A female is not pregnant until conception. Period. That is the "technical viewpoint". And, it's the viewpoint a biologist would have.
Obviously your claim of being a "scientist" is either wrong or your field is something other than biology. (Maybe basket weaving?) My guess is that you are no scientist. I have my doubts that anyone well versed in science would use the term "period" to refer to menstruation.
You'd rather be grouped than be on a plane with someone who's going to detonate a bomb? I agree with that.
But no one has proven that the current TSA methods are effective. And even if they are effective for some methods of terrorism, they won't be effective for others. So that groping isn't making you safe.
On the other hand, the odds of being on a plane with someone who plans to detonate a bomb are much lower than the odds of your dieing in an automobile accident -- so, I'm sure you never travel by car, right?
I've been a member of eMusic a long time. When I first signed up, it was $9/month for 40 downloads. Then it went up to 10$/month. Then to $12/month. Then they dropped the number of downloads available at the $12 level to 24 -- but I got to stay at 30 downloads because I was a long time customer. Now its $12/month, and, at best you get 24 downloads ($0.49/track). I've got a couple of months at half price because I complained, but after that, I'm really not sure.
I guess, if I can find enough tracks each month at the $0.49 level, it's still worth it. But I'm not sure I can. And finding the sort of things I like will be even more difficult, because I'll have to plow through a bunch of crap I never wanted to see.
They've got to do what ever they can to keep the company profitable and to make it more profitable. But I think they're alienating a lot of us who enjoyed the low prices and perks of the service.
The instructor said that he "created" the tests. He later on talked about writing questions, but he in no way specifically stated that he would be writing any or all of the questions on the test. Creation can just as easily mean selecting questions from a testbank.
If the testbank was not public knowledge, and was not meant to be public knowledge, if that testbank was acquired without the permission of the book publishers and then spread to students, what the students did was cheating, whether they knew it or not.
That's no different than passing around a copy of the actual test beforehand.
On the other hand, if the student came across a publicly accessable resource and used it to study, I don't believe that was cheating.
To state that every single kind of way one could possibly cheat should be outlined in a policy is naive. When electronic devices like a Palm first became available, it would have been cheating to fill the thing with potential test answers even if the policy didn't state that electronic devices couldn't be used to cheat.
There are more ways to cheat than can be specifically stated in any reasonable policy.
You pretty much list all the reasons why some believe it's okay to download music, software, and films without paying.
Not that you're wrong, or even that the concepts are wrong, but they're certainly nothing new.
Personally, if I decide to purchase a book (and I buy a *lot* of fiction), I only purchase new when I'm very sure I'll enjoy the work. If I'm not sure, but the reviews make it seem like I will, I buy used from the cheapest seller on Amazon.
Ebooks are basically a non-choice. I've bought one in my life, and I bought it assuming that since it was a technical book I'd be able to search it. I was wrong and I'll continue buying "real" books for the forseeable future.
On the other hand, if publishers want to throw in a digital copy along with my bound book, I'd pay an extra dollar or two. No more, though.
I disagree. If you have an application that only shows pictures of men, and another application with the exact same look and feel, but it shows pictures of women, are they really two different applications? Having done iPhone development, I can say that I could do exactly that, the only difference being in which pictures were contained with which app.
They aren't different applications, just uses for the same application. In my example, I could sell the application, then provide the pictures as separate "add-ons", or I could sell the same application 100 times with 100 different sets of pictures.
MS upgrading IE and breaking Firefox just isn't the same as Apple upgrading iTunes and breaking the ability of the Pre to sync with iTunes. The cases are so far apart is difficult to image how they can be compared at all.
IE and FF are both software, obstensively built to do exactly the same thing: display web pages. Now, if Microsoft insisted that you use IE to visit their own web pages, and did something to break or slow down FF when someone used it to access their home pages, that would be similar.
Oh yeah, but wait, they do. (Or did. Maybe that got changed.)
iTunes is proprietary and was built specifically to support Apple made devices. They built the hardware, they wrote the software, they get to decide what hardware the software interacts with.
