"You're an idiot." - insult "You're an idiot. =P" - joke
I've never been a fan of over using emoticons like many people my age seem to (and I prefer ASCII emoticons to annoying animated ones in MSN and such), but when you're expressing something more than just basic literal information and details, using emoticons can effectively set the tone of an email, or an IM.
And hell, chucking in a "^_^" or "=)" something at the end of an email can always make the other person feel happier about it. =P
I don't know if it's an American thing, or what, but having been to two Australian public Primary Schools and two High Schools (One public and one private), I have never heard of any stories of bullying or bullies like the ones I hear from America. o.O
I could have just been lucky with my schools...but the extent of bullying at the public schools was just teasing and spreading rumours...physical harassment only really happened if there was a mutually agreed fight.
In my current school, there's almost no bullying. Hell, I find it strange that people who are non-conformist, and have strange interests/skills, actually are treated very positively. Granted, I have a really good year level, I hear the other year levels are worse...but still, even here, the worst bullying is just some insulting. That's about it.
Are American schools really as bad as they are made out in movies?
You have all of your music easily accessible on your media player. Want to play a song? Instead of finding the CD, removing the currently playing CD and putting the new one in, its a simple matter of scrolling and finding it (or using iTunes search, which makes it even easier).
Because of this, you can have literally, thousands of songs easily selected. Imagines shuffling through hundreds of CDs. It'd also take up lots of physical space and be harder to keep 'clean' and 'organised'.
There's also the convenience of actually acquiring the file. A simple download, as opposed to having to go to the store. You can also get things song by song, rather than having to get a full album to listen to one song. It's cheaper too.
The only time I have really bought CDs is when buying my Dad a present (who's a music lover too). Burning him a copy of "Opeth - Orchid" and "Pink Floyd - Animals" is cheap, but buying him the CD is something he really appreciated. You get the full CD, with its cover and eyecandy. Being presented with a burnt CD of illegally downloaded songs...sucks as a present (Yes, I got one of these on my eighteenth =P).
There is of course, listening in the car too - most cars still don't feature MP3 support, so CDs will last a bit longer, but this will eventually phase out. And I see more and more people coming up with ways of using their iPods with their car stereos too.
Whenever it comes down to religion, I find myself arguing for two sides. I hate the topic of religion when I'm with most people. I find when it comes to this, everyone becomes so damned arrogant.
I don't mind people saying "These are my beliefs." No, the religious people say "My beliefs are correct, there's no other interpretation, and all your beliefs suck" and the atheists are even worse, with their "Gawd I'm smart and damned proud to be atheist. Seriously, who the hell would follow the Bible? It is so stupid and obviously contradictory. All religious people are morons."
I find myself arguing both for and against the beliefs. There is no way to logically or scientifically prove anything, therefore, no one can really be a 'moron' for believing either. And hell, just take Christianity - there is so many ways of interpreting it. People will attack the idea of creation as stupid - but why can't they understand that another way to interpret it is that maybe the '7 day story' was a poetic legend given by God to a primitive society with the intention of telling them that "God created the universe"? God couldn't tell Moses about the intricacies of evolution or anything like that - such a thing would only confuse people of that time period.
Every single time an arrogant atheist comes up with a 'sure argument against a religion' I have come up with a counter-argument based on one of many interpretations that can refute or explain such an attack, and the same goes for religious people.
I think people just have to accept that there is no scientific way to prove or disprove any of this, and there will be arguments against *everything* that tries to.
Might just be who I hang out with, and it's just cause my school is really accepting and open (which it is really...), but I'm finding the key is confidence. You go up to make a speech looking like a nerd, loser and are really shy, then talk about something weird and nerdy - you'll be booed off the stage.
But go up on the stage with a confident, funny, lighthearted "I don't give a shit" attitude, and say something, people get into it - which is what this guy did. Oh sure, you still need to make sure the joke can be understood by the layman (though if the point of the joke is talking about stuff they have no clue about - just go ahead).
But yeah, I've seen some great public speakers at my school - and listened to the jokes, humour and all that they've made. What makes them funny is their body language, their tone, the pause before the punch-lines, and their overall confident demeanor. If you listen to their actual jokes, they're not *that* funny, and if someone else did it? It wouldn't be as funny.
My own main personal killer is, even in normal day-to-day language...I have the tendency to fumble words - take half of one and add it to the other...tends to kill my witty comebacks half the time. >_>
Think...your watching your fetish porn and you think your home alone. Then your Mum walks in - you have 500ms to consider the following: a) Hide junior under the desk and/or zip up your pants b) Alt Tab or close the window (hoping there's no other windows there) c) Turn off the monitor d) Think up a viable excuse.
