So I read the freaking article and I don't see what the U.S. is giving in return. It's all about what EU has to give up as far as info and such. I find it hard to believe this passed on the EU end without the U.S. sharing at least the same information. Is there an article somewhere that explains the whole deal? Or is this all there is?
If I were in her shoes, I'd claim the same thing. However, this is just going to be a justification for when technology let's "the man" truly read your mind to say there was just cause to do so in order to determine whether she really forgot or just pretended to and all the crazy ethical questions/arguments/fights that will ensue. These days I'm doubting ethics and philosophy can possibly keep up with the pace of technology. I hope I'm wrong!
I didn't read through the bazillions of comments, but after playing with a ton of the 3rd party firmwares that run on the old Linksys WRTG routers like Tomato and OpenWRT, etc., I just finally built a cheap and tiny ITX atom based box and put pfsense on it. I would never go back.
I don't know about anyone else, but I find it amusing that you apparently find it absurd to devalue the garbage related to the moon shot. If someone finds Neil Armstrong's discarded urine from his physical testing prior to the flight, should we value that too? I mean "it was part of humanities first foray to another planet. [sic]" Think of how much was wasted by letting booster stages burn up in the atmosphere! We should sue someone for letting those incredible pieces of history burn up! OMG!
That's all well and good, but like it or not Windows is still the litmus test. The standard of measure is the version of Windows most people are using today. Linux might be better than it was, but it's not even close to being a realistic replacement for Windows or Mac OS for the general non-technical public. Those "unfriendly versions of Windows back then" were very friendly for the times and what made computers usable by the average consumer. It is also a big reason that Windows become the standard OS that everyone knows (and needs to know for most office related jobs) how to use.
Until Linux is realistically comparable to Windows or Mac OS in the ease-of-use department it will always be an extreme niche player on the desktop like it is today.
Anyone in advertising that I've ever spoken with always insists people love advertising. However, I've never spoken to anyone outside of advertising that says they like ads. I would think the emergence of things like DVRs, browser adblockers, etc would be a big clue to the advertising industry.
If they can't find a way to make the market competitive then I agree, but I think it would be much better if they had to compete like cell phone companies compete. Then instead of trying to invent ways to avoid upgrading infrastructure and rape their customers, they would actually have to provide decent service at competitive prices.
But until someone figures out how to bypass the need to "share" infrastructure, like phone wires that were paid for by the local phone company monopoly, I don't see how that can really happen. Maybe have the town or county own the local loop or last mile to everyone's house? I don't know.
As the very first sentence I wrote started, "One of the reasons...", I'm not sure where you got the idea that I "honestly think that competition to lower prices is only achieved through skimping on quality or reliability..." Obviously I don't. Read more carefully before replying please.;)
That said, as others have pointed out, a sanctioned and regulated monopoly is not necessary in the example you cite.
Limiting competition is indeed the goal of a regulated monopoly -- that would be the reason we use the word "monopoly." However the goal here is not inherently to allow a single entity to profit in as much as it is to make sure a scarce resource (telephone poles, underground conduits, water pipes, etc.) are used to best effect. The only other alternative is to have the government own the infrastructure and provide the service themselves. I don't think that's a good idea either.
If you honestly think free market competition is the best way to go for crucial infrastructure services, I point you at California's electric power fiasco as evidence you are very wrong. California did exactly that in 1996. Now prices are high, supply is low and you get to enjoy rolling blackouts every summer! w00t!
One of the reasons for enforced monopolies is that for an infrastructure service that is considered "crucial", like electricity, phone and water you don't want the inevitable pressure to cut costs by scrimping on reliability in order to compete. That is why these enforced monopolies are, in theory, regulated heavily.
Of course, I personally don't think that precludes heavy competition with heavy regulation, but what do I know.:)
All I can really say is as a GM back in the days of 1st and 2nd edition (I stopped playing once WOTC took over), the fact that there were no specific rules for certain situations is exactly why it was fun to play. The GM could make up whatever was necessary to move the game along without having to worry about some player screaming about the rules. Most of the folks complaining about the lack of ability to role-play with the new ruleset -- this is really what they mean. If you want rigid game mechanics, play a video game.
Gladiator had a very final ending. That was much more recent than most of the movies mentioned so far and I certainly enjoy it enough to watch it again periodically.
I think the ending versus hook into sequel has a lot to do with the director.
Obviously I did, or a) I wouldn't have made the coffee reference, and b) I wouldn't have mentioned the open source software part.
So since you seemed to have found magically invisible information at the page you linked, perhaps you can share it with the rest of us?
As I said, $10K is hardly enough to live on so they either had money coming in from somewhere else, developed the whole game in a week, or they are not human.
I'm curious what they spent the $10K on. That seems too small for living expenses (unless perhaps you are single and living on ramen noodles), and it seems too much if they used open source software for the most part. Of course, $10K buys a lot of coffee. I might budget $10K for coffee...
You will get 150K answers to this. The short of it is, speaking as someone who has been in the biz for 20 years, the degree only matters if you are being hired by someone who has one.
The "replica" long rifle - as a presentation piece or a gentleman's sporting gun with over-elaborate inlaid decoration in brass or silver - appears as early as 1825. Something more authentic can be had today for $600-$700. Pennsylvania Rifles
The point, that you apparently missed, was that all of them have not. If people's lives depended on them, in the way carrying a firearm does in Fallout 3, there would be a heck of a lot more because people would be constantly repairing and maintaining them any way they can.
I believe that was what the "repair" skill was for.
I can't believe people still fire revolutionary war era weapons in a modern world. Why the things haven't rusted into uselessness I just don't understand.;)
I'm with you! And I love your interpretation of the teaser. I was thinking like this:
- Its about 12-15 years in the future (like you said) - The title at the end appears covered in barnacles which suggests to me that Rapture has decayed even further (barnacles imply long periods of time with no/little movement/change) - The butterfly springs out implying that maybe Rapture is now on the surface (i.e. An undersea volcano pushed all of or part of Rapture up to the surface as an island) - The sand castle Rapture emphasizes the last bullet point.
So many ways to guess. I guess that's the point of a good teaser.
If most games that came out today had a story half as good as the one in Bioshock gamers would be really spoiled. At least for me, Bioshock was the most fun game to come out in a long, long time and 80% of that was due to immersion factor. The gameplay itself was really nothing revolutionary at all. It was the great story and the feeling that you were actually influencing things (which ironically you were not!) that sucked you in.
While I *completely* understand where you are coming from (and I'm somewhat sympathetic to your view), I have to respond and say that the progress you get from folks who push the envelope, even if its only in one specific part/element of a "game", is worth having bad game play and/or even a failure in the long wrong if in the next game/attempt its no longer difficult to do. Meaning even if someone loses their shirt because they focused on only that one element at the expense of the others, for someone it will pay off in time.
For example, look at Peter Molyneux. This guy is notorious for having games that have a specific element that blows everything that came before it out of the park -- at the expense of the rest of the game he is trying to produce. Which really does suck for him, but in the end it pushes the envelope for everything that comes after that uses those same elements.
Its not hard to see that over and over if you look at games in hindsight. The most popular current games are the ones that take all these elements that pushed the envelope and put them all together in a way that works. See ultra successful endeavors like World of Warcraft (the best of Everquest and Ultima Online), Bioshock (the best of System Shock, Ultima Underworld, and Doom), any RTS (Command and Conquer), and so on. And you can take all those games listed and go back further to games like Rogue, Empire, and Adventure.
So really, I have to say you should give kudos to people willing to go out on a limb and push the realism if thats what they want to do. If no one did you would still be using a monochrome monitor to play your text adventure or blow up asteroids with vector graphics. If they want to push the realism that's fine with me. Someone will take the technology and make a better game with it sooner or later.
Slashdot Mirror
So I read the freaking article and I don't see what the U.S. is giving in return. It's all about what EU has to give up as far as info and such. I find it hard to believe this passed on the EU end without the U.S. sharing at least the same information. Is there an article somewhere that explains the whole deal? Or is this all there is?
Same here. It detected only Adblock, for me, of all my addons.