Maybe in two years, Apple will have something to worry about, but with over 40 million iPhones sold worldwide I don't think they have to worry right now.
Know what? Apple has no obligation to make sure that the Palm Pre can sync with iTunes. Whether or not they actually intend to break the syncing makes no difference, because they can and do update software regularly. If that update breaks the Pre syncing with iTunes, tough. I have no idea if the Pre has syncing with iTunes on its feature list, but it shouldn't unless Palm has negotiated with Apple for that privilege. If it isn't on the feature list, just something that's there, then no one should be counting on it to continue to work.
If a Pre owner was sold a Pre after having been told by some sales person that the Pre supports syncing with iTunes, then that owner should be complaining to the store, or to Palm, or to management of who ever told him that he could do that.
My point, again, is that Apple has no obligation to support iTunes for anything but its own devices, and if that happens to break some other hardware syncing, it isn't Apple's fault, nor their problem.
If that sounds harsh, so be it, but I refuse to feel sorry for anyone that bought something like the Pre based upon a "feature" that is either a lie to the customer or an undocumented feature that shouldn't be counted upon to work.
Well, I used to write and sell software for Palm OS organizers. I made a fair amount of money for a couple of years, not gigantic sums, but enough to keep me in new toys.
I decided early on that my "copy protection" was going to be very minimal. To put it simply, I decided that I would used the least amount of copy protection I could, just enough to keep the honest users honest. Anyone who really wanted to steal my product was going to do it anyway, so why worry about them?
My copy protection limited a user to some number of transactions in the demo version, but once the user had the full version, it used to keys, no nothing. It could be transfered to another device, backed up, handed to another person, whatever. The only caveat was that if you were on my user list, you didn't get support or new versions as they were made available.
$8000 in one year isn't a gigantic sum of money, no, but I think it's enough that I can have an opinion on this issue.
Re: Re:
A female is not pregnant until conception. Period. That is the "technical viewpoint". And, it's the viewpoint a biologist would have.
Obviously your claim of being a "scientist" is either wrong or your field is something other than biology. (Maybe basket weaving?) My guess is that you are no scientist. I have my doubts that anyone well versed in science would use the term "period" to refer to menstruation.
Re:
You'd rather be grouped than be on a plane with someone who's going to detonate a bomb? I agree with that.
But no one has proven that the current TSA methods are effective. And even if they are effective for some methods of terrorism, they won't be effective for others. So that groping isn't making you safe.
On the other hand, the odds of being on a plane with someone who plans to detonate a bomb are much lower than the odds of your dieing in an automobile accident -- so, I'm sure you never travel by car, right?
I'm close to leaving...
I've been a member of eMusic a long time. When I first signed up, it was $9/month for 40 downloads. Then it went up to 10$/month. Then to $12/month. Then they dropped the number of downloads available at the $12 level to 24 -- but I got to stay at 30 downloads because I was a long time customer. Now its $12/month, and, at best you get 24 downloads ($0.49/track). I've got a couple of months at half price because I complained, but after that, I'm really not sure.
I guess, if I can find enough tracks each month at the $0.49 level, it's still worth it. But I'm not sure I can. And finding the sort of things I like will be even more difficult, because I'll have to plow through a bunch of crap I never wanted to see.
They've got to do what ever they can to keep the company profitable and to make it more profitable. But I think they're alienating a lot of us who enjoyed the low prices and perks of the service.
Creation is not writing, using a non-public resource is cheating
The instructor said that he "created" the tests. He later on talked about writing questions, but he in no way specifically stated that he would be writing any or all of the questions on the test. Creation can just as easily mean selecting questions from a testbank.
If the testbank was not public knowledge, and was not meant to be public knowledge, if that testbank was acquired without the permission of the book publishers and then spread to students, what the students did was cheating, whether they knew it or not.
That's no different than passing around a copy of the actual test beforehand.
On the other hand, if the student came across a publicly accessable resource and used it to study, I don't believe that was cheating.
