#justice for all requires dealing with the edge cases and not just defining them away

[spiderfreedom]

not gonna effortpost about this today because I gotta get work done but real short

I notice this argument being used all the time: "you can't make a definition of 'woman' that does not exclude some people that we call women. therefore, the only good definition for 'women' that includes all people we call woman is 'people who identify as woman.'"

and the thing is, philosophically, "you can't make a definition of {thing} that does not exclude some examples we also call {thing}" is something that applies to almost every category! it's literally a whole philosophical problem of "what is the definition of a chair?" didn't we have a whole meme about how nobody can even agree on what a sandwich is?

it's not something unique to women, tables, horses, sandwiches, salads, or anything else. it is a problem of language itself.

you can apply the exact same argument to other categories: "how do you define 'blackness' without excluding some people we call 'black'?" if you're american, maybe you will use the one-drop rule, in which case halsey is black and anyone who had a single black ancestor four generations ago. but is that actually how we use the word black? does that capture something meaningful about being black in america? how about being black in the world?

let's go further: "how do you define 'transgender' without excluding some people we call 'transgender'?" within the transgender community, there is no real agreement on what it means to be transgender! beyond a vague sense of "identifying as the gender society assigned to you", but even that can be challenged. if a cis (female) woman takes testosterone, starts hanging around trans women, calling herself a trans woman, is confused for a trans woman by the people that she talks to, experiences oppression on the basis of being perceived as a trans woman... can she be considered a trans woman, despite being female?

ultimately "how do you define things" is a philosophy of language question more than anything else. perfect definitions that encapsulate sets neatly do not exist, because the terms we use are socially contingent. when people came up with the word 'table', they didn't also create a logically rigorous definition for it. they just said 'well, this thing here is a table.' and then people argue about the edge cases. because also, nobody actually agrees on the members of sets of every single word!! just like how we all have different ideas of what is and isn't a sandwich!

that's the other thing, people already disagree about what words refer to. someone who has the 5ARD intersex condition has testes but may be raised and socialized as girl because their parents think their genitals kinda look like a vulva. is this person a 'girl/woman'? people are not sure... which makes sense... because it is an edge case. is a stool a chair? is a hotdog a sandwich? is an open sandwich a sandwich? the further you get from the 'prototype', the more people are going to be disagree.

so the entire question 'what is a woman' is just an exercise in confusing philosophy of language framed as saying something very meaningful about the social category of woman. it is not! it is a problem of language that we cannot define 'woman' or 'chair' or 'salad' or 'horse' or 'gamer' in a rigorous way. it is nothing inherent to women, chairs, salads, horses, or gamers.

(but what about science?) good question, what about science? science tries to operate differently from the way laypeople talk about things. scientists take common words, like 'energy', and give them different, more rigorous definitions in order to try to figure something out about the world. for laypeople, 'energy' is something vague and diffuse. for physicists, 'energy' is the force that causes things to move, and its behavior is described by certain mathematical models.

similarly, laypeople may take 'woman' to mean 'a person with breasts and vulva/vagina', but a biologist may have a more rigorous definition of 'female': 'producing large gametes.' this is useful because it helps us see commonalities between creatures that may look really different, like flowers, bedbugs, asparaguses, cats, and humans - all very different creatures where sex looks different, but still have a distinction between 'producing large gametes' and 'producing small gametes' - there's no intermediate gamete. biologists have a different word for what people/animals look like, and that is 'phenotype.' when a parent looks at a child with 5ARD condition, they see the child has no visible penis and thus 'looks 'looks female.' a biologist would say that the child's sex is male (because they have the reproductive equipment to produce sperm, and none of the reproductive equipment to produce ova) but that their phenotype is ambiguous. sex is a binary variable, but human development is a long process where are a lot can happen, and so sexual phenotypes are not variable.

so already we're pretty far from the lay definition, because laypeople don't have the same idea of what sex is as scientists do, and don't distinguish between someone's sex and their appearance - for them, the sex is the appearance. who is right? it depends on what you want to do. scientists want to discover meaningful things about nature, and their definitions are far more useful than the layperson's for that purpose. which definitions are useful is also socially determined - we may feel sympathy for the child with 5ARD, told they were a girl their whole life, but who learns that they have testes. should we continue to treat this child as a girl/woman, or should we encourage them to view themselves as a boy/man? that is a social, cultural, legal argument, not a scientific one. the biological truth is the same regardless of the social, cultural, legal arguments, but there may be a compelling case to act differently. that's on us as humans to decide!

so yeah I'm just tired of hearing the same damn arguments over and over again. "what is a woman? is someone with CAIS a woman? is someone with 5ARD? what if we take a young non-intersex male and give them female hormones?" like this will never take us to where we want to go because it's a philosophy of language question disguised as a scientific one. the real question is, what are we talking about and which definitions will help us in that? if you believe that female people are exploited on the basis of their female bodily functions, then obviously you want to bring attention to that by using the word 'female'! if you want to focus on feminine socialization, then it may be useful to bring up cases of people who may not technically be female but were still raised as them, like Erika/Erik Schinegger, a male (possibly with 5ARD) who was raised as a girl and believed he was a girl for most of his youth.

trying to make a single catchy response to a question of what is 'x' is never going to satisfy everyone, because it cannot, because language is imperfect and real life is messy. scientists try to cut nature at the joints, but their cuts may not look like laypeople's! (and don't get me started on scientists disagreeing on what is a joint and what is not, metaphorically.)

and at its worst, when chasing an ironclad definition, you get bizarre answers that seem detached from reality, like saying 'people with CAIS condition are genotypically male and have underdeveloped testes, so we should treat them as males'. they may be reproductive males, but they have a female phenotype, and are raised as girls, and are literally unreceptive to testosterone - to treat them as 'men' on the basis of developmental or reproductive sex certainly seems to be missing something very important from the picture! see below: a person with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS):

does it really make sense to say this person is a man due to her having testes, which technically makes her reproductively male? is that capturing reality? or are you trying to force reality to fit into your definition because you're afraid that if you cannot create a perfect definition of 'woman', that we will never be able to talk about biology and female oppression?

tl;dr: questions like 'what is a woman' are designed to be time-wasters because they are not actually answerable because language sucks. argue for your operative definition, your context, and move on. and don't be afraid to change definitions based on the context... sometimes reproductive sex is relevant, sometimes phenotype is more important, sometimes socialization is more relevant. this is not weakness, it's recognizing that reality is not so rigid and sometimes you must use a different model to get the understanding you want.

[thegeneralsnotebook]

January Feature: History of Colours Part 1 -- Yellow

Welcome to another year’s worth of articles on The General’s Notebook. The time off in December, as I flew home to be with my family for the holidays, was a refreshing one, and now I have some energy to begin tackling another project. In this case, that’s a new series of posts over here, detailing the history of each colour within the entire scope of the MLPCCG metagame. For many of us, those early days of the Premier Block may be represented by nothing more than the old cards that we know were played with back then, but there was real development and real competition then too. In fact, in my opinion those days were something of a Golden Age for the game, when the subreddit was filled with excited speculation and real discussion. Sure, the cards may have been subpar, but the community was pretty great.

Of course, in my case those days were before even my time, as though I started playing the game around midway through the tenure of Canterlot Nights, I only first started paying attention to the larger trends around Absolute Discord. So some of the older decks were completely unknown to me, and I was lucky to have the expertise of my good friend Bugle to help putting this history together. To start, we’re going to be talking about Yellow, because it’s a colour that’s had a really interesting history, possibly one of the most interesting out of all the colours.

It’s also a colour that is really present in the zeitgeist of the game right now, suddenly a force to be reckoned with not just in Core, but also in Harmony. Indeed, as we’ll see, there’s a little bit of poetic justice in Yellow taking a Harmony crown this year, given its history with the format, but to understand that we’re going to have to take the whole journey first.

Yellow’s fortunes in the game have experienced some significant variations over the course of time, but in broad strokes, the story is actually very simple. In the beginning, the colour was great. Then it was bad, for a long time, and now it’s good again. Barring one or two exceptions, that’s actually a pretty good approximation of how things have gone in the years since Premier. So let’s start with those golden days of yore, when the future was bright, and the metagame barely a new thing.

The core highlights of any Premier Yellow deck.

