At first I thought you were joking, but there really wasn't anything funny. Claiming that because you've been pulled over 4 times and haven't been hassled must mean that everyone who gets hassled is doing something suspicious is just as stupid as the people who claim that every cop will hassle anyone they pull over just to get a ticket because that's what they've seen. It's known as a hasty generalization.
As for what I was doing when the cops asked to search my car, I don't think I was doing anything suspicious. I live in a rural area outside of Chicago where the police don't have a lot to do. I'm not saying that they're lazy or anything (some are, some aren't just like every other job), but there really isn't much for cops to do but set up speed traps and catch drunk drivers. When the cops have that kind of mentality, they tend to go for anything they can find. I was pulled over twice out of state, once I got a speeding ticket and the other time a warning, neither time was I asked if they could search my car, but that's probably because both times I was on my way back from school and my car was packed. I have been pulled over 4 times in Illinois. I got one speeding ticket around 4 AM and was hassled a bit because I looked drunk at that time of night, but managed to convince the cop that I was just tired, which was the truth. Other than that, I was pulled over twice in high school. Once was because I had drove down a street a couple times which is somehow considered suspicious. We were just riding around trying to think of something to do. The cop asked to search my car, and I refused. After trying to convince me that I had to let him do it and failing, he gave up and let me go. The other time I was leaving a bowling alley to go to a party, and a cop started to follow me. The cop followed me for about 3 or 4 miles before pulling me over because the air freshener hanging from my rear view mirror was an obstruction of vision or something like that. She asked to search my car, and I refused, at which point she said she didn't care because she thought we were two kids who she saw taking some beer out of the back of a jeep but after seeing us up close, she knew we weren't the same kids so she was going to let us go, as if she didn't have to let us go anyway because she had no reason to detain us.
Like the other guy said, there are a lot of ways to be "suspicious", and being young is one of them. Also, everytime I was pulled over for some reason other than speeding was when I was driving an old beat up car instead of something nicer that would blend in.
Yes, as I said before, I agree that that can happen. I'm also sure it has happened before and will happen again, but that doesn't make it the norm. While you may very well be hasseled (or in some cases, even "arrested") for refusing a search, that doesn't mean you will be convicted of anything or that the search will hold up in court. If the officer isn't acting in accordance with the law yet you do everything correctly, your chances of the search being dropped are pretty good. However, you're right that it can happen, and anybody can get screwed. Personally, I keep a mini tape recorder in my car in case something like this ever happens to me. And it's not that I'm a generally paranoid person, I don't think I will ever be in a situation where I would need that tape recorder, but that doesn't mean it can't happen to me.
Ok, you're right that all of that is possible, but I really don't think it is the norm. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but iI really don't think that every other (50%) person who refuses to allow for a search of a car then has the car searched anyway by some abuse of power. What tends to happen (at least from people I know in the situation) is that the officers ask if they can search the vehicle, and then the normally rights-minded individual in the car allows it for some reason. I had a friend whose whole family did some drugs and loved to drink. His dad was also a lawyer and told him that he should never allow the police to search his car under any circumstances. He then told all of us the same thing, and we told everyone that we knew to be careful as well. Then one day the kid gets pulled over, and for some stupid reason lets the cops search his car, at which point they find some seeds on the floor.
Another thing people tend to do is get scared when the cops say that you will be delayed as they need more time to process the information if you fail to allow a search or that now a dog will be called in. The problem here is that most people don't know that in many cases, you don't need to wait around. If the officer does not allow you to leave, then it's an unwarrented detention. You are not obligated to wait around for a drug dog to show up to sniff your car. Ask the officer, "Am I free to leave?" The answer is usually yes, whehter or not the cop lies to you, but I really think most will be honest with you if you ask the right questions. The problem is that they aren't obligated to be honest with you if you don't know which questions to ask. My lawyer friends have always told me that if I'm pulled over, be polite, but only crack your window enough to slip out your license and registration and don't say anything. You aren't obligated to speak to the officer at all. If he continues to ask questions, just repeat the phrase, "Am I free to leave?". Of course, repeating that phrase over and over might conflict with the "be polite" idea, so you have to use some judgement there.
Inexplicably, SCOTUS does not consider a drug dog to be an unreasonable search. As for SCOTUS's opinion on this, I think they're closer to saying that a drug dog is not a search at all, so it can't be labelled as reasonable or unreasonable and they don't need probable cause. Of course, I didn't read that much about it so I could be misunderstanding the decision.
