Caineach's page

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Rynjin wrote:

]My main beef with the new console(s) besides the idiotic 2nd install fees, is that it's throwing away that main advantage and replacing it with...the exact disadvantages a PC has, but with none of the major advantages (better hardware, most prominently, at least if we're just talking games).

The main advantage of a console is not the ability to throw in a disc and start playing right away. The main advantage of a console is in its standardized platform architecture.

That is the main advantage for the developer. It is not the main advantage for the consumer.

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Like I said, as near as I could tell, they lived in a dorm.

And everything they said and did seemed more apt for grad students than for actual working scientists.

Why would I say that? Because I'm a professional scientist, and none of the things on the show resemble anything in my life in the slightest bit, except maybe the D&D playing.

It took me a few episodes before I realized they weren't grad students.

I think if they made them college freshmen initially, I would have much fewer problems with the show.

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This has probably already been mentioned (four pages of text and I'm at work, wish I could read it all but...alas :P), but you don't even own your PS3. If you read the terms and agreements section that you're forced to accept during every update, you'd see that you're RENTING the device, it ISN'T yours and they can feel free to lock you out of the PSN at any time (possibly even out of the device itself). Let me just add that while I'm pointing this out, I don't actually like it, it's just the way it is.

On a small point, Blizzard uses torrent technology to send updates and patches and apparently other companies use it to transfer info as well, it CAN be used illegally but it is also being used legally by major companies and such (I remember finding an article about several companies that use it to move info around really quickly).

If Sony actually tried to do something with this language they would probably have a legal battle on their hands that they don't want to be resolved. It would probably not be in their favor.

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DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

Why are we letting corporations treat us like enemies or idiots?

You're acting like you're being treated like their enemy, or like you're being treated like idiots. Neither of those things is true, of course - you're being treated as potential customers - but casting this relationship as adversarial probably helps to justify this outrage, doesn't it?

No, they aren't treating us as customers. They are treating us as thieves. If they were treating us as customers, they would show respect. These policies do not do that.

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Irontruth wrote:

Scott Betts wrote:

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

Apples and Oranges.

Nope.

Quote:

If I lend a book to a friend, or a DVD they get the same experience as I did. They don't owe the author, or the production company a cent. That copy is bought and paid for.

If I give away my copy of Mass Effect to a friend, then it's not the developer's business that I do that.

It is if you are party to a licensing agreement that prohibits that.

Quote:

If they are going to insist on charging a licence to play a game, then the consumer better get something out of the deal, because right now we don't get anything except treated like idiots.

You do get something out of it. You get to play the game.

This isn't new. This is something you've been doing for years, now. You're just finally realizing it.

Again, first sale doctrine has trumped EULA's in court cases. Gaming companies don't get to decide what the law is or just declare certain things to be true that the rest of society has decided otherwise.

I have a feeling that first sale doctrine is going to receive some legal reexamination; it's one of those relics of a less complex world like so many other aspects of our IP law. I think that big companies like Microsoft feel the same.

I agree and think first sale doctrine is going to be reexamined. I just disagree with you on how it is going to end. I believe the general expectation people have is that they will be able to resell the products they have purchased, and that the reexamination will strengthen this idea. Most people think they are buying software not licensing it. I think it will go with the way most people think they are doing something.

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Scott posts like a viral marketer, and I've seen plenty in my time. Oh so many. Considering he's a goblin squad member I suspect that he knows some people who work on this failure of a console. Makes the most sense to me. Otherwise why defend something that is right now being widely mocked and derided on the internet. Heck, even the corrupt journalists don't like it. FYI did anyone else notice that when there was cheering during the stream that no one was cheering or clapping in the audience. Even Adam Sessler pointed this out!

Its a great big pile of crap and everyone including Microsoft knows it. The few people defending it are working double time to respond to everyone with a counter argument.

Now Scott, you're a alright guy but this is not a winnable argument at this time. Best you can do wait until the opportune time to jump back in the fray and shout, "I TOLD YOU SO!"

As for me not being a authority about games, well your right. But I've been playing video games since I was 2 and I'm fast approaching 30. I have boxes of games I don't play anymore, I've got 8 ft by 4ft bookcase filled with videogames, I've played over 600 hours of Dark Souls, heck I'm involved in a Indy project to put out a free jrpg on pc(man its hard to get people working together on this). I'm not a authority on video games but I know what I'm talking about. Xbox 3 is a uninteresting piece of garbage and a lot has to change to get gamers interested in it.

Avtually, Scott's arguments are consistent with what he has posted in the past.

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Rynjin wrote:

It's not quite the same thread as "The Piracy Defense" but it's tangential to it.

When someone lends or gifts an item to a friend once they're done with it, it is not the same as piracy in any way. The original friend bought the disc.

The disc, but not the experience of the game (which is what the creators of that game are really selling you). Even if you do not copy the disc, allowing someone else to play it to its full extent is essentially copying the experience.

No. First sale doctrine. You sold me the disk with information on it. Once you do that, I can do anything with the disk I want, barring reproduction, which is covered under copyright laws.

Quote:

He does not have the right to "Unauthorized copying, reverse engineering, transmission, public performance, rental, pay for play, or circumvention of copy practice".

