I do, of course, realize that our government and legislation is highly based on precedent. If the legislature has previously passed a bill similar to a newly proposed one, it is much easier to pass.
And yes, I am a political scientist.
I did not say that everything from DHS is bad. I said that this is from DHS, and that this is bad. I actually did not mean to imply that all DHS work is bad. The point is that if there is a charge for getting a RealID, which there will be, and if the RealID is required to get a job, for instance, then people who are poor will suffer even more than they do now.
I wonder if the DHS consciously constructs slippery slopes and has timelines drawn up for when to feed what to the American people, or if they're just really good at accidentally destroying our civil liberties...
As a fellow CoH/CoV player, I wholeheartedly endorse both your posts.:) Been playing since launch, and the game has gotten better and better... I'm the Games staff writer for the Tufts Daily and I really wanted to review Issue 11 - it's a damn shame that such issues are not accounted for in the traditional "Game of the Year" competitions.
Additionally, the tidal forces of the moon are slowly robbing the Earth of its momentum. The Earth used to spin much faster, rotating as many as 400 times during a single orbit of the sun. Taking a tiny chunk out of that slowdown might not be such a bad thing, eh?
No, it doesn't matter if one person would prefer it that way, it only matters if there is no objection from any member of the social contract. In a truly fair system, nothing is imposed upon anyone - all is agreed upon by all. What you claim is a "rational" system, that being the system optimized for the fewest total casualties to natural causes, does not take into account the quality of life of those sacrificed for the whole. This is held to be immoral if one believes that humans cannot be deprived of their right to pursue happiness.
Why is it unethical? If you could save thousands of lives by curing a disease, but curing the disease required potentially deadly experiments on a few people, wouldn't it be unethical NOT to proceed with the research? It is unethical because nobody would choose to be the lab-human from behind the veil of ignorance In other words, if you were designing society's rules from a position where you had no idea which role you would be cast into, you would not create the role of "person to die in lab experiments for the greater good" because you yourself would not want to take on that role.
The research doesn't confirm anything. In fact, no science does. It just shows that there's yet another phenomenon which does not demonstrate the prominent possibility to be incorrect. It seems a minor distinction, but it's important to science that science can't "prove" anything - only attempt to disprove by null hypothesis.
Technically, "Grand theft auto" does not mean a spree of carjacking - Auto is a modifier on the crime of Grand Theft, which is any theft valued over $1,000. Thus, Grand Theft Auto is when you steal something worth more than $1000, and that thing happens to be a car. You would, of course, be charged with a count of this felony for every car you stole in a spree.
There currently is a one-mile strip of highway outside of Los Angeles that can actually be driven automatically by properly equipped cars. It doesn't rely on GPS, though - instead, it has magnets implanted in the roadway and the cars have sensors on their undersides to allow them to detect where lanes are. The next step would be for onboard computers to use short-distance wireless band to do p2p navigation by finding where other vehicles are. This way, the system is less reliant on space-based, US-controlled systems.
The article mentions iRobot, the company behind Roombas, but this Garage company is not necessarily working on bots with personality right now either. Instead, they're looking to use robots to do other things humans don't want to do - like take a month-long journey on the sea to survey temperature conditions of remote sections of water, or drive in traffic. Imagine how much work you could get done (or fun you could have:P) if you didn't have to drive your car yourself? Life would be much more relaxing, and potentially much more safe.
It's an interesting strategy outlined in the article - that they're less worried about making money quickly and more worried about making robotics a sustainable sector of the economy means they'll either crash and burn early, or their efforts will single-handedly help to define a new generation of technology. Quite the fun dichotomy.:)
I'm honestly astonished this didn't happen sooner. Casual game apps as an option for email accounts would be a huge draw to the much-vaunted 12-20 yo demographic.
While I would agree that Halo and GTA are worlds apart, and hope that this controversy catalyzes much-needed revamping of the ESRB's functionality, I still find it out of place that churches are using Halo to bring young men to services. "Thou shalt not kill" does not mesh well with "Thou shalt kill aliens in copious numbers".
Also, it just strikes me of bribery - they should be there because they're interested in the religion, not because they wanna get a mad sic deathmatch in after church lets out. But maybe that's just me.
You'd miss out on a lot by buying it on the PS2, I would think, as all Sony console downloads will probably be done through PSN, and it's very hard to get the PS2 online at all. To clarify, by hard, I mean the peripherals cost a lot and the console is not built to make it easy, unlike the ps3 and 360.
I don't know how the BBFC works, but the ESRB pulls in volunteers who are parents of school-age kids to watch 30 minutes of footage from any given game and has them conference to determine the game's rating. The footage is required to show anything which may tip the rating - they publish a list of "potentially pertinent" factors and send them to every developer so the devs know what to make sure they get in.
It's silly nonetheless, though, because you've got parents who don't necessarily know the first thing about games rating things based on a total lack of context and usually not even a tenth of the game on screen. A packet is also submitted with the game footage which contains a list of all ratings-pertinent content, but generally that pretty matches the video.
If the BBFC works the same way, they wouldn't even be able to give a list of "what to change" to the developer - they'd have pulled an entirely different committee of people who might object to totally different aspects of things.
As for the MMO plan, from the first gamasutra story linked in the original post:
"As for how the 10 new franchises spaced out over the next few years, the company confirmed that it would be fairly evenly over the 2009, 2010, and 2011 fiscal years, revealing that the BioWare MMO currently in development at BioWare Austin is planned towards the back half of that three year outlook."
As far as funding goes, I'm sure part of Bioware's motivation in this deal was the security of publishing it would give them for their MMO. As an independent developer, no matter how successful, they simply wouldn't have had the cashflow to self-publish an MMO. Assuming EA just lets them do their jobs and tries not to interfere with the typically awesome work that they do, I don't see the Bioware MMO going the way of previous EA led MMOs. Also, I'd be willing to bet that part of EA's motivation in acquiring Bioware was in buying up whatever in-house MMO engine they were coming up with, so that they can use it on other properties. But I guess only time will tell.;-)
It should be free always, as part of a patch, on PC. I've got no problem with charging for it on Live or PSN, as they don't really have the precedent of free content updates... but microtransactions paying for getting your game *finished* on PC are inexcusable.
Just a thought... I ventured over to http://www.transgaming.com/ , the company that EA worked with to do their Mac ports, