Today must be my lucky day. First some guy in my guild in BTO sends me an expensive vehicle for no reason, then I won a red employee from a routine daily attempt at a gambling game in BTO.
First the expensive vehicle is much better than the one I have, and the chance of me getting it is negligible because I don't spend money on it, which that guy does. He's one of those who has such vehicles to spare, though I have no idea why he would send me one since I haven't done anything significant in the game. In addition, it is better than the best vehicle available to people who don't spend money on the game.
FYI vehicles in BTO make us earn money faster. The better the vehicle, the faster it gets.
Second the red employee is an extremely rare class of employee. Employees in the game raise the revenue of the store they work in, and there are 5 colour classes of them. Red is the second highest level, which is kind of common only for people who spend thousands of USD on the game. In other words, the chance of me getting such employees is also negligible since I haven't spend a single cent on it.
Even though it kind of drained my hard-earned ingame money to retrain her to suit my industry, it is definitely cheaper than the cost of time and money needed to train one of my crappier employees to that level.
Just found out about the Rugged laptops from Panasonic during a conversation in BTO in which one of the guys mentioned that he worked in some mining company and he was given a semi-rugged laptop.
Those things are amazing. First of all, they're completely sealed! According to him, those computers don't need ventilation because they only use heatsinks. That's some pretty extraordinary heatsinks, or maybe I'm just outdated.
Secondly, his friend who has a fully Rugged laptop demonstrated its shock absorption by dropping it at about 6 feet above ground. It was totally fine. His friend then dropped his semi-Rugged laptop. It broke a little but it merely took some screwing to fix it.
(6 feet = 1.8m)
Those computers use Intel i5 and i3 processors, so they don't suck in terms of performance either.
Toughbooks aren't new, but I haven't heard of them probably because I don't look at laptops much anymore. Most people don't need them, but for that guy working in a mining company, it's obvious why his company picked them.
Is it just me or have the McGriddles shrunk recently?
The history of copyright laws is actually surprisingly different from what I expected. It actually originated back when printing presses first proliferated in England and the English government came up with the copyright law to help censor certain materials from being printed.
It was never designed to protect the artists and still isn't. That's what the part of the essay in the above link is saying. Copyright saving the livelihoods of the artists is a merely a side-effect... when it works.
Yet we still have to take into account the livelihoods of the other people who help to produce the works, so the copyright laws still do have a sort of purpose.
However I still believe that it needs to adapt. With the Internet, we can practically have any movies, games and music for free with no fear of consequences. I like the analogy used in one of the comments. Imagine an episode of Naruto as a can of Coke. Now the Internet in this scenario is a magical machine that can instantly clone the can of Coke perfectly at no cost, and there are people around the globe just using this machine to clone the cans for free.
It practically defies common sense to believe that people would resist taking them! There's a reason why saints are so rare - it's against human nature to be saintly.
Therefore, the present business models used by distributors need to be changed, and it is already in some cases.
For example, the recent revival in computer games due to online gaming is one way to adapt to the new technology. DLCs and updates, as much as I dislike their implication that what we bought is incomplete, is another.
Here's another article authored by an actual musician. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I'm pretty sure I have thought about it long ago. If artists really need copyrights to make a living, how did they survive before the introduction of these laws? The same is described in the article:
Humans have walked this earth for about 195,000 years. We don’t know exactly when music emerged, but it was certainly a very long time ago, long before recorded history. There is evidence that music may have been integral to the evolution of the human brain, that music and language developed in tandem. The first recording device was invented just 129 years ago. The first mass-produced record appeared just 110 years ago. The idea that selling permission to listen to recorded music is the foundation of the possibility of earning one’s livelihood from music is at most 50 years old, and it is a myth. The fact that most musicians today believe in this myth is an ideological triumph for corporate power of breathtaking proportions.
A fact as described by another paragraph in the same article is that today, an artist can perform a piece of music just once in his/her entire lifetime and have it enjoyed by others forever. Combine this with the fact that people who attend concerts have proven to be unable to tell when the performer lip-synchs and we have a rather interesting concept here.
Gah! I can't think anymore. It's been over 30 hours since I last went to sleep, or 22 hours since I woke up. It's 6.41pm now. But you can mull on this question if you want. :)
Oh btw HoN is like DotA but better. Just tried a few games today. I still suck at it. You can play it on Garena.
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