Lending or gifting, as far as I know, does not constitute "unauthorized transmission", any more than selling it back to Gamestop does.

It does if you were party to a licensing agreement that prohibits the practice.

Licenses which viloate first sale doctrine and have not stood up in court. You cannot force someone into a contract after point of sale, which the licensing agreements do.

Quote:

Because it's a good product and deserves to be purchased.

"It deserves to be purchased" is not how most consumers operate. If this is the crux of your argument, you need to start from scratch.

I find it amusing that you disagree with this point so strongly, since every person I know who buys video games actively uses this for justifcation for buying the game when they could easily pirate it. I mean, we have all known how to do it for the past 10+ years, but we still have bought hundreds of games. And this is literally the justification every single person I know uses as to why.

Quote:

Same as the above, as well as a moral sense that taking said copy and effectively OWNING it (not just renting or borrowing it) for free is wrong.

Taking said copy and using it for its full intended purpose without paying for it is wrong, regardless of whether you are under the impression you "own" it or not.

Trying to limit how I can use a product after I have legally purchased it is wrong. Resale is legal, and preventing me from doing it is wrong. Sharing it is legal, and preventing me from doing so is wrong.

Quote:

Entertainment is different from other products.

Absolutely.

Quote:

You buy food because you NEED it. You buy a house because you NEED it, and so on. These things will be continued to be made (in some shape or form) because they are necessities.

Entertainment will continue to be made.

Quote:

Entertainment is not NEEDED, it is WANTED. People who WANT more of it will buy it from the publishers, expecting that publisher to publish more for them to enjoy.

Again, this is not capitalism - this is patronage. You are mixing...

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Caineach wrote:

From what I have been able to find out, the AP found out about it after the Justice Department notified the AP. The JD's rules are that they must notify within 90 days, and that was the notification the AP recieved.

Again, no expert, but this seems not to jive very well with:

"As Lynn Oberlander, The New Yorker’s general counsel, pointed out in a post this week, the Justice Department’s own guidelines call for the government to inform news organizations when it issues such subpoenas (it was the phone companies that received the actual request in this case), allowing journalists the chance to contest them in court."

(from above)

I suppose the two could go together, but how is a journalist going to contest the subpoena if the gov't has already had the records for 90 days?

Like I said, there are so many different reports about what standard policy is and which ones apply that I can't form an opinion. It could be that different standards apply to differnt types of investigations, and people reporting don't know which ones are supposed to apply.

I wouldn't put it past the JD to be doing shady things (I expect it at this point). I just don't know enough about their policies to tell if they are in this case, and the people reporting are being inconsistent and biased enough that I can't tell if the JD actually did anything wrong here.

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Well the Justice Department has apparently gone against their own rules about informing News agencies when they are being investigated. So claims of being "the most transparent" administration seems to be false.

Now does that mean Obama has gone back on his word. Maybe not. We are seeing more information that advisers to the President have been keeping information from him (regarding the IRS scandal specifically). So it is maybe others in the administration that are hiding things and not the President.

It should be noted though that at this time it has been stated that the President is apparently okay with being kept out of the loop (so he can't unintentionally influence the investigations that were on going).

From what I have been able to find out, the AP found out about it after the Justice Department notified the AP. The JD's rules are that they must notify within 90 days, and that was the notification the AP recieved.

My biggest problem is that there is so much different and conflicting information going on I can't make an informed oppinion.

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Auxmaulous wrote:

Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

Btw, I have no opinion on what the Paypal 14 did or are alleged to have done because I don't understand what they did or are alleged to have done. I'll let the IT nerds duke that one out.

They were part of a denial of service attack which was launched against PayPal because they stopped people from sending money to Assange/Wikileaks.

Basically overload the PayPal traffic so it crashes.

Problem with that that though - is PayPal is used to conduct business by everyday people - mostly people trying to make it on their own outside of the usual "work for a corporation" structure. People who buy and sell on eBay, conduct their own at home business. So these protesters/hackers really shot themselves in the foot when it comes to garnering sympathy from everyday common people.

They launched an attack against a service that was peripheral to the main case. Because PayPal (which I hate) didn't allow donations to a organization that was potentially involved in a crime, they got attacked.

The PayPal 14 should do some time; I do think it's a bit of an overreach on some of the sentences they try to hand out when it comes to protecting business though. Some violent offenders get hit with less potential time. A year (6 months in reality) plus a few years suspended would be reasonable over 15 years imo.

Yeah, I get all of that. I guess I don't understand what a "denial of service" attack is, nor how PayPal could provide 1,000 IPs (?) about the attack, but there are only 14 defendants.

Computer stuff. I don't get it.

Those 1000s of IPs were people who had viruses on their system that were performing the attacks without the people knowing about it. They are refered to as a botnet. The viruses look for signals from a host on where to attack. The 14 were found by tracking back the signals from the botnet to their sources.

Recently, a single person was arrested for the largest ddos attack in history, against Spamhause, a spam filtering service. He used a single botnet and amplified it through a flaw in the system.

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Tirisfal wrote:

With this study, I would argue that we're smarter now, considering the fact that there are probably far less illiterate people out there now.

until you have to listen to any teenager this day and age. 50% are so buried in their texting that they don't process simple commands, and the other 50% is learning to speak in text. (O M G, L O L.)

