Excellent quote to call out, and very apt. What I found funny was the actual headline. It could much more cleanly read: "Will a corporation charge their customers more if they think they can get away with it, even if there is no technical merit or cost basis behind the decision?"
There would be no need for further conversation. The thread could then be summed up with: "Uhm... duh?"
Well, obvious anti-immigration bias in your post aside,let's look at this on the facts: - There are already numerous cases in the US, and knowing about it and being aware of the issues (such as seeking medical attention if you start to feel sick) is the important thing; Closing the border only stops the legitimate people trying to cross the border. How exactly does that help stem the flow of illegal immigrants? Oh, right, we just kill them all. (Citation: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/ - And no, no reference to killing immigrants there) - The financial damage of closing the border; Based on 2006 financial figures, closing of the border would cost approximately $931 million in lost trade revenue EVERY SINGLE DAY the border stays closed; Now, that's a mix of revenue between the US and Mexico, but that's the total amount. But still about $380 million in lost exports to Mexico alone. (Citation: http://www.usembassy-mexico.gov/eng/eataglance_trade.html)
So, in addition to not doing any good, it makes our current wonderful economic state even BETTER by destroying almost a billion dollars in revenue a day. What exactly do you hope to accomplish by closing the border?
I disagree with modding down troll simply because of a policy disagreement. That said, Barbam's post is basically a troll. It's attempting to score political points with NO facts.
- "Obama's deficit"... you mean the deficit that didn't exist 8 years ago before Bush and 12 years of a Republican congressional majority. A deficit that he inherited and is left in the unenviable position of attempting to fix. Making it sound like this is entirely Obama's fault for the situation we're in (and attempting to change the discussion to a different topic, the deficit), despite his having been in office less than four months. Troll antics. - "Oh wait, she's not eligible, she paid her taxes".. shine a light on every politician, and you'll probably find efforts to evade or minimize taxes. Not an excuse, but also a thin slice of his appointees that of course Fox and other conservative mouth pieces have made sound like the death of the world. But, what does this add to the discussion? Trollish point scoring. - "unionization of IT worker", magically, a brand new complaint in an article that doesn't even mention it. Changing the subject with tin foil hat conservative talking points. How is it possibly relevant to the topic at hand? - Numerous ridiculous suggestions for other cabinet positions, instead of actually focusing on the appointee's qualifications or lack thereof.
Simply put, it was probably modded troll because it IS a troll, not because he might have an unpopular stance int he/. crowd. Not that that hasn't happened, but this is a poor example to evangelize.
The city of Redmond recognizes it and wants it, probably 50% of the tax revenue for that city derives from Microsoft and it's employees. Microsoft recognizes the value and wants it, hence footing half the bill. It eases up congestion on the TWO other overpasses across the freeway in the area (there's a third well away from the campus, apartments and tons of housing throughout that area that rarely gets used). So yes.. there are literally thousands of homes, people at businesses (not just Microsoft, though they are the ONLY business directly contributing), and public and private transit that can use, as well as the numerous bike and foot commuters in the area. As I said. Uninformed. You just want a reason to hate them. The fact that you've got your underwear in a bind about obfuscation code done in a beta build of an OS over 25 years ago is possibly the saddest justification for MS hate I've seen on Slashdot in a long time. So no, I don't need an explanation. You need a Xanax.
The bridge in question connects one publicly accessible area to another publicly accessible area where there are limited ways to get across the freeway in question. While Microsoft accounts for about 40% of the expected traffic on the new bridge, they [i.e. Microsoft] are actually footing the bill for approximately half the cost of the bridge. Those bastards! Fleecing the public by paying half of something that is a publicly owned structure that will provide a few hundred jobs for 2 years, that they won't own but will be able to benefit from, and will encourage people to WALK rather than drive everywhere. How dare they. And it's a shovel ready project. Yah.. horrible idea.