To continue with a horrible analogy, what happens if you're blind and unknowingly walk through an unlocked door (not unknowingly walk through a door, but unknowingly walk through a door you "aren't supposed to")?
Since many laptops and wireless network cards automatically connect to available networks, you really can't blame the user trying to access the network. There is ignorance on both sides here. Routers are initially set up without something that "says no" and many computers are set to connect to anything that doesn't "say no".
Furthermore, at many airports in the US for example, there are wireless access points that users can connect to and pay a fee to surf the internet. A user must first connect to the network and open a web browser to get the message that allows them to pay for access. How can the user ever access this network without first "walking into the unlocked door"?
I agree with you on your overall point, but I don't think you can compare this to the Napster vs. RIAA theme you stated (although I'm not sure you were actually trying to say the two are the same). The problem now is that companies like Viacom are trying to hook up with smaller companies to create rivals to YouTube, which probably won't work. There isn't a lot of incentive for people to head to 10 different sites to watch their favorite TV clips when they can go to YouTube and see them all. I would argue that the big media companies are making the same mistake that the RIAA did in that they are trying to define how people watch media, when people have already dictated how they want to see it. The people have spoken, and they want to watch YouTube (I don't really give a shit whether YouTube is the big winner, but it just seems to me that that is what the average tv-on-the-internet viewer uses).
If Wikipedia is not a credible source of information because it is user created, then teachers are not a credible source of information either since they may have a bias on the teacher material. Traditional dictionaries and encyclopedias, along with all other facts and references, are information created by people, who are analogous to "users". If they want to say wikipedia is not credible, then they need to find a better reason, like the fact that wikipedia can be edited on the fly without peer review. Banning wikipedia won't do much other than to show students that the administration is behind the times. I'm not saying wikipedia is a good reference, just that it isn't necessarily worse than other resources that schools accept without question.
I've never been a big fan of upgrading Windows either. I've still got 2 computers running 2000 because it's always worked best for me. My University gave Vista away for free to all engineering majors, so I thought I'd give it a try on my best comp. Long story short, Vista works for everyday tasks and video and what not, but I frequently have to restart because of some network problem that keeps happening, my graphics shear and distort randomly, and the driver problems prevent me from playing games and doing certain other extra tasks. I'll live with Vista until the end of the semester because I don't want to bother going through the trouble until I'm done, but then I'll be making the switch to an older version. There's really no need for me to be using Vista, as so many other people seem to say.
...but wait. Vista does make me more productive! Since I can't play any games or visit certain websites, I get bored and focus on my studies more. Wow, thanks Vista!
Furthermore, we already use too much corn (not the best choice of words, but I'll explain what I mean). Besides the corn we eat in its regular form, corn syrup and other corn derivatives are used in a large portion of our diets in the US. Also, corn is used as the vast majority of feed (estimated at 92% in 2003) for livestock. Corn is a major part of our entire food infrastructure. We are already in serious danger if a corn famine ever arose, but the effects would compound if we base our fuel on corn as well. Diversification is important for any country, especially with an economy as large as the US. Of course, this might never happen, but we all know it's possible (Ireland). By the way, I live in Illinois in a small town of 4000 people surrounded by corn fields. I'm not saying this because I hate corn, but dependence on a single crop is a thin line to walk.
It's not the size of the hard drive that counts; its the motion in the controller, but you can get a BIG hard drive if you feel the need for compensation.
But seriously, I've got a PS3 and a Wii, and storage space was the last thing I was thinking about when I bought them. An 60GB or a 80GB PS3 translates to a $650 and a $700 PS3 (or most likely some other price over $650) as far as I'm concerned, and I think a lot of people feel the same way. Is that extra 20GB going to be worth the extra money? If they go through with it, this seems like a foolish move for Sony.
I'd bet it takes a week before someone finds out and crashes the whole thing.
This is obvious to most people who use online email, but one of the reasons I like gmail is because I can send myself pictures or projects and download them anywhere, so if I'm working on something on someone else's computer, I can get it to my home computer without any physical media or programs to install (not that there aren't other ways to do this, but its easy this way). There's talk of a cutoff point that checks for abusers, but if this is really unlimited storage, then shouldn't I be able to send a dvd to my email so I can download it and watch it on another computer (forget about the copyright or email technical issues)?
But anyway, I think I figured out what is going through the minds of the people at Yahoo. The service is completely unlimited for users, meaning that there are no limits, but they will deactivate your account if you storage goes over a certain threshold deemed abusive by Yahoo. As long as you don't pass the threshold, you won't have any limits! Mmmm, circular logic...