We receive all our information from the same source, of which I was told, for example, that you could smuggle drugs across the border if you packed them in coffee grounds. to which I asked 'you understand that is a movie/tv plot item, and not really true, right?'

the conversation only went downhill from there.

I remember hearing ginormous the first time in a commercial and literally slapping my forehead. within weeks, I was in an argument with a college student about it not actually being a word, and what could you not communicate with the words enormous or gigantic that you had to make up a new one to fill the void. And now its a part of the webster's dictionary.

My favorite is getting into a conversation with some of Voltaire's ideals, only to have the person ask me if Voltaire was one of my 'Dungeons and Dragons things' and jokingly being told to come back to reality, all in one sentence.

Becoming dumber? Oh, hell yes.
Far less illiterate people? basic verbal understanding; yes, but far from being 'literate'.

Right, because the 80s didn't have

"cool", and "rad", and "cowabunga".

Language evolves. I'm sick and tired of grognards thinking that they are somehow supperior because they don't understand modern culture.

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I've honestly never had Skyrim crash on me except when I installed incompatible mods. Across Xbox 360 and PC and oodles and oodles of hours of playtime. Most people I know have not had multiple crashes either.

Except I hear Bethesda likes to repeatedly kick the PS3 in the teeth whenever they can. That's where I see most of the complaints stem from.

I'm not saying they don' happen, since obviously they've happened to you or you wouldn't complain about them, but I'm telling you my frame of reference here. The buggiest game they've released recently has been New Vegas (which DID have multiple crashes, quest destroying glitches, and so on almost universally) but that one was not developed by Bethesda so I generally don't include it in these discussions.

Boycotting was suggested by at least one poster I saw ("I won't buy any more Bethesda games until" and so on.), that's why I mentioned it.

Arnwyn wrote:

??? Where? It looks like you're making things up.

Quote:

IGN will give it 10/10 anyway, and gamers will lap it up regardless.

Which is being condescending towards people who buy and enjoy the games by implying that they will "lap up" anything, no matter how bad.

Funny, I never had any issues with Fallout 3 or New Vegas, but every one of my friends who played skyrim in the first few months has had it crash on them pre mods.

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Where does the 'social welfare group' play into it?

Is that the only way to get tax exempt status?

The specific type of tax exempt status they were applying for requires them to be a social welfare group and not a political organization. It also allows them to be able to provide annonimity to their donors, which they wouldn't be able to do with other tax exempt statuses.

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That is a perfectly reasonable approach.

Kinda meta-gamey, but that can be reasoned away as practice against a variety of opponents.

But what I started the thread about was the people for whom using power attack always and forever is a matter of dogmatic faith. There are no circumstances where they will not power attack.

And I would say that that is viable on most full BAB classes close to 95% of the time.

The only exceptions are:
When PA will alter your crit chance. (here the math can get wonkey)
When your non-PA damage *.05*PA hit penalty > PA damage * hit% with PA - this is very hard to do with full BAB characters, because other damage bonuses are not that common in high enough quantity.
When you don't need to PA to kill an enemy - this is probably the most common, but it relies on your GM giving you hints as to how tough the enemy is. Its a larger problem at low levels.

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I know the internet says I should care about Agent Coulson, but I have a hard time getting worked up about a character whose defining personality trait was dying like a b*+++ to catalyze the heros into taking action. But for his death, no one would be clamboring for a show featuring Agent Coulson (or objecting to a show about SHIELD lacking Agent Coulson). He's just another member in the "unpopular/irrelevant until he died a noble death" brigade, joining such storied members as Doug Ramsey, Jason Todd, and Blink from AoA.

I knew quite a few people who loved the character before the Avengers came out because of his previous appearances.

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Nappy-headed though? It's just an adjective. It's not even necessarily pejorative. Stop being afraid of words, people!

Nappy-headed is a degrogetory term for black people. I've only really heard it used that way by people from Texas or Louisiana, so it is likely regonal. Some older people I have heard use it to talk about people who were "passin". So, when used in conjunction with an insult, like ho, it is completely reasonable to say it is racist. It does have other uses as an adjective, but in this context it is used because of its racists overtones.

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DSXMachina wrote:

Aranna wrote:

Poor Mark Sweetman didn't understand the humor when he watched the girls comic book episode. So I will attempt to explain it.

The girls start out the episode with the popular misconception that comics are just for 12 year olds... which is an amusing and perhaps aggravating real world misconception. But despite their words they end up nerding out just like the boys when they attempt to understand these comic books. Making the joke ultimately ON the girls not on the boys. The episode actually affirms a part of comics appeal and makes the joke at the expense of the popular misconception.

Whilst the lads go off to the desert (well Con#132) and are too enthsiastic to remember to lock their car. Then a car-jacker steals it, with all the non-cosplay clothes inside. Thus they end up at a diner where everyone thinks they are 15 (or nerds) & need their mothers calling - because they are so stupid. To which Howard affirms they are, as he asks for them to call his Mommy.

I am not saying every joke ends well... this is the only episode of the show I don't like so far. Whoever wrote that episode made it TOO much about them not acting like grown ups and too little affirming. It was an episode in poor taste. But every series fails at some point and I take this one episode as an exception that proves the rule.

