I know, but black people consider the use of the word "colored" to be racist, and I agree - it's as if white people are "normal," and other races are colored. It only makes me cringe because I know he only uses it to be anti-pc. NAACP is caught up in their own PC.
Arsenio Hall had a joke way back when that the reason they don't change NAACP to NAAAA is because people would call it "nah."
I don't buy it. I think that most people are considered and reasonable. I think that the extremes are just more interesting and consequently receive disproportional attention.
Not everyone who votes Republican is a fundamental Christian NRA wingnut. Not everyone who votes Democrat is a tree hugging, socialist nutjob.
I believe that the truth (as is usually the case in my experience) is somewhere in the middle. Most people just want to live and not be hassled.
At the same time you deserve an "AMEN!" I think the truth is few people actually care enough to bother with politics and just vote along party lines because they feel like they're "supposed" to be democrat or republican (maybe because mom and dad were), and I don't really consider that "considered and reasonable."
But I do think that, on the whole, most of us want the same things, and nobody wants war, hunger, homelessness, and we mostly do want for people to get an education and be able to earn enough to take care of themselves. It's just how we do it, and the level of sense of responsibility, where ideology differs.
That's because the poor (mostly white) southerners who take more government benefits as a group don't understand their own ideology.
My own brother was happily collecting benefits after drug-addicting, smoking and drinking himself into an umemployable wreck of a human being considered himself a "staunch" Reagan conservative up until his sad, but not unexpected, early death.
If you vote republican and accept Medicare and social security you are a hypocrite.
I'm not a republican, but frankly, that's absolute horseshit until people can opt out. What you really want to do is allow people to opt out, see all the rich folks opting out, and the poor republicans (the majority of recipients of government benefits, I might add) will understand the problem with their "ideology."
... leaves bigger holes than any that currently exist. Re-invest profit into the company by any means, or pay it out as bonuses to top execs, or just buy stuff. Make sure there's a small profit every couple years so you can stay incorporated, and the tax would end up as some infinitesimally small amount.
Most of the laws had the best intentions at one point, like your comment, but those need to continually be patched, which results in the current situation.
I disagree - what you're saying would happen (excepting bonuses, maybe) is the point. If they're not going to give it up to taxes, then they can use it on expansion... and while they may pay some people more, keep in mind they have to pay payroll taxes, too, paid for both by employees and employers. Especially in this case, if you are giving bonuses to high income employees, that bonus is being taxed on the employee at the highest tax rate, so they're just pushing the taxes to someone else - in either case, either the company expands (good for the economy overall) or the taxes are collected from payroll on both ends.
I actually do not support this method of taxation at all, but since it's unlikely we'll get rid of it, a lower rate with no loopholes will do more to bring back businesses and/or improve our economy and/or increase tax revenue.
The only people that suffer are the accountants that have to be paid buckets of money finding loopholes.
It's estimated that hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on tax compliance every year. I'd rather companies hold on to that and be taxed, or expand.
My dad says "colored" to refer to black people... it makes me cringe, but he's a remnant of his generation (raised in the 1930s). But then in PC America, calling black people black instead of "African Americans" makes a lot of other people cringe. It makes me cringe when the news refers to blacks in other countries as "African Americans."
So, yeah, in PC America, the demographics in a company must match the demographics of the country, otherwise they're "racists." Nobody wants equal opportunity any more... they weren't happy with the results.
I had a black social studies teacher in middle school who insisted the only way to equality was to have 50% black representation in congress. Yes, people actually think that way.
The schools are very highly rated, academically, but they are ridiculous otherwise. My son get reprimanded and had to reverse his Men In Black T-Shirt that had the little laser pistol on it and said "It's not the size of the gun that matters" because it might be threatening to other students. Yes, it's a tacky shirt, but really? My daughter had the same problem; her shirt had a crazy looking cartoon cat that said "I will kill you all." It's funny. Laugh. She's since gotten away with a similar shirt where the cat is saying "I'm plotting your demise."
The elementary school has a crossing guard and no such permit or fee is required. Frankly, it's middle school - they shouldn't require a crossing guard anymore. That's part of the coddling problem.
You need the parents to fill out a form to get a pass, replacement passes cost $5.00, but my kids tell me their friends who have passes said they had to pay for the initial pass, too. I wouldn't know, we live far enough away that walking is not a good option, although riding a bike would work if it were allowed at all (it's not).
My commute is pretty long - nearly 25 miles one way. I naively moved to this area when my wife was pregnant with our first because it was a better school district, but I've regretted it ever since... but we're just not in the financial condition to move, unfortunately, and my wife does freelance work now at a number of places near where we live.
Anyway, I've tried a number of things that the company seems to conspire to make not work for me, despite their "green" initiatives and advertising alternative schedules for "work life balance."
I tried a compressed work week - came in an hour earlier and left an hour later for four days (M-Th). It was good because traffic was better earlier and later, and then I had a three day weekend. You think "great, I get to spend extra time with the kids because of the three day weekend," but what happened was I left for work before they got up, came home when they were going to bed, and within a couple of years they were both in school on Friday anyway. So I was seeing them less. My jackass of a boss would then keep scheduling private meetings with me on Fridays, and it was obviously just to f#@k me up, because I'd come in on Friday and wait all day, then he'd say "I don't have time, let's meet on Monday." And yes, I'm certain it was intentional.
So I tried work from home (and still do). Hey, if you can work one day a week at home, that automatically cuts out 20% of the weekly aggravation from commuting. And if everybody did it (I know they can't), and the days at home were spread evenly through the week, then everyone's commute every day would be 20% better. But it doesn't work that way, and I can't do it when people schedule meetings or I'm working on a project that requires me to use resources at the office. But on the whole it works pretty well.
Alternative hours - this is where I get aggravated. So I manage to get my ass out of bed before five; the gym at work (at least we have that) opens at 5:30. I work out, shower, and I'm at my desk at 7:00am. Work eight hours (lunch at my desk, typically), I can leave around 3:00 or 3:30. Traffic is a dream at those times. Unfortunately, a lot of the artists I work with don't even come in until 10:00am or so. They schedule meetings at 3:30 and 4:00. To make matters worse, I work in television production and write playback interfaces for on air graphics. I'm not a graphics operator, but we're not union, so when all the graphics operators are booked, they ask me to do it. It's a nice change of pace... but the show we do is at night, so my schedule is shifted by almost exactly 12 hours.
So one of the keys to good health is keeping a regular schedule, and they make it impossible... I might go for a week or two, but then something always happens. Sure, there's a few special events I need to deal with every year, which might take me away from home for a week, but it's the constant interruptions in your daily schedule all throughout the year that lead to health problems. Frankly, I don't know how the graphics operators do it, because when they're not doing live shows, they're in during normal work hours to prep.
I have an unusual position, though, and it does pay well (although I haven't gotten a decent raise since they could blame the recession... all the while boasting publicly how well the company is doing and posting increasing revenue year after year). I also like my job, on the whole, because it's different, and the work is constantly changing. So I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but if a bunch of money fell into my lap right now, I'd quit for sure, and I'd take less money to work elsewhere. But my job is so specific, it's hard to find decent compensation anywhere else... few companies need someone with my talents.
Good post. I'm from the era where my mom would yell out the door for us that it was time for dinner because she didn't know which of our neighboring friend's yards we were playing in. I agree, the coddling has gone far too long.
Yup... as I said as a part of another response, while our elementary and high schools "allow" walkers (now it has to be "allowed," apparently), the middle school charges a f@#king fee for a "walker permit."
The coddling has gone too far. We're waiting so long to let kids mature, a lot of them never make it.
I walked to elementary school every day until we moved farther away, at which point I alternatively either road my bike or took the bus (and occasionally walked anyway). That continued through middle and high school, and that was up in NY.
Now it's 40 years or so later, I live in GA, and my kids are not allowed to ride their bikes to school. Walkers at my daughter's middle school require permits that they have to pay a fee for.
It's ridiculous.