I agree with you that there are artists out there who still produce good whole albums. It surprises me a little to hear so many people say that they only listen to a few songs from an artist. Once I find a song or two that I like from some artist, I tend to track down every one of their songs. I've got a lot of music, and the majority of it comes from whole albums which I listen to in their entirety. I'd say that I have twice as many artists with their whole albums than I have artists with only a couple songs. It's not necessarily that these albums are great, just that I like the style of music from the artist so I want to listen to more of what they have to play.
That said, I also think its bullshit to have to pay $20 for a CD if you only want a single song, so I'm not trying to argue that the old model should be preserved. If new artists come out with 12 songs that are meant to be listened to together and in order, I'm sure they'll still be able to sell them.
Does a million dollar cell phone impress you? How about the million dollar martini? (actually, the martini doesn't cost that much because you pick the diamond and they are usually around $10,000, but still).
I agree with you that these things aren't very impressive. They're attaching the value of aesthetics to a functional object, which happens a lot but just isn't special when the aesthetic value completely dwarfs the capabilities of the object. You really aren't buying a $1 million laptop, you're buying a diamond worth close to $1 million with a laptop attached to it.
Ok, so what about mashups and musicians like MF Doom who sample music?
You might have an answer for that too, but it really doesn't matter. The problem is that there are a lot of situations that don't have a clear answer. Use common sense? That works great if everyone has the same "common sense", but since people have differing opinions on things, using common sense is not the answer. If it was that easy, no one would be listing counter examples to your explanation. The point is that common sense doesn't help most people when it comes to copyright questions, so Congress needs to clarify the issue (I'm not sure if Congress is really the one who needs to step in or not, but that was the point of the article and summary as I understood it). The responses to your original post, the post I replied to, and your original post in that it pointed out how the author of the article didn't understand the law, all help to support his point that there needs to be clarification.
The 50 years thing was just to say that 2 years isn't sufficient. I don't think 50 is either, but it really doesn't matter because 2 is bullshit.
As for "Unfortunately, humans haven't been advanced enough to collect climate data for long enough to predict anything. So wait another 1,000 years, and if the data still supports global warming, I'll start listening." Seriously? We have lots of data that shows climate change over long periods of time. We know when the last ice age started and ended and have pretty good (although rough) ideas of when other ice ages occured over the last couple million years. Whether or not we can acturately predict climate change isn't about whether or not we have enough data.
You're right. I can't seem to find a dictionary that uses such a specific time frame even though I thought I found some last night. The only thing I can find today that says that is Wikipedia. However, instead of a concrete time frame, a lot of dictionaries used the word "sustained".
I don't think that only reason dictionaries use "Earth" in the definition is because it has been beaten into us that humans are the cause, but that's beside the point as well. Regardless of the whether or not it only applies to Earth, my point is that the so called "global warming" of Mars can't be concluded as "global warming" as we know it because we don't have nearly enough data to conclude that, or at least there wasn't enough data when the article that the GP linked to was written. 2 years worth of data is not enough to say that Mars is going through a phase of global warming, as I said in my post. I probably shouldn't have thrown the comment about the dictionary in there because it leaves the post open for someone to come in and attack that one point as if the other points don't exist...
It is no wonder that a dictionary didn't want to discredit itself by skipping earth in the definition and leaving the possibility for someone to claim that something other then humans could cause it acording to their definition.
Did you miss the part in my post where I said that warming of the earth occurs naturally? I really don't think that most people who believe that humans are causing the current global warming also think humans are the only cause of global warming. There is plenty of data to show that the temperature of the earth has fluctuated significantly over many, many years (hundreds of thousands?). I really haven't heard anyone say that only humans can raise the temperature of the earth. I'm not sure where that idea is coming from.
You need to change that to people who consider themselves "educated enough to know that global warming denial is an unscientific crock" while not understanding that it is also caused by natural phenomena, to which you seem to fit into at least half of that definition. Just because Mars has global warming or the Earth has had global warming in the past doesn't mean that we aren't causing it now and that the effects of our added global warming won't be significantly different from natural global warming.
Besides that, most dictionaries define global warming as something related only to the Earth and also as needing measurements taken over decades, neither of which apply when used in the phrase "Mars has global warming". Your linked article talks about measurements taken over 2 years, which is hardly enough to claim that global warming is taking place on Mars (assuming of course, that global warming is defined that way), but good try.
Assuming, of course, that buying YouTube was stupid, which has yet to be seen. Getting sued isn't really a measure of the intelligence of an action... losing the lawsuit might be a better indication.