Oh sorry. Slashdot. My bad. Go on with your uninformed hating.
Near record is not a record. Cherry pick your quotes much? Next sentence in that article: "but 34 percent below the average measured for September since 1979"
Last year was a record. 9% back from that record compared to last year is still crappy when you're talking about a total 34% drop in total area since 1979. 4.5227 million square miles compared to 4.6 million square miles year to year change from 2007 to 2008, compared to over 6 million square miles three decades ago. The article could be a little less hyperbolic in it's title, but as for an agenda? Please.
On an animal intelligence scale, you're absolutely correct. But with full cognitive understanding and ability to take massive amounts of new information and utilize it, I think it's not really a useful comparisons on humans. A dog, at least none I've met, can read a book and be more knowledgeable for the experience. If I could read every digitized eBook in existence, and analyze them, and truly understand the material, over the course of a week instead of a lifetime, I'd like to think I would be much more knowledgeable and able to use the inherent capacities of my brain to much better degree. For me at least, making better use of my brain (i.e. learning more, analyzing more, considering things more) is a factor of available time, not lack of desire. For me, at least, sniffing someone's crotch has never been a high priority. Well, there was this one time...
Ultimate thread of pointless arguments. Unless the open source community wants to provide huge amounts of open source games that are high quality that will keep the insatiable hunger for new content in check by gamers, this sort of move by Amazon will be fought and countered by every one of us in the development and publishing industry every way we can. The prevailing argument seems to be that, since re-selling is legal, you should be able to do it completely unregulated, regardless of the damage it does to the industries that provide you that content. So, if 10,000 copies of a game sell, but they go through a million hands due to rampant resales that the publishers/developers never see a cent of, well, there goes another dev. And that publisher, just had the same thing happen to their top 10 titles, so no more publisher. Guess there are no more devs or publishers left who can operate profitable businesses to provide your content.
The old hacker creed of "information should be free" may be the prevailing attitude on/., but it's taken to unsustainable and asinine levels both here and among "content consumers" in general, as if you have have a constitutional right to the (millions of dollars and tens of thousands of people months spent developing titles) games you consume every year without paying a dime. Make it so, and you'll run out of content faster than you can blink, because we'll no longer have a viable business model to generate that content. Dunno about you, but I still need to pay my rent and feed my family, and I'm not gonna work at Costco and spent another 80 hours a week making games "just for the fun of it", and neither will many others, beyond college students and people who still live in their moms basement at age 36.
I'm sure there are all sorts of flaws in my own dissertation, but if someone can provide a REAL business model that doesn't involve making every game subscription based (MMO) or based on 90% multiplayer (COD4) to keep people from selling them over and over and over again, I'd love to hear it. Because so far, all this thread is doing is defending the right of gamers and retailers to make the games industry completely unsustainable as a business.
I was waiting all afternoon to get home so I could finally read the responses to this headline./. doesn't dissapoint. Comedy gold. Now get your mom to make you some more pizza pockets and get back to writing, damnit.
While it is certainly possible that this is the case, I think this may be over complicating matters. I imagine YouTube gets a very large number of DMCA notices on any given day. If anyone works for Google/YouTube, maybe they can answer, but if it was my system, I'd have a automated process that would automatically flag any complaints and their related media and have it temporarily disable the content until a human could review the claim(s), and either pull it permanently or re-enable it.
But that's just me. Maybe I'm giving companies more credit than they deserve. But that would protect them within the bounds of the law, and still make sure legal material was re-posted as soon as the complaint was invalidated.
Well, it didn't - it took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem. - 1989 speech on the history of the microcomputer industry.
Just so there's no real room to misinterpret his intent. He admitted that the _microprocessor_ limitation was hit a lot sooner than anyone expected.
All the companies you identify, were every bit as much to blame for their failure as Microsoft. Microsoft certainly didn't help them along the path to financial success, but that's what happens in a competitive marketplace.