At the same time, for whatever reason, walking to Elementary school was just fine, and walking to the high school is fine... so it's obviously up to individual school. If you're planning on having kids, and can't afford private schools, do yourself a favor and DO NOT move to GA.
I wonder about that all the time when it comes to superheroes. Superman may harness the power of the sun, but his exposed skin doesn't collect enough to lift up a truck or stop a speeding train. How many calories does that take? And the Flash... could run 2 seconds at top speed before exhausting all the calories he could consume in a month.
Agreed, but isn't it an interesting subject to bring up for Star Wars nerds?
So I have to ask, doesn't it count when, for example, Anakin jumps out of his cruiser and falls to other ones - I mean, you can't do that shit without the force.
The vast majority that play the game without paying wouldn't have paid if there was no crack, so what's the harm?
You're simply not entitled to someone else's IP whether it "hurts" them or not. It's a morally bankrupt justification.
I used to gank stuff all the time when I was a poor high school or college student. Now that I have an income I pay for everything. There's no reason that the poor should be kept from cultural media.
Because it's bullshit that someone can buy a computer capable of playing these games (or spend their money on a console) and then plead "poor." If you can't afford the games, you can't afford the console. And please don't be disingenuous stating people are playing these games on $200 laptops they got for school.
The fact is that if someone has the disposable income to buy a gaming computer or console, then they have enough to pay for some games - maybe not as many as they can illegally copy. So instead of buying one or two, they illegally copy 10. So I do buy into the notion that, given a particular game, a person would otherwise not have paid for it anyway, but I don't buy that they'd never buy anything if they couldn't copy anything.
The bottom line is nobody is entitled to someone else's IP for free (unless that someone else wants it to be free).
Personal property includes IP, and why the courts use the terms "theft of IP" all the time. They don't turn around and look at the lawyers and say "nuh uh, you can't steal IP."
That said, the equating of copyright infringement to piracy is the poster child example for hyperbole.
I also think that DRM is anti-consumer, your RIAA and MPAA examples are the best examples. They spend millions of dollars on DRM - licenses to use DRM, DVD and BluRay players have to license and build the technology to decrypt, and who ultimately pays for all of that? The consumer... so the consumer legally buys some media (that includes a price for the DRM built in) and a player (that includes a price for decryption) and can't make a legal copy (device shift), or they move to a different country and buy a new player and their library will no longer play. All because they want to prevent people who wouldn't have paid otherwise anyway from making a copy. And the consumer is forced to pay for the technology restricting their rights. Then the millions these companies pay lawyers and all the millions of tax payer dollars they use going to court... it's all incredibly counterproductive.
That said, there's simply no excuse for copyright infringement in order to play a game without paying for it. None.
I used to crack my legally purchased games to avoid DRM, and I won't argue there aren't other fringe cases for cracking DRM, but let's not be dishonest to suggest that that's why these people are cracking DRM. The vast majority of it is for people to play games without paying for them, and that' s just not cool.
Nowadays the DRM I've encountered is much less annoying. Having to look up some code on a code wheel in order to play a game was bad enough - I had one game that would just stop in the middle of game play and give you a page, paragraph, sentence and word number to find in the manual. It didn't do it just once, just randomly during game play. I was ridiculous - and it negatively affected game play. But that's just not true anymore, that's not how modern DRM works.
I do have a problem with companies that don't consider long term rights, and I applaud all the programmers who've been able to keep old Nintendo, SEGA, and PS games alive through emulators and hacking, so I'm not suggesting these people should stop trying to crack DRM. But let's face it - the vast majority here are cracking games because people don't want to pay to play a game. This isn't stealing bread to feed your family, it's a f#@king game, and if one can afford the game console or the computer to play it, then one should pay for one's games.
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I know, but black people consider the use of the word "colored" to be racist, and I agree - it's as if white people are "normal," and other races are colored. It only makes me cringe because I know he only uses it to be anti-pc. NAACP is caught up in their own PC.
Arsenio Hall had a joke way back when that the reason they don't change NAACP to NAAAA is because people would call it "nah."