The use of the word "readings" made me think a bit. When I had to do a reading for the day's discussion in English class in high school (or any other class really), I was held accountable for reading the material, yet Congress members aren't held accountable for reading the material they discuss each day. They may not be completely analogous, but that's pretty messed up when you think about it.
Teachers are not teachers anymore, they are babysitters.This sentence was not only relavent to the issue in the article, but is characteristic of so many of the problems with our education system right now from parents expecting schools to raise their kids and teach them values to our failing grades compared with the rest of the world. I don't think that its just the bureaucracy of structured classes, but with the teachers' lack of ability to control a classroom. Of course, that's a whole other can of worms.
Yes, but given that Sony couldn't even handle a simple maneuver as you suggested, one even the most socially inept geek could handle....it begs the following--if they cannot handle basic PR, why would I trust that they could handle the rest of their console which includes complex tasks such as hardware, software, and programmer/developer relationships?
I understand your argument and don't intend to argue about the rest of your post, but this comment really sounded wrong to me, especially the part I marked as bold. You use "the most socially inept geek" as an example of someone who could handle this decision better, but why would you trust someone to do PR for you when the person can't avoid making a complete fool of him/herself at a party? It really isn't fair to compare PR ability with software or hardware design, although it is more applicable to programmer/developer relationships. You made some other valid points, but this quote really detracted from them.
It kinda sounds like you are saying that as a counter, which implies that I don't think innovative games are for profit, although my whole point was that innovative games might be able to make a better profit than standard formula games. I was trying to contrast the innovative games with games that follow a formula like almost every EA sports game. Not sure if you were trying to counter, but I thought I should clarify my point in case it wasn't clear.
As for the rest, I definintely agree with you. However, there is still room for innovation in any genre (at least any I can think of at the moment). Consider the multiplayer FPS game where you could fly planes and helicopters while also running on the ground, or go back to the first game that allowed players to use vehicles. These innovations helped set those games apart. But more to your point, innovative games do get to set the rules (or innovations on well-established games change the rules), which can lead to a more profitable game.
You're making a common [incorrect] assumption in your post:
Popular != Profitable
Actually, I never said that, nor have I ever assumed that it is true. However, my definition of "popular" in this context, is that if a game is more "popular" than another, than it sells more copies. Now, as I'm sure you know since you demonstrated you can give a basic explanation of economics, profit is maximized when the price is set where marginal revenue equals marginal cost. Since companies don't know the demand for a game when setting the price and generally set the price to a standard, this isn't how we maximize profit. Instead, profit depends on how many games are sold and how much it costs to develop and market the game (I'm making some assumptions here that take out the cost of creating and shipping the game, but those shouldn't be relevant in most cases). Now, unless you disagree that this is the major factor in the profitability of a game, then if two games cost the same to develop and market, then the game that sells more (i.e. is more popular) will be more profitable. As you said, popular != profitable, but also profitable !=> (does not imply) popular, unprofitable !=> popular, profitable !=> unpopular, and all other combinations of those words. I wasn't assuming that popular games are profitable, but the more units of a game that are sold, the more revenue is made from the game. Again, since the major cost is a one time development cost, selling more games means more profit (or less loss). So to fix the assumption you assumed I made, popular = more revenue.
As much as we might wish it to be otherwise, game companies are, above all else, COMPANIES. That means that, their goal is NOT to make "good" games from a player perspective. Their goal is to make PROFITABLE games. They want the games that will net them the highest total revenue.
Now allow me to put words in your mouth. You are making the assumption that companies work in a robotic fashion when it comes to making money. By that I mean that companies determine if something is more or less profitable than something else, and then pick the better. This is true to an extent, but it forgets that companies don't know what will be more profitable. Companies take risks to make money. Sometimes it is more profitable to do something that isn't the norm because the norm is being reproduced by everyone else on the market (Nintendo Wii, just about anything made by Will Wright). Sometimes companies think about the consumers because loyalty can mean consistent return customers (Macs, car companies). Sometimes companies give things away for free so they can make money in other ways (gmail, promotional CDs). Whos to say that a company won't be more profitable if it makes games that are good from a consumer's perspective instead of according to some formula?