Have you seen the show? Remove episode specifics and it follows the same pattern as every episode I have seen, and I haven't seen many.

Supposed geniuses do something monumentally dumb (again). Then they have to deal with normal people, and fail misserably, reaffirming everyone's negative oppinion about them by simultaneously being collosal jerks and doing more dumb things.

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As for the loudmouth jock, or any other media personality who is directly exercising their own freedom of speech, trying to get them fired isn't saying to the world "I don't like what that guy said". That's your right. What you're saying is "I don't like what that guy said and I don't think he has the right to say, let alone think or feel it" which is moronic.

Its not that you think he doesn't have a right to say something. He has every right to say it. He does not have the right to be pushing said viewpoint through his employer's media to get national coverage, and his employer continuing to allow him to shows their complicity. He doesn't have a right to be shielded from the negative consequences of offending people, and nor is the company. And when these comments are out of the context of what the person is hired to do, it shows a lack of awareness that the company certainly should be concerned about.

As far as boycotts go, contacting the advertisers of certain tv/radio programs and telling them you don't like that they support certain programing can also be effective. Rush has to worry about going off the air despite having a huge fan base because many advertisers avoid his show like the plague.

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Plain honest question from someone outside USA. I have never heard of that church outside this forums and find really sick that people as they as presented here. So, the question is... how that "church" still exists? Their activities seem really amoral and find strange they are still legal? They really seem a dangerous sect.

Either way, Tirisfal, you have all my support for what you want to do. Little more I can do, sorry.

The WBC skirts the line in the US of being classified as a hate group. If/when they are, many of their legal protections go away. Until it happens, they abuse the legal right to protest by shouting homophobic messages at inappropriate places.

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thejeff wrote:

And that doesn't count the conditions offshore where most of the cool gadgets are actually made. Or where the rare mineral are mined.

I think that a large deposit of lithium was found in one of the middle eastern contries (forget which). The country is poor and mining there will help the country. The offshore conditions are probably similar to the industrial revolution the US went through, and is a necessary evolutionary stage of the economy.

Or the companies that are going to mine the lithium could set up safe mines and pay their workers reasonable rates, creating massive advancement in the country that would allow their ecconmy to grow. But since the company will likely be foreign, it wont care and will pay just enough to get people to want a position there over whatever other backbreaking work they could get, provide crappy housing for the people, but then make it too expensive for the people to leave so that they are stuck working there. Kinda like what happened to coal towns in the US.

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Necromancer wrote:

Funny...I've never bought anything made by Bethesda that was broken at launch. Hm. Must be a console issue.

I have Fallout 3, New Vegas, Oblivion, and Skyrim for both 360 and PC. The console versions bought at launch. None were broken at release on console. None are broken on PC. Though for a while FO3 had issues with Win 7.

I'd wager it's an issue with his rig, not the games.

True, it was the 1.2 patch that made Skyrim's dragons fly backwards.

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Meatrace wrote:

Your response just shows how clueless you are.

We're not talking about a planned economy, we're talking about reasonable wage laws. Like, a minimum wage that an individual can actually live on, for start.

When you say the laborers get paid what the market will bear, you show your ignorance as to what a market is. A market is bargaining between supply and demand. Unions are an ESSENTIAL part of that bargain and thus essential to that market process.

Markets only exist when there is an incentive for both sides to bargain. If the guy who runs the food stand doesn't sell his wares he goes out of business, if no one buys his wares they starve. Right now, since the vast majority of companies are owned by a shrinking minority of people who are already stinking rich, there's no incentive for them to hire anybody because they can just sit on their pile of cash. In short, the labor market is not a market at all.

I take that back. It's a slave market.

Furthermore, your part about profits being saved to expand the company or save for a downturn, that already isn't happening in almost any business. They don't save money to pay the bills in the bad times, they LAY PEOPLE OFF in the bad times. The people at the top siphon off the profits, load the company with debt, cook the books, and try to sell the company off to the next sucker. Who then, after seeing what a sorry state the previous owner left the company in, has to balance the books on the backs of the laborers. And the cycle continues.

diplomacy:1d20+11

Sure, there are some crooks that make headlines. There's also alot of decent people running companies. Giving us ipods and paizo publications. I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

Do you realize that pretty much all of corporate America is the "some crooks" that you are talking about? Hell, you mention ipods, but Apple is constantly getting hammered for piss poor payment to employees while being one of the most profitable companies in the world. Doubling the pay of all their non-managers would be something like 1% of their annual proffits.

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Caineach wrote:

By not favoring legislation either way, you favor those who start from the stronger barganing position, which will always be those those with money. Thus, you favor employers having power over the workers. This wont be the case in situations where there is so much competition for labor that workers can choose where to go, but the industries where that is true are rediculously few and far between, and usually have an artifical barrier to entry and/or require significant levels of expertise. If the barriers are skill or knowlesge based, they wont last long, as people will train for those positions to satisfy the need, and then the need wont necessarily stick arround.

I think that keeping legislation out of the picture will help increase competition for workers. Burdening employers with regulation and labor bargining would only hurt their ability to be competitive, and be a barrier to entry for a company even opening. With less regulation there would be more employement and more competion for workers, giving them more freedom, compensation, and benifits.