Now take that situation and imagine you are just finishing yourself off. You'd panic like a biatch, possibly doing none of the above and forever scarring your mother's thoughts of you being innocent for the rest of your life.
I'm sure that this woman probably felt a similar amount of panic and shock (since she didn't even EXPECT the pop-ups...).
~Jarik
PS: Apologies for the graphic images. >_>
But...this is Slashdot - I'm sure we've all been through this situation at one point or another. =P
I have heard this a lot, but being an owner of a 9800Pro manufactured *by* ATI, and having a Gigabyte manufactured 9600XT, we've noticed no real problems with the Catalyst Drivers (granted, the drivers that came on the driver CD for both of our cards were unappealing and not great...but after installing Catalyst we both increased our benchmark scores by up to 500).
In fact more of my friends with nVidia cards seem to have the problems with stability. =S
Is this problem just apparent in newer cards? Or am I just insane?
Most mid-high range Mobos these days offer RAID options (usually 0,1,5,10). Obviously, if the RAID controller dies, so does the RAID partition right? So my question was, assuming I go with a brand name motherboard - Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, DFI, etc - Am I safe from failing RAID controllers? I want to run RAID 0 for the bigger drives and slight increase in performance from two channels (or so I have heard) - but if it increases the chance of failure, I'm not sure.
And considering I have quite a few drives, I'll need the SATA channels for more drives (which is why I am shying from using RAID 5...don't think I'll have enough free SATA ports).
Even when achieved by questionable means. Compare, for example, the developments in Chile (US-supported dictatorship) vs. Cuba (USSR-supported dictatorship). Chile is the Latin America's top economy, while Cuba is the very lowest.
I disagree with that point.
Cuba originally existed as an American-backed Dictatorship. It was a backyard resort for Americans and a good place for American industry, but the dictatorship did not do anything good for the locals. This social discontent is what allowed Castro's revolution to occur.
In fact, for large periods of Castro's regime, he has had no Soviet support and a lot of the time has actually been in CONFLICT with Soviet support (Castro has run Cuba as a world power, instead of a small nation).
I have a lot of respect for Castro. Where the Bolshevik party became a party that used Communist ideals as a tool to achieve power, I believe Castro truly believed in Marxist Ideals (He went out of his way supporting other country's revolution to the point where Khrushchev threatened to remove Soviet support and allow an American invasion if he didn't stop).
So it wasn't really that much of a Soviet-backed Dictatorship as it was of Castro's regime which was supported by the USSR at times. As for the state of the country...a lot of that can be related to the US embargo and during the Cuban Missile Crisis, blockade. Except for one part where America offered a hand of friendship to Cuba (in which Castro shocked the world by turning it down in favour of supporting the communist revolution in Angolia), America has consistently tried to cause Cuba to fall. While a lot of Cuba's failings could be Castro's own goals being unachievable and not the best planned (which is why Soviet's ordered an executive committee to take over economic decisions in Cuba lest Cuba loses financial support), America is also to cause for Cuba's problems.
Really, while I can't agree with Castro's ideals, he's a lot more than a Russian-backed Dictator - a puppet of the USSR. Which is why Cuba stays true to Marxist ideals even today without superpower support.
As for your other points, I agree completely.
America does have a habit of destroying a regime and rebuilding it, while pouring money in it. As you said, West Germany and Japan are two very obvious examples - two of the world's top leaders in industry and manufacturing. America poured ridiculous amounts of money into West Berlin as a strategical measure - it was symbolic. Russia was angry at Germany for killing over 30million Russians in WWII - so they put huge debts on East Germany and East Berlin and fucked over the place. America on the other hand, wanted to compare East Berlin, which was falling apart to West Berlin - which was positively glowing. This was meant to be a comparison between 'Communism and Capitalism' - the symbolic 'prosperous society' versus the 'society that's falling apart'.
It's an effective strategy and probably the reason why so many countries in the Soviet Bloc rebelled as soon as Gorbachev showed weakness by allowing perestroika (liberalism) reforms. They saw Capitalism as superior due to these things.
There is of course the fact that after these countries become powerful, they feel indebted to America and offer good trade agreements and help the economy and prosperity of America.
The whole essence of the Bolshevik ideals were to force revolution. When the Communist Party broke up into the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions, that was one of the differences in political views. The Mensheviks believed that the masses should rise up against the government - the revolution should start from below. The Bolsheviks believed that the revolution should be done more in a 'coup d'etat' style - that is, a handful of 'elite educated revolutionaries' (forming the Bolshevik party) would guide the 'proletariat' (workers) to revolution - aka, they would do the revolution 'for' the workers.
That's what happened during October 1917 revolution - only 10,000 or so Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace of the Provisional Government as opposed to the Soviets and the masses attacking together. This whole attitude of 'we know what's best for the proletariat - they agree with us' is what allowed them to become so expansionist - they would simply say they were doing the will of the masses who couldn't do it themselves.
Really, thinking about it is kind of similar to what America is doing, except America will claim to be doing the will of the masses - with communism replaced with democracy/liberty. While it is probably true liberty/democracy *is* probably the will of many individuals in these countries, it is still an interesting comparison to make. The 'we know what's best for you' attitude.
I am in a band and Guitar Pro 4/5 has always proved invaluable to us. Back when www.mysongbook.com allowed you to actually download all their tabs, it was easy to find a good, high quality tab for whatever song we were covering. All of our compositions are also made in Guitar Pro and spread to each of the band members - both for the ability of being able to listen to a theoretical version of the song, and being able to convey our ideas to the other members better.
This was in no way making us money, or losing any money for the record companies. We weren't choosing to listen to Midis over buying CDs or anything like that. Oh sure, you can argue maybe we were abstaining from buying sheet music over using the tabs, but at the same time - most of what we played did not have sheet music transcriptions for all instruments.
And being able to have your song in tab notation, sheet music notation and have it playable as a Midi (for all instruments) is a lot more useful than just having the sheet music for one instrument in a book.
With mysongbook.com down, not only are tabs a lot harder to find, but it's harder to find the higher quality ones, or ones that include all instruments (instead of just guitars+bass).
This is nothing but greed - record companies trying to work out if they can make money off tabs...and until they can work that out, banning any other distributions all together.
BSG is my favorite TV show of all time. I enjoyed all seasons - mini-series, Season1, Season2 and Season 3. In fact, I think I enjoyed Season 2 the best and despite what everyone else seems to criticize, all the 'character development' fillers in the middle of Season 3 were really interesting.
One of the main reasons I enjoy it, as compared to most Sci Fi's, is that in general - it runs more like a movie, without a quick end. Each episode affects the next greatly - you could watch all seasons put together without the flow being interupted too much.
Compare this to Sci Fi's like Stargate SG1 and X-Files - while still great in their own way, they aim at each episode being standalone. There is very minor character development during the flow of each season, and of course, there will be 2-3 double episodes throughout each season which will be focused on continuing the overall plotline. And of course, every filler will generally be based on top of the 'general plot line' - but fundamentally, each episode is designed for more casual watches. You could miss 5 episodes of SG1 and probably still understand what was happening. Not so with BSG.
What I do see happening, which I think everyone else is noticing, is the fact that BSG is becoming like Prison Break. I still like the latter show, but it's becoming a drag - it's not longer the really intelligent and awesome show I had huge respect for and has become a show that goes on forever and ever. I mean come on - every time they get to a possible end, there's a plot twist and they're back at the start. 3 seasons? Ridiculous. Season 1 should've ended with the first attempted break out and Season 2 should've ended at around ep 15 (But I don't agree with people who say there shouldn't've been a season 2 - since Mahone kicks ass =P). But yeah, I'm seeing BSG having more plot twists, etc.
Now I'm not necessarily against this...yet...I just don't want it to turn out to be like PB. So far, it's on the borderline of being overdone. As for the new 4-5 cylons we've learned...this could be done really well, or really badly. It's up to the writers really. In fact, I'm the kinda guy to watch a show and wish something would happen - but it never does...except in BSG. =P
Overall, I think BSG is living up to its potential. Apart from a few things which could have been done better, for me personally, this is by far the TV show I have enjoyed the most. I just hope Season 4 is amazing and finishes with a blast!
I'm curious as to whether the Terrans (Earthlings) will be: 1. Primitive/Ancient 2. At our level of technology atm. 3. At a similar level of technology to the colonists and Cylons 4. At a level exceeding the other two races.
Will be interesting in any case. =)
And I'm interested in more development of Boomer/Caprica Six and the Colonials. After all, they were part of the human rights movement and if there wasn't an insurgency on New Caprica, they could have very well lived in somewhat peace.
2500+ odd stories in 2 weeks certainly makes one wonder if some of the fanfictioners didn't get the memo that they were supposed to be ticked. I would guess most of those fics are so far, short, single chapter or one shots where most of them will be abandoned after the first few chapters.
