Believe what you like, but you have obviously never worked for an Australian bank. I wouldn't be surprised if they said that they lost the punch cards. F*cktards, the lot of them.
Wow.. What complete and utter rubbish your post is. Are you seriously suggesting that we pay countries not to piss us off so we start a war with them?
Actually, your Government does that already. Unfortunately, it's not very good at it, and the outcome is usually the opposite.
Of course, it's an absurdity to say that you pay a 'country'. A country is an intellectual construct, people who treat it as a thing are usually poor thinkers. No, you pay people, not countries, and those people may be the current government, if they are willing to do your country's bidding, or the soon-to-be-government-but-currently-terrorists-and-murderers in which case its more a case of supplying arms and intel.
Yes, we were giving Afghanistan money before we invaded it.
There you go again, confusing an intellectual construct with actual people. The USG has given money to many people in Afghanistan. First, they gave money to the Taliban so they could win the cold war for you, then they didn't like the Taliban any more so they gave money to the Northern Alliance, then they realized that there was no practical way to form a government without the support of the Pashtun majority, so they resumed aid to the Taliban, but not the bad Taliban, only the good Taliban, who are no longer called the Taliban because the Taliban are now bad/terrorists/Al Qaeda/something. Strange how the people who bomb civilians are the good guys, and the ones fighting them are the terrorists. It's a mad mad world. But I digress.
Yea, there is no such thing as free health care, Not to society, but there is for the individual.
no such thing as un-winnable wars, That depends on your definition of 'winning'. But if you were to nuke Iraq and Afghanistan until there was not one person left alive, I guess you could call that a 'win'. Might make it hard to get the oil from Iraq though.
and no such thing as saving money while spending it on science and RnD You have no idea what you are talking about. RnD into resource efficiency usually has a 9 month payback period, after which it is all savings. Maybe this is why your country is in so much trouble right now.
My laptop fan doesn't even come on under load running linux, but under Windows, it runs even at idle.
Turn off fast indexing service. In fact you should turn off most MS services, most of them are useless, consume idle CPU cycles and are probably attack vectors as well.
It never fails to give my inner 12-year old the giggles to contemplate that Kamikaze is commonly translated as " divine wind "
Probably incorrectly. "Kami" is better translated as 'gods' or 'spirits' and kaze is wind. The word Kamikaze comes from the storm that destroyed the invading Mongol fleet and saved Japan from the same fate suffered by China and Russia (i.e. Mongol government).
A more literal translation (in context) would be Wind of the Gods or Wind Sent by the Gods.
All debate/discussion/disagreement about drugs is pointless unless you use the scientific definition of a drug i.e. any substance that passes the blood-brain barrier. Without that definition, all discussion on drugs is useless. It should also be noted that the body itself produces a variety of drugs (that meet the scientific definition above) that we are most definitely 'addicted' to, such as melatonin, seratonin, adrenaline and endorphins, just to name a few. In fact, addiction to drugs produced by the body is how the DNA motivates the organism to survive and reproduce. In other words, addiction is both completely natural, and present in all humans (and most likely all mammals, and quite possibly all animals). So actually, the sound logic is to say that 100% of the population is addicted to drugs,
As an aside I have also heard that this Mayan 2012 prediction is all buffoonery. They Mayans thought their the world would end just like we think the world ends after December. It was their calender for keeping track of time. I think it was implied that you just restart the calender once the cycle is over. Perhaps it is so implisit that they didn't feel the need to explain this just the same we don't put a sticker on every calender we ever make that says "Not to worry, world not ending, new calender next year!"
Actually, the Mayans believed in a ~25,000 year cycle, divided into 5 epochs of ~5000 years. The current Mayan epoch ends in December 2012. Given that Mayan civilisation effectively collapsed in the 1600s, they were probably waiting until it got closer to the date to draw up a new calendar for the new epoch closer to the end of the current one.
It should be said though, that the Mayans believed that the next epoch would be *very* different to the current one. The basis for this assertion is as yet undetermined, but to the previous poster who ridiculed Mayan civilisation, the Mayans were very capable astronomers and mathematicians. One only needs to look at the engineering of Mayan temples, aligned perfectly to either solar events or astronomical bodies to know that they were no amateurs.
Have a look for 2012: Science or Superstition. It's about 90 minutes long, contains about 8 minutes of science, and 82 minutes of superstition, but the 8 minutes of science is very interesting, and much more worthwhile of debate than skygodders who panic after seeing a movie.
Fear is the basis for your society. It's how the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful. If there is some collateral damage, then that will just be accepted as a necessary condition to maintain the status quo (and the Empire that pays for the status quo).
I think it's rather amusing to point and laugh at people who are afraid of a mythical planet crashing into them when so many in your population believe that the son of a mythical sky god is coming down to Earth to raise up the faithful at the 'end of days'.
Power, control, the matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
So the thing to wonder about is not how do they do it without the red tape, but how do they do it despite of mountains of it.
It's a good question, and I believe the answer lies in the 'common good' argument. If some project can be framed as 'good for Japan', then it will get a lot of traction once the majority agree that it is. Japanese society is basically feudal, but can also be nationalistic given the right incentives.
I think as soon as South Korea entered the bandwidth arms race, it was a matter of national pride for the Japanese to have faster internet access. I'm sure that their telephone still costs $600 per month though....
It's obvious you haven't played it. Nexuiz physics and gameplay are very different from previous FPS, and I've played most of them.
I know the eye candy looks a little dated, but that has everything to do with not having an art department, and nothing to do with whether the developers have created something truly new.
And believe me, they have. There are still some glitches in the game, but overall, it plays like no other FPS.
Still, the MTV generation do love the graphics, even if the game play sucks.
My only complaint with Nexuiz is that they completely change the weapon characteristics with every major release to further bias the game to their love affair with hit-scan weapons.
I would have though light reflected up from the ground would be non-negligible.
I believe it is smaller than ambient light for a couple of reasons.
(1) Unpainted concrete is not that reflective. (2) Tar roads are black, and tend not to reflect light much.
The real problem is three fold; ambient light, water vapour and particulate. We can't do much about the water vapour (as the majority of the world's population live near the coast), particulate can be reduced significantly as the California experience shows, and that just leaves ambient light.
I spent some time in San Bernadino, and when the Santa Anna was blowing it became very dry and smog free, and you could see a LOT of stars from the backyard despite the enormous amount of ambient light from streetlights etc. So it is all well and good to produce less light (and save the whales... er I mean... planet at the same time), but mist, dust and pollutants play a much bigger part.
Should we have laws that put limits on the moral content of our culture?
First you insist that we are not animals, and now you want to legislate your belief. We humans are as sexual as any other mammal reaching the age of conception.
By denying our NATURAL desires, we create UNNATURAL ones. We also create wealth, technology and art through this repression, and so any demonisation of the results of our repression is really just feigned horror, because we like the ends to much to put an end to the means.
When I see the human scum that are the product of lax Western culture, it's no mystery why Islamists see us as the incarnation of evil.
Quite frankly, who gives a shit how the Islamists see us. Radical Islam was born from cold war realpolitik, not a values clash. Save the stupid lie about clash of civilisations for the stupid people please.
So funny.... uh you don't need any scrubbing software, just copy the content of your Word Document, then paste it into a new blank document. That will leave behind any 'history' of the document.
There's no such thing as a "natural" monopoly. The term is nothing but propaganda used by mercantilists to justify government prohibition of competition.
Sorry, but I disagree. There are a very small number "natural" monopolies, and as far as I know they all centre around geography.
Geographic restraints form natural barriers to entry. For example, it is presently more expensive to build an elevated road than to build one that sits on the ground, hence there tends to be a natural monopoly in roads, and because of this restriction, our society has decided to pool our resources (taxes) so that the Government builds the majority of roads, thus preventing a single corporate entity from taking advantage of a very important resource.
Other "natural" monopolies or oligopolies are also based on geography, such as minibuses in Hong Kong, gas pipes in the ground, electricity and telecommunications, in which it is expensive to build the infrastructure, and the profit margin is such that only one company can survive. There are solutions to these monopolies, but not market solutions.
Consumer CPUs on the other hand are NOT a natural monopoly, but the business has VERY high barriers to entry. Current optics equipment required for 70nm lithography results in the setup cost of a new fabricating plant at just under 1 billion dollars, not to mention the RnD costs of developing the chip itself. No one wants to take this kind of risk to invest in a company who would then compete with 2 ferocious, well established incumbents.
To break this kind of monopoly/oligopoly, once would need to develop a completely different way to fabricate fast CPUs without lithography, or alternatively, develop a way to manufacture precision optics much more cheaply. Personally I believe that this is an inevitability. So for now the CPU business is a temporary natural monopoly, defined by the high barrier to entry (cost of the fabrication facilities and product development).
Eventually, if the need is great enough, even geography and cost can be overcome, and so all 'natural monopolies' come with a temporal restriction. i.e. they wont be monopolies for time eternal, but they ARE natural monopolies right NOW.
The real problem here is that people become disenfranchised because they don't involve.
That is NOT the reason people become disenfranchised. Look, most people just aren't that interested in what other people want to do with their lives, and that is a Good Thing(tm). Just as long as you don't involve me, you can smoke slug vomit for all I care.
This idea that we need to stop OTHER people from doing something that is bad for them is something I never quite understood. I'm sure it makes perfect sense to the busybodies, anal retentives and other assorted fascists and assholes that make these rules on the behalf of the majority, it just doesn't make any sense to me.
However, most people have enough complications in their life without adding a different drug to the mix, so they go along with whatever the uptight PTB say to minimise any disruption to their daily life of eating, drinking and watching porn.
After all why should I care about you because all you do is complain, whine, etc.
You shouldn't. Can't we just get over the SkyGod bedtime story where some super duper man in the sky is looking down and giving a shit what we do with our time? Or is it too ingrained from too early an age?