I don't buy it. I think that most people are considered and reasonable. I think that the extremes are just more interesting and consequently receive disproportional attention.
Not everyone who votes Republican is a fundamental Christian NRA wingnut. Not everyone who votes Democrat is a tree hugging, socialist nutjob.
I believe that the truth (as is usually the case in my experience) is somewhere in the middle. Most people just want to live and not be hassled.
At the same time you deserve an "AMEN!" I think the truth is few people actually care enough to bother with politics and just vote along party lines because they feel like they're "supposed" to be democrat or republican (maybe because mom and dad were), and I don't really consider that "considered and reasonable."
But I do think that, on the whole, most of us want the same things, and nobody wants war, hunger, homelessness, and we mostly do want for people to get an education and be able to earn enough to take care of themselves. It's just how we do it, and the level of sense of responsibility, where ideology differs.
That's because the poor (mostly white) southerners who take more government benefits as a group don't understand their own ideology.
My own brother was happily collecting benefits after drug-addicting, smoking and drinking himself into an umemployable wreck of a human being considered himself a "staunch" Reagan conservative up until his sad, but not unexpected, early death.
If you vote republican and accept Medicare and social security you are a hypocrite.
I'm not a republican, but frankly, that's absolute horseshit until people can opt out. What you really want to do is allow people to opt out, see all the rich folks opting out, and the poor republicans (the majority of recipients of government benefits, I might add) will understand the problem with their "ideology."
... leaves bigger holes than any that currently exist. Re-invest profit into the company by any means, or pay it out as bonuses to top execs, or just buy stuff. Make sure there's a small profit every couple years so you can stay incorporated, and the tax would end up as some infinitesimally small amount. Most of the laws had the best intentions at one point, like your comment, but those need to continually be patched, which results in the current situation.
I disagree - what you're saying would happen (excepting bonuses, maybe) is the point. If they're not going to give it up to taxes, then they can use it on expansion... and while they may pay some people more, keep in mind they have to pay payroll taxes, too, paid for both by employees and employers. Especially in this case, if you are giving bonuses to high income employees, that bonus is being taxed on the employee at the highest tax rate, so they're just pushing the taxes to someone else - in either case, either the company expands (good for the economy overall) or the taxes are collected from payroll on both ends.
I actually do not support this method of taxation at all, but since it's unlikely we'll get rid of it, a lower rate with no loopholes will do more to bring back businesses and/or improve our economy and/or increase tax revenue.
The only people that suffer are the accountants that have to be paid buckets of money finding loopholes.
It's estimated that hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on tax compliance every year. I'd rather companies hold on to that and be taxed, or expand.
My dad says "colored" to refer to black people... it makes me cringe, but he's a remnant of his generation (raised in the 1930s). But then in PC America, calling black people black instead of "African Americans" makes a lot of other people cringe. It makes me cringe when the news refers to blacks in other countries as "African Americans."
So, yeah, in PC America, the demographics in a company must match the demographics of the country, otherwise they're "racists." Nobody wants equal opportunity any more... they weren't happy with the results.
I had a black social studies teacher in middle school who insisted the only way to equality was to have 50% black representation in congress. Yes, people actually think that way.
.... what the percentages ought to be and why?
Pondering the implications of using such a metric for hiring... and it's not pretty.
I think some of the decisions they've made in the past indicate they already have.
Agreed - as long as there's equal opportunity, the results don't mean jack, and will never, on their own, be proof of a lack of opportunity.
Seriously? As an agnostic living in the bible belt, I sincerely disagree with you.
The schools are very highly rated, academically, but they are ridiculous otherwise. My son get reprimanded and had to reverse his Men In Black T-Shirt that had the little laser pistol on it and said "It's not the size of the gun that matters" because it might be threatening to other students. Yes, it's a tacky shirt, but really? My daughter had the same problem; her shirt had a crazy looking cartoon cat that said "I will kill you all." It's funny. Laugh. She's since gotten away with a similar shirt where the cat is saying "I'm plotting your demise."