I know, I'm not really being fair here. You never said that making good games won't be profitable, but I never claimed nor gave any indication that I disagreed with the stated goal of a company. I'm so tired of making a comment about something and getting a regurgitated lecture about how a company's only goal is to make money, when that says very little in the long run. Consider this, "there is no selfless act" (I could be wrong, but I haven't found any proof otherwise). Anything you can do, you do it for yourself, and if you don't believe that, come up with a counterexample and I'll explain why it's selfish. Now, if we understand that everything we do is selfish, then whenever someone asks why some guy does something, it would be correct to say "Because he only cares about himself." The only problem is that there are a lot of ways to care about yourself. If you are given a choice between getting shot in the head or shooting your wife (or husband, or other person who you care about more than anything else in the world), you might choose to shoot yourself because you want the other to
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At first I thought you were joking, but there really wasn't anything funny. Claiming that because you've been pulled over 4 times and haven't been hassled must mean that everyone who gets hassled is doing something suspicious is just as stupid as the people who claim that every cop will hassle anyone they pull over just to get a ticket because that's what they've seen. It's known as a hasty generalization.
As for what I was doing when the cops asked to search my car, I don't think I was doing anything suspicious. I live in a rural area outside of Chicago where the police don't have a lot to do. I'm not saying that they're lazy or anything (some are, some aren't just like every other job), but there really isn't much for cops to do but set up speed traps and catch drunk drivers. When the cops have that kind of mentality, they tend to go for anything they can find.
I was pulled over twice out of state, once I got a speeding ticket and the other time a warning, neither time was I asked if they could search my car, but that's probably because both times I was on my way back from school and my car was packed. I have been pulled over 4 times in Illinois. I got one speeding ticket around 4 AM and was hassled a bit because I looked drunk at that time of night, but managed to convince the cop that I was just tired, which was the truth. Other than that, I was pulled over twice in high school. Once was because I had drove down a street a couple times which is somehow considered suspicious. We were just riding around trying to think of something to do. The cop asked to search my car, and I refused. After trying to convince me that I had to let him do it and failing, he gave up and let me go. The other time I was leaving a bowling alley to go to a party, and a cop started to follow me. The cop followed me for about 3 or 4 miles before pulling me over because the air freshener hanging from my rear view mirror was an obstruction of vision or something like that. She asked to search my car, and I refused, at which point she said she didn't care because she thought we were two kids who she saw taking some beer out of the back of a jeep but after seeing us up close, she knew we weren't the same kids so she was going to let us go, as if she didn't have to let us go anyway because she had no reason to detain us.
Like the other guy said, there are a lot of ways to be "suspicious", and being young is one of them. Also, everytime I was pulled over for some reason other than speeding was when I was driving an old beat up car instead of something nicer that would blend in.
Yes, as I said before, I agree that that can happen. I'm also sure it has happened before and will happen again, but that doesn't make it the norm. While you may very well be hasseled (or in some cases, even "arrested") for refusing a search, that doesn't mean you will be convicted of anything or that the search will hold up in court. If the officer isn't acting in accordance with the law yet you do everything correctly, your chances of the search being dropped are pretty good. However, you're right that it can happen, and anybody can get screwed. Personally, I keep a mini tape recorder in my car in case something like this ever happens to me. And it's not that I'm a generally paranoid person, I don't think I will ever be in a situation where I would need that tape recorder, but that doesn't mean it can't happen to me.
Ok, you're right that all of that is possible, but I really don't think it is the norm. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but iI really don't think that every other (50%) person who refuses to allow for a search of a car then has the car searched anyway by some abuse of power. What tends to happen (at least from people I know in the situation) is that the officers ask if they can search the vehicle, and then the normally rights-minded individual in the car allows it for some reason. I had a friend whose whole family did some drugs and loved to drink. His dad was also a lawyer and told him that he should never allow the police to search his car under any circumstances. He then told all of us the same thing, and we told everyone that we knew to be careful as well. Then one day the kid gets pulled over, and for some stupid reason lets the cops search his car, at which point they find some seeds on the floor.
Another thing people tend to do is get scared when the cops say that you will be delayed as they need more time to process the information if you fail to allow a search or that now a dog will be called in. The problem here is that most people don't know that in many cases, you don't need to wait around. If the officer does not allow you to leave, then it's an unwarrented detention. You are not obligated to wait around for a drug dog to show up to sniff your car. Ask the officer, "Am I free to leave?" The answer is usually yes, whehter or not the cop lies to you, but I really think most will be honest with you if you ask the right questions. The problem is that they aren't obligated to be honest with you if you don't know which questions to ask. My lawyer friends have always told me that if I'm pulled over, be polite, but only crack your window enough to slip out your license and registration and don't say anything. You aren't obligated to speak to the officer at all. If he continues to ask questions, just repeat the phrase, "Am I free to leave?". Of course, repeating that phrase over and over might conflict with the "be polite" idea, so you have to use some judgement there.