As for products that never made it to market? I think you may be a tad confused? Tablet PC's are still available and brand new ones purchasable. They've never become a break away hit, because they frankly are a niche product, and the way the screens have to be built make them more expensive to produce than a standard laptop. But I still know quite a few people who own one. (Artists mostly.. plus a few people who spend inordinate amount of times in meetings and like products like OneNote for keeping track of tons of notes, doodles, etc)
Truth is in the eye of the beholder. Your truth is another man's slanted point of view. A Microsoft hater would clearly claim that as "truth".. someone who doesn't care either way would file it away as the flames of someone who can't see how those companies planted the seeds of their own destruction.
Devil's advocate, sorry. Should have clarified that. In my own example, I totally agree. It's not murder, and certainly no intent to commit murder if a car has a fault.
Better example. Cigarettes. At this point if you smoke, you know what you're getting into. Arguably, you should have known anytime in the last 40 years. But there are court and public record of massive attempts to cover up the addictive and deadly properties of smoking, nicotine, etc. Haven't seen Phillip Morris brought up on homicide, manslaughter, or murder charges yet though. Just massive monetary lawsuits brought on by mostly greedy lawyers.
And again, I don't know how much I buy into even that, as if you smoke and can't tell it's bad for you, I'd question your IQ, but that's a personal liberty choice. If you want to smoke 50 packs a day where I don't have to smell it, knock yourself out. Social chlorination is all that is. But there is a huge double standard in this country as to how individuals are treated, and how companies are treated. And a monetary fine is, as mentioned above, just a slap on the wrist in almost all cases.
Well.. where do you draw the line for defining murder? If you're driving a Ford pickup, and it randomly explodes due to a fuel line problem, and it kills you. Your family will probably get a lot of money from that. Then they have a recall because it's killed 200 people over 3 years. That ranks up there with the worst serial killers of all time. They'll walk away with a lot of cash settlements, a product recall and a lot of PR work to do. And then they'll probably have the same thing happen 15 years later. No, I'm not citing a specific example, but car recalls like this have occurred. Most of those companies are still steamrolling ahead.
By that view, if you want to commit murder, creating a faulty product that kills people is certainly the best way to get away with it.
So, I suggest this kind of jokingly, but wondering if it would be feasible. If the law is, at it's heart, supposed to be objective, impartial, and based purely on the facts, wouldn't it be possible to remove the judge's bias and reading from most civil matters by utilizing the same technology that is the core of so many problems with the law right now?
The idea I'm struggling towards is: - Every civil case should be able to be broken down to pure facts. Anything that cannot be backed up with data is inadmissible. Sworn testimony is not admissible, because humans are inherently biased to their own point of view, even when trying to be honest. - Break down the high level laws into what their intent is, in a factual manner. No opinion. Right to free speech. Pretty straight forward. No more obscenity laws. Some people like to claim that obscenity shouldn't be protected, but.. who's definition of obscenity? Copyright and fair use laws? Between the two, these should break down pretty easy with very little room for interpretation. It's either copyrighted or it's not, it's either fair use, or it's not. (you can do x,y, z or its derivatives, you can't do a, b, c or its derivatives) - You'd need a fairly powerful analysis tool to compare the known "facts" of the law vs. the known "facts" of the case and then determine where things stand.
There's a ton of holes I can already see in this and there would still be a need for human analysis for the components of cases that can't be judged purely on the facts (testimony, circumstances, intent), but at least to form a baseline that no judge could skip past (minimize accusations of "legislating from the bench"), you could proceed just with those intangibles towards a verdict, with 90% of the case already determined as to how the law applies to it. And biggest worry about this kind of system, is a legal system that doesn't take compassion into account quickly becomes a tyrannical one.
I'm kind of struggling for a concept that I don't feel I'm explaining very well, but does what I'm trying to describe here make sense as a way to apply these broad laws to 99% of all eventualities?