The elementary school has a crossing guard and no such permit or fee is required. Frankly, it's middle school - they shouldn't require a crossing guard anymore. That's part of the coddling problem.
Well... I did at least use the bike in the road!
, you need to see the general information, "walkers" section.
You need the parents to fill out a form to get a pass, replacement passes cost $5.00, but my kids tell me their friends who have passes said they had to pay for the initial pass, too. I wouldn't know, we live far enough away that walking is not a good option, although riding a bike would work if it were allowed at all (it's not).
My commute is pretty long - nearly 25 miles one way. I naively moved to this area when my wife was pregnant with our first because it was a better school district, but I've regretted it ever since... but we're just not in the financial condition to move, unfortunately, and my wife does freelance work now at a number of places near where we live.
Anyway, I've tried a number of things that the company seems to conspire to make not work for me, despite their "green" initiatives and advertising alternative schedules for "work life balance."
I tried a compressed work week - came in an hour earlier and left an hour later for four days (M-Th). It was good because traffic was better earlier and later, and then I had a three day weekend. You think "great, I get to spend extra time with the kids because of the three day weekend," but what happened was I left for work before they got up, came home when they were going to bed, and within a couple of years they were both in school on Friday anyway. So I was seeing them less. My jackass of a boss would then keep scheduling private meetings with me on Fridays, and it was obviously just to f#@k me up, because I'd come in on Friday and wait all day, then he'd say "I don't have time, let's meet on Monday." And yes, I'm certain it was intentional.
So I tried work from home (and still do). Hey, if you can work one day a week at home, that automatically cuts out 20% of the weekly aggravation from commuting. And if everybody did it (I know they can't), and the days at home were spread evenly through the week, then everyone's commute every day would be 20% better. But it doesn't work that way, and I can't do it when people schedule meetings or I'm working on a project that requires me to use resources at the office. But on the whole it works pretty well.
Alternative hours - this is where I get aggravated. So I manage to get my ass out of bed before five; the gym at work (at least we have that) opens at 5:30. I work out, shower, and I'm at my desk at 7:00am. Work eight hours (lunch at my desk, typically), I can leave around 3:00 or 3:30. Traffic is a dream at those times. Unfortunately, a lot of the artists I work with don't even come in until 10:00am or so. They schedule meetings at 3:30 and 4:00. To make matters worse, I work in television production and write playback interfaces for on air graphics. I'm not a graphics operator, but we're not union, so when all the graphics operators are booked, they ask me to do it. It's a nice change of pace... but the show we do is at night, so my schedule is shifted by almost exactly 12 hours.
So one of the keys to good health is keeping a regular schedule, and they make it impossible... I might go for a week or two, but then something always happens. Sure, there's a few special events I need to deal with every year, which might take me away from home for a week, but it's the constant interruptions in your daily schedule all throughout the year that lead to health problems. Frankly, I don't know how the graphics operators do it, because when they're not doing live shows, they're in during normal work hours to prep.
I have an unusual position, though, and it does pay well (although I haven't gotten a decent raise since they could blame the recession... all the while boasting publicly how well the company is doing and posting increasing revenue year after year). I also like my job, on the whole, because it's different, and the work is constantly changing. So I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but if a bunch of money fell into my lap right now, I'd quit for sure, and I'd take less money to work elsewhere. But my job is so specific, it's hard to find decent compensation anywhere else... few companies need someone with my talents.
Good post. I'm from the era where my mom would yell out the door for us that it was time for dinner because she didn't know which of our neighboring friend's yards we were playing in. I agree, the coddling has gone far too long.
Yup... as I said as a part of another response, while our elementary and high schools "allow" walkers (now it has to be "allowed," apparently), the middle school charges a f@#king fee for a "walker permit."
The coddling has gone too far. We're waiting so long to let kids mature, a lot of them never make it.
I walked to elementary school every day until we moved farther away, at which point I alternatively either road my bike or took the bus (and occasionally walked anyway). That continued through middle and high school, and that was up in NY.