And by "increase competition for workers," you mean drive salaries down until they barely pay for subsistence living, and then possibly a little lower. I know this because before we created our existing labor laws that is what was happening.

If "Burdening employers with regulation and labor bargining" is preventing someone from opening a buisness, they probably don't have a good enough buisness model to actually turn a profit in a way that will help society, so I don't really care if they can't open. Tell me, how does creating more jobs that pay less than a living wage help increase demand for workers in a way that will drive worker's wages up?

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Personally, I am of the other opinion. I think Reaper is handling this great. I have enough information that I know about what is going on but they are not spamming me with useless crap I don't care about and can't affect. Seriously, some of my backed kickstarters feel the need to update daily about every random detail - STOP DOING THAT. It clogs up email and notifications and does nothing to get the product in my hands faster. It only makes me care less about your product as it takes too long for me to bother reading it.

I want updates maybe monthly, an additional one when the product is about to ship, with revised ETA on when it is going to be available. That is pretty much what Reaper has done, and I feel they are handling it well.

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Hama wrote:

DRM? Please, show me one DRM method that hasn't been bypassed in a week after the game's release?

Diablo 3 took awhile. Even after the hacks came out, most were trojans in disguise. Piracy creates the desire for game companies to use always on DRM like Diablo 3. Blizzard sold 12 million copies of always on DRM Diablo 3 so games with extreme DRM can be popular.

IMHO, I buy games based on how much I like them. Game series that EA published that I like are Battlefield, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. I also really liked Mirror's Edge and Kingdoms of Amalur. I like the stories from the Old Republic but the combat is just okay (still believe they should have went with Unreal for the engine).

A Battlefront game by DICE would be very interesting to me. I have not played Dead Space, so I have no opinion on how good a Star wars game from Visceral would be.

DRM is a mistake, and has never been shown to increase game sales. Likewise, removing DRM has never been shown to hurt game sales, and many companies have experienced better than expected sales after removing it. All DRM really does is piss off consumers who have legally bought your product and encourage them to bypass your DRM*. Companies that insist on always on DRM are making dumb buisness moves that have already hurt some, like EA on Sim City.

Personally, I have stopped buying games from EA because of their buisness practices. Not buying their stuff is all that I can really do to tell them I don't want their rediculous draconian anti-piracy crap. I'm a little disappointed that I wont play ME3, but that is the only thing they have made in past few years that I would have thought to buy anyway.

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Irontruth wrote:

In your example, when the company goes belly up, who is paying those workers?

Also, you didn't disagree with me. You have actually taken the position that money is more valuable than work.

You are in favor of wealth incumbency. You are against economic mobility, that someone who works hard is more likely to earn lots of money than someone who doesn't work as hard.

I'm in favor of people being paid for working hard.

You are in favor of people being paid for being rich.

When the company goes belly up, the investor in the company is stuck with the loss, the people working for the company are out of a job, so they don't get paid.

I'm lawful neutral on people getting paid for working hard or being rich. I don't favor any legislation for the workers, or for the investors. I was against the bailouts, and I've posted on my thoughts about organized labor. I can see why I'm being taken as being for "the man" and against the worker, it's just been polarized that way because this is seems to be a pro-labor thread.

By not favoring legislation either way, you favor those who start from the stronger barganing position, which will always be those those with money. Thus, you favor employers having power over the workers. This wont be the case in situations where there is so much competition for labor that workers can choose where to go, but the industries where that is true are rediculously few and far between, and usually have an artifical barrier to entry and/or require significant levels of expertise. If the barriers are skill or knowlesge based, they wont last long, as people will train for those positions to satisfy the need, and then the need wont necessarily stick arround.

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Politician. They aren't letting anyone replace them.

Lawyers. See above.

Doctor. (disagree that surgery will ever be completely automated. Too much of the human body remains unknown and crap can and WILL go wrong and then the robot just lets you bleed out. No thanks!)

Musician.
They may be able to someday go through the motions to make a note play the note its supposed to but without heart and imagination they'll never be able to bring the music to life.

-S

Using today's technology, a robot surgeon has better sensors, better dexderity, and access to more information about your health. The only thing we are really missing is the programing. Visual recognition is already being used to diagnose diseases because it can detect smaller errors.

I also disagree with you on music. Some of the modern algorithms can already produce music people can't distinguish from human made. It may be true of live performances, but not of

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Nearly anything in the medical field.

I bet within our lifetime surgeons will be robotic. We are already using robots to perform the surgery. All we need is the visual recognition programing.

A recent poll of doctors found they would prefer robot to human assistants.

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This is the problem of imagining "intelligence" as being just one thing, and equating it with neural processing power.

As I understand it, scientists have not yet discovered any specific identifiable differences between the neural structures of people thought of as being abnormally intelligent and the rest of us (though there are some identifiable differences in neuron operations in some cases, such as autistic savants, I'm unaware of these having been traced to structural differences).

Even if there were such identifiable structural differences, and if it were possible to alter the "normal" brain into the "genius" brain, that's no guarantee that such an alteration would actually change that brain's behavior in the desired fashion. Perhaps the process of brain maturation and change matters as much or more than the final structure. Growing certain neural pathways through studying calculus might have completely different effects from growing the same neural pathways through a pill.