Copying software results in:
- Legitimate copies going up in price, as companies argue that piracy has taken away profits that should have gone to them.
- More and increasingly draconian copy protection that only hurts legitimate users.
Your argument is only valid in for software that was never intended for profit. Yes, copying retail software does do real harm and IS real theft by any rational standard of law. If you prefer to think there are no laws and software is exempt from property protections, than yes, I guess your argument is unbeatable. Not through any inherent validity, but in your self-imposed view that stealing software is somehow "ok" because it doesn't change the bits in question.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, and that's not what you're arguing, but it's how it comes across. Of course, I'm looking at this from the companies perspective. From a consumer's perspective, if you allow someone to copy your software, then your argument is perfectly valid. You're still breaking the law and causing real harm to real people, but I could see your point in this light.
And the fact that a majority of the world still uses XP and/or Vista.. that little fact just *whoosh*.. right past ya. You should have just run it rhough the "/. article filter" that removes all references to Windows, and makes repetitive jokes about "5.9 should be enough for anyone".. you know, that ever paraphrased quote that was never actually made by Bill or anyone at Microsoft but is continually attributed to them for cheap shots that have no substance that typically get modded funny.
Of course, someone was foolish enough to mention anything about Windows in a tech article, so it goes reason that 90% of the comments would be about the Windows Experience score, rather than the substance of the article. Vista sucks. Ok, agreed. But seriously, humor aside, slashdot sounds more and more like tech savvy ditto-heads every day.
The concept of "game designer" is very obfuscated from an outside perspective. Inside the industry, it can go from "lead designer/creative director", who are very much like project managers, to "Level designer", "ai scripter", "world builder", including tasks like placing hundreds or thousands of creatures, placing furniture, writing quests, simple and complex in whatever tools are available. Again, it covers a huge experience level, and skill set composition. Hence why the salary is shown so low. For every one creative director making $100k or $150k, you have 10 to 20 level designers, script writers, etc making $30k to $50k.
But, speaking as a project manager in the games industry, in response to someone's snarky comment below. A project manager in the games industry that doesn't do anything... doesn't last very long, in my experience. There's not nearly enough money flowing freely through most companies to put up with dead weight. Well, not at most companies anyway. Dead weight, period, usually doesn't last. Or maybe I've just been lucky.:)
There is a truisim in software development, especially game development: If you really want to get something fixed that is clearly broken, filing a bug is not the answer. Exploit the hell out of it, or at least make the engineer in question afraid you and others will exploit the flaw. The problem that otherwise would have taken months to get fixed.. is magically fixed in the next build usually.
Evil? Yes, but if it's broke, exploit it to fix it!br
"Intel is realizing that consumers, particularly Apple's consumers, don't really care what's on the inside"
I actually completely disagree with this. And one reason. x86 compatibility. Until a year ago, I never would have considered owning a Macintosh. But, with an x86 processor inside, Boot Camp, Crossover, and other recent additions to the Mac arsenal, for the first time since 1989, I want a Mac! And it's _completely_ about the processor. It could be AMD as well, but the main point is that suddenly compatibility with my hundreds of PC games, applications and utilities becomes possible. Easily, without having to buy new versions or hope the developer might actually MAKE a new version.
One comment I haven't seen is.. one of the reasons, in my opinion, that Apple never reached market dominance in the beginning of the 90s is the lack of homebrew solutions. The people building their own machines, specifying the compoents they wanted, and knowing all about the architecture was the catalystfor companies like Gateway and Dell to succeed and in fact help Windows become the dominant OS. Quite simply, Apple refused to share the wealth. People attack Microsoft for being greedy, but in the process, they have made many other companies wealthy beyond belief.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent quote to call out, and very apt. What I found funny was the actual headline. It could much more cleanly read:
"Will a corporation charge their customers more if they think they can get away with it, even if there is no technical merit or cost basis behind the decision?"