Inexplicably, SCOTUS does not consider a drug dog to be an unreasonable search.
As for SCOTUS's opinion on this, I think they're closer to saying that a drug dog is not a search at all, so it can't be labelled as reasonable or unreasonable and they don't need probable cause. Of course, I didn't read that much about it so I could be misunderstanding the decision.
To continue with a horrible analogy, what happens if you're blind and unknowingly walk through an unlocked door (not unknowingly walk through a door, but unknowingly walk through a door you "aren't supposed to")?
Since many laptops and wireless network cards automatically connect to available networks, you really can't blame the user trying to access the network. There is ignorance on both sides here. Routers are initially set up without something that "says no" and many computers are set to connect to anything that doesn't "say no".
Furthermore, at many airports in the US for example, there are wireless access points that users can connect to and pay a fee to surf the internet. A user must first connect to the network and open a web browser to get the message that allows them to pay for access. How can the user ever access this network without first "walking into the unlocked door"?
I agree with you on your overall point, but I don't think you can compare this to the Napster vs. RIAA theme you stated (although I'm not sure you were actually trying to say the two are the same). The problem now is that companies like Viacom are trying to hook up with smaller companies to create rivals to YouTube, which probably won't work. There isn't a lot of incentive for people to head to 10 different sites to watch their favorite TV clips when they can go to YouTube and see them all. I would argue that the big media companies are making the same mistake that the RIAA did in that they are trying to define how people watch media, when people have already dictated how they want to see it. The people have spoken, and they want to watch YouTube (I don't really give a shit whether YouTube is the big winner, but it just seems to me that that is what the average tv-on-the-internet viewer uses).
If Wikipedia is not a credible source of information because it is user created, then teachers are not a credible source of information either since they may have a bias on the teacher material. Traditional dictionaries and encyclopedias, along with all other facts and references, are information created by people, who are analogous to "users". If they want to say wikipedia is not credible, then they need to find a better reason, like the fact that wikipedia can be edited on the fly without peer review. Banning wikipedia won't do much other than to show students that the administration is behind the times. I'm not saying wikipedia is a good reference, just that it isn't necessarily worse than other resources that schools accept without question.
That is why the melting of the artic/antartic would be a big problem...
Homer Simpson: Nuke-uler. It's pronounced, Nuke-uler.
I've never been a big fan of upgrading Windows either. I've still got 2 computers running 2000 because it's always worked best for me. My University gave Vista away for free to all engineering majors, so I thought I'd give it a try on my best comp. Long story short, Vista works for everyday tasks and video and what not, but I frequently have to restart because of some network problem that keeps happening, my graphics shear and distort randomly, and the driver problems prevent me from playing games and doing certain other extra tasks. I'll live with Vista until the end of the semester because I don't want to bother going through the trouble until I'm done, but then I'll be making the switch to an older version. There's really no need for me to be using Vista, as so many other people seem to say.
...but wait. Vista does make me more productive! Since I can't play any games or visit certain websites, I get bored and focus on my studies more. Wow, thanks Vista!
Furthermore, we already use too much corn (not the best choice of words, but I'll explain what I mean). Besides the corn we eat in its regular form, corn syrup and other corn derivatives are used in a large portion of our diets in the US. Also, corn is used as the vast majority of feed (estimated at 92% in 2003) for livestock. Corn is a major part of our entire food infrastructure. We are already in serious danger if a corn famine ever arose, but the effects would compound if we base our fuel on corn as well. Diversification is important for any country, especially with an economy as large as the US. Of course, this might never happen, but we all know it's possible (Ireland). By the way, I live in Illinois in a small town of 4000 people surrounded by corn fields. I'm not saying this because I hate corn, but dependence on a single crop is a thin line to walk.
It's not the size of the hard drive that counts; its the motion in the controller, but you can get a BIG hard drive if you feel the need for compensation.
But seriously, I've got a PS3 and a Wii, and storage space was the last thing I was thinking about when I bought them. An 60GB or a 80GB PS3 translates to a $650 and a $700 PS3 (or most likely some other price over $650) as far as I'm concerned, and I think a lot of people feel the same way. Is that extra 20GB going to be worth the extra money? If they go through with it, this seems like a foolish move for Sony.
I'd bet it takes a week before someone finds out and crashes the whole thing.
This is obvious to most people who use online email, but one of the reasons I like gmail is because I can send myself pictures or projects and download them anywhere, so if I'm working on something on someone else's computer, I can get it to my home computer without any physical media or programs to install (not that there aren't other ways to do this, but its easy this way). There's talk of a cutoff point that checks for abusers, but if this is really unlimited storage, then shouldn't I be able to send a dvd to my email so I can download it and watch it on another computer (forget about the copyright or email technical issues)?