When you say people don't have a political clue, I would argue what you are saying is that people don't have a clue because they don't agree with you.
No people don't have a political clue because to be otherwise would require expending mental effort that could go into betting at the track or finding the cheapest case of beer. Really, most people just live their own lives without thinking too much and when asked for their opinion, tend to regurgitate whatever they heard on TV. It's just easier that way.
Well guess what this is a democracy (representative in most) and if you don't make yourself heard then it is your FAULT, not the politicians, nor the "clueless" voters who do vote and make themselves heard.
The Pro-Marijuana lobby DO make themselves heard, it's just that the ANTI-Marijuana lobby are a lot richer, better connected and ruthless in shouting over the top. THAT is democracy. Whoever has the resources to shout the longest, loudest and tell the silliest and most irrational lies is the one who sets the political agenda.
By modelling insects. They co-ordinate very large numbers towards a single macro goal (i.e. building a mound, collecting food etc). We know quite a lot about how they do this, but more research is needed into how they control timing amongst other things.
what it mainly will do is give the illusion that Australia's children are being protected from the Big Bad 'Ol Intarwebs
That's the political reason. The real reason is so assholes like Packer and the State/Federal governments can return to the good 'ol days when they controlled all of the information that made it to Australians.
Just another astonishingly stupid idea from the Baby Boomer generation. Why don't they just fuck off already?
That is because you are looking at the MacBook Pro, which is $1000 more than the plain ol' MacBook, just so masturbators can say the word 'pro' when they mention their computer.
I recently purchased a MacBook Core Duo 2.4Ghz, with 4GB upgrade, plus VMWare Fusion (which turned out to be a piece of shit), for AUD$2200, after having purchased PC notebooks and laptops for the past 10 years. The closest spec PC laptop I could find was ~$2900, so it was a no-brainer really.
I got a 22inch LG LCD monitor, plugged it straight into the DVI port of the MacBook, and I now have Mac OS X, Ubuntu and Windows XP running, at the same time!
Seriously, unless you use your laptop for games, get a MacBook and forget the 'pro'. Buy a large external monitor and parallels, and you are sweet. Trust me.
Care to make any suggestions for a $50k/20 hours a week job?
I'm going to assume that you are talking about IT, given the article is about IT, although Slashdot discussions tend to digress fairly quickly.
So in IT there are basically two types of work. Sexy, exciting, greenfield development with new technologies and new ideas, and production support. Production support is just something that most IT people don't want to do, because it is boring thankless work. However, it is absolutely vital to keep certain systems running, and if you are the only person that can do it, then you have leverage to change your hours to suit you, without lowering the quality of the support you provide.
The way you approach it is like this.
First, work enthusiastically towards solving every production issue that comes up. Spend all of your time reading *any* available documentation on the system, even if you don't understand it all, you need to get a good overview of the system.
Second, as you get better at supporting the system, your colleagues will go and find something more interesting to do, or move to a job that pays more for their experience. This is the trap that you don't want to fall into, as you want to use your experience to get better hours, not better pay.
Third, once you are indispensible to the smooth running of the production system, you need to get remote access and a company approved laptop. This is a vital pre-requisite for moving to your new arrangement, as it will feel like a safety net to your employer knowing that you can log in, even on your day off if there is an absolute emergency. Getting remote access is by no means easy as some companies, so it will require some negotiation, you may even need to imply that you are looking for more enlightened companies that offer it, but a lot will depend on how good a job you did in step 2 above.
Fourth, now that you have remote access, you need to solve one production issue from home. This may be a matter of doing it one evening when you get home. I know this sounds like you are adding more hours to your working life, but keep in mind you only need to do this once (or sometimes twice) for you to have a convincing argument that you are able to do your job remotely without having to be in the office.
Fifth, now that you have remote access, and convincing proof that you don't need to be in the office to solve production issues, you need to start looking for an opportunity to bring up changing your hours with your manager. The absolutely vital thing in this process is to explore every avenue of negotiation with your manager before you tell him/her that your situation at home has changed, and if you can't change your hours (without a change in pay), then you will be unable to work there any longer. If, having explored every avenue, your manager/company still refuses to accomodate you, then you will need to leave, because you never want to work for people who are assholes for the sake of being assholes.
More likely though is that you will find it quite easy to get the change in hours that you need. Some people like to shorten their day so they can pick up their children from school. This is often easy to negotiate, because managers often prefer that you are in 5 days a week. Alternatively, you may want a 3 day week, with 2 days 'on call'. Be sure to define what constitutes a valid reason to call you on your day off when you are 'on call'. Make sure it is sev1 or sev2 production issues only.
The only final thing on this is whether you are willing to take a pay cut for your change in hours. I recommend not, but it may be the only way to get your company to come to the party, if you are willing to meet them 3/4 of the way.
The poor are there anyway, they will probably remain there. What's the argument against making them more comfortable at no real expense and an actual gain to us (injecting the money back into the economy, helping the lower rank of neighborhood stores stay alive, improving public transportation and common services,...) as opposed to tax breaks that will not be as well invested and will put those neighborhood services into debt (loans to banks) rather than help them become more self-sufficient (sales)?