There would be no need for further conversation. The thread could then be summed up with: "Uhm... duh?"
Well, obvious anti-immigration bias in your post aside,let's look at this on the facts:
- There are already numerous cases in the US, and knowing about it and being aware of the issues (such as seeking medical attention if you start to feel sick) is the important thing; Closing the border only stops the legitimate people trying to cross the border. How exactly does that help stem the flow of illegal immigrants? Oh, right, we just kill them all. (Citation: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/ - And no, no reference to killing immigrants there)
- The financial damage of closing the border; Based on 2006 financial figures, closing of the border would cost approximately $931 million in lost trade revenue EVERY SINGLE DAY the border stays closed; Now, that's a mix of revenue between the US and Mexico, but that's the total amount. But still about $380 million in lost exports to Mexico alone. (Citation: http://www.usembassy-mexico.gov/eng/eataglance_trade.html)
So, in addition to not doing any good, it makes our current wonderful economic state even BETTER by destroying almost a billion dollars in revenue a day. What exactly do you hope to accomplish by closing the border?
Oh my god! You killed entropy!
You bastards!
I disagree with modding down troll simply because of a policy disagreement. That said, Barbam's post is basically a troll. It's attempting to score political points with NO facts.
- "Obama's deficit" ... you mean the deficit that didn't exist 8 years ago before Bush and 12 years of a Republican congressional majority. A deficit that he inherited and is left in the unenviable position of attempting to fix. Making it sound like this is entirely Obama's fault for the situation we're in (and attempting to change the discussion to a different topic, the deficit), despite his having been in office less than four months. Troll antics.
- "Oh wait, she's not eligible, she paid her taxes".. shine a light on every politician, and you'll probably find efforts to evade or minimize taxes. Not an excuse, but also a thin slice of his appointees that of course Fox and other conservative mouth pieces have made sound like the death of the world. But, what does this add to the discussion? Trollish point scoring.
- "unionization of IT worker", magically, a brand new complaint in an article that doesn't even mention it. Changing the subject with tin foil hat conservative talking points. How is it possibly relevant to the topic at hand?
- Numerous ridiculous suggestions for other cabinet positions, instead of actually focusing on the appointee's qualifications or lack thereof.
Simply put, it was probably modded troll because it IS a troll, not because he might have an unpopular stance int he /. crowd. Not that that hasn't happened, but this is a poor example to evangelize.
The city of Redmond recognizes it and wants it, probably 50% of the tax revenue for that city derives from Microsoft and it's employees. Microsoft recognizes the value and wants it, hence footing half the bill. It eases up congestion on the TWO other overpasses across the freeway in the area (there's a third well away from the campus, apartments and tons of housing throughout that area that rarely gets used). So yes.. there are literally thousands of homes, people at businesses (not just Microsoft, though they are the ONLY business directly contributing), and public and private transit that can use, as well as the numerous bike and foot commuters in the area. As I said. Uninformed. You just want a reason to hate them. The fact that you've got your underwear in a bind about obfuscation code done in a beta build of an OS over 25 years ago is possibly the saddest justification for MS hate I've seen on Slashdot in a long time. So no, I don't need an explanation. You need a Xanax.
The bridge in question connects one publicly accessible area to another publicly accessible area where there are limited ways to get across the freeway in question. While Microsoft accounts for about 40% of the expected traffic on the new bridge, they [i.e. Microsoft] are actually footing the bill for approximately half the cost of the bridge. Those bastards! Fleecing the public by paying half of something that is a publicly owned structure that will provide a few hundred jobs for 2 years, that they won't own but will be able to benefit from, and will encourage people to WALK rather than drive everywhere. How dare they. And it's a shovel ready project. Yah.. horrible idea.
Oh sorry. Slashdot. My bad. Go on with your uninformed hating.
Near record is not a record. Cherry pick your quotes much? Next sentence in that article:
"but 34 percent below the average measured for September since 1979"
Last year was a record. 9% back from that record compared to last year is still crappy when you're talking about a total 34% drop in total area since 1979. 4.5227 million square miles compared to 4.6 million square miles year to year change from 2007 to 2008, compared to over 6 million square miles three decades ago. The article could be a little less hyperbolic in it's title, but as for an agenda? Please.
On an animal intelligence scale, you're absolutely correct. But with full cognitive understanding and ability to take massive amounts of new information and utilize it, I think it's not really a useful comparisons on humans. A dog, at least none I've met, can read a book and be more knowledgeable for the experience. If I could read every digitized eBook in existence, and analyze them, and truly understand the material, over the course of a week instead of a lifetime, I'd like to think I would be much more knowledgeable and able to use the inherent capacities of my brain to much better degree. For me at least, making better use of my brain (i.e. learning more, analyzing more, considering things more) is a factor of available time, not lack of desire. For me, at least, sniffing someone's crotch has never been a high priority. Well, there was this one time...
Ultimate thread of pointless arguments. Unless the open source community wants to provide huge amounts of open source games that are high quality that will keep the insatiable hunger for new content in check by gamers, this sort of move by Amazon will be fought and countered by every one of us in the development and publishing industry every way we can. The prevailing argument seems to be that, since re-selling is legal, you should be able to do it completely unregulated, regardless of the damage it does to the industries that provide you that content. So, if 10,000 copies of a game sell, but they go through a million hands due to rampant resales that the publishers/developers never see a cent of, well, there goes another dev. And that publisher, just had the same thing happen to their top 10 titles, so no more publisher. Guess there are no more devs or publishers left who can operate profitable businesses to provide your content.
The old hacker creed of "information should be free" may be the prevailing attitude on /., but it's taken to unsustainable and asinine levels both here and among "content consumers" in general, as if you have have a constitutional right to the (millions of dollars and tens of thousands of people months spent developing titles) games you consume every year without paying a dime. Make it so, and you'll run out of content faster than you can blink, because we'll no longer have a viable business model to generate that content. Dunno about you, but I still need to pay my rent and feed my family, and I'm not gonna work at Costco and spent another 80 hours a week making games "just for the fun of it", and neither will many others, beyond college students and people who still live in their moms basement at age 36.
I'm sure there are all sorts of flaws in my own dissertation, but if someone can provide a REAL business model that doesn't involve making every game subscription based (MMO) or based on 90% multiplayer (COD4) to keep people from selling them over and over and over again, I'd love to hear it. Because so far, all this thread is doing is defending the right of gamers and retailers to make the games industry completely unsustainable as a business.
And it's clear deregulation has worked so well for us so far! Look at our financial sector!
I was waiting all afternoon to get home so I could finally read the responses to this headline. /. doesn't dissapoint. Comedy gold. Now get your mom to make you some more pizza pockets and get back to writing, damnit.
While it is certainly possible that this is the case, I think this may be over complicating matters. I imagine YouTube gets a very large number of DMCA notices on any given day. If anyone works for Google/YouTube, maybe they can answer, but if it was my system, I'd have a automated process that would automatically flag any complaints and their related media and have it temporarily disable the content until a human could review the claim(s), and either pull it permanently or re-enable it.
But that's just me. Maybe I'm giving companies more credit than they deserve. But that would protect them within the bounds of the law, and still make sure legal material was re-posted as soon as the complaint was invalidated.
The rest of the quote:
Well, it didn't - it took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem. - 1989 speech on the history of the microcomputer industry.
Just so there's no real room to misinterpret his intent. He admitted that the _microprocessor_ limitation was hit a lot sooner than anyone expected.
All the companies you identify, were every bit as much to blame for their failure as Microsoft. Microsoft certainly didn't help them along the path to financial success, but that's what happens in a competitive marketplace.