The Golden Years of Premier

There were two notable Yellow decks in the days of Premier, and while they shared one big card (one that will be a recurring theme through these early days of Yellow decks), aside from that their playstyles couldn’t be much more different. On the one hand, we had the aggro stylings of Blue/Yellow Rainbow Dash Wins, and on the other the Yellow/Purple control of Royal Guidance.

RD Wins probably requires little introduction and explanation. While in those days the game was fundamentally different, with confronting a Problem before anyone else netting you the Problem’s bonus points, functionally aggro was still aggro. That meant that one kept their cards’ reqs low, optimized high impact for low cost, and built an insurmountable momentum through the midgame that carried on through to the end. The biggest feature of Blue in those days was the free movement available from cards like Wild Fire and Holly Dash, and the AT efficiency of Cloudchaser and Two Bits. Yellow pitched in cheap things to make finding the off-colour Problem requirements easier, as well as the best Faceoff trick in the day with Critter Cavalry. And, of course, lest she ever be forgotten, the sheer dominance that was Guidance Counselor. This wasn’t one of those decks that necessarily tried to lock the opponent out of the game with her, as RD Wins was often, er... winning before that would happen, but it was still a huge source of AT advantage, and already well-recognized as one of the best cards in the game.

By the way, those 9 Troublemakers certainly weren’t a mistake, as if you take a close read on PR Rainbow Dash’s text you’ll realize that she needed them, even if the main strategy of the deck was was to confront Problems and go fast. And hey, who would say no to the opportunity for that brilliant double YPS opening? Even if we’re an aggro deck.

To the second example, Royal Guidance was the Swiss Army Knife of decks in those days, and it was one that absolutely thrived on the idea of dropping Fluttergui Turn 2 and basically winning the game from there on out. In fact, that was where the name of the deck came from, since Royal Guidance was the card that enabled either of Fluttergui or Ursa Vanquisher to hit the board early, setting up for an extremely asymmetric early game that would be used to assert dominance through the rest of it. Generally, this would take the form of solid Purple control, hunkered down behind Troublemakers and letting the game draw out. In those days, options against Troublemakers were few, and most decks could only really gather their resolve and hope to take them down in the faceoff, and under those circumstances Purple’s tools were well-positioned to keep the walls secure.

Indeed, some builds of Royal Guidance even tried their hand at the good old Gyro toolbox, even then already in a very well-developed form, though without the Eff Stop support at least. In the late game, the deck would often transition into a farming plan once Fluttershy had been flipped over, and could usually pull it off quite well, netting the extra points needed for the last push to the finish.

The meta as a whole was fluid in those days, with a number of other decks also vying for things (as we’ll get to in future articles), but with these two Yellow was absolutely in contention. This was a state of affairs that was bound to continue, at least for a little while.

These two could kill you with a wink of their eyes.

And The Man at the Back Said “Everyone Attack”

And it turned into a Ballroom Blitz. This one is probably the most well-known Yellow deck of the Premier era. Not only did it represent a distillation of the best that Yellow had to offer from the first two sets, it represented the match-made-in-heaven that was Yellow and White. And, so far as I could tell from the history, this deck was also Rarity: Truly Outrageous’ breakout hit. Sure, it was obvious to everyone that she was an absurdly valuable card right from the start, but it looks like this was the first deck that really hit the big-time with her.

The new Fluttershy Mane represented a huge speedup in the early game, especially since at this point Starting Problems were almost all small ones with easy confront requirements, and thus CN Fluttershy could ensure a quick confront and bonus points as soon as Turn 2. Remember those first confront bonuses plus the faceoffs, and a dominant early game could easily put the game out of reach, especially once it was followed up with the White-powered midgame, consisting of Stand Still to keep the opponent off-balance, and of course RTO to seal the deal. The deck could even (and often did) obtain the extra efficiency of using Staring Contest to self-bounce a cheap Friend like Forest Owl. Why, after all, would one spend 2 AT to move it when one could transition it through the hand instead and only pay 1 AT? All of that combined to make a lightning-fast juggernaut that tore up tournaments all across the country.

Of secondary note is a list that Bugle brought to my attention which I had never even heard of, a Yellow/Pink creation of the time that went by the semi-official name of Ploofy Critters. Fundamentally, this deck is working to much the same principles as the one above, but replacing the White integration with a somewhat lighter Pink package instead, and taking more Yellow weight as a result. Pink certainly does offer a bit of more permanent removal, but this deck’s success was something of a mystery at the time of its origination, especially with this list missing the crucial power that was Snips & Snails: Problem Solvers. (Which, it pays to note, was an even better card with those old first-confront rules.) Still, this deck in combination with Ballroom cemented Yellow’s status as one of the strongest colours in the game.

Unfortunately, though, that pride was coming right before the fall.

Something tells me this isn’t the last we’ll be seeing of these two in this series.

Rock & Ruin

Crystal Games started out shaping up to be a great set for Yellow. In fact, there was a deck shaping up that looked about ready to dominate the whole meta, and it was indeed powered by a Yellow card. But it got banned. Even so, for at least a little while the old guard was able to keep on with things, mostly overlooking the cards in the new set. As time went on, though, a couple of Manes who had been introduced in a small supplemental set made their presence felt more and more, and started defining their own era, which we’ll cover in more detail once we get to the articles about Orange and Pink. Most important to this story was the final nail that came with the banning of Guidance Counselor. Yellow had lost its biggest weapon, and in a world now filled with farming and Pile combo, there just wasn’t any space left for it anymore. It fell away.

So began the Long Darkness for the colour. Indeed, it got so bad that at the second NA Continental tournament, there was a grand total of just 7 Yellow cards across the entire Top 16. The one bright spot, in its own ironic way, was the popularity of Seabreeze’s Flower, which was kind of a Yellow card, even though nobody was using it for that purpose.

From here, the history gets a little dull, because yeah, the Long Darkness continued for a long time. Years and multiple sets passed with the colour being little more than a footnote, with few good Manes to its name, no true bombs that could form a deck’s foundation, and little prospect on the horizon too.

Which isn’t to say that attempts weren’t made. A few of them even bit at the edges of viability. Equestrian Odysseys especially offered quite a bit of hope, with Fluttershy, Backup Vocals finally being the card that could maybe make Bubbly Mare work, and Bedtime offering the chance for a Yellow/White control deck. Both of those saw real experimentation, but came up short, especially in a meta that was now quickly falling under the sway of the Apple Queen.

Then, suddenly, a spark. From a most unexpected direction, the colour came to life in High Magic, this time partnering with Purple and White in the form of Zipporwhill control. Granted, it was a mere 4 Yellow cards that made it into the deck, but that was the most that had been seen in a top deck in years, and more importantly they were the key cards that made the deck work. The piles of critter tokens that often accumulated over the course of a Zipporwhill game were a testament to that. The deck’s ability to turn a merely efficient Power Event in Rise and Shine into a control tool was its main strength, and cycling it repeatedly with Eff Stop turned out to be just the ticket. While Zippo’s time at the top turned out to be brief, with Defenders heralding the rise of Pink decks with more removal than she could stand, it was a bright, shining moment. Maybe, just maybe, Yellow was back to being something worth playing around with.

The heralds. Surprisingly, it still took a few sets for Yellow to emerge again.

A Silent Renaissance

Defenders of Equestria absolutely was the point of rebirth for the colour, though one wouldn’t necessarily have known it at the time. This was, after all, the meta made famous for Hot Wings and Vinyl’s Bag of Tricks, a time of Pink ascendancy almost unparalleled save maybe for the grand old days of Pile (again, more on that in the Pink article). But quietly, important seeds had been sown for Yellow’s resurgence later. Most importantly, after literal years of waiting, the colour received not only one but two exceptional Mane Characters in Nurturing Nature and Thorax. With that came extremely efficient point acceleration in the from of Tri-Horned Bunyip, and new tools against both Resources and Troublemakers, themes that had been building in the colour for a while, and were now getting close to a critical mass. Indeed, the colour was getting back to its roots for the first time in a while: prepping for a game plan of speedy confronts and aggression.