Compare that to Fanfiction.net where just the Harry Potter section there is almost 300,000 fics. Out of these fics, most of them will be
Though quantity means nothing in terms of quality. As anyone who regularly reads FF.net will have noticed the general degradation of quality as FF.net has assumed huge amounts of popularity with obviously, bad writers...and more and more authors are leaving to go on smaller fanfiction sites as their fanfics get lost in pages and pages worth of ridiculously repetitive, badly written and slash fics (not that I have anything against slash/yaoi fics...but the sheer amount of slash/yaoi fics out there is ridiculous. Especially since they're all, like, exactly the same. >_>)
Telstra introduced the Bigpond Cable Unlimited Plan 8mbps/128kbps (which was, in reality 'after 10GB a month, you MAY be capped to 64kbps up and down') at the end of 2003. It was, until the introduction of ADSL2+, the fastest residential internet you could get - which is, pretty darn slow (Especially upload) for $70AUD a month.
At the time, there was no other real competition to this. Sure, Optus came out with an almost identical plan (12GB, then capped to 28.8kbps) and after a while, ADSL1 providers began to offer better plans - but all served a maximum of 1500kbps/512kbps. It was only iiNet that served an 8mbps ADSL1 connection - and this was only later.
As for T00lstra, they played their cards well. For the first year on that plan, I never got capped. I knew a guy who hit 120GB who never got capped either. They got a customer-base...then they started capping you like a bitch. Of course, it was all manual capping, so there were easy ways to mess with the system (reset your router on the 15th day of the month and get reset to zero, any day after the 28th you could not get capped, and you could only get capped on Mondays) and you could get a fair amount more out of that. But quickly, they put automatic scripts with capped you. Once again, they still hadn't fixed 28th+ of each month. But just three months ago, even that flaw in the system didn't work and now I am definitely planning to move away from Telstra as soon as ADSL2+ comes out.
The pathetic thing is, since 2004, their Unlimited, now 'Liberty' plan, dropped like...a whole $10. Now with ADSL2+, they've even lost their speed advantage over competitors. And really, when iiNet can offer 3 times as fast internet, with 4 times as much bandwidth for the same price...I have to wonder how Telstra will do unless they start providing better service... Their monopoly over Cable is for naught with ADSL2+ really.
I used to really be into Starcraft for a time, and I think the main reason I enjoyed it so much was because it was so intense - everything you did mattered. It was easily the best RTS I had every played.
As I'm sure you already know, Koreans are huge on Starcraft - and I have watched replays, VODs,FP-VODs and live streams from MBCGame. For those of you who watched the final between Iloveoov and JulyZerg (I think it was either the OSL 2006 final? Or it could've been SkyLeague? Might be wrong *Shrugs*), the game was won by JZ due to ONE MEDIC which was surrounded and killed my JulyZerg's zerglings before the medic could get behind the marine line. The marines were subsequently raped and the game was decided.
Now most of you who haven't played SC:BW probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but what I'm trying to say is Starcraft is a game more focused on your control of each single unit.
It is far from realistic, which is why I'm hoping the new engine for Starcraft II doesn't add physics to the game. Half the reason it is so good is it is very fast. This fast once again, means that your micro can really be used to huge levels. I find in slower games, micro is a lot more worthless to utilize, since it doesn't do much.
I guess it all is up to what audience Starcraft II is aimed at. If they want to aim at the people who play the latest RTS for a couple of months and give up, they need to make it a game where the aim is to mass units and send them into the base. This is what most gamers I've encountered do. They don't care about build orders, about micro or macro, etc. It's all about graphics and super weapons. People mass units for 30 minutes then both attack each other till one person wins.
If they want to aim it at the current Starcraft audience - a multi-million dollar industry in Korea that is still at its peak after 10 years - then it needs to be the kinda game the former gamers would find boring or really hard.
For instance, for a player who has an Actions Per Minute of 30, who just builds units, sends them into the enemies' base and twiddles their thumbs, Starcraft is NOT a balanced game. Lurkers for instance, are units that burrow under ground and attack - able to hit many units at once. Say the said player masses hundreds of marines, sends them in - he goes 'oh no' when three lurkers wipe them out. But this *is* balanced for a player who knows what he's doing - that is, he stops his marines movement using his macro (and hotkeys!), scanner sweeps the area (revealing hidden units) and takes them out with his Siege Tanks.
Many players who are into RTS's like Generals, Red Alert, Act of War etc seem to dislike Starcraft. So it really depends how they make it - I doubt they can satisfy everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Emoticons can make the difference:
"You're an idiot." - insult
"You're an idiot. =P" - joke
I've never been a fan of over using emoticons like many people my age seem to (and I prefer ASCII emoticons to annoying animated ones in MSN and such), but when you're expressing something more than just basic literal information and details, using emoticons can effectively set the tone of an email, or an IM.