Because by doing that they will become even poorer. I'm sorry if my original point wasn't clear. What you suggest (a handout) is part of the process of people becoming poor. Receiving free money (as compassionate as it may seem), creates problems for people that makes them even more uncomfortable.In order for someone to receive any benefit from a reward, there must be some kind of effort towards it. Think of the cosmonaut's on MIR. Without artificial stress, their bone density decreases in the absence of gravity. The body doesn't put in effort or resources if none are required.
Honestly I think the reason for this is that the completely illogical fact that the concept of giving something to the poor just pisses some people off. No reason to be pissed, a homeless person didn't kill their dad or anything. They'd rather see rich people (or better yet, a corporation!) get charity any day regardless of how they use it.
I think they would rather see their corporation receive a handout, thus ensuring their continuing employment. This serves to weaken corporations in the same way as free money to the poor weakens the poor.
I think the idea that the Government has money is something that really needs to be addressed in the education system. The government doesn't have money. It doesn't make or sell anything. The government is a collective pool of money from all taxpayers that is supposed to be building things (roads, bridges, armies) that are beyond the resources of the individual.
It is the 'common wealth' as opposed to the 'private wealth'. The idea that we should use the 'common wealth' to give money to poor people (or rich corporations, or rich people) is the complete anti-thesis of what the commonwealth actually is. It is not beyond the resources of the individual (poor or rich) to improve their economic status. Really. Certainly in the United States you could benefit a great many poor people if the common wealth were to be used on repairing your crumbling infrastructure (particularly bridges), instead of maintaining the imperial army. Perhaps you should focus your efforts on that?
I've tried to figure this out for years now, to no avail. I'm seriously considering taking a class on economics but I don't really trust that anyone fully grasps what is going on...
Yes, this is a fascinating question, and the lack of an answer falls into the same category as why it's hard to collect taxes and the reason communism failed.
The fact of the matter is, human life is a series of transactions. We transact in our social interaction and economic interaction, and the outcome of each transaction is (unusually), non-deterministic. The non-deterministic outcome is a function of highly variant motivations of the individuals involved in the transactions.
This makes (macro) economics a science of things that happened once, but are unlikely to happen again, and consequently, most economic theory, postulates and opinion are total and complete nonsense.
But what of micro-economics? The problem here is one of computational processing power. i.e. there just isn't enough of it to track economic activity in real time.
The one thing I've figured out, it's easy for money to flow up to people who have it, and there it appears to be very bad for the economy (unless the rich person throws a lot of parties and hires caterers and hookers--at least that keeps the money moving). But it seems REALLY REALLY hard to get money to flow down to the lowest levels where it would most quickly be placed back into circulation and do the best for the economy.
Now this one we (our civilisation) does have an answer to. The fundamental mistake made in addressing this 'problem' is the common confusion between 'state' and 'process'.Confusing 'state' and 'process' is a common enough mistake in problem solving. In the case of the flow of money, unless one can move past this erroneous assumption, it is not possible to understand what is going on.
Being 'rich' or being 'poor' is commonly thought of as a 'state'. That is, a state of poverty or a state of wealth. Our language, our education and our culture encourage this idea for reasons unknown. But neither poverty or richness are states, they are processes.
They are a particular type of process known as a 'feedback loop'. That is, if you do certain things along a certain timeline, it will lead you to greater poverty or greater wealth, and the poverty or wealth encourages you to keep following the same process (i.e. doing the same things at the same time), which leads to greater poverty or wealth.
Those who are wealthy already understand this, but those who are poor often do not, and will refuse to change their behaviour in any case if the process is made apparent to them.
Both processes (for becoming poor or becoming wealthy) are immutable, inevitable and inviolable, so there is nothing you can really do about it except decide which of the processes you wish to follow. They also tend to be the reason why societies, civilisations and empires rise and fall, so you can see the inevitable coming decline of an empire from the level of helplessness in it's poorer citizens.
I realize that it's fashionable to poo-poo the US, but you're ignoring the source of the MSOXML problem--idiots pretending that bullshit third-world "countries" aren't bullshit. (Actually, this causes quite a lot of other problems, too.)
So Microsoft isn't a US company right? They must have started in bullshit Bolivia. Because no US company would corrupt third world governments with bribes and favours to vote their way.
Corruption always has two parties, the corrupter and the corrupted. You say the corrupted is the problem, I say the corrupter is the problem.
Jesus H Christ you are a fucking idiot. Your monumental ignorance of what has occurred in Iraq during the occupation is only exceeded by your blithering ineptitude at rational thought.
I would reply individually to each of your idiotic assertions, but I would be wasting my time. Why don't you grab another donut and watch another sitcom or fox news?
Slashdot Mirror
Do they honestly expect us to believe this shit?
Believe what you like, but you have obviously never worked for an Australian bank. I wouldn't be surprised if they said that they lost the punch cards. F*cktards, the lot of them.