You might think, then, that it was only a matter of time before things turned around. Seaquestria & Beyond certainly had enough good cards that one would think the colour couldn’t help but see play. Day Shift once again gave the colour some brutal AT efficiency, its efficacy against Resources became unmatched with the introduction of Brian, and we even saw multiple effective multicoloured cards added in: like Pirate Fluttershy and Treading Water. Yet even so, Yellow remained under the radar, with the Seaquestria meta being first dominated by the Apple Queen (prior to her forcible removal) and then by Tempest Shadow and Purple/Pink.

Nay, it was indeed not until Friends Forever that the colour finally threw off its bonds and re-emerged as a true contender. Little wonder that this was accompanied by a true monster card in Mage Meadowbrook. In this set, Yellow was not taking any prisoners, and it was time for everyone else to feel the weight of the long years it had spent in irrelevance. Suddenly there were more Yellow than one could shake a stick at, with the most prominent being the Thorax/Orange aggro pioneered on the West Coast, and the pure mono style that first made waves in the Midwest. It also featured, at least tangentially, in the alicorn tribal that saw some play around this time. 

Fast-forward now to Leaders & Legends, and suddenly the colour is everywhere again. It has prospects with Purple thanks to Pegasus Royal Guard, is still going strong in Orange, where it now regularly trots out Novo for the surprise faceoff edge, and even just captured a tournament in Harmony, at this most recent Vanhoover Pony Expo. Remember how I said there was a little poetic justice in Yellow’s tourney win this year? Well, Yellow dropped off in the old CG meta due to the prevalence of Pile of Presents and Orange farming. Which deck did Yellow have to beat to take the crown at Vanhoover this year? Yeah, it was Pile, albeit in an updated form. What was taken first from Fluttershy, Thorax has now reclaimed.

Conclusion

That thus wraps the discussion of Yellow for this month. Truly, this colour has had a very bumpy ride over the course of the history of the game. Yet, at the moment, the horizon looks bright. It’s a future that once looked nearly impossible, but those of us with a soft spot for the colour are now happy to see it come. May many more like this follow!

As for this series, the next colour in the line will be White, as we walk backward through the normal colour order. That may be in February, or later if something else demands attention first. But in any event, I’ll see you all back here next month for another post!

[ancaporado]

When Should You Shoot A Cop - Larken Rose June 28, 2011, Copblock.org

That question, even without an answer, makes most “law-abiding taxpayers” go into knee-jerk conniptions. The indoctrinated masses all race to see who can be first, and loudest, to proclaim that it is NEVER okay to forcibly resist “law enforcement.” In doing so, they also inadvertently demonstrate why so much of human history has been plagued by tyranny and oppression.

In an ideal world, cops would do nothing except protect people from thieves and attackers, in which case shooting a cop would never be justified. In the real world, however, far more injustice, violence, torture, theft, and outright murder has been committed IN THE NAME of “law enforcement,” than has been committed in spite of it. To get a little perspective, try watching a documentary or two about some of the atrocities committed by the regimes of Stalin, or Lenin, or Chairman Mao, or Hitler, or Pol Pot, or any number of other tyrants in history. Pause the film when the jackboots are about to herd innocent people into cattle cars, or gun them down as they stand on the edge of a ditch, and THEN ask yourself the question, “When should you shoot a cop?” Keep in mind, the evils of those regimes were committed in the name of “law enforcement.” And as much as the statement may make people cringe, the history of the human race would have been a lot LESS gruesome if there had been a lot MORE “cop-killers” around to deal with the state mercenaries of those regimes.

People don’t mind when you point out the tyranny that has happened in other countries, but most have a hard time viewing their OWN “country,” their OWN “government,” and their OWN “law enforcers,” in any sort of objective way. Having been trained to feel a blind loyalty to the ruling class of the particular piece of dirt they live on (a.k.a. “patriotism”), and having been trained to believe that obedience is a virtue, the idea of forcibly resisting “law enforcement” is simply unthinkable to many. Literally, they can’t even THINK about it. And humanity has suffered horribly because of it. It is a testament to the effectiveness of authoritarian indoctrination that literally billions of people throughout history have begged and screamed and cried in the face of authoritarian injustice and oppression, but only a tiny fraction have ever lifted a finger to actually try to STOP it.

Even when people can recognize tyranny and oppression, they still usually talk about “working within the system”–the same system that is responsible for the tyranny and oppression. People want to believe that “the system” will, sooner or later, provide justice. The last thing they want to consider is that they should “illegally” resist–that if they want to achieve justice, they must become “criminals” and “terrorists,” which is what anyone who resists “legal” injustice is automatically labelled. But history shows all too well that those who fight for freedom and justice almost always do so “illegally”–i.e., without the permission of the ruling class.

If politicians think that they have the right to impose any “law” they want, and cops have the attitude that, as long as it’s called “law,” they will enforce it, what is there to prevent complete tyranny? Not the consciences of the “law-makers” or their hired thugs, obviously. And not any election or petition to the politicians. When tyrants define what counts as “law,” then by definition it is up to the “law-breakers” to combat tyranny.

Pick any example of abuse of power, whether it is the fascist “war on drugs,” the police thuggery that has become so common, the random stops and searches now routinely carried out in the name of “security” (e.g., at airports, “border checkpoints” that aren’t even at the border, “sobriety checkpoints,” and so on), or anything else. Now ask yourself the uncomfortable question: If it’s wrong for cops to do these things, doesn’t that imply that the people have a right to RESIST such actions? Of course, state mercenaries don’t take kindly to being resisted, even non-violently. If you question their right to detain you, interrogate you, search you, invade your home, and so on, you are very likely to be tasered, physically assaulted, kidnapped, put in a cage, or shot. If a cop decides to treat you like livestock, whether he does it “legally” or not, you will usually have only two options: submit, or kill the cop. You can’t resist a cop “just a little” and get away with it. He will always call in more of his fellow gang members, until you are subdued or dead.

Basic logic dictates that you either have an obligation to LET “law enforcers” have their way with you, or you have the right to STOP them from doing so, which will almost always require killing them. (Politely asking fascists to not be fascists has a very poor track record.) Consider the recent Indiana Supreme Court ruling, which declared that if a cop tries to ILLEGALLY enter your home, it’s against the law for you to do anything to stop him. Aside from the patent absurdity of it, since it amounts to giving thugs with badges PERMISSION to “break the law,” and makes it a CRIME for you to defend yourself against a CRIMINAL (if he has a badge), consider the logical ramifications of that attitude.

There were once some words written on a piece of parchment (with those words now known as the Fourth Amendment), that said that you have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures at the hands of “government” agents. In Indiana today, what could that possibly mean? The message from the ruling class is quite clear, and utterly insane. It amounts to this: “We don’t have the right to invade your home without probable cause … but if we DO, you have no right to stop us, and we have the right to arrest you if you try.”

Why not apply that to the rest of the Bill of Rights, while we’re at it? “You have the right to say what you want, but if we use violence to shut you up, you have to let us.” (I can personally attest to the fact that that is the attitude of the U.S. “Department of Justice.”) “You have the right to have guns, but if we try to forcibly and illegally disarm you, and you resist, we have the right to kill you.” (Ask Randy Weaver and the Branch Davidians about that one.) “You have the right to not testify against yourself, but when we coerce you into confessing (and call it a ‘plea agreement’), you can’t do a thing about it.” What good is a “right”–what does the term “right” even mean–if you have an obligation to allow jackboots to violate your so-called “rights”? It makes the term absolutely meaningless.

To be blunt, if you have the right to do “A,” it means that if someone tries to STOP you from doing “A”–even if he has a badge and a politician’s scribble (“law”) on his side–you have the right to use whatever amount of force is necessary to resist that person. That’s what it means to have an unalienable right. If you have the unalienable right to speak your mind (a la the First Amendment), then you have the right to KILL “government” agents who try to shut you up. If you have the unalienable right to be armed, then you have the right to KILL “government” agents who try to disarm you. If you have the right to not be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures, then you have the right to KILL “government” agents who try to inflict those on you.

Those who are proud to be “law-abiding” don’t like to hear this, and don’t like to think about this, but what’s the alternative? If you do NOT have the right to forcibly resist injustice–even if the injustice is called “law”–that logically implies that you have an obligation to allow “government” agents to do absolutely anything they want to you, your home, your family, and so on. Really, there are only two choices: you are a slave, the property of the politicians, without any rights at all, or you have the right to violently resist “government” attempts to oppress you. There can be no other option.