If I were in her shoes, I'd claim the same thing. However, this is just going to be a justification for when technology let's "the man" truly read your mind to say there was just cause to do so in order to determine whether she really forgot or just pretended to and all the crazy ethical questions/arguments/fights that will ensue. These days I'm doubting ethics and philosophy can possibly keep up with the pace of technology. I hope I'm wrong!
I didn't read through the bazillions of comments, but after playing with a ton of the 3rd party firmwares that run on the old Linksys WRTG routers like Tomato and OpenWRT, etc., I just finally built a cheap and tiny ITX atom based box and put pfsense on it. I would never go back.
I don't know about anyone else, but I find it amusing that you apparently find it absurd to devalue the garbage related to the moon shot. If someone finds Neil Armstrong's discarded urine from his physical testing prior to the flight, should we value that too? I mean "it was part of humanities first foray to another planet. [sic]" Think of how much was wasted by letting booster stages burn up in the atmosphere! We should sue someone for letting those incredible pieces of history burn up! OMG!
I'd be happy if Microsoft re-released the Trackball Explorer. It's never been bested as far as trackballs go.
That's all well and good, but like it or not Windows is still the litmus test. The standard of measure is the version of Windows most people are using today. Linux might be better than it was, but it's not even close to being a realistic replacement for Windows or Mac OS for the general non-technical public. Those "unfriendly versions of Windows back then" were very friendly for the times and what made computers usable by the average consumer. It is also a big reason that Windows become the standard OS that everyone knows (and needs to know for most office related jobs) how to use.
Until Linux is realistically comparable to Windows or Mac OS in the ease-of-use department it will always be an extreme niche player on the desktop like it is today.
Anyone in advertising that I've ever spoken with always insists people love advertising. However, I've never spoken to anyone outside of advertising that says they like ads. I would think the emergence of things like DVRs, browser adblockers, etc would be a big clue to the advertising industry.
What you describe sounds more like A Clockwork Orange than 1984. Maybe one set of problems causes the other?
If they can't find a way to make the market competitive then I agree, but I think it would be much better if they had to compete like cell phone companies compete. Then instead of trying to invent ways to avoid upgrading infrastructure and rape their customers, they would actually have to provide decent service at competitive prices.
But until someone figures out how to bypass the need to "share" infrastructure, like phone wires that were paid for by the local phone company monopoly, I don't see how that can really happen. Maybe have the town or county own the local loop or last mile to everyone's house? I don't know.
As the very first sentence I wrote started, "One of the reasons...", I'm not sure where you got the idea that I "honestly think that competition to lower prices is only achieved through skimping on quality or reliability..." Obviously I don't. Read more carefully before replying please. ;)
That said, as others have pointed out, a sanctioned and regulated monopoly is not necessary in the example you cite.
Limiting competition is indeed the goal of a regulated monopoly -- that would be the reason we use the word "monopoly." However the goal here is not inherently to allow a single entity to profit in as much as it is to make sure a scarce resource (telephone poles, underground conduits, water pipes, etc.) are used to best effect. The only other alternative is to have the government own the infrastructure and provide the service themselves. I don't think that's a good idea either.
If you honestly think free market competition is the best way to go for crucial infrastructure services, I point you at California's electric power fiasco as evidence you are very wrong. California did exactly that in 1996. Now prices are high, supply is low and you get to enjoy rolling blackouts every summer! w00t!
One of the reasons for enforced monopolies is that for an infrastructure service that is considered "crucial", like electricity, phone and water you don't want the inevitable pressure to cut costs by scrimping on reliability in order to compete. That is why these enforced monopolies are, in theory, regulated heavily.
Of course, I personally don't think that precludes heavy competition with heavy regulation, but what do I know. :)
All I can really say is as a GM back in the days of 1st and 2nd edition (I stopped playing once WOTC took over), the fact that there were no specific rules for certain situations is exactly why it was fun to play. The GM could make up whatever was necessary to move the game along without having to worry about some player screaming about the rules. Most of the folks complaining about the lack of ability to role-play with the new ruleset -- this is really what they mean. If you want rigid game mechanics, play a video game.
Gladiator had a very final ending. That was much more recent than most of the movies mentioned so far and I certainly enjoy it enough to watch it again periodically.