Re: Re:
To state that every single kind of way one could possibly cheat should be outlined in a policy is naive. When electronic devices like a Palm first became available, it would have been cheating to fill the thing with potential test answers even if the policy didn't state that electronic devices couldn't be used to cheat. There are more ways to cheat than can be specifically stated in any reasonable policy.
Re: another anecdote
You pretty much list all the reasons why some believe it's okay to download music, software, and films without paying.
Not that you're wrong, or even that the concepts are wrong, but they're certainly nothing new.
Personally, if I decide to purchase a book (and I buy a *lot* of fiction), I only purchase new when I'm very sure I'll enjoy the work. If I'm not sure, but the reviews make it seem like I will, I buy used from the cheapest seller on Amazon.
Ebooks are basically a non-choice. I've bought one in my life, and I bought it assuming that since it was a technical book I'd be able to search it. I was wrong and I'll continue buying "real" books for the forseeable future.
On the other hand, if publishers want to throw in a digital copy along with my bound book, I'd pay an extra dollar or two. No more, though.
Re: Misleading title, really
I disagree. If you have an application that only shows pictures of men, and another application with the exact same look and feel, but it shows pictures of women, are they really two different applications? Having done iPhone development, I can say that I could do exactly that, the only difference being in which pictures were contained with which app.
They aren't different applications, just uses for the same application. In my example, I could sell the application, then provide the pictures as separate "add-ons", or I could sell the same application 100 times with 100 different sets of pictures.
Re: Re: Apple can do what it wants...
MS upgrading IE and breaking Firefox just isn't the same as Apple upgrading iTunes and breaking the ability of the Pre to sync with iTunes. The cases are so far apart is difficult to image how they can be compared at all.
IE and FF are both software, obstensively built to do exactly the same thing: display web pages. Now, if Microsoft insisted that you use IE to visit their own web pages, and did something to break or slow down FF when someone used it to access their home pages, that would be similar.
Oh yeah, but wait, they do. (Or did. Maybe that got changed.)
iTunes is proprietary and was built specifically to support Apple made devices. They built the hardware, they wrote the software, they get to decide what hardware the software interacts with.
Maybe in two years, Apple will have something to worry about, but with over 40 million iPhones sold worldwide I don't think they have to worry right now.
Apple can do what it wants...
Know what? Apple has no obligation to make sure that the Palm Pre can sync with iTunes. Whether or not they actually intend to break the syncing makes no difference, because they can and do update software regularly. If that update breaks the Pre syncing with iTunes, tough. I have no idea if the Pre has syncing with iTunes on its feature list, but it shouldn't unless Palm has negotiated with Apple for that privilege. If it isn't on the feature list, just something that's there, then no one should be counting on it to continue to work.
If a Pre owner was sold a Pre after having been told by some sales person that the Pre supports syncing with iTunes, then that owner should be complaining to the store, or to Palm, or to management of who ever told him that he could do that.
My point, again, is that Apple has no obligation to support iTunes for anything but its own devices, and if that happens to break some other hardware syncing, it isn't Apple's fault, nor their problem.
If that sounds harsh, so be it, but I refuse to feel sorry for anyone that bought something like the Pre based upon a "feature" that is either a lie to the customer or an undocumented feature that shouldn't be counted upon to work.
Re: You would be singing a different tune..
Hmm.
Well, I used to write and sell software for Palm OS organizers. I made a fair amount of money for a couple of years, not gigantic sums, but enough to keep me in new toys.
I decided early on that my "copy protection" was going to be very minimal. To put it simply, I decided that I would used the least amount of copy protection I could, just enough to keep the honest users honest. Anyone who really wanted to steal my product was going to do it anyway, so why worry about them?
My copy protection limited a user to some number of transactions in the demo version, but once the user had the full version, it used to keys, no nothing. It could be transfered to another device, backed up, handed to another person, whatever. The only caveat was that if you were on my user list, you didn't get support or new versions as they were made available.
$8000 in one year isn't a gigantic sum of money, no, but I think it's enough that I can have an opinion on this issue.
Sean.
More like 125 films available...
I went to the site -- they have 125 films available in the HD VMD format.
Not that I think it makes any difference -- I agree that the format is DOA. It's simply too late.