Of course, on a practical level, openly resisting the gang called “government” is usually very hazardous to one’s health. But there is a big difference between obeying for the sake of self-preservation, which is often necessary and rational, and feeling a moral obligation to go along with whatever the ruling class wants to do to you, which is pathetic and insane. Most of the incomprehensible atrocities that have occurred throughout history were due in large part to the fact that most people answer “never” to the question of “When should you shoot a cop?” The correct answer is: When evil is “legal,” become a criminal. When oppression is enacted as “law,” become a “law-breaker.” When those violently victimizing the innocent have badges, become a cop-killer.

The next time you hear of a police officer being killed “in the line of duty,” take a moment to consider the very real possibility that maybe in that case, the “law enforcer” was the bad guy and the “cop killer” was the good guy. As it happens, that has been the case more often than not throughout human history.

https://www.copblock.org/5475/when-should-you-shoot-a-cop/

[brightbeautifulthings]

I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell

"The people who teach us something retain a particularly vivid place in our memories. I'd been a parent for about ten minutes when I met the man, but he taught me, with a small gesture, one of the most important things about the job: kindness, intuition, touch, and that sometimes you don't even need words."

Year Read: 2017

Rating: 3/5

Context: I received a free e-copy through First to Read from the publishers at Penguin Random House. The title of this book, a nod to Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, captured my interest immediately. There's also a caption comparing her to Cheryl Strayed, who I love. But, you know, that’s probably false because nobody else is Cheryl Strayed. Lidia Yuknavitch comes close, but she can't be Cheryl Strayed because she's Lidia Yuknavitch, and no one else is her either. (Read: This review is full of pedantic detours about what effective memoirs should look like. I'm a snob. I'm sorry.) Trigger warnings: illness, rape, death.

About: Maggie O'Farrell recounts her life in seventeen near-death experiences. From her childhood hospitalization with encephalitis to a near-deadly cesarean section and her own daughter's struggles with severe allergies, O'Farrell examines what it means to live life on the edges of death.

Thoughts: The concept of this memoir is better than its execution. On the surface, recounting a life in near-death experiences sounds really interesting, but I never felt like O'Farrell was doing enough with it. Some of the chapters end abruptly at the end of the experience without a lot of interpretation, and I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to take from them. There's also no sense of thematic unity linking the experiences together, other than the fact that they include brushes with death. It's not necessarily that a memoir needs a moral or a lesson so much that the work memoirs are uniquely capable of doing is linking personal experiences to universal truths. The best memoirs tell us something about ourselves and the world we live in; I'm not sure what this one is trying to say.

However, there are sections of the memoir that are powerful individually. In particular, O'Farrell's childhood illness, her difficulties in having children, and her daughter's severe allergies are tense and memorable. They point an accusing finger at a healthcare system that is vastly in need of reform as well as a society that simply doesn't know how to deal with illness. I felt like she could have done more exploring that second aspect. She mentions that rehabilitation did not prepare her for the way people would treat her when she returned to school, but it's more of a passing comment than anything. I would have liked to see more about this. In a way, I understand why she doesn’t go into more detail; this is not an illness memoir. It is not the thing that defines her life, but it is one of the places where the narrative is strongest.

It's the rest of the near-death experiences that I'm not sure what to make of or how to connect with the others. They're interesting stories, but I'm not sure how they're meaningful. It's not an inability to relate, since I can relate to some of these experiences: doctors who don't take you seriously, especially when you're a woman, or how it feels to walk away from something you thought was going to be the rest of your life. But even with these shared experiences, I couldn't really feel O'Farrell in her memoir. I have little sense of her and no sense of the most important relationships in her life. The scene in the hospital where the doctor took her hand during childbirth is one of few real, human connections throughout the memoir. Everything else is background.

I'm not overly fond of the writing style either. O'Farrell has a tendency to use long lists of things in place of descriptions and to constantly undercut her word choice with two or three synonyms ("I ran, scarpered, dashed off, legged it whenever I had the chance."). Rather than make her meaning clearer, the sentence gets less descriptive with every addition, and I found it distracting. There are also sections that move oddly from first person into third or second, which is both jarring and a little inexplicable. There are very few places where I find the use of second person acceptable. I'm a lot less likely to relate to something that's directed at me like that, because my contrary brain immediately goes no, it's not like that for me. I have no idea how this particular experience feels; that's why I'm reading a memoir about it.

As for third person, it just feels like the wrong choice for a memoir. A switch from the narrator calling herself "I" to calling herself "she" suggests to me that O'Farrell hasn't come to terms with these events. She can't identify with them; she can only talk about them as if they've happened to another person, in which case, she shouldn't be writing about them for the public. Do all the free-writing you want about events to help you understand them, but that kind of writing is personal; it isn't meant to be published. Good memoir-writing requires distance--emotional, chronological, whatever--from events in order to make sense of them. There are some things we never get enough distance from.

My overall impression is that this memoir only comes halfway. It tells us what happened but not what we should make of it, and if that's the point (since life is messy and rarely has closure and some things just never make sense), then O'Farrell needs to do more to show that. It doesn't tell me what it's like to live on the edges of death. It doesn't tell me, really, how that's affected O'Farrell's life either. It doesn't help me understand someone's relationship with death in any better or more effective way. It functions mainly on emotional appeal and shock value. I Am, I Am, I Am tries to take on too many ideas and does justice to few of them, but it may work better for some readers than it did for me.

[tomkail]

Expanding the information horizon

What is the information horizon?

One of Keith Burgun’s many wonderful design concepts is the information horizon. It describes how far ahead you are able to calculate potential moves. With a short information horizon, such as in RPS, the player can’t usefully predict counterplay to a considered move. In a long one such as in Connect 4, the player has to do the rote calculation of “I do this, they do that, I do this...” for several moves ahead before they’re able to work out of the first step of the move is sensible. Burgun suggests designing a horizon somewhere in the middle so that the game requires some thought, but isn’t just a calculating contest.

I recommend reading about it since I’m not doing the idea justice. The rest of this article will drill into a key part of it that I don’t think has been broken down elsewhere. 

Deep vs wide

The horizon’s limit is effectively the number of calculations the player is able to (or can be bothered to) execute. 

The horizon has two key dimensions - width and depth. 

Depth is how many turns we look ahead. 

Width is the number of options that must be considered for each turn.

The total number of calculations can be defined as width ^ depth. The player needs to execute increases exponentially the further they look ahead, making it incredibly hard to do so.

In practice

The width and depth of any game’s information horizon can be very different.

The Connect 4 example becomes a clear case of low width. A move changes the game state in a very contained and predictable way; so we often only need to work out what happens if they stack a piece on top of ours.

Burgun’s commonly suggested solution for designing an information horizon is to add fog of war. Since its impossible to know what might be beyond the fog, the number of responses to a move into it is infinite, meaning that the number we can plan (the width) for is 0. He likes this since it prevents the player from being able to play a calculation contest at all.

The other way of designing the information horizon is to add more predictable uncertainty, increasing the width, as in the case of James Lantz’s response to the idea, where he suggests a game of chess where a King has a 50% chance of becoming a queen. For each move, assuming only one obvious response for each king/queen outcome, the width is 2. This increases exponentially, making it impossible for a human to see far (This is effectively how brute force AI works).

I would agree with Burgun’s criticism of this sort of design, in that randomness makes it hard to see who the better player was. You might have simply gotten unlucky. In a better game, the uncertainty might stem from not knowing where an opponent might be, or what their strategy or play style is. What dividing up depth and width does is allow us to consider how we can design for a more or less “solid” horizon. With a high width, the number of calculations increases so fast that we fast approach infinity, which is equivalent to our fog of war example.

In LOL, players have more knowledge of what might be lurking in fog. It can only be one of the living, visible enemies. In this case, they might assess the odds of a particular branch. What are the odds of a tough opponent coming out of the jungle? In response, could they deal with it if it happened? Rather than adding noise to the outcome, mapping both odds is fundamental to the learning process of the game. The player might consider another possibility - all the enemy champions might attack them. This would be disregarded by most players, but if it were to happen it wouldn’t be right to call it “noise”, but rather a refinement of the player’s internal model of the risks and rewards of the games. This said, in a non-real time game, a player could feasibly calculate the odds of such a thing occurring to get an edge over their opponent.

In a more effective soft horizon, there are so many likely counters to a move that it becomes worthless to consider a specific one in depth, and the better response is to consider all the options without assuming one will happen. In the first fog of war case, this might mean keeping your units away from the fog, rather than planning for a specific encounter.

As with Flow theory, the optimal information horizon defines a number of choices for the player to consider that are not too simple or too complex. The “hardness” of a horizon is defined by the number and probability of responses to a certain move, where a hard horizon prevents analysis past a certain depth, and a soft horizon allow players to deeply consider the result of a small set of moves.

[thisdaynews]

Warren’s blasts at tech leave Biden in the shadows

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/warrens-blasts-at-tech-leave-biden-in-the-shadows/

Warren’s blasts at tech leave Biden in the shadows

Pressed for a statement on the issue, Biden’s campaign told POLITICO that the former vice president is broadly concerned about economic concentration and would “aggressively” use antitrust law and other tools to ensure that “all corporations” do right by their workers and customers. But Biden views Warren’s singling out of tech as misguided and doesn’t think a president should tell antitrust enforcers which companies to go after, his campaign said.

A close adviser said Biden’s camp is reluctant to become drawn into what it views as Warren’s “weird litmus test.”

“It’s easy to say you want to go after ‘Big Tech’ and break them up,” said one senior economic policy official from the Obama White House who remains sympathetic to Biden. (The person spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss tensions that go back to the days of a presidency that Warren also served in.) “It’s a heck of a lot harder to come up with a coherent theory of the case of why that’s a better outcome for consumers, prices, and innovation.”

The Warren campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

But Warren’s approach looks to be working for her. Even where it might be least expected: In the last quarter of fundraising, she raised nearly a quarter-million dollars from employees of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, some of the very companies she has pledged to break up.

Sally Hubbard, the director of enforcement at the Open Markets Institute, an advocacy group deeply involved in the push for antitrust enforcement on tech companies, argued that Biden is carrying on the Obama administration’s light-touch approach to the industry. Meanwhile, Warren is tapping into Americans’ emerging sense that something is not quite right with Silicon Valley.

“People are understanding that it’s not just some technocratic, boring area,” Hubbard said of the antitrust debate Warren has helped ignite. “It’s fundamentally about equality and freedom, the American way, the American dream. It’s at the heart of capitalism and what we think of core American values.”

Hubbard said she sees the Silicon Valley workers who give to Warren as acting in their own interests: Corporate breakups mean more employers to compete for their labor. Another factor is tech employees’ agreement with Warren’s push to fundamentally restructure the U.S. economy, said Peter Leyden, who runs a public policy-focused Silicon Valley media startup called Reinvent.

“It’s not contradictory or weird,” said Leyden, a former managing editor of Wired. “In general, tech workers in northern California, they’re roughly down with it — that we have to rebalance the economy from a grossly unequal society.”

The different tacks that Warren and Biden have taken on this massively powerful industry go back before the Obama era, to at least 2005, when the pair battled over bankruptcy reform.

That year, the Delaware senator and the Harvard law professor debated back and forth in a tense, substantive Senate hearing. At one point, Biden offered Warren the mixed compliment that she was making “a very compelling and mildly demagogic argument.”

The same phrase could capture the case Warren has made for breaking up tech, starting with a Medium post in March that said “it’s time” to break up Google, Facebook, and Amazon — pledging that when she becomes president, her administration will do just that.

And Warren has hardly let up on the issue.

She posted a billboard in San Francisco, near a train station frequented by tech workers, blaring the message “Break Up Big Tech.” More recently, after leaked audio recorded Mark Zuckerberg saying his company would be forced to sue a Warren administration if it went ahead with a breakup, Warren has leaned into the fight — tweeting again and again her disdain for Facebook. She even ran a deliberately false ad designed to jab Facebook over a newly announced policy on misleading ads, which she and other critics say lets President Donald Trump get away with running lies on the platform.

Biden, meanwhile, has said little. But in response to repeated requests, his campaign sent along a quote from a campaign spokesperson outlining his thinking.

“Vice President Biden is running for President to rebuild America’s middle class and a critical element of getting that done is ensuring that all corporations — including tech giants — are treating their workers and customers fairly,” read the statement from campaign spokesperson Mike Gwin. “To accomplish this, a Biden administration will aggressively use all the tools available — including utilizing antitrust measures — to ensure that these corporations are behaving in a responsible manner and contributing to a greater prosperity for our economy and middle class.”

People close to Biden say the former vice president is reined in by his reluctance to dictate targets and methods to regulators in a future Biden administration. By a combination of both tradition and statute, the country’s chief antitrust enforcers — the Justice Department’s antitrust division and the Federal Trade Commission — operate at a distance from the White House.

Recent history offers at least one example of a vice president-turned-presidential candidate paying a political cost for refusing to dictate to regulators.

In 2002, then-Democratic presidential hopeful Al Gore balked at speaking out against an airport planned for the edges of the Florida Everglades, in part over worries about corrupting an ongoing Air Force analysis of the project. Gore instead called for a “balanced solution” — prompting some Florida environmental activists to endorse Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who accused him of “waffling as usual.” Nader wound up getting 97,000 votes in Florida, far exceeding the 537-vote margin that delivered the state and the White House to George W. Bush.

That said, in the Trump era, political norms aren’t once they were.

As a candidate in 2016, Trump declared that his administration would block AT&T’s attempt to buy Time Warner, saying the deal would put “too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.” After Trump won, his Justice Department indeed sued to stop the sale. And while a judge let it go through, AT&T couldn’t get traction with the argument that the president had inappropriately meddled in the DOJ’s decision making.

Biden is arguably in the mainstream of the Democratic field: No candidate has come close to Warren’s call for breaking up Google, Facebook and Amazon, even though the Democrats in Tuesday’s debate took turns detailing a wide range of complaints about Silicon Valley’s behavior and effect on society.

The candidates proposed various solutions, including more aggressive taxation of tech companies, requirements for transparency on social-media ads, and a redefinition of the major online platforms as publishers. But none agreed fully when asked point-blank whether Warren’s breakup proposals were right.

Instead, several responded that as president, they would install strong antitrust enforcers to go after monopolies in multiple industries. “We need a president who has the guts to appoint an attorney general who will take on these huge monopolies,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said. Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro called for “cracking down on monopolistic trade practices.” New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said, “I will put people in place that enforce antitrust laws.”

Only two candidates clearly objected, in whole or part, to Warren’s proposal: Entrepreneur Andrew Yang argued that “competition doesn’t solve all the problems.” And former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke lodged the strongest rejection of the Warren plan: “I don’t think it is the role of a president or a candidate for the presidency to specifically call out which companies will be broken up. That’s something that Donald Trump has done.”

Biden didn’t get a chance to answer. But the divide between Biden and Warren is helping to define the terms of the debate, and it is shaping how an eventual Democratic president might navigate its relationship with the powerful and deep-pocketed U.S. tech industry.

The source close to the Biden campaign said the topic remains a “live issue” inside that operation, meaning the team is still working through how to talk about the way he would handle Silicon Valley.

The former Obama White House economic policy official said Biden will probably have no choice but to make that clearer. “My guess is that it will be inescapable, and inadvisable, for him to not talk about the need to have exceptional scrutiny on some of the excesses and misbehavior,” the ex-official said.

Read More

[bestnewsmag-blog]

New Post has been published on Bestnewsmag

New Post has been published on https://bestnewsmag.com/pro-gamers-talk-about-the-future-of-motion-controls-in-competitive-gaming-read-more-at-httpwww-gamerevolution-comfeaturespro-gamers-talk-about-the-future-of-motion-controls-in-competitive-gaming/

Pro Gamers Talk About The Future Of Motion Controls In Competitive Gaming Read more at http://www.gamerevolution.com/features/pro-gamers-talk-about-the-future-of-motion-controls-in-competitive-gaming

Over lots of hours, professional gamers finally track their ability in hand dexterity and hand-eye coordination with the belief that mere milliseconds imply the difference between success and failure.

For maximum eSports players, this nice tuning takes region on a keyboard & mouse, however, that isn’t the case.In the case of smaller, console-derived competitive groups, keyboard & mouse are now not the golden preferred. but as opposed to taking the highlight in hopes of turning into the norm, movement controls have discovered a place supporting these competitive organizations by way of complementing conventional controls as well as attracting more casual gamers to their groups.

It’s nearly unanimously agreed upon in the Splatoon network that movement controls are the definitive manner to play In the massive leagues. “With a standard console controller, motion controls are the nearest we’re going to ever get to the equivalent of mouse and keyboard precision,” said competitive player Thatsrb2DUDE whilst speak with GameRevolution. “[With] twin sticks you’ll probably have to set up 20 extraordinary inputs to reap the equal arm movement.” The ability cap difference is just too vast to ignore for most gamers.

Are you looking for the precise history on your website to make it more appealing and visible for your goal audiences? Gone are the times while backgrounds used to follow a comparable structure of being non-transferring. With the advent of the era in almost all the fields nowadays, it’s miles no marvel that backgrounds have Gone via a whole transformation. If you have designed your internet site with appealing content material and top notch designs, it’s far most effective herbal which you could need to highlight its features in an extra visually attractive manner Within the shape of backgrounds. motion backgrounds are the proper solution for you in this situation. While it’s far pretty overwhelming to observe that there are free 4K movement backgrounds to be had on the net these days, it additionally does your activity of choosing certainly one of them pretty challenging. Here are a few tips which you want to maintain in thoughts Even as selecting the appropriate movement history to your internet site.

1. Simple but elegant

movement backgrounds are meant to focus on the content material and capabilities of your internet site. Consequently, pick out designs that are not jarring for the eyes. Avoid the use of vibrant designs that put off the importance of your content. Issues like waterfalls divert the viewers’ attention far from the principle idea. Stick to designs which are beautiful to the eyes and make your internet site content greater significant and readable.

2. Diffused but engaging animations

Considered one of the largest advantages that you get on the side of those transferring backgrounds is the electricity of animations. You need to reach the appropriate balance among the usage of these animations because too a lot of them can distort your important content material and too little of them can make your website look very stupid. Use animations which might be progressive, enticing and that gel nicely with the design and coloration of your texts. On every occasion you select a motion historical past, ensure that it suits the white texts which you have used for your content; this can enhance visibility.

3. Well suited with all kinds of devices

Your audiences would possibly view your internet site on various gadgets like smartphones, computer systems, laptops, tablets, iPads, and many others. it’s miles crucial to hold this in mind and pick a history that looks desirable and appealing in all of the devices. The scale of the device ought to not create an unsightly experience for the visitors after they test your website online. This way, you can improve your visibility. A few designs look outstanding on a huge PC display screen. However, while you view the same for your phone, it appears claustrophobic and takes the eye away from your content material. test the layout of all devices to make sure that they look appealing.

4. Hues

pick Colorations that match with the font fashion of your content material. As an example, When you have chosen white as your textual content shade, choose a dark movement heritage, so that your texts are highlighted well. There may be no tough and rapid rule with regards to choosing Hues in your shifting backgrounds; the most effective factor that you need to endure in mind is to check whether or not the colors do justice to your content material and layout. In the case of Splatoon, analog sticks are nonetheless relied upon for motion, so ability with conventional enter methods continue to be beneficial. It is the proper analog stick that does not regularly see use in aggressive circles.

“Even at most sensitivity, a popular participant can most effective push the proper stick to date in either course,” said aggressive Splatoon player OctoPops. “The digital camera will best pass as speedy as the placing of that sensitivity.” In comparison, mouse aiming presents immediately get right of entry to any vicinity in a 360 diploma outer edge, main to brilliant reflex highlights. motion controls find a glad medium Right here.

At the same time as There is a getting to know curve when adapting to Splatoon’s movement manage scheme, most gamers end up selecting them over dual joysticks. In the maximum level tournaments, movement aiming is considered default.

The gaming coin has undergone many modifications over the many years. Formerly the digital cash has been only a shape of variety gained as factors at the success completion of each gaming level. With the passage of time and technological improvements, the coins have turned out as one of the crucial methods of gaming accessory which happens in exchange of actual world money.

What Brings on the trade?

To apprehend the impact the cash has controlled to introduce by using influencing the game enthusiasts, one possible rationalization is the manner the gaming consoles have modified and that is in which gamers bask in playing video games that are as an alternative the direct emulation of the encircling actual world. The excessive-end pics gives the look and sense of the video games together with fuelling the want to accumulate.

The obtaining in terms of gaming takes place to take area extra in sports activities-centric video games. To buy MUT coins may be one instance that triggers of gaming sports along with the transfer of players between groups, buying clothing and add-ons for the team’s games and so on. The net gaming cash is available for game enthusiasts with their actual world money which includes debit or credit playing cards.

The Dealers:

The coin Sellers are extra in preference by means of game enthusiasts if they take place to inventory up cash of each viable denomination below one roof. The coin Sellers that has managed to build great fame on the subject of the selling of gaming coins is already in the commercial enterprise for multiple years now. these Sellers when they commenced used to serve to an unmarried person based totally market. Afterward, the Dealers passed off to grow and elevated, stocking up coins to lure customers in settling for and buying MUT cash at the side of each different feasible gaming coin from coin developers. The shops or Dealers accordingly incomes the name of being a one stop store.

The shops have already earned repute until the date of serving customers in extra of lots. The reason of A few shops being best over others by customers is;

• low-cost and the very first-class viable costs of cash. Sellers additionally take up the venture of making the cash to be had at inexpensive charges in strains to that in their competitors if discovered.

• The fast processing of orders that too as orders stuffed within five-60 minutes.

• The dependable method of transport. every order meets the clients by very a great deal adhering to the enterprise’s coverage of transport.

Such measures have helped the organizations develop a regular consumer base.

Rajib Saha is a creator of fame and has to date penned many articles at the converting gaming industry and the gamer’s desires like To shop for MUT coins. these articles have managed to earn rave evaluations in the main generation and electronic journals. A competitive advantage may want to actually be defined as the advantage or capacity a firm has over its rivals Within the industry, or the ability a company has to outperform its enterprise opponents.

A company is said to have an aggressive advantage when it has the skills or means to push out its competitors in striving for the favor of clients. This is applicable across the world or locally in addition to each service and products.thus, a sustainable competitive advantage is an endurance the company applies regardless of efforts by way of competition or ability entrants to replicate or overtake it. Sustainability Consequently, requires that strategic assets aren’t effortlessly to be had to others and imperfectly cell. this can be taken into consideration later.

Porter (1990) states that, even though no longer all countries are Within the vanguard of opposition, the house country which shapes the aggressive gain is the starting point for a company’s aggressive benefit and also from which it ought to be sustained. But, in some thing subject of an undertaking, competitive gain introduction need to be a desire of control and it needs to without a doubt fit to gain effects. It should be cited Right here that aggressive advantage can commonly be traced to One among three roots:

Advanced resources, Advanced capabilities, and Superior positions.

the aggressive strategy is one of the ways in which an enterprise pertains to its surroundings with the aid of competing with other firms who also are looking to adapt inside the operating environment. it’s far with this thing- the aggressive method which if appropriately chosen and applied accurately supply the firm an aggressive gain over its rivals.

It ought to be stated Right here that the prescriptive view of strategic planning emphasizes the significance of the organizational surroundings as a source of threats and possibilities and the need for powerful responses by the employer if survival becomes to be assured and the fulfillment carried out. The reaction is later formulated into plan which formulates essential selections approximately entry into new markets or improvement of recent products and services guided by way of set goals. under the influence of Porter’s writings Within the 1980s the emphasis shifted from the plan to the choice of the suitable established strategy to put the enterprise unit in its aggressive environment. Porter, arguing that the surroundings poses threats and brings possibilities than with traits and occasions, cautioned that the environment can be analyzed using the 5 forces evaluation to discover the problems which affect the level of competition in an industry; after which a approach is formulated to combat it.

The ensuing method, which he called commonplace, prominent Some strategic options the company can own:

Fee leadership: the business may want to function itself as presenting a low Price product as a standard fee i.E. Cost leadership method. Prices are reduced at each element of the feed chain. Producers can take advantage of the advantages of a larger margin than the competitors. Toyota is a great example of a company that produces pleasant automobiles at low price coupled with an emblem and marketing abilities to apply a top rate pricing policy.