And hell, chucking in a "^_^" or "=)" something at the end of an email can always make the other person feel happier about it. =P
~Jarik
I don't know if it's an American thing, or what, but having been to two Australian public Primary Schools and two High Schools (One public and one private), I have never heard of any stories of bullying or bullies like the ones I hear from America. o.O
I could have just been lucky with my schools...but the extent of bullying at the public schools was just teasing and spreading rumours...physical harassment only really happened if there was a mutually agreed fight.
In my current school, there's almost no bullying. Hell, I find it strange that people who are non-conformist, and have strange interests/skills, actually are treated very positively. Granted, I have a really good year level, I hear the other year levels are worse...but still, even here, the worst bullying is just some insulting. That's about it.
Are American schools really as bad as they are made out in movies?
~Jarik
Would they really declassify sensitive information that would be an obstacle to their mission?
You have all of your music easily accessible on your media player. Want to play a song? Instead of finding the CD, removing the currently playing CD and putting the new one in, its a simple matter of scrolling and finding it (or using iTunes search, which makes it even easier).
Because of this, you can have literally, thousands of songs easily selected. Imagines shuffling through hundreds of CDs. It'd also take up lots of physical space and be harder to keep 'clean' and 'organised'.
There's also the convenience of actually acquiring the file. A simple download, as opposed to having to go to the store. You can also get things song by song, rather than having to get a full album to listen to one song. It's cheaper too.
The only time I have really bought CDs is when buying my Dad a present (who's a music lover too). Burning him a copy of "Opeth - Orchid" and "Pink Floyd - Animals" is cheap, but buying him the CD is something he really appreciated. You get the full CD, with its cover and eyecandy. Being presented with a burnt CD of illegally downloaded songs...sucks as a present (Yes, I got one of these on my eighteenth =P).
There is of course, listening in the car too - most cars still don't feature MP3 support, so CDs will last a bit longer, but this will eventually phase out. And I see more and more people coming up with ways of using their iPods with their car stereos too.
~Jarik
Whenever it comes down to religion, I find myself arguing for two sides. I hate the topic of religion when I'm with most people. I find when it comes to this, everyone becomes so damned arrogant.
I don't mind people saying "These are my beliefs." No, the religious people say "My beliefs are correct, there's no other interpretation, and all your beliefs suck" and the atheists are even worse, with their "Gawd I'm smart and damned proud to be atheist. Seriously, who the hell would follow the Bible? It is so stupid and obviously contradictory. All religious people are morons."
I find myself arguing both for and against the beliefs. There is no way to logically or scientifically prove anything, therefore, no one can really be a 'moron' for believing either. And hell, just take Christianity - there is so many ways of interpreting it. People will attack the idea of creation as stupid - but why can't they understand that another way to interpret it is that maybe the '7 day story' was a poetic legend given by God to a primitive society with the intention of telling them that "God created the universe"? God couldn't tell Moses about the intricacies of evolution or anything like that - such a thing would only confuse people of that time period.
Every single time an arrogant atheist comes up with a 'sure argument against a religion' I have come up with a counter-argument based on one of many interpretations that can refute or explain such an attack, and the same goes for religious people.
I think people just have to accept that there is no scientific way to prove or disprove any of this, and there will be arguments against *everything* that tries to.
~Jarik
Well, the solution is to send all the gas and car companies to mars and globally warm *that* for a change. That way, everyone is happy. =P
It's a good point you make.
And I'm sure if they *weren't* preparing for 'cyberwar' people would be attacking them for not taking real threats seriously.
You think they'd give him that many options? More like:
Access granted! Hello Mr President,
would you like to...
[1] View your ranch on 'The Google Maps'
[2] Play online poker
[3] Start a War with:
[4] Learn English
For some people, there's also the convenience perspective and using a system they may feel more comfortable with.
~Jarik
Where's Jack Thompson? o.O
Might just be who I hang out with, and it's just cause my school is really accepting and open (which it is really...), but I'm finding the key is confidence. You go up to make a speech looking like a nerd, loser and are really shy, then talk about something weird and nerdy - you'll be booed off the stage.
But go up on the stage with a confident, funny, lighthearted "I don't give a shit" attitude, and say something, people get into it - which is what this guy did. Oh sure, you still need to make sure the joke can be understood by the layman (though if the point of the joke is talking about stuff they have no clue about - just go ahead).
But yeah, I've seen some great public speakers at my school - and listened to the jokes, humour and all that they've made. What makes them funny is their body language, their tone, the pause before the punch-lines, and their overall confident demeanor. If you listen to their actual jokes, they're not *that* funny, and if someone else did it? It wouldn't be as funny.
My own main personal killer is, even in normal day-to-day language...I have the tendency to fumble words - take half of one and add it to the other...tends to kill my witty comebacks half the time. >_>
~Jarik
Yeah!