So I rather doubt that there will be any easy physical method of increasing "intelligence," if by that we mean "thinking and behaving in a manner similar to people we consider intelligent," at least any time soon.

I wouldn't be suprized if we figure out a way to increase neural pathway creation though, and make learning and possibly future intelligence significantly easier.

That would be something that might interest me.

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Part of me likes vikings in horned helmets and roman emperor going to battle with their nipple-and-belly-button breastplates.

But roman leaders did go into battle with nipple-and-belly-button breastplates. They also had 6-pack abs.

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meatrace wrote:

Irontruth wrote:

You should watch this video. Do you think that accurately depicts the "American Dream"?

The most remarkable thing about that video isn't it's content.

There are almost 6 million views and 60k likes. But ZERO dislikes.
Because everyone agrees that we're f+~%ed and this is why.

I see 2800 dislikes.

It shows 0 dislikes for me as well.

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If I had the chance to take a shot that would give me godlike intelligence, there is another factor to deal with: How many others have had it? If I am the VERY FIRST, I could with some probability gain godlike intelligence and then deny the possibility to all others. Which would put me in a distinctly advantageous situation. Against this weighs the risk that there are unforeseen side effects.

I find it amusing that you go in the exact opposite dirrection. Unless it was a very common thing, I would not want this at all. There is a reason intelligence and happyness have a reverse correlation.

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I think there is room for workers to be paid more in the following senario. This morning I saw a construction crew building a structure. One of them was using a nail gun. Having a nail gun probably increases the rate of nailing 4-5x, with less fatugue. If the worker owns the gun, he should be paid more having made the investment. On the other hand there were also cranes, and there is no way a worker would be able to afford to even rent one. That's where the investment comes in by the company. I see the worker making an investment getting paid more and the pointy-haired boss making an investment and getting paid proportionately. The saving in the economy allows investment in cranes, spending in the economy directs production, but we need to produce to spend not spend to produce.

diplomacy:1d20 + 11 ⇒ (18) + 11 = 29

WTF?

Why would the company pay a worker who has bought his own nailgun more when they can just purchase a nailgun and have multiple people use it? Lets say they pay the guy with his own equipment $1/hr more. He is at most bringing a few hundred dollars of his own tools. He is the only one who can use them, so you only have access to those tools for 1 shift. Over the course of 2 months, the $1/hr will have paid for all of his tools. So, should the company take a 2 month hit to increase their ability to hire multiple people to use the tools and not be locked in to a specific person for a major efficiency upgrade on an investment that will pay off over multiple years? Add on that it would be cheaper than hiring 1 extra person for 1-2 days for a 4-5x efficiency increase. No buisness is going to pass that up.

Meanwhile, that gun would represent a significant investment on the part of the employee. It is more than a day's work to buy, for someone living paycheck to paycheck. It is a doable investment, but not one made lightly.

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Irontruth wrote:

I already showed that collective bargaining results in higher wages and benefits. People in unions earn about $10,000 more per year than non-union workers. 93% of union members of access to health care and retirement benefits, compared to 69/64% of non-union workers.

Non-union workers are paid less and less likely to have access to health care. This isn't me guessing, these are actual statistics in the real world.

In truth, I think unions are really only a stop-gap measure. I'd rather see more employee owned businesses. Not just small businesses either, but large corporations.

The John Lewis Partnership owns the largest chain of department stores in the UK and had about $13 billion in revenue in 2011 and over 81,000 employees, it would be in the Fortune 200 if it were in the US. They've maintained growth throughout the financial crisis both here in the US and Europe. They pay their employees more than their...

We differ on where the cost is for higher wages. I agree that unions would have higher wages, I just think that it is a net loss on the economy.

It sounds like an employee-owned business are fine. They probably don't unionize against themselves:). I agree with you that unions could cause strife between labor and management, and that generally wouldn't be an environment that I would find comfortable. The company that I work for had a union vote before I came aboard. It was voted down. One of the reasons I believe is that we are treated fairly.

Well, the corralative evidence disagrees with you. The fact is, as we implemented unions the ecconomy grew leaps and bounds and then as we started dismantling unions the ecconomy has stagnated, with new growth primarily through sectors created through government spending.

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Krensky wrote:

You have always had to pay sales tax on mail order purchases. State's just can't force a business without a business locus (or whatever the term is) to collect it for them. You're supposed to fess up when you file your state taxes. No one does though.

I'm not sure nobody does. In fact, I do pay taxes on internet purchases on my state taxes. I figure it's only a matter of time before leaving that field blank becomes an audit risk.

I know tax act automatically assumes a value and then asks you if you want to change it.

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Force states to clean up their tax code law.

Sure. That will be the day.

You would be suprized how much the incentive of "you can only collect tax if you follow these rules" will cause people to voluntarily follow those rules.

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Which could result in a violation of PCI compliance depending on how it is handled ... there are more moving parts than are immediately obvious.

Additionally, it would require more than simply zip code. As has been pointed out above, some states do have some truly wonked out tax code, so you could be looking at total item cost, item type (which would require online merchants to have products categorized according to each state's listing of taxable item types ... the terminology is not uniform between states I am sure), date of sale, etc.