I think the ending versus hook into sequel has a lot to do with the director.
God spare you from the horrors of spending 30 seconds to find out before posting.
Obviously I did, or a) I wouldn't have made the coffee reference, and b) I wouldn't have mentioned the open source software part.
So since you seemed to have found magically invisible information at the page you linked, perhaps you can share it with the rest of us?
As I said, $10K is hardly enough to live on so they either had money coming in from somewhere else, developed the whole game in a week, or they are not human.
I'm curious what they spent the $10K on. That seems too small for living expenses (unless perhaps you are single and living on ramen noodles), and it seems too much if they used open source software for the most part. Of course, $10K buys a lot of coffee. I might budget $10K for coffee...
...will love using this new way of harvesting power.
You will get 150K answers to this. The short of it is, speaking as someone who has been in the biz for 20 years, the degree only matters if you are being hired by someone who has one.
And that's all that needs to be said about it.
The "replica" long rifle - as a presentation piece or a gentleman's sporting gun with over-elaborate inlaid decoration in brass or silver - appears as early as 1825. Something more authentic can be had today for $600-$700. Pennsylvania Rifles
The point, that you apparently missed, was that all of them have not. If people's lives depended on them, in the way carrying a firearm does in Fallout 3, there would be a heck of a lot more because people would be constantly repairing and maintaining them any way they can.
Hence the repair skill.
I believe that was what the "repair" skill was for.
I can't believe people still fire revolutionary war era weapons in a modern world. Why the things haven't rusted into uselessness I just don't understand. ;)
I'm with you! And I love your interpretation of the teaser. I was thinking like this:
- Its about 12-15 years in the future (like you said)
- The title at the end appears covered in barnacles which suggests to me that Rapture has decayed even further (barnacles imply long periods of time with no/little movement/change)
- The butterfly springs out implying that maybe Rapture is now on the surface (i.e. An undersea volcano pushed all of or part of Rapture up to the surface as an island)
- The sand castle Rapture emphasizes the last bullet point.
So many ways to guess. I guess that's the point of a good teaser.
If most games that came out today had a story half as good as the one in Bioshock gamers would be really spoiled. At least for me, Bioshock was the most fun game to come out in a long, long time and 80% of that was due to immersion factor. The gameplay itself was really nothing revolutionary at all. It was the great story and the feeling that you were actually influencing things (which ironically you were not!) that sucked you in.
I can't wait for the new one!
Unless they bring back their Trackball Explorer (hands down the BEST trackball ever produced) I'm uninterested. :P
Does anyone else get sad at the thought that there are so many weird things in the universe you may not learn the answers to in your lifetime?
I would submit that this is the lament of every intelligent being since the dawn of time (assuming there is a dawn of time).
While I *completely* understand where you are coming from (and I'm somewhat sympathetic to your view), I have to respond and say that the progress you get from folks who push the envelope, even if its only in one specific part/element of a "game", is worth having bad game play and/or even a failure in the long wrong if in the next game/attempt its no longer difficult to do. Meaning even if someone loses their shirt because they focused on only that one element at the expense of the others, for someone it will pay off in time.
For example, look at Peter Molyneux. This guy is notorious for having games that have a specific element that blows everything that came before it out of the park -- at the expense of the rest of the game he is trying to produce. Which really does suck for him, but in the end it pushes the envelope for everything that comes after that uses those same elements.
Its not hard to see that over and over if you look at games in hindsight. The most popular current games are the ones that take all these elements that pushed the envelope and put them all together in a way that works. See ultra successful endeavors like World of Warcraft (the best of Everquest and Ultima Online), Bioshock (the best of System Shock, Ultima Underworld, and Doom), any RTS (Command and Conquer), and so on.
And you can take all those games listed and go back further to games like Rogue, Empire, and Adventure.
So really, I have to say you should give kudos to people willing to go out on a limb and push the realism if thats what they want to do. If no one did you would still be using a monochrome monitor to play your text adventure or blow up asteroids with vector graphics. If they want to push the realism that's fine with me. Someone will take the technology and make a better game with it sooner or later.