As for products that never made it to market? I think you may be a tad confused? Tablet PC's are still available and brand new ones purchasable. They've never become a break away hit, because they frankly are a niche product, and the way the screens have to be built make them more expensive to produce than a standard laptop. But I still know quite a few people who own one. (Artists mostly.. plus a few people who spend inordinate amount of times in meetings and like products like OneNote for keeping track of tons of notes, doodles, etc)
Truth is in the eye of the beholder. Your truth is another man's slanted point of view. A Microsoft hater would clearly claim that as "truth".. someone who doesn't care either way would file it away as the flames of someone who can't see how those companies planted the seeds of their own destruction.
Devil's advocate, sorry. Should have clarified that. In my own example, I totally agree. It's not murder, and certainly no intent to commit murder if a car has a fault.
Better example. Cigarettes. At this point if you smoke, you know what you're getting into. Arguably, you should have known anytime in the last 40 years. But there are court and public record of massive attempts to cover up the addictive and deadly properties of smoking, nicotine, etc. Haven't seen Phillip Morris brought up on homicide, manslaughter, or murder charges yet though. Just massive monetary lawsuits brought on by mostly greedy lawyers.
And again, I don't know how much I buy into even that, as if you smoke and can't tell it's bad for you, I'd question your IQ, but that's a personal liberty choice. If you want to smoke 50 packs a day where I don't have to smell it, knock yourself out. Social chlorination is all that is. But there is a huge double standard in this country as to how individuals are treated, and how companies are treated. And a monetary fine is, as mentioned above, just a slap on the wrist in almost all cases.
Well.. where do you draw the line for defining murder? If you're driving a Ford pickup, and it randomly explodes due to a fuel line problem, and it kills you. Your family will probably get a lot of money from that. Then they have a recall because it's killed 200 people over 3 years. That ranks up there with the worst serial killers of all time. They'll walk away with a lot of cash settlements, a product recall and a lot of PR work to do. And then they'll probably have the same thing happen 15 years later. No, I'm not citing a specific example, but car recalls like this have occurred. Most of those companies are still steamrolling ahead. By that view, if you want to commit murder, creating a faulty product that kills people is certainly the best way to get away with it.
I think slashdot needs a new positive (+1) rating.. Pedantic. Because.. here, it really is raised to an artform. :)
So, I suggest this kind of jokingly, but wondering if it would be feasible. If the law is, at it's heart, supposed to be objective, impartial, and based purely on the facts, wouldn't it be possible to remove the judge's bias and reading from most civil matters by utilizing the same technology that is the core of so many problems with the law right now?
The idea I'm struggling towards is:
- Every civil case should be able to be broken down to pure facts. Anything that cannot be backed up with data is inadmissible. Sworn testimony is not admissible, because humans are inherently biased to their own point of view, even when trying to be honest.
- Break down the high level laws into what their intent is, in a factual manner. No opinion. Right to free speech. Pretty straight forward. No more obscenity laws. Some people like to claim that obscenity shouldn't be protected, but.. who's definition of obscenity? Copyright and fair use laws? Between the two, these should break down pretty easy with very little room for interpretation. It's either copyrighted or it's not, it's either fair use, or it's not. (you can do x,y, z or its derivatives, you can't do a, b, c or its derivatives)
- You'd need a fairly powerful analysis tool to compare the known "facts" of the law vs. the known "facts" of the case and then determine where things stand.
There's a ton of holes I can already see in this and there would still be a need for human analysis for the components of cases that can't be judged purely on the facts (testimony, circumstances, intent), but at least to form a baseline that no judge could skip past (minimize accusations of "legislating from the bench"), you could proceed just with those intangibles towards a verdict, with 90% of the case already determined as to how the law applies to it. And biggest worry about this kind of system, is a legal system that doesn't take compassion into account quickly becomes a tyrannical one.
I'm kind of struggling for a concept that I don't feel I'm explaining very well, but does what I'm trying to describe here make sense as a way to apply these broad laws to 99% of all eventualities?
Copying software results in: - Legitimate copies going up in price, as companies argue that piracy has taken away profits that should have gone to them. - More and increasingly draconian copy protection that only hurts legitimate users.
Your argument is only valid in for software that was never intended for profit. Yes, copying retail software does do real harm and IS real theft by any rational standard of law. If you prefer to think there are no laws and software is exempt from property protections, than yes, I guess your argument is unbeatable. Not through any inherent validity, but in your self-imposed view that stealing software is somehow "ok" because it doesn't change the bits in question.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, and that's not what you're arguing, but it's how it comes across. Of course, I'm looking at this from the companies perspective. From a consumer's perspective, if you allow someone to copy your software, then your argument is perfectly valid. You're still breaking the law and causing real harm to real people, but I could see your point in this light.
Sigh. Ruiner, you're not thinking about this like a true capitalist. Don't end this thing called life. Just raise the subscription fees.
And the fact that a majority of the world still uses XP and/or Vista.. that little fact just *whoosh*.. right past ya. You should have just run it rhough the "/. article filter" that removes all references to Windows, and makes repetitive jokes about "5.9 should be enough for anyone".. you know, that ever paraphrased quote that was never actually made by Bill or anyone at Microsoft but is continually attributed to them for cheap shots that have no substance that typically get modded funny.
Of course, someone was foolish enough to mention anything about Windows in a tech article, so it goes reason that 90% of the comments would be about the Windows Experience score, rather than the substance of the article. Vista sucks. Ok, agreed. But seriously, humor aside, slashdot sounds more and more like tech savvy ditto-heads every day.
You need to stop this line of thought immediately. This has the earmarks of a zombie horror movie ALL OVER IT.
The concept of "game designer" is very obfuscated from an outside perspective. Inside the industry, it can go from "lead designer/creative director", who are very much like project managers, to "Level designer", "ai scripter", "world builder", including tasks like placing hundreds or thousands of creatures, placing furniture, writing quests, simple and complex in whatever tools are available. Again, it covers a huge experience level, and skill set composition. Hence why the salary is shown so low. For every one creative director making $100k or $150k, you have 10 to 20 level designers, script writers, etc making $30k to $50k.
:)
But, speaking as a project manager in the games industry, in response to someone's snarky comment below. A project manager in the games industry that doesn't do anything... doesn't last very long, in my experience. There's not nearly enough money flowing freely through most companies to put up with dead weight. Well, not at most companies anyway. Dead weight, period, usually doesn't last. Or maybe I've just been lucky.
Cheers.
There is a truisim in software development, especially game development: If you really want to get something fixed that is clearly broken, filing a bug is not the answer. Exploit the hell out of it, or at least make the engineer in question afraid you and others will exploit the flaw. The problem that otherwise would have taken months to get fixed.. is magically fixed in the next build usually.
Evil? Yes, but if it's broke, exploit it to fix it!br
I actually completely disagree with this. And one reason. x86 compatibility. Until a year ago, I never would have considered owning a Macintosh. But, with an x86 processor inside, Boot Camp, Crossover, and other recent additions to the Mac arsenal, for the first time since 1989, I want a Mac! And it's _completely_ about the processor. It could be AMD as well, but the main point is that suddenly compatibility with my hundreds of PC games, applications and utilities becomes possible. Easily, without having to buy new versions or hope the developer might actually MAKE a new version.
One comment I haven't seen is.. one of the reasons, in my opinion, that Apple never reached market dominance in the beginning of the 90s is the lack of homebrew solutions. The people building their own machines, specifying the compoents they wanted, and knowing all about the architecture was the catalystfor companies like Gateway and Dell to succeed and in fact help Windows become the dominant OS. Quite simply, Apple refused to share the wealth. People attack Microsoft for being greedy, but in the process, they have made many other companies wealthy beyond belief.