But anyway, I think I figured out what is going through the minds of the people at Yahoo. The service is completely unlimited for users, meaning that there are no limits, but they will deactivate your account if you storage goes over a certain threshold deemed abusive by Yahoo. As long as you don't pass the threshold, you won't have any limits! Mmmm, circular logic...
I agree with you that there are artists out there who still produce good whole albums. It surprises me a little to hear so many people say that they only listen to a few songs from an artist. Once I find a song or two that I like from some artist, I tend to track down every one of their songs. I've got a lot of music, and the majority of it comes from whole albums which I listen to in their entirety. I'd say that I have twice as many artists with their whole albums than I have artists with only a couple songs. It's not necessarily that these albums are great, just that I like the style of music from the artist so I want to listen to more of what they have to play.
That said, I also think its bullshit to have to pay $20 for a CD if you only want a single song, so I'm not trying to argue that the old model should be preserved. If new artists come out with 12 songs that are meant to be listened to together and in order, I'm sure they'll still be able to sell them.
Does a million dollar cell phone impress you? How about the million dollar martini? (actually, the martini doesn't cost that much because you pick the diamond and they are usually around $10,000, but still).
I agree with you that these things aren't very impressive. They're attaching the value of aesthetics to a functional object, which happens a lot but just isn't special when the aesthetic value completely dwarfs the capabilities of the object. You really aren't buying a $1 million laptop, you're buying a diamond worth close to $1 million with a laptop attached to it.
Ok, so what about mashups and musicians like MF Doom who sample music?
You might have an answer for that too, but it really doesn't matter. The problem is that there are a lot of situations that don't have a clear answer. Use common sense? That works great if everyone has the same "common sense", but since people have differing opinions on things, using common sense is not the answer. If it was that easy, no one would be listing counter examples to your explanation. The point is that common sense doesn't help most people when it comes to copyright questions, so Congress needs to clarify the issue (I'm not sure if Congress is really the one who needs to step in or not, but that was the point of the article and summary as I understood it). The responses to your original post, the post I replied to, and your original post in that it pointed out how the author of the article didn't understand the law, all help to support his point that there needs to be clarification.
The 50 years thing was just to say that 2 years isn't sufficient. I don't think 50 is either, but it really doesn't matter because 2 is bullshit.
As for "Unfortunately, humans haven't been advanced enough to collect climate data for long enough to predict anything. So wait another 1,000 years, and if the data still supports global warming, I'll start listening." Seriously? We have lots of data that shows climate change over long periods of time. We know when the last ice age started and ended and have pretty good (although rough) ideas of when other ice ages occured over the last couple million years. Whether or not we can acturately predict climate change isn't about whether or not we have enough data.
You're right. I can't seem to find a dictionary that uses such a specific time frame even though I thought I found some last night. The only thing I can find today that says that is Wikipedia. However, instead of a concrete time frame, a lot of dictionaries used the word "sustained".
I don't think that only reason dictionaries use "Earth" in the definition is because it has been beaten into us that humans are the cause, but that's beside the point as well. Regardless of the whether or not it only applies to Earth, my point is that the so called "global warming" of Mars can't be concluded as "global warming" as we know it because we don't have nearly enough data to conclude that, or at least there wasn't enough data when the article that the GP linked to was written. 2 years worth of data is not enough to say that Mars is going through a phase of global warming, as I said in my post. I probably shouldn't have thrown the comment about the dictionary in there because it leaves the post open for someone to come in and attack that one point as if the other points don't exist...
It is no wonder that a dictionary didn't want to discredit itself by skipping earth in the definition and leaving the possibility for someone to claim that something other then humans could cause it acording to their definition.
Did you miss the part in my post where I said that warming of the earth occurs naturally? I really don't think that most people who believe that humans are causing the current global warming also think humans are the only cause of global warming. There is plenty of data to show that the temperature of the earth has fluctuated significantly over many, many years (hundreds of thousands?). I really haven't heard anyone say that only humans can raise the temperature of the earth. I'm not sure where that idea is coming from.
You need to change that to people who consider themselves "educated enough to know that global warming denial is an unscientific crock" while not understanding that it is also caused by natural phenomena, to which you seem to fit into at least half of that definition. Just because Mars has global warming or the Earth has had global warming in the past doesn't mean that we aren't causing it now and that the effects of our added global warming won't be significantly different from natural global warming.