Which is why this bill includes language to force states to clean up their tax code laws for ease of use by the system.

Seriously, those aspects are trivial compared to what gets handled by companies and government every day. You are looking at a multi-year software development cycle to handle them, followed by an extensive vetting process. There will be kinks in the system initially that will need to be worked out. But this process is valuable and necessary as online purchasing becomes more standard.

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Coriat wrote:

zylphryx wrote:

They will have to maintain a listing of over 9000 different state/county/city tax rates.

Actually as far as I can tell from reading the linked Act this burden is not placed on businesses. States which want to take advantage of the Act must:

Quote:

Provide a uniform sales and use tax base among the State and the local taxing jurisdictions within the State pursuant to paragraph (1).

and also must provide:

Quote:

software free of charge for remote sellers that calculates sales and use taxes due on each transaction at the time the transaction is completed, that files sales and use tax returns, and that is updated to reflect rate changes as described in sub-paragraph (H)

I'm not exactly sure whether the first quote means what I think it means, but the second one seems to fairly unambiguously falsify your statement. The state will be responsible for the lists and math and crap.

Simplifications required of states that want to take advantage of this Act start on page 3 line 12 of the linked document.

In addition, the state must:

Quote:

Relieve remote sellers and certified software providers from liability to the State or locality for incorrect collection, remittance, or noncollection of sales and use taxes, including any penalties or interest, if the liability is the result of incorrect information or software provided by the State.

I stand corrected.

However, if one is running with a custom shopping cart solution, how exactly will this free software get integrated with the shopping cart? For that matter, will integrations be developed for ALL shopping cart solutions that are out there?

Or will the cost of having the free federally required software play nicely with whatever shopping cart solution you are running with fall on your shoulders to code/pay to have developed? I would assume that commercially available shopping cart solutions would implement their own integrations (which hopefully would...

You set up a module that takes the customer information, most likely zip code, submits it to a central database and returns the specific tax rate and governmental bodies owed. You document the standard format of the input and output of the module. People then download it and attach it to their code, and then deal with the tax exactly how they deal with tax now. Companies then probably need to add some information into their database to track how much is owed to each agency.

Seriously, this is a really easy coding problem.

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thejeff wrote:

Or they give out year end bonuses to employees instead of raises.

I've never worked anywhere where they tried that one; a lot of companies just don't care enough to even dissemble. They just send a mass email: "To all employees: Due to our performance with respect to Fiduciary Plan Q, we regret to inform you that there will be no salary adjustments this year. In addition, the 401(k) plan now consists of one or two options from the worst-managed mutual funds in existence, and company matching remains suspended indefinitely. Oh, and by the way, we're switching to a much crappier health insurance plan, and it will cost you twice as much. Have a nice day, and thank you for your efforts." Generally, only management gets bonuses.

This is what I have seen as well.

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Huffington Post article on McDonals CEO pay vs Costco
Apparently, McDonalds is removing Costco from its list of companies to compare its executive pay against. The reason isn't given, but Costco pays significantly less to upper management.

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If I am not mistaken it is entirely based on where you live, not where you physically ARE at the time of purchase.

I think so too. I'm pretty sure there are already laws on the books for physical purchases out of state that are brought accross state lines. FOr instance, if you buy a car out of state, I believe you still need to pay your state's sales tax. The dealer doesn't collect it, but it is your responcibility to.

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4 people marked this as a favorite.

A new wizard and cleric have been added to the party.

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Yeah, definitely not worth another semester of math.

There is nothing that I did that isn't taught in the first week, assuming your calculous class isn't dumb and spend way too mcuh time on limits first.

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HangarFlying wrote:

Ah, ok. The other thing I'm not clear on then, is does the state where the seller is located get the tax or the state where the buyer is located get it?

Knowing that government has never found a tax it didn't like- I bet the answer to this is "Yes".

And you would be wrong. It is only the buyer's state that must collect sales tax, because that is considered the point of sale.

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Thiago Cardozo wrote:

A company is designing aluminum packages for one of its products. Each package should be able to contain 100mL of product and must have the shape of a cylinder. What should be the dimensions of the package in order to use the least amount possible of aluminum per unit?

V= pi r^2 H

100= pi* r^2* H

31.83=r^2 h

Excel values of H, get r, calculate surface areas, look at lowest surface area and i get

h=6mm
R= 2.3mm

I could add decimals in for more precision, but i'd imagine there's an upper limit

I don't know how to set the problem up in calculus. Its been a while.

Surface area (SA) = 2*pi*r*h + 2*pi*r^2

Volume = pi*r^2*h = 100 cm^3
h=100/(pi*r^2)
SA = 200/r + 2*pi*r^2
dSA/dr = -200/r^2 +4*pi*r set equal to 0 to find minimum
r=3√(50/pi) (cubic root) = 2.51...~= 2.5cm

h= 5.03... using exact value for r. 2.5cm results in 5.09... or ~5.1 cm.

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Thiago Cardozo wrote:

Man, that must have been a terrible Calculus class. It's starting to become clear to me that these views some people have on the subject is mostly due to awful Calculus teachers.

Two of them.

Can you give me a calculus I word problem?

A landscape photographer is taking long exposure pictures.

