetically the people are getting less intelligent and they do mention natural selection. Natural selection talks a lot about 'favorable traits' being passed along and often are traits that facilitate the reproduction of the organism. In modern western society, where people normally don't stave to death or get eaten by bears and reproduction is more of a side-effect of having sex. It could be argued that the number one factor would be sexual desire by the opposite sex. What if the traits society found desirable for mating were, high metabolism and rapid muscle growth, and intelligence was anti-desirable? For every Trevor-type that came from a Clevon-Type, there could be 50 Clevon Jrs.
While this might be true with curtain game, but this is not the case with the systems. In the past I have worked at WalMart and Hastings (think GameStop+Blockbuster+Boarders). I'm not sure if it has changed (I seriously doubt it) but retail outlets do not make any real money on the system. The cost to the retail outlets is normally within a few dollars of the MSRP.
If you have any trouble believing this, just ask yourself when was the last time you saw a new console on sale for less than the MSRP? The stores make a ton profit on controllers, accessories and to a lesser extent games. If they were able to they would cut into the profit of the system in order to encourage people to buy the profitable components from their business.
Street Fighter 2 created the fighting game genre (yeah yeah, SF1 and that kung fu game whose name escapes me, they sucked). Also created the competitive arcade scene.
I would also put Final Fantasy 7 on the list. RPGs up to that point were much different. FF7 brought about modern cinematic RPGs.
I believe it's Konami (Namco maybe?) that owns the patent on having a mini game while a game is loading. No other company is allowed to have them. It's a shame, because you know if anyone was allowed to, it would be pretty common.
I just upgraded to SP2 yesterday, at windowsupdate they wouldn't let me advance without installing an 'important system update'. I had two options, install or leave.
Not having to install WGA seems like a good reason...