Besides that, most dictionaries define global warming as something related only to the Earth and also as needing measurements taken over decades, neither of which apply when used in the phrase "Mars has global warming". Your linked article talks about measurements taken over 2 years, which is hardly enough to claim that global warming is taking place on Mars (assuming of course, that global warming is defined that way), but good try.
Assuming, of course, that buying YouTube was stupid, which has yet to be seen. Getting sued isn't really a measure of the intelligence of an action... losing the lawsuit might be a better indication.
No, it's really not the same at all.
The use of the word "readings" made me think a bit. When I had to do a reading for the day's discussion in English class in high school (or any other class really), I was held accountable for reading the material, yet Congress members aren't held accountable for reading the material they discuss each day. They may not be completely analogous, but that's pretty messed up when you think about it.
Good post.
Teachers are not teachers anymore, they are babysitters.This sentence was not only relavent to the issue in the article, but is characteristic of so many of the problems with our education system right now from parents expecting schools to raise their kids and teach them values to our failing grades compared with the rest of the world. I don't think that its just the bureaucracy of structured classes, but with the teachers' lack of ability to control a classroom. Of course, that's a whole other can of worms.
Innovative games are for profit.
It kinda sounds like you are saying that as a counter, which implies that I don't think innovative games are for profit, although my whole point was that innovative games might be able to make a better profit than standard formula games. I was trying to contrast the innovative games with games that follow a formula like almost every EA sports game. Not sure if you were trying to counter, but I thought I should clarify my point in case it wasn't clear.
As for the rest, I definintely agree with you. However, there is still room for innovation in any genre (at least any I can think of at the moment). Consider the multiplayer FPS game where you could fly planes and helicopters while also running on the ground, or go back to the first game that allowed players to use vehicles. These innovations helped set those games apart. But more to your point, innovative games do get to set the rules (or innovations on well-established games change the rules), which can lead to a more profitable game.
Actually, I never said that, nor have I ever assumed that it is true. However, my definition of "popular" in this context, is that if a game is more "popular" than another, than it sells more copies. Now, as I'm sure you know since you demonstrated you can give a basic explanation of economics, profit is maximized when the price is set where marginal revenue equals marginal cost. Since companies don't know the demand for a game when setting the price and generally set the price to a standard, this isn't how we maximize profit. Instead, profit depends on how many games are sold and how much it costs to develop and market the game (I'm making some assumptions here that take out the cost of creating and shipping the game, but those shouldn't be relevant in most cases). Now, unless you disagree that this is the major factor in the profitability of a game, then if two games cost the same to develop and market, then the game that sells more (i.e. is more popular) will be more profitable. As you said, popular != profitable, but also profitable !=> (does not imply) popular, unprofitable !=> popular, profitable !=> unpopular, and all other combinations of those words. I wasn't assuming that popular games are profitable, but the more units of a game that are sold, the more revenue is made from the game. Again, since the major cost is a one time development cost, selling more games means more profit (or less loss). So to fix the assumption you assumed I made, popular = more revenue.
Now allow me to put words in your mouth. You are making the assumption that companies work in a robotic fashion when it comes to making money. By that I mean that companies determine if something is more or less profitable than something else, and then pick the better. This is true to an extent, but it forgets that companies don't know what will be more profitable. Companies take risks to make money. Sometimes it is more profitable to do something that isn't the norm because the norm is being reproduced by everyone else on the market (Nintendo Wii, just about anything made by Will Wright). Sometimes companies think about the consumers because loyalty can mean consistent return customers (Macs, car companies). Sometimes companies give things away for free so they can make money in other ways (gmail, promotional CDs). Whos to say that a company won't be more profitable if it makes games that are good from a consumer's perspective instead of according to some formula?
I know, I'm not really being fair here. You never said that making good games won't be profitable, but I never claimed nor gave any indication that I disagreed with the stated goal of a company. I'm so tired of making a comment about something and getting a regurgitated lecture about how a company's only goal is to make money, when that says very little in the long run. Consider this, "there is no selfless act" (I could be wrong, but I haven't found any proof otherwise). Anything you can do, you do it for yourself, and if you don't believe that, come up with a counterexample and I'll explain why it's selfish. Now, if we understand that everything we do is selfish, then whenever someone asks why some guy does something, it would be correct to say "Because he only cares about himself." The only problem is that there are a lot of ways to care about yourself. If you are given a choice between getting shot in the head or shooting your wife (or husband, or other person who you care about more than anything else in the world), you might choose to shoot yourself because you want the other to