Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

[DSMatticus]

If you're eating a member of your own species, all of the various kinds of sick that may or may not be thriving in its body will also thrive in your's (exceptions abound for specific illnesses that some of us have won the genetic lottery on being resistant to and what not). We do ourselves a lot of favors by cooking meat and not eating certain parts of certain animals, but forcing potential illnesses to navigate your extended family history (the really extended one, the one that pigs show up on) is another line of defense and not one you want to give up.

[Stahlseele]

Why did the Transformers Movie kill off a lot of the original Autobots in order to have a narrative justification for selling new toys instead of, oh:

[*] Concluding the story, start a new series from there? You know, the strategy they used for future incarnations of the franchise?

[*] Just let the roster bloat and sag with new Autobots and Decepticons, accept that some of the new ones will catch fire and/or that people will care less about some of the old ones? You know, the strategy they use for Pokemon?

[*] Introduce a bunch of ridiculous upgrades for the Autobots/Decepticons that would require kids to nag their parents for new toys? I don't think anyone would've minded, say, an Optimus Prime upgrade to, say, a Space Shuttle/Super OP. Or if they introduced an alt. Iron Hide that could be folded into a set of external armor.

To see them driven before it and to hear the lamentations of their women.

To actually drive home the point that this is something important.
And then they ruined it by being complete asshats about some of them.
Optimus Prime. His Death made generations of men/boys weep.

Because it's a dark and edgy move to do so. In pretty graphic detail too.
Using the excuse:"This is not violence, they are machines!"

[Prak]

@Frank: Aren't prions primarily a concern if you eat the brain matter? Or is it all nerve tissue and thus basically a fool's errand to try to "avoid" them?

Prion transmission can happen any time you ingest a damaged protein. There happens to be a known prion (kuru) that transmits the deadly and incurable condition of spongiform encephalopathy which is found in nerve tissue. But your chances of discovering a new horrible prion disease are almost infinity times higher by consuming any human flesh than they are drinking a glass of orange juice.

For a prion to cause a cascading effect, it needs to have access to undamaged proteins with the same amino acid sequence as itself. Obviously, this is much more likely when infecting the same species as its origin - because creatures of the same species have almost all of the same proteins with the same amino acid sequences. Of course, all life on Earth has common ancestry and there are conserved amino acid sequences shared between any two living things. Which is why you can catch vCJD from cows with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. But eating things farther from you on the tree of life is objectively safer.

-Username17

Interesting. Thanks Frank.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Are there any marketeers that have calculated or at least estimated how many sales are gained due to piracy?

For example, I've spent over 400 dollars on PSP games (not including the PSP1000 and 2000 that I bought) 300 dollars on Pathfinder books. Neither product would've received a penny from me if they were so easily hacked for homebrew/had so much content online for free. By contrast, I have not spent anything for the PS Vita ever since I bought it a year and a half ago.

I'm not asking for a moral debate on piracy or anything -- even though I suspect it'll lead to it -- I'm just asking for a raw, by-the-numbers analysis.

[radthemad4]

Do you mean this:

Neither product would've received a penny from me if they weren't so easily hacked for homebrew/had so much content online for free.

I don't know how you'd measure sales gained due to piracy though.

[radthemad4]

Amphetamines of course!

I'll consider it, but so far Lago's advice seems to be working (thanks Lago). I'm not sleeping less yet, but I'm feeling more active than I remember feeling recently. It's only been two days though, so hopefully things will improve further if I keep this up.

[radthemad4]

@Stahlseele: I can only WILLPOWER myself to do stuff if there's a deadline. Life's pretty calm at the moment.

Sorry for the split posts. I keep getting this on trying to post long messages for some reason. Should I go the pastebin route, or split posts?

[Stahlseele]

@Lago:
some studies say that yes, piracy will in some cases increase sales.
there is nothing absolute on this though, because it's highly circumstancial.
it hurts the big productions that have a big budget for advertisement more than it hurts the indy stuff that needs word of mouth propaganda first and foremost to see any kind of exposure.

@radthemad4:
that's why only a small number of people actually manages to do it.
you have to do it when there is no deadline and then keep it up when there is no deadline indefinetely so you can profit from it when there is a deadline. some people say meditation helps, but i don't know anybody personally that can claim it works . .

[DSMatticus]

Well, the Swiss Government has explicitly acknowledged that they are fine with personal use piracy. They based this decision on a commissioned study which itself also looked at a bunch of other studies and their data and they found that piracy had zero (or positive) effect on sales in the entertainment industry as a whole. I don't have any specific link, but there's a bunch of business/entertainment/tech articles on it and it's pretty googleable. Pick your favorite.

The explanation seems to be that while you might think that people "save" money by pirating entertainment media, remember that people's entertainment budget is basically "whatever I have left over after covering my relatively fixed expenses and stashing away a bit for a rainy day (if that)," and any money pirates save on entertainment is still left over to be spent on entertainment. The end result is that the industry receives exactly as much financial support as it does without piracy, but consumers get more bang for their buck.

It's possible the RIAA genuinely (if incorrectly) believes it hurts sale. It's possible that it's run of the mill "how dare the unwashed masses enjoy life without paying my fun taxes!" pleb-hating. But I'm more inclined to believe that the RIAA and co are fighting a very rational (if dishonest and evil) battle against consumer choice. It's not about protecting the health of the industry, it's about protecting the publishing oligopoly. If people can consume media and decide which artists to support after the fact, then power in the entertainment industry might do something crazy and shift to the people who make entertainment (artists) from the people who handle advertising and brands and complicated webs of intellectual property rights (publishers). Crazy, right?

Both their methods and their goals are reprehensible.

[Stahlseele]

and remember, there's a % tax on all things by now that allow storage / copy of data. At least over here.
scanners. check.
printers. check.
paper. check.
CD/DVD/Blu-Ray writers. check.
empty CD/DVD/Blu-Ray. check.
HDD/USB Flash Drives. check.
and seeing how it is a % of the price, it can and on low price stuff pirated often times actually WILL be more than what you would have paid buying it.

Basically, they tell you to pay for your piracy and then forbid you from doing exactly that. And if THAT does not sound fishy to somebody else, i have no idea what's going on in their mind anymore . . Especially if you take into consideration, that you pay these taxes even if you don't actually use the things that are taxed like this to actually copy/pirate anything but to only create original stuff yourself. So you are paying them to make up for something that you never even intended to do.

To be honest, i am kinda surprised that i have not yet heard about such a tax on soundcard/chips and speakers and graphics cards and monitors yet.

[Maj]

But I'm more inclined to believe that the RIAA and co are fighting a very rational (if dishonest and evil) battle against consumer choice. It's not about protecting the health of the industry, it's about protecting the publishing oligopoly.

I agree. I have recently seen (unfortunately I don't know where that link is, either) the suggestion that had the RIAA adapted to the digital era sooner, they would have made money sooner. The problem is that they weren't/aren't willing to adapt, so they're being left behind. And in a desperate move to try to maintain power, they're playing the asshat card. It's stupid.

Edit: Found link. It's a PDF.

[Shrapnel]

Why did the Transformers Movie kill off a lot of the original Autobots in order to have a narrative justification for selling new toys

Mostly because this needed to happen.

instead of, oh:

[*] Concluding the story, start a new series from there? You know, the strategy they used for future incarnations of the franchise?

This I'm not that sure on. My personal belief is that that kind of thing wasn't very common in the eighties.

[*] Just let the roster bloat and sag with new Autobots and Decepticons, accept that some of the new ones will catch fire and/or that people will care less about some of the old ones? You know, the strategy they use for Pokemon?

Simple: You don't advertise a product you aren't selling anymore.

Let's go with Ironhide as an example. His toy was on shelves from 1984 to 1985. When 1986 came around, Hasbro decided to cease selling his toy in favor of selling the the new assortment of characters for that year. Since he was no longer on the shelves and wasn't going to be sold any more, Hasbro decided to remove him from the show, thus making room for new characters and making kids want to buy last year's toy.

As for why they killed the characters they weren't selling, instead of just letting them go Mandyville... well, that's because Hasbro wanted to make Transformers appeal to a broader age range (re: teens), and teens are really turned on by people getting killed (this explains why teenage couples always snogged while watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

[*] Introduce a bunch of ridiculous upgrades for the Autobots/Decepticons that would require kids to nag their parents for new toys? I don't think anyone would've minded, say, an Optimus Prime upgrade to, say, a Space Shuttle/Super OP. Or if they introduced an alt. Iron Hide that could be folded into a set of external armor.

They did eventually do that. What it really boils down to is that Hasbro didn't realize that a lot of these characters were really popular and well liked: They only saw old toys that needed to be replaced by new ones.

Around 1987, Hasbro realized that having popular characters come back as fancier toys was a really good idea, and that's why we have things like Goldbug, Powermaster Optimus Prime, Classic Pretenders, and Action Masters.

[radthemad4]

I gotta say, even though my experience with Transformers is limited to the live action movies which I didn't like (I kinda liked 1 the first time I saw it, but changed my mind on subsequent viewings on TV) and just a few random episodes of Transformers Animated on TV (which I did like), I love browsing the wiki. The captions, lightheartedness and the general attitude of that place is awesome.

[Ancient History]

Which also explains this: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Optimash_Prime

[radthemad4]

And this: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Autotot which can be accessed from that

[Shrapnel]

The tfwik is my number one favorite place on the Internet, and also sucks up around 98% of my time on the web (the other 34% here and the rest of the 12% elsewhere).

[DSMatticus]

The tfwik is my number one favorite place on the Internet, and also sucks up around 98% of my time on the web (the other 34% here and the rest of the 12% elsewhere).

I like how the post is edited. It was probably just a typo or something, but I prefer to imagine you struggling to settle on a particular set of gibberish numbers: "no, no, those numbers don't add up right wrong. 98, 34, and 12 are clearly superior. What was I thinking?"

[Shrapnel]

I'll leave it a beautiful mystery, like who really killed Kennedy.

[Stahlseele]

It was a Comedian.

[Shrapnel]

[Lago PARANOIA]

From a political perspective, why did modern YEC decided to center what little science there is in their movement around Noah's Ark? That's just a baffling decision, because from a strict scientific perspective it's probably the most mockable and indefensible part of the Bible. Why not, oh, the plagues of Egypt or biblical longevity?

[Kaelik]

From a political perspective, why did modern YEC decided to center what little science there is in their movement around Noah's Ark? That's just a baffling decision, because from a strict scientific perspective it's probably the most mockable and indefensible part of the Bible. Why not, oh, the plagues of Egypt or biblical longevity?

Because whenever they talked about anything else, people brought up the most scientifically impossible thing, thus forcing them to try over and over to come up with that bullshit.

But really, they do have a bunch of other stuff, but you don't see it as much.

[name_here]

Because without invoking Noah's Ark they've got nothing for explaining geography and weathering, which are completely fatal to their dating.

[Maj]

Probably because they believe they've found it? Or something?

[Stahlseele]

You know . . all those people who make such a hullaballoo about Shotguns and the like for Home defence right?
Why do you never see / hear any of them affixing a bayonett to their boomsticks?