Think...your watching your fetish porn and you think your home alone. Then your Mum walks in - you have 500ms to consider the following:
a) Hide junior under the desk and/or zip up your pants
b) Alt Tab or close the window (hoping there's no other windows there)
c) Turn off the monitor
d) Think up a viable excuse.
Now take that situation and imagine you are just finishing yourself off. You'd panic like a biatch, possibly doing none of the above and forever scarring your mother's thoughts of you being innocent for the rest of your life.
I'm sure that this woman probably felt a similar amount of panic and shock (since she didn't even EXPECT the pop-ups...).
~Jarik
PS: Apologies for the graphic images. >_>
But...this is Slashdot - I'm sure we've all been through this situation at one point or another. =P
I have heard this a lot, but being an owner of a 9800Pro manufactured *by* ATI, and having a Gigabyte manufactured 9600XT, we've noticed no real problems with the Catalyst Drivers (granted, the drivers that came on the driver CD for both of our cards were unappealing and not great...but after installing Catalyst we both increased our benchmark scores by up to 500).
In fact more of my friends with nVidia cards seem to have the problems with stability. =S
Is this problem just apparent in newer cards? Or am I just insane?
~Jarik
Does that mean there is a relationship over a wife's hotness...and how much sound she produces?
And does it work the other way? Ie, transferring a wife's loudness into hotness. =P
Quite obviously Microsoft Word is the best. Vi and Emacs are for people who can't afford REAL software.
I respect the fact he's *genuine* and he really *cares* for his ideals and people, as opposed to just using ideals and people as political tools.
~Jarik
Well, I had a question.
Most mid-high range Mobos these days offer RAID options (usually 0,1,5,10). Obviously, if the RAID controller dies, so does the RAID partition right? So my question was, assuming I go with a brand name motherboard - Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, DFI, etc - Am I safe from failing RAID controllers? I want to run RAID 0 for the bigger drives and slight increase in performance from two channels (or so I have heard) - but if it increases the chance of failure, I'm not sure.
And considering I have quite a few drives, I'll need the SATA channels for more drives (which is why I am shying from using RAID 5...don't think I'll have enough free SATA ports).
~Jarik
I disagree with that point.
Cuba originally existed as an American-backed Dictatorship. It was a backyard resort for Americans and a good place for American industry, but the dictatorship did not do anything good for the locals. This social discontent is what allowed Castro's revolution to occur.
In fact, for large periods of Castro's regime, he has had no Soviet support and a lot of the time has actually been in CONFLICT with Soviet support (Castro has run Cuba as a world power, instead of a small nation).
I have a lot of respect for Castro. Where the Bolshevik party became a party that used Communist ideals as a tool to achieve power, I believe Castro truly believed in Marxist Ideals (He went out of his way supporting other country's revolution to the point where Khrushchev threatened to remove Soviet support and allow an American invasion if he didn't stop).
So it wasn't really that much of a Soviet-backed Dictatorship as it was of Castro's regime which was supported by the USSR at times. As for the state of the country...a lot of that can be related to the US embargo and during the Cuban Missile Crisis, blockade. Except for one part where America offered a hand of friendship to Cuba (in which Castro shocked the world by turning it down in favour of supporting the communist revolution in Angolia), America has consistently tried to cause Cuba to fall. While a lot of Cuba's failings could be Castro's own goals being unachievable and not the best planned (which is why Soviet's ordered an executive committee to take over economic decisions in Cuba lest Cuba loses financial support), America is also to cause for Cuba's problems.
Really, while I can't agree with Castro's ideals, he's a lot more than a Russian-backed Dictator - a puppet of the USSR. Which is why Cuba stays true to Marxist ideals even today without superpower support.
As for your other points, I agree completely.
America does have a habit of destroying a regime and rebuilding it, while pouring money in it. As you said, West Germany and Japan are two very obvious examples - two of the world's top leaders in industry and manufacturing. America poured ridiculous amounts of money into West Berlin as a strategical measure - it was symbolic. Russia was angry at Germany for killing over 30million Russians in WWII - so they put huge debts on East Germany and East Berlin and fucked over the place. America on the other hand, wanted to compare East Berlin, which was falling apart to West Berlin - which was positively glowing. This was meant to be a comparison between 'Communism and Capitalism' - the symbolic 'prosperous society' versus the 'society that's falling apart'.
It's an effective strategy and probably the reason why so many countries in the Soviet Bloc rebelled as soon as Gorbachev showed weakness by allowing perestroika (liberalism) reforms. They saw Capitalism as superior due to these things.
There is of course the fact that after these countries become powerful, they feel indebted to America and offer good trade agreements and help the economy and prosperity of America.