It is able to provide a product that became exceptional from that offered via opponents. I.E. Differentiation. This allows businesses to make fees less sensitive and consciousness on fee that generates a relatively higher rate and a better margin. Even though additional Costs can be incurred pursuing differentiation, it’s miles viable that this could be offset with the aid of the improved sales generated by means of the sales.

by means of focusing on a small however nicely-described a part of the marketplace, as an instance a particular shopping for institution or product area or geographical area. also called area of interest, that is normally appropriate for a small company i.E. awareness method.

prevalent competitive approach, usually used after competitive evaluation or as a reaction to competitors benefit, is defined as the idea on which a strategic enterprise unit (SBU) would possibly acquire or counter competitive gain in its market. (Johnson and Scholes, 5th Edition.)

Constructing on Porter’s (1980) prevalent aggressive strategies, Bowman et al argues that agencies attain competitive advantage via supplying their clients with what they want, or want higher or more effectively than competition and making it difficult for competition to imitate. This become later evolved into 5 time-honored techniques which might be used in this discussion. as a consequence, the everyday competitive techniques are the essential activities on which an SBU seeks to achieve a long-lasting nice function in its environment and gaining the want of stakeholders by using meeting the expectations of shoppers, users or other stakeholders

The following are Bowman’s five-accepted aggressive approach options and examples of organizations who implemented them to advantage aggressive advantage: no frills approach, low fee strategy, hybrid strategy, focused differentiation method and delivered value or differentiation approach.

In quick, a no-frills method combines a low price, low perceived introduced price and objectives a charge-sensitive market. No frills approach is now a famous approach with low-cos airways Easy Jet and Ryanair in search of to go into the airline enterprise to compete with likes of Virgin and is a determinant Within the market. This, Consequently, gives the company the wanted aggressive side over its competitors who charge the higher price. This approach is an achievement due to the fact there should in all likelihood be a segment of the market that overlooks the low high-quality of the commodity supplied it fulfills the equal motive.

To achieve the competitive gain the usage of no fills method revenues ought to growth and the product should truly be rate-touchy. Smooth Jet frills approach appears to be taking place well because of the Price financial savings strategies they’re the usage of. as an example no ticketing, no price ticket agents, no in-flight food or drink for customers as well as the quick-haul flight. Now, almost all supermarkets Within the Uk use no frills approach with the aid of introducing very own brands the rate of that have been reduced to draw customers in an effort to benefit a competitive benefit.

The following accepted approach is the low charge method. This strategy pursues a decrease price than pertains In the market while trying to keep the comparable price of product or service as those provided by means of competitor alike. There is the capability of charge conflict amongst competitors and ultimately customers are probable to lose as the companies may not be able to preserve the decrease-charge-accurate-cost method. However the price battle and coffee margins, there are Some cautioned methods wherein a 56eab742a58e3778cd3080d979724cd6 strategy can result in a firm’s aggressive gain. The marketplace section must be low-price touchy, and also the SBU has a Fee benefit over its competition.

But, in practice, the lower charge approach typically delivered approximately with the aid of reducing operational Cost alone does not supply the company the aggressive benefit if the firm isn’t always capable of preserve it Inside the lengthy-term as there at the moment are greater companies getting into the marketplace because of low or no entry barriers like small capital necessities and additionally how efficient the workforce is probably.

The hybrid competitive approach seeks to achieve differentiation and a fee lower than that of competitors simultaneously. This is not a Smooth strategy to pursue because to differentiate a services or products entails A few money and will increase Value the very aspect the low charge seeks to reduce. This approach is the match for the DIY enterprise because the likes of Robert Dyas aren’t able to stand the competition. The success of this is depending on presenting unique greater green services or products to clients at the same time as at the equal time working at a decrease Fee with the intention to lower its rate to the enterprise level. The achievement of this approach ought to similarly be more suitable if the firm has economies of scale and might boom volume of sales extra than its competitors, thereby, lowering its base Cost as a result. Asda’s George brand is an example of a universal hybrid method in an SBU.

Any other strategy is differentiation approach. This seeks to provide products or services absolutely distinctive from the ones of its competitors by means of adding features valued by using customers. the main goal of using this is to both hold the marketplace proportion or increase market proportion relative to its competition. A clear example of this is aircraft producer Airbus’s wider fuselages, cockpits designed for use in more than one plane and electric rather than mechanical flight controls.

those capabilities have helped Airbus win clients like The big apple-based totally Jet blue; even though Jet Blue is staffed with former employees from Boeing. (Fortune, Europe Edition 22 November 17th 2003; pp34) This approach may be used to gain a competitive gain which is its last goal with the aid of the company investing extra in R&D, unique designs and capabilities. The advertising-based tactics in terms of right advertising and marketing verbal exchange (instance advertising and marketing the products or services) as well as the brand electricity to win the loyalty of consumers. (example Airbus)

The fifth generic aggressive method is the centered differentiation method which seeks to provide high perceived value; justifying a considerable charge top class generally to a selected market, section. It is also adopted to counter or to compete others in apparently similar phase. This can Therefore be argued that focused differentiation is just an extension of any of the 4 techniques so far taken into consideration depending on the competition on this new segment that’s typically center to excessive earnings earners. A powerful instance is the advent of Lexus in 1989 with the aid of Toyota to compete with other luxurious brands of BMW and Mercedes-Benz new series.

For the focused differentiation strategy to be used to obtain a competitive benefit over competitors Inside the enterprise, the commercial enterprise unit ought to locate ways to make the production greater efficient with a purpose to pass the financial savings to clients. The commercial enterprise unit must discover new segments and should also be organized to aggressively create new marketplace phase in which it’s miles believed first movers get a big benefit. Again Toyota prides itself on this via being the first to introduce a brand, scion, in particular for young customers in January 2003 which changed into an achievement and the introduction of hybrids in 1997 selling 127,000 a long way extra than Honda.( Hybrid makes use of engines and is environmentally friendly.) (Fortune, Europe Version, range 24 December 22, 003; pp57).

The essence of the diverse strategies discussed so far is to create or add value to the goods or offerings with the intention to deliver advanced and or sufficient delight to the patron so that the company will gain a aggressive gain over its opponents. But, it’s far one component for a company to benefit a aggressive benefit and Another to preserve the aggressive advantage so gained. So whilst a company is capable of get a aggressive benefit over its competition, it will become expedient to attempt to maintain this advantage.

Some of the methods to maintain the aggressive gain are by means of what is described as keeping apart mechanism. this is the utility of forces like obstacles of imitation which restriction the extent to which an aggressive benefit can be duplicated or matched or even in all likelihood scrapped via the resource advent sports of different companies. even though comparable in the precept to the barrier of entry pressure, while the access barriers shield profitability of a whole enterprise, keeping apart mechanisms preserve the competitive benefit of an unmarried firm. As an instance criminal limitations like emblems, patents or highbrow belongings rights as in Microsoft’s case.

It may also be for the mere truth that the leading firm makes it tough for the competitor to catch up with the firm’s era as it entered the marketplace in advance and it maintains to analyze and might be capable of the move to a Superior position by the point its competition catch up. this is referred to as the early mover gain. because the business unit has entered the market earlier, the past fulfillment Within the marketplace is believed to preserve the company.

Despite the fact that, no matter how discrete the method adopted to gain the sustainable competitive advantage or sufficient satisfaction that the consumer may get in addition to the mechanisms put in area to preserve the competitive side, Simple economics has proved that guy’s desires are insatiable and with the records generation age, There’s a stepped forward dynamism in business that products and services can turn out to be obsolete before they even attain The following user.

The question is can the company hold to create extra financial price than its competition now than then?

Now with the advent of records systems and technology, this conventional manner of competitive advantage or competitive side has, Consequently, taken an exceptional turn. information amassing and that I suggest a competitive statistics accumulating in deed can to A few big quantity make a distinction to a firm’s function in an enterprise and for that remember to have an effect on its aggressive benefit one way or the alternative.

An awesome and latest example is Asda installing radio frequency identity (RFID) system, a tool which might be used to experiment bar codes of incoming goods that can keep Asda $8.35 billion yearly thru improvement in its deliver chain management. Fortune, Wal-Mart continues the change, November 10,2003pp 23.

companies can both use their own database or an informational collecting software to tune its operations and get the specified information like inventory, clients, and trends of competitors’ performance and about The fast transferring products to formulate their techniques or shape what is known as facts partnerships for the purpose of sharing statistics to benefit aggressive or strategic gain; and even link their structures with Some competition to reap synergies.

that is turning into vital due to the truth that opposition Inside the commercial enterprise world these days isn’t only inside a selected enterprise one operates however can also be pass-opposition with humans in different associated industry like universities and publishers competing due to ahead and backward integrations. Baxter Healthcare International is understood to offer medical materials from its competitors and workplace supplies via its digital ordering channel to its customers. by using doing this the firm increases its client base in addition to loyalty of its clients is more desirable.

At this juncture, the announcement that “There may be no such aspect as a sustainable competitive gain” can be taken into consideration with regards to the occasions that took place in Sears, which was U.S.A.’s largest retailer until Wal-mart overtook it after a diversification method went bust in spite of the reality that it (Sears) has been closely automatic with extra expenditure going into information generation and networking than all other non-laptop companies Inside the USA aside from Boeing. So why could not this massive amount spent in computer systems and networking been able to provide them the aggressive edge over its rivals? Is it because of the reality that the hardware on my own isn’t enough to provide the facts needed unless it’s far integrated with the correct software program? Sears did exactly that.

seeking to reinvent itself, Sears commenced to discover nearly all techniques inclusive of low pricing method, delayering, stepped forward advertising ploys as well as embarking on a $4billion five-year save maintenance to make the shops more attractive. All to no avail.

Then Sears noticed that, its merchandise consumers do now not have Reliable statistics on precisely what clients were shopping for at every shop. control turned into counting on 18 separate systems that frequently gave conflicting and redundant pricing statistics. They may only view a department’s daily performance. This was now not right for a firm of Sears’s stature. Sears later tightened its grips over the commercial enterprise once more by means of Constructing a larger database related to the consolidation of information on transaction facts, to ninety million families,31million Sears’ card customers, their credit score repute, and different related information.

The database houses the business enterprise’s Strategic overall performance Reporting machine (SPRS).Now Sears’ 1,000 consumers and managers realize what warm-promoting products to replenish right away. This aggressive data amassing to a degree helped flip around Sears. It’s save income commenced growing and planned to enroll in partnership with AOL to reinforce its online commercial enterprise by means of focused on AOL’s 21 million clients via growing content for AOL on topics such as the way to build a deck, suggestions on home decorating and other domestic development subjects; and also flow its suppliers to an digital ordering gadget just like that defined for Baxter Healthcare, by linking its automated ordering gadget at once to that of every dealer to take away office work absolutely for an advanced go with the flow of goods into its stores.

As Previously mentioned, if a firm can preserve or keep its lead on growing value, leveraging strategic belongings As an instance get right of entry efficient distribution channels, preserve marketplace function and may be low Cost gain then it can be stated to have a sustainable competitive advantage. that is certainly now not viable in this dynamic enterprise global. The most hard a part of this is that the firm should create greater financial value than its competition every now and then. Will its competitors be searching on with out doing something?

Microsoft As an instance is spending billions of dollars to broaden its own seek engine that will be incorporated in both its online service MSN and its new running system due in 2006 to fight Google’s dominance In the seek engine enterprise. (Fortune, 22 December 2003pp 17).

In my personal opinion based on the discussions above, if absolutely sustainable competitive benefit is the persistence of a company’s capability to outperform its enterprise, then suffice it to mention that, as a great deal as amassing and use of aggressive information as illustrated Within the Sears’ story above can give a firm a (sustainable) aggressive advantage, it’s miles clearly tough if no longer not possible to preserve any competitive advantage for a very long term. that is so because of the price of technological adjustments, changes in enterprise strategies, and the truth that customers’ loyalty can wane and have an effect on income leading to a fall in marketplace percentage and therefore competitive benefit. Boeing become overtaken by way of Airbus In the aviation enterprise at a while. Sears’ management became taken away by Wal-mart.

notwithstanding the supply of choice of the five general techniques, it is meant that the onus of their achievement rests with control and the way the era and the data accumulated are combined to be used. that is so due to the fact a careful tracking and evaluation continuously and the proper identification and proper timing of a specific segment are keys to the success of these strategies due to market dynamism

While I was more youthful… I [didn’t] need to be pigeonholed… Basically, now you need to be pigeonedholed. It is your area of interest. – Joan Chen, actress

A business strategy represents the game plan that your organisation will use to run its enterprise, advantage market proportion, and behavior operations. This course of action determines how the organisation enchantment to and fulfill clients, compete correctly, and achieve managerial objectives. Developing a strategy need to mean there may be a managerial willpower to comply with a particular organization of actions so as to strengthen the enterprise’s monetary marketplace performance and growth its bottom-line.

How will management grow the enterprise even as building a devoted purchaser base and out competing competitors becomes the perspective for each short-term and lengthy-term goals. On the way to boost performance and prevail, each useful piece of the commercial enterprise (research and development, deliver chain activities, production, sales and advertising, distribution, finance, and human assets) must be unified in operation. Simply, management’s desire of approach have to be guided through the challenge assertion and the imaginative and prescient of the organization. The strategic choice made for the business enterprise and with the aid of the managers speaks loudly… “Surrounded via the infinite precise enterprise strategies and ways of competing we would have decided on, we have determined to apply this specific aggregate of aggressive and running approaches in using the organisation within the deliberate direction, growing its marketplace role and competitiveness, and advancing execution.” Hardly ever are those conclusions regarding approach clear-cut and painless for any employer, and a number of the conclusions may additionally become wrong – but that isn’t a justification for now not you decide on a particular path of action.

Whilst Developing a business strategy, your company’s gift situation must be considered. Managers ought to be driven to assess the business surroundings for the specific enterprise and the aggressive forces, the company’s recent performance and marketplace fame, its robust points and skills, and its aggressive susceptible points. Relying on the desires and the imaginative and prescient of the organisation, managers are compelled to set a clear route for course. By no means it this route absolute. Placing foot on this path of action requires the company approach to evolve over time with each proactive and reactive activity. Developing the corporation method is in a cinch intended to guide the business enterprise inside the planned course whilst growing the enterprise, and enhancing economic and market overall performance. For this reason perfecting the organisation’s imaginative and prescient and empowering the agency’s assignment statement.

This article describes the 5 basic aggressive approach alternatives – which of the 5 to make use of is an vital and fundamental desire for any agency. In Developing this universal method, your organization is beginning its pursuit for a aggressive advantage. The primary differences among competitive strategies comes down to (1) whether or not your company units aim on a marketplace target that is wide or slim, and (2) whether or not your corporation is pursuing a competitive benefit connected to low-cost or product differentiation.

The five awesome competitive strategy approaches that stand out are beneath:

The five Normal competitive techniques

1. A low-cost provider strategy – striving to achieve lower standard costs than opponents and appealing to a large spectrum of clients, typically with the aid of underneath pricing competitors.

2. A wide differentiation method – looking for to distinguish the agency’s product imparting from competitors’ in methods so as to enchantment to a broad spectrum of consumers.

three. A nice-price provider approach – giving customers greater fee for their money by incorporating true-to-excellent product attributes at a lower fee than rivals; the goal is to have the lowest (best) expenses and prices compared to competitors providing merchandise with similar attributes.

4. A centered (or market niche) approach based on low expenses – concentrating on a slender client section and out competing competitors by means of having lower charges than opponents and Accordingly being able to serve niche members at a lower fee.

five. A targeted (or marketplace area of interest) strategy primarily based on differentiation – focusing on a slender customer segment and out competing opponents through providing niche contributors customized attributes that meet their tastes and necessities better than competitors’ products.

every of these 5 Standard aggressive processes stakes out a distinct market function. The choice on which Popular method to hire is conceivably the maximum vital strategic commitment in your organisation. This commitment will pressure the relaxation of the strategic actions that your agency has the same opinion to and it sets the entire tone on your quest of a competitive gain over competitors at the same time as “Growing Your Very own Lane” in business achievement.

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