Wow.. What complete and utter rubbish your post is. Are you seriously suggesting that we pay countries not to piss us off so we start a war with them?
Actually, your Government does that already. Unfortunately, it's not very good at it, and the outcome is usually the opposite.
Of course, it's an absurdity to say that you pay a 'country'. A country is an intellectual construct, people who treat it as a thing are usually poor thinkers. No, you pay people, not countries, and those people may be the current government, if they are willing to do your country's bidding, or the soon-to-be-government-but-currently-terrorists-and-murderers in which case its more a case of supplying arms and intel.
Yes, we were giving Afghanistan money before we invaded it.
There you go again, confusing an intellectual construct with actual people. The USG has given money to many people in Afghanistan. First, they gave money to the Taliban so they could win the cold war for you, then they didn't like the Taliban any more so they gave money to the Northern Alliance, then they realized that there was no practical way to form a government without the support of the Pashtun majority, so they resumed aid to the Taliban, but not the bad Taliban, only the good Taliban, who are no longer called the Taliban because the Taliban are now bad/terrorists/Al Qaeda/something. Strange how the people who bomb civilians are the good guys, and the ones fighting them are the terrorists. It's a mad mad world. But I digress.
Yea, there is no such thing as free health care,
Not to society, but there is for the individual.
no such thing as un-winnable wars,
That depends on your definition of 'winning'. But if you were to nuke Iraq and Afghanistan until there was not one person left alive, I guess you could call that a 'win'. Might make it hard to get the oil from Iraq though.
and no such thing as saving money while spending it on science and RnD
You have no idea what you are talking about. RnD into resource efficiency usually has a 9 month payback period, after which it is all savings. Maybe this is why your country is in so much trouble right now.
My laptop fan doesn't even come on under load running linux, but under Windows, it runs even at idle.
Turn off fast indexing service. In fact you should turn off most MS services, most of them are useless, consume idle CPU cycles and are probably attack vectors as well.
It never fails to give my inner 12-year old the giggles to contemplate that Kamikaze is commonly translated as " divine wind "
Probably incorrectly. "Kami" is better translated as 'gods' or 'spirits' and kaze is wind. The word Kamikaze comes from the storm that destroyed the invading Mongol fleet and saved Japan from the same fate suffered by China and Russia (i.e. Mongol government).
A more literal translation (in context) would be Wind of the Gods or Wind Sent by the Gods.
Seriously, that seems to have become worse here, if such a thing is possible.
Actually I have, and the general conclusion around the world (outside the US) is that CIA stands for CAN'T IDENTIFY ANYTHING.
All debate/discussion/disagreement about drugs is pointless unless you use the scientific definition of a drug i.e. any substance that passes the blood-brain barrier. Without that definition, all discussion on drugs is useless. It should also be noted that the body itself produces a variety of drugs (that meet the scientific definition above) that we are most definitely 'addicted' to, such as melatonin, seratonin, adrenaline and endorphins, just to name a few.
In fact, addiction to drugs produced by the body is how the DNA motivates the organism to survive and reproduce. In other words, addiction is both completely natural, and present in all humans (and most likely all mammals, and quite possibly all animals).
So actually, the sound logic is to say that 100% of the population is addicted to drugs,
Actually, the Mayans believed in a ~25,000 year cycle, divided into 5 epochs of ~5000 years. The current Mayan epoch ends in December 2012. Given that Mayan civilisation effectively collapsed in the 1600s, they were probably waiting until it got closer to the date to draw up a new calendar for the new epoch closer to the end of the current one.
It should be said though, that the Mayans believed that the next epoch would be *very* different to the current one. The basis for this assertion is as yet undetermined, but to the previous poster who ridiculed Mayan civilisation, the Mayans were very capable astronomers and mathematicians. One only needs to look at the engineering of Mayan temples, aligned perfectly to either solar events or astronomical bodies to know that they were no amateurs.
Have a look for 2012: Science or Superstition. It's about 90 minutes long, contains about 8 minutes of science, and 82 minutes of superstition, but the 8 minutes of science is very interesting, and much more worthwhile of debate than skygodders who panic after seeing a movie.
Fear is the basis for your society. It's how the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful. If there is some collateral damage, then that will just be accepted as a necessary condition to maintain the status quo (and the Empire that pays for the status quo).
I think it's rather amusing to point and laugh at people who are afraid of a mythical planet crashing into them when so many in your population believe that the son of a mythical sky god is coming down to Earth to raise up the faithful at the 'end of days'.
Power, control, the matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Photosynthesis.They take in CO2, and give off O2, which we kind of need to breathe
Aahhhhhh ... the cycle of life.
Plants make the beer, we drink the beer, we burp and pee to help the plants make more beer.
If only we could live on beer. The world would be a happier (if cooler) place.
So the thing to wonder about is not how do they do it without the red tape, but how do they do it despite of mountains of it.