~Jarik
The whole essence of the Bolshevik ideals were to force revolution. When the Communist Party broke up into the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions, that was one of the differences in political views. The Mensheviks believed that the masses should rise up against the government - the revolution should start from below. The Bolsheviks believed that the revolution should be done more in a 'coup d'etat' style - that is, a handful of 'elite educated revolutionaries' (forming the Bolshevik party) would guide the 'proletariat' (workers) to revolution - aka, they would do the revolution 'for' the workers.
That's what happened during October 1917 revolution - only 10,000 or so Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace of the Provisional Government as opposed to the Soviets and the masses attacking together. This whole attitude of 'we know what's best for the proletariat - they agree with us' is what allowed them to become so expansionist - they would simply say they were doing the will of the masses who couldn't do it themselves.
Really, thinking about it is kind of similar to what America is doing, except America will claim to be doing the will of the masses - with communism replaced with democracy/liberty. While it is probably true liberty/democracy *is* probably the will of many individuals in these countries, it is still an interesting comparison to make. The 'we know what's best for you' attitude.
~Jarik
Having never *really* used Linux...I thought this article was calling him a git. o.O
I am in a band and Guitar Pro 4/5 has always proved invaluable to us. Back when www.mysongbook.com allowed you to actually download all their tabs, it was easy to find a good, high quality tab for whatever song we were covering. All of our compositions are also made in Guitar Pro and spread to each of the band members - both for the ability of being able to listen to a theoretical version of the song, and being able to convey our ideas to the other members better.
This was in no way making us money, or losing any money for the record companies. We weren't choosing to listen to Midis over buying CDs or anything like that. Oh sure, you can argue maybe we were abstaining from buying sheet music over using the tabs, but at the same time - most of what we played did not have sheet music transcriptions for all instruments.
And being able to have your song in tab notation, sheet music notation and have it playable as a Midi (for all instruments) is a lot more useful than just having the sheet music for one instrument in a book.
With mysongbook.com down, not only are tabs a lot harder to find, but it's harder to find the higher quality ones, or ones that include all instruments (instead of just guitars+bass).
This is nothing but greed - record companies trying to work out if they can make money off tabs...and until they can work that out, banning any other distributions all together.
~Jarik
BSG is my favorite TV show of all time. I enjoyed all seasons - mini-series, Season1, Season2 and Season 3. In fact, I think I enjoyed Season 2 the best and despite what everyone else seems to criticize, all the 'character development' fillers in the middle of Season 3 were really interesting.
One of the main reasons I enjoy it, as compared to most Sci Fi's, is that in general - it runs more like a movie, without a quick end. Each episode affects the next greatly - you could watch all seasons put together without the flow being interupted too much.
Compare this to Sci Fi's like Stargate SG1 and X-Files - while still great in their own way, they aim at each episode being standalone. There is very minor character development during the flow of each season, and of course, there will be 2-3 double episodes throughout each season which will be focused on continuing the overall plotline. And of course, every filler will generally be based on top of the 'general plot line' - but fundamentally, each episode is designed for more casual watches. You could miss 5 episodes of SG1 and probably still understand what was happening. Not so with BSG.
What I do see happening, which I think everyone else is noticing, is the fact that BSG is becoming like Prison Break. I still like the latter show, but it's becoming a drag - it's not longer the really intelligent and awesome show I had huge respect for and has become a show that goes on forever and ever. I mean come on - every time they get to a possible end, there's a plot twist and they're back at the start. 3 seasons? Ridiculous. Season 1 should've ended with the first attempted break out and Season 2 should've ended at around ep 15 (But I don't agree with people who say there shouldn't've been a season 2 - since Mahone kicks ass =P). But yeah, I'm seeing BSG having more plot twists, etc.
Now I'm not necessarily against this...yet...I just don't want it to turn out to be like PB. So far, it's on the borderline of being overdone. As for the new 4-5 cylons we've learned...this could be done really well, or really badly. It's up to the writers really. In fact, I'm the kinda guy to watch a show and wish something would happen - but it never does...except in BSG. =P
Overall, I think BSG is living up to its potential. Apart from a few things which could have been done better, for me personally, this is by far the TV show I have enjoyed the most. I just hope Season 4 is amazing and finishes with a blast!
I'm curious as to whether the Terrans (Earthlings) will be:
1. Primitive/Ancient
2. At our level of technology atm.
3. At a similar level of technology to the colonists and Cylons
4. At a level exceeding the other two races.
Will be interesting in any case. =)
And I'm interested in more development of Boomer/Caprica Six and the Colonials. After all, they were part of the human rights movement and if there wasn't an insurgency on New Caprica, they could have very well lived in somewhat peace.