To achieve a blue sky at night, the lens must recieve a luminous exposure of at least 1000 lux seconds. The current luminous emittance of the sky is 5 lux, but its rate of decay is <insert appropriate logrithmic formula> lux/minute. How long must the camera exposure be?
The photographer wants the house in the picture to be lit up inside. To appear occupied, the windows must be between 8000 and 10000 lux seconds. Assuming each window produces 300 lux when the lights are on, how long must the lights be turned on durring the camera exposure?
The ambient light from neighbors homes creates 10 lux on a tree in the background. The photo will be washed out if the lux seconds exceeds 15000. What is the latest time the photographer can open his shutter before this light will ruin the image? How long is this exposure?

Every question here can be solved with performing a single integration and using the produced formula. It is a scenareo that I have personally dealt with. It is something photographers should understand, but don't necessarily need to worry about because they can use experience of what levels of lux will cause will cause issues with what exposures. But that baseline had to be developed.

For annother one:
A baseball is thrown from 1.5m above ground level at a 30° angle from the ground at a velocity of 25m/s. Assume wind resistance on the sphere is F=1/2pv^2CA, where F is the force of resistance, p is the density of air, 1 kg/m^3, C is the coeficient of friction, <given constant>, and A is the cross sectional area of the baseball. The baseball's diameter is .075m and weighs .15kg.
How far does the baseball travel?

Supplemental equasions if they have not also taken physics 1:
Force = mass * acceleration
Velocity = integral of aceleration with respect to time
distance = integral of velocity with respect to time

- I had roughly this question on my highschool physics AP exam.
Unfortunately I hadn't taken calculous yet so I had no idea how simple it was.

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Morgen wrote:

<rant>
The issue I had was with the albatross of the River Song character dragging down every episode it was ever in. I could not have cared less about that character and it was just annoying to see it popping up so much. It got way too much focus and I am quite happy to see it gone.
</rant>

Well, she's back for the last episode this season, so you're not quite out of the woods yet.

Me, I actually like her. I think Kingston does a solid job, and the character is a nice addition to the Doctor Who mythos.

Personally, I think she is way overused in season 6. I haven't gotten to season 7 yet.

In general, I find Moffat is making the story too much about the companions, including River, and not enough about exploring wierd places and traveling. The show needs more filler episodes.

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Caineach wrote:

Actually, I do know people who argue that churches not marrying gay and lesbian couples should be illegal.

Well, those people would be mistaken.

I never said they weren't. But they can make a logical argument that cannot be outright dismissed (there are plenty of arguments against it).

Church leaders who perform marriages are acting as agents of the court. As an agent of the court, why it reasonable for them to perform active descrimination based off of gender?

The few people I know who argue this are some of the farthest left of my generally left wing friends, and as I said had explosive arguments with other people I would consider left wing over it. These people are also some of the most vocal about gender equality though, so the idea that they might be what the right sees when they look for examples is quite possible. It would be the reverse of everyone seeing the worste of supposed christians because crazy right wing pundits and preachers are the most vocal.

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Read the FAQ:
"What is your favorite type of comedy?

I really like Stephen Colbert and the Onion. When a comedian really knows his material and can present a situation that sounds pretty ludicrous but instead of just jumping up and down and saying, "I'm making fun of this!" he instead presents it completely strait-faced and in a serious manner while never breaking character, that is when true comedic genius can occur."

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Detect Magic wrote:

I am similarly against gay marriage, but not because I think gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry. I'm against telling churches that they have to perform marriage ceremonies for folks that they don't believe should be getting married. Besides, if a church wants to deny a gay couple the opportunity to marry, why would you want to be a member of that church? Even if I was religious (I'm not), I'd find it hard to associate with (or support) a church which doesn't view all people as equal under God.

That said, I believe marriage should be a religious ceremony and nothing more. It shouldn't grant any legal benefits. The fact that it does seems to me to be a violation of the separation of church and state.

All "marital rights" and legal benefits provided by marriage should be provided instead by a civil union. Thus, two people can join, legally, and be recognized by the state, whilst having no association with the church (or any other place of worship). If they'd like a religious marriage as well, they should be free to have one, but would obviously have to find a pro-gay congregation. Now, that's probably a problem for some people depending upon where they live. Pro-gay churches are out there--but they're not abundant in all places.

Sadly, as I don't expect this to happen, I'm in support of gay marriage, because I think all people, regardless of sexuality, are entitled to the same human rights (including the right to "marry" whomever they wish).

I highly doubt that the government would tell churches they would have to marry gay people. In fact of the 13 countries that gay marriage exists not one has actually done that. For example I live in Canada. Canada passed same-sex marriage in 2006. The law as written openly states no church has to marry anyone for doing so is against their religious freedoms. It even goes further than that, in Canada a government official, judge, or justice of the peace who would normally be obligated can ask another authorized official in their...

Actually, I do know people who argue that churches not marrying gay and lesbian couples should be illegal. When NY passed its gay marriage bill, it was delayed a short time so that language could be added to include protections for churches. Most people I know saw this as a worthwhile ammendment that was needed, but it did explode my friend circle and one person left it and no longer associates with anyone else "because they were a bunch of sexist bastards." This included multiple other openly bi and homosexual people.