Now it's 40 years or so later, I live in GA, and my kids are not allowed to ride their bikes to school. Walkers at my daughter's middle school require permits that they have to pay a fee for.
It's ridiculous.
At the same time, for whatever reason, walking to Elementary school was just fine, and walking to the high school is fine... so it's obviously up to individual school. If you're planning on having kids, and can't afford private schools, do yourself a favor and DO NOT move to GA.
F-ing right! Justin Beiber's the BEST!
I wonder about that all the time when it comes to superheroes. Superman may harness the power of the sun, but his exposed skin doesn't collect enough to lift up a truck or stop a speeding train. How many calories does that take? And the Flash... could run 2 seconds at top speed before exhausting all the calories he could consume in a month.
Agreed, but isn't it an interesting subject to bring up for Star Wars nerds?
So I have to ask, doesn't it count when, for example, Anakin jumps out of his cruiser and falls to other ones - I mean, you can't do that shit without the force.
The vast majority that play the game without paying wouldn't have paid if there was no crack, so what's the harm?
You're simply not entitled to someone else's IP whether it "hurts" them or not. It's a morally bankrupt justification.
I used to gank stuff all the time when I was a poor high school or college student. Now that I have an income I pay for everything. There's no reason that the poor should be kept from cultural media.
Because it's bullshit that someone can buy a computer capable of playing these games (or spend their money on a console) and then plead "poor." If you can't afford the games, you can't afford the console. And please don't be disingenuous stating people are playing these games on $200 laptops they got for school.
The fact is that if someone has the disposable income to buy a gaming computer or console, then they have enough to pay for some games - maybe not as many as they can illegally copy. So instead of buying one or two, they illegally copy 10. So I do buy into the notion that, given a particular game, a person would otherwise not have paid for it anyway, but I don't buy that they'd never buy anything if they couldn't copy anything.
The bottom line is nobody is entitled to someone else's IP for free (unless that someone else wants it to be free).
Good to know. The casual game buying public (me, at least in the last ten years) is completely unaware.
I'm fully against DRM - as fully against it as I am against illegally copying.
Personal property includes IP, and why the courts use the terms "theft of IP" all the time. They don't turn around and look at the lawyers and say "nuh uh, you can't steal IP."
That said, the equating of copyright infringement to piracy is the poster child example for hyperbole.
I also think that DRM is anti-consumer, your RIAA and MPAA examples are the best examples. They spend millions of dollars on DRM - licenses to use DRM, DVD and BluRay players have to license and build the technology to decrypt, and who ultimately pays for all of that? The consumer... so the consumer legally buys some media (that includes a price for the DRM built in) and a player (that includes a price for decryption) and can't make a legal copy (device shift), or they move to a different country and buy a new player and their library will no longer play. All because they want to prevent people who wouldn't have paid otherwise anyway from making a copy. And the consumer is forced to pay for the technology restricting their rights. Then the millions these companies pay lawyers and all the millions of tax payer dollars they use going to court... it's all incredibly counterproductive.
That said, there's simply no excuse for copyright infringement in order to play a game without paying for it. None.
I used to crack my legally purchased games to avoid DRM, and I won't argue there aren't other fringe cases for cracking DRM, but let's not be dishonest to suggest that that's why these people are cracking DRM. The vast majority of it is for people to play games without paying for them, and that' s just not cool.
Nowadays the DRM I've encountered is much less annoying. Having to look up some code on a code wheel in order to play a game was bad enough - I had one game that would just stop in the middle of game play and give you a page, paragraph, sentence and word number to find in the manual. It didn't do it just once, just randomly during game play. I was ridiculous - and it negatively affected game play. But that's just not true anymore, that's not how modern DRM works.
I do have a problem with companies that don't consider long term rights, and I applaud all the programmers who've been able to keep old Nintendo, SEGA, and PS games alive through emulators and hacking, so I'm not suggesting these people should stop trying to crack DRM. But let's face it - the vast majority here are cracking games because people don't want to pay to play a game. This isn't stealing bread to feed your family, it's a f#@king game, and if one can afford the game console or the computer to play it, then one should pay for one's games.