It's a good question, and I believe the answer lies in the 'common good' argument. If some project can be framed as 'good for Japan', then it will get a lot of traction once the majority agree that it is. Japanese society is basically feudal, but can also be nationalistic given the right incentives.
I think as soon as South Korea entered the bandwidth arms race, it was a matter of national pride for the Japanese to have faster internet access. I'm sure that their telephone still costs $600 per month though ....
a game that looks 10 years out of date.
It's obvious you haven't played it. Nexuiz physics and gameplay are very different from previous FPS, and I've played most of them.
I know the eye candy looks a little dated, but that has everything to do with not having an art department, and nothing to do with whether the developers have created something truly new.
And believe me, they have. There are still some glitches in the game, but overall, it plays like no other FPS.
Still, the MTV generation do love the graphics, even if the game play sucks.
My only complaint with Nexuiz is that they completely change the weapon characteristics with every major release to further bias the game to their love affair with hit-scan weapons.
Ah well.
I would have though light reflected up from the ground would be non-negligible.
I believe it is smaller than ambient light for a couple of reasons.
(1) Unpainted concrete is not that reflective.
(2) Tar roads are black, and tend not to reflect light much.
The real problem is three fold; ambient light, water vapour and particulate. We can't do much about the water vapour (as the majority of the world's population live near the coast), particulate can be reduced significantly as the California experience shows, and that just leaves ambient light.
I spent some time in San Bernadino, and when the Santa Anna was blowing it became very dry and smog free, and you could see a LOT of stars from the backyard despite the enormous amount of ambient light from streetlights etc. So it is all well and good to produce less light (and save the whales ... er I mean ... planet at the same time), but mist, dust and pollutants play a much bigger part.
Should we have laws that put limits on the moral content of our culture?
First you insist that we are not animals, and now you want to legislate your belief. We humans are as sexual as any other mammal reaching the age of conception.
By denying our NATURAL desires, we create UNNATURAL ones. We also create wealth, technology and art through this repression, and so any demonisation of the results of our repression is really just feigned horror, because we like the ends to much to put an end to the means.
When I see the human scum that are the product of lax Western culture, it's no mystery why Islamists see us as the incarnation of evil.
Quite frankly, who gives a shit how the Islamists see us. Radical Islam was born from cold war realpolitik, not a values clash. Save the stupid lie about clash of civilisations for the stupid people please.
So funny.... uh you don't need any scrubbing software, just copy the content of your Word Document, then paste it into a new blank document. That will leave behind any 'history' of the document.
And when you then edit the new document?
There's no such thing as a "natural" monopoly. The term is nothing but propaganda used by mercantilists to justify government prohibition of competition.
Sorry, but I disagree. There are a very small number "natural" monopolies, and as far as I know they all centre around geography.
Geographic restraints form natural barriers to entry. For example, it is presently more expensive to build an elevated road than to build one that sits on the ground, hence there tends to be a natural monopoly in roads, and because of this restriction, our society has decided to pool our resources (taxes) so that the Government builds the majority of roads, thus preventing a single corporate entity from taking advantage of a very important resource.
Other "natural" monopolies or oligopolies are also based on geography, such as minibuses in Hong Kong, gas pipes in the ground, electricity and telecommunications, in which it is expensive to build the infrastructure, and the profit margin is such that only one company can survive. There are solutions to these monopolies, but not market solutions.
Consumer CPUs on the other hand are NOT a natural monopoly, but the business has VERY high barriers to entry. Current optics equipment required for 70nm lithography results in the setup cost of a new fabricating plant at just under 1 billion dollars, not to mention the RnD costs of developing the chip itself. No one wants to take this kind of risk to invest in a company who would then compete with 2 ferocious, well established incumbents.
To break this kind of monopoly/oligopoly, once would need to develop a completely different way to fabricate fast CPUs without lithography, or alternatively, develop a way to manufacture precision optics much more cheaply. Personally I believe that this is an inevitability. So for now the CPU business is a temporary natural monopoly, defined by the high barrier to entry (cost of the fabrication facilities and product development).
Eventually, if the need is great enough, even geography and cost can be overcome, and so all 'natural monopolies' come with a temporal restriction. i.e. they wont be monopolies for time eternal, but they ARE natural monopolies right NOW.
The real problem here is that people become disenfranchised because they don't involve.
That is NOT the reason people become disenfranchised. Look, most people just aren't that interested in what other people want to do with their lives, and that is a Good Thing(tm). Just as long as you don't involve me, you can smoke slug vomit for all I care.
This idea that we need to stop OTHER people from doing something that is bad for them is something I never quite understood. I'm sure it makes perfect sense to the busybodies, anal retentives and other assorted fascists and assholes that make these rules on the behalf of the majority, it just doesn't make any sense to me.
However, most people have enough complications in their life without adding a different drug to the mix, so they go along with whatever the uptight PTB say to minimise any disruption to their daily life of eating, drinking and watching porn.
After all why should I care about you because all you do is complain, whine, etc.