~Jarik
Compare that to Fanfiction.net where just the Harry Potter section there is almost 300,000 fics. Out of these fics, most of them will be
Though quantity means nothing in terms of quality. As anyone who regularly reads FF.net will have noticed the general degradation of quality as FF.net has assumed huge amounts of popularity with obviously, bad writers...and more and more authors are leaving to go on smaller fanfiction sites as their fanfics get lost in pages and pages worth of ridiculously repetitive, badly written and slash fics (not that I have anything against slash/yaoi fics...but the sheer amount of slash/yaoi fics out there is ridiculous. Especially since they're all, like, exactly the same. >_>)
~Jarik
*nods*
Telstra introduced the Bigpond Cable Unlimited Plan 8mbps/128kbps (which was, in reality 'after 10GB a month, you MAY be capped to 64kbps up and down') at the end of 2003. It was, until the introduction of ADSL2+, the fastest residential internet you could get - which is, pretty darn slow (Especially upload) for $70AUD a month.
At the time, there was no other real competition to this. Sure, Optus came out with an almost identical plan (12GB, then capped to 28.8kbps) and after a while, ADSL1 providers began to offer better plans - but all served a maximum of 1500kbps/512kbps. It was only iiNet that served an 8mbps ADSL1 connection - and this was only later.
As for T00lstra, they played their cards well. For the first year on that plan, I never got capped. I knew a guy who hit 120GB who never got capped either. They got a customer-base...then they started capping you like a bitch. Of course, it was all manual capping, so there were easy ways to mess with the system (reset your router on the 15th day of the month and get reset to zero, any day after the 28th you could not get capped, and you could only get capped on Mondays) and you could get a fair amount more out of that. But quickly, they put automatic scripts with capped you. Once again, they still hadn't fixed 28th+ of each month. But just three months ago, even that flaw in the system didn't work and now I am definitely planning to move away from Telstra as soon as ADSL2+ comes out.
The pathetic thing is, since 2004, their Unlimited, now 'Liberty' plan, dropped like...a whole $10. Now with ADSL2+, they've even lost their speed advantage over competitors. And really, when iiNet can offer 3 times as fast internet, with 4 times as much bandwidth for the same price...I have to wonder how Telstra will do unless they start providing better service... Their monopoly over Cable is for naught with ADSL2+ really.
*sigh* Now I just gotta wait for a DSLAM here...
~Jarik
I used to really be into Starcraft for a time, and I think the main reason I enjoyed it so much was because it was so intense - everything you did mattered. It was easily the best RTS I had every played.
,FP-VODs and live streams from MBCGame. For those of you who watched the final between Iloveoov and JulyZerg (I think it was either the OSL 2006 final? Or it could've been SkyLeague? Might be wrong *Shrugs*), the game was won by JZ due to ONE MEDIC which was surrounded and killed my JulyZerg's zerglings before the medic could get behind the marine line. The marines were subsequently raped and the game was decided.
As I'm sure you already know, Koreans are huge on Starcraft - and I have watched replays, VODs
Now most of you who haven't played SC:BW probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but what I'm trying to say is Starcraft is a game more focused on your control of each single unit.
It is far from realistic, which is why I'm hoping the new engine for Starcraft II doesn't add physics to the game. Half the reason it is so good is it is very fast. This fast once again, means that your micro can really be used to huge levels. I find in slower games, micro is a lot more worthless to utilize, since it doesn't do much.
I guess it all is up to what audience Starcraft II is aimed at. If they want to aim at the people who play the latest RTS for a couple of months and give up, they need to make it a game where the aim is to mass units and send them into the base. This is what most gamers I've encountered do. They don't care about build orders, about micro or macro, etc. It's all about graphics and super weapons. People mass units for 30 minutes then both attack each other till one person wins.
If they want to aim it at the current Starcraft audience - a multi-million dollar industry in Korea that is still at its peak after 10 years - then it needs to be the kinda game the former gamers would find boring or really hard.
For instance, for a player who has an Actions Per Minute of 30, who just builds units, sends them into the enemies' base and twiddles their thumbs, Starcraft is NOT a balanced game. Lurkers for instance, are units that burrow under ground and attack - able to hit many units at once. Say the said player masses hundreds of marines, sends them in - he goes 'oh no' when three lurkers wipe them out. But this *is* balanced for a player who knows what he's doing - that is, he stops his marines movement using his macro (and hotkeys!), scanner sweeps the area (revealing hidden units) and takes them out with his Siege Tanks.
Many players who are into RTS's like Generals, Red Alert, Act of War etc seem to dislike Starcraft. So it really depends how they make it - I doubt they can satisfy everyone.
~Jarik