You shouldn't. Can't we just get over the SkyGod bedtime story where some super duper man in the sky is looking down and giving a shit what we do with our time? Or is it too ingrained from too early an age?
When you say people don't have a political clue, I would argue what you are saying is that people don't have a clue because they don't agree with you.
No people don't have a political clue because to be otherwise would require expending mental effort that could go into betting at the track or finding the cheapest case of beer. Really, most people just live their own lives without thinking too much and when asked for their opinion, tend to regurgitate whatever they heard on TV. It's just easier that way.
Well guess what this is a democracy (representative in most) and if you don't make yourself heard then it is your FAULT, not the politicians, nor the "clueless" voters who do vote and make themselves heard.
The Pro-Marijuana lobby DO make themselves heard, it's just that the ANTI-Marijuana lobby are a lot richer, better connected and ruthless in shouting over the top. THAT is democracy. Whoever has the resources to shout the longest, loudest and tell the silliest and most irrational lies is the one who sets the political agenda.
how the frack do you do traffic control?
By modelling insects. They co-ordinate very large numbers towards a single macro goal (i.e. building a mound, collecting food etc). We know quite a lot about how they do this, but more research is needed into how they control timing amongst other things.
what it mainly will do is give the illusion that Australia's children are being protected from the Big Bad 'Ol Intarwebs
That's the political reason. The real reason is so assholes like Packer and the State/Federal governments can return to the good 'ol days when they controlled all of the information that made it to Australians.
Just another astonishingly stupid idea from the Baby Boomer generation. Why don't they just fuck off already?
That is because you are looking at the MacBook Pro, which is $1000 more than the plain ol' MacBook, just so masturbators can say the word 'pro' when they mention their computer.
I recently purchased a MacBook Core Duo 2.4Ghz, with 4GB upgrade, plus VMWare Fusion (which turned out to be a piece of shit), for AUD$2200, after having purchased PC notebooks and laptops for the past 10 years. The closest spec PC laptop I could find was ~$2900, so it was a no-brainer really.
I got a 22inch LG LCD monitor, plugged it straight into the DVI port of the MacBook, and I now have Mac OS X, Ubuntu and Windows XP running, at the same time!
Seriously, unless you use your laptop for games, get a MacBook and forget the 'pro'. Buy a large external monitor and parallels, and you are sweet. Trust me.
Care to make any suggestions for a $50k/20 hours a week job?
I'm going to assume that you are talking about IT, given the article is about IT, although Slashdot discussions tend to digress fairly quickly.
So in IT there are basically two types of work. Sexy, exciting, greenfield development with new technologies and new ideas, and production support. Production support is just something that most IT people don't want to do, because it is boring thankless work. However, it is absolutely vital to keep certain systems running, and if you are the only person that can do it, then you have leverage to change your hours to suit you, without lowering the quality of the support you provide.
The way you approach it is like this.
First, work enthusiastically towards solving every production issue that comes up. Spend all of your time reading *any* available documentation on the system, even if you don't understand it all, you need to get a good overview of the system.
Second, as you get better at supporting the system, your colleagues will go and find something more interesting to do, or move to a job that pays more for their experience. This is the trap that you don't want to fall into, as you want to use your experience to get better hours, not better pay.
Third, once you are indispensible to the smooth running of the production system, you need to get remote access and a company approved laptop. This is a vital pre-requisite for moving to your new arrangement, as it will feel like a safety net to your employer knowing that you can log in, even on your day off if there is an absolute emergency. Getting remote access is by no means easy as some companies, so it will require some negotiation, you may even need to imply that you are looking for more enlightened companies that offer it, but a lot will depend on how good a job you did in step 2 above.
Fourth, now that you have remote access, you need to solve one production issue from home. This may be a matter of doing it one evening when you get home. I know this sounds like you are adding more hours to your working life, but keep in mind you only need to do this once (or sometimes twice) for you to have a convincing argument that you are able to do your job remotely without having to be in the office.
Fifth, now that you have remote access, and convincing proof that you don't need to be in the office to solve production issues, you need to start looking for an opportunity to bring up changing your hours with your manager. The absolutely vital thing in this process is to explore every avenue of negotiation with your manager before you tell him/her that your situation at home has changed, and if you can't change your hours (without a change in pay), then you will be unable to work there any longer. If, having explored every avenue, your manager/company still refuses to accomodate you, then you will need to leave, because you never want to work for people who are assholes for the sake of being assholes.
More likely though is that you will find it quite easy to get the change in hours that you need. Some people like to shorten their day so they can pick up their children from school. This is often easy to negotiate, because managers often prefer that you are in 5 days a week. Alternatively, you may want a 3 day week, with 2 days 'on call'. Be sure to define what constitutes a valid reason to call you on your day off when you are 'on call'. Make sure it is sev1 or sev2 production issues only.
The only final thing on this is whether you are willing to take a pay cut for your change in hours. I recommend not, but it may be the only way to get your company to come to the party, if you are willing to meet them 3/4 of the way.
Good luck.
The poor are there anyway, they will probably remain there. What's the argument against making them more comfortable at no real expense and an actual gain to us (injecting the money back into the economy, helping the lower rank of neighborhood stores stay alive, improving public transportation and common services, ...) as opposed to tax breaks that will not be as well invested and will put those neighborhood services into debt (loans to banks) rather than help them become more self-sufficient (sales)?
Because by doing that they will become even poorer. I'm sorry if my original point wasn't clear. What you suggest (a handout) is part of the process of people becoming poor. Receiving free money (as compassionate as it may seem), creates problems for people that makes them even more uncomfortable.In order for someone to receive any benefit from a reward, there must be some kind of effort towards it. Think of the cosmonaut's on MIR. Without artificial stress, their bone density decreases in the absence of gravity. The body doesn't put in effort or resources if none are required.
Honestly I think the reason for this is that the completely illogical fact that the concept of giving something to the poor just pisses some people off. No reason to be pissed, a homeless person didn't kill their dad or anything. They'd rather see rich people (or better yet, a corporation!) get charity any day regardless of how they use it.
I think they would rather see their corporation receive a handout, thus ensuring their continuing employment. This serves to weaken corporations in the same way as free money to the poor weakens the poor.
I think the idea that the Government has money is something that really needs to be addressed in the education system. The government doesn't have money. It doesn't make or sell anything. The government is a collective pool of money from all taxpayers that is supposed to be building things (roads, bridges, armies) that are beyond the resources of the individual.
It is the 'common wealth' as opposed to the 'private wealth'. The idea that we should use the 'common wealth' to give money to poor people (or rich corporations, or rich people) is the complete anti-thesis of what the commonwealth actually is. It is not beyond the resources of the individual (poor or rich) to improve their economic status. Really. Certainly in the United States you could benefit a great many poor people if the common wealth were to be used on repairing your crumbling infrastructure (particularly bridges), instead of maintaining the imperial army. Perhaps you should focus your efforts on that?
I've tried to figure this out for years now, to no avail. I'm seriously considering taking a class on economics but I don't really trust that anyone fully grasps what is going on...
Yes, this is a fascinating question, and the lack of an answer falls into the same category as why it's hard to collect taxes and the reason communism failed.
The fact of the matter is, human life is a series of transactions. We transact in our social interaction and economic interaction, and the outcome of each transaction is (unusually), non-deterministic. The non-deterministic outcome is a function of highly variant motivations of the individuals involved in the transactions.
This makes (macro) economics a science of things that happened once, but are unlikely to happen again, and consequently, most economic theory, postulates and opinion are total and complete nonsense.
But what of micro-economics? The problem here is one of computational processing power. i.e. there just isn't enough of it to track economic activity in real time.
The one thing I've figured out, it's easy for money to flow up to people who have it, and there it appears to be very bad for the economy (unless the rich person throws a lot of parties and hires caterers and hookers--at least that keeps the money moving). But it seems REALLY REALLY hard to get money to flow down to the lowest levels where it would most quickly be placed back into circulation and do the best for the economy.
Now this one we (our civilisation) does have an answer to. The fundamental mistake made in addressing this 'problem' is the common confusion between 'state' and 'process'.Confusing 'state' and 'process' is a common enough mistake in problem solving. In the case of the flow of money, unless one can move past this erroneous assumption, it is not possible to understand what is going on.
Being 'rich' or being 'poor' is commonly thought of as a 'state'. That is, a state of poverty or a state of wealth. Our language, our education and our culture encourage this idea for reasons unknown. But neither poverty or richness are states, they are processes.
They are a particular type of process known as a 'feedback loop'. That is, if you do certain things along a certain timeline, it will lead you to greater poverty or greater wealth, and the poverty or wealth encourages you to keep following the same process (i.e. doing the same things at the same time), which leads to greater poverty or wealth.
Those who are wealthy already understand this, but those who are poor often do not, and will refuse to change their behaviour in any case if the process is made apparent to them.
Both processes (for becoming poor or becoming wealthy) are immutable, inevitable and inviolable, so there is nothing you can really do about it except decide which of the processes you wish to follow. They also tend to be the reason why societies, civilisations and empires rise and fall, so you can see the inevitable coming decline of an empire from the level of helplessness in it's poorer citizens.
I realize that it's fashionable to poo-poo the US, but you're ignoring the source of the MSOXML problem--idiots pretending that bullshit third-world "countries" aren't bullshit. (Actually, this causes quite a lot of other problems, too.)
So Microsoft isn't a US company right? They must have started in bullshit Bolivia. Because no US company would corrupt third world governments with bribes and favours to vote their way.
Corruption always has two parties, the corrupter and the corrupted. You say the corrupted is the problem, I say the corrupter is the problem.
Jesus H Christ you are a fucking idiot. Your monumental ignorance of what has occurred in Iraq during the occupation is only exceeded by your blithering ineptitude at rational thought.
I would reply individually to each of your idiotic assertions, but I would be wasting my time. Why don't you grab another donut and watch another sitcom or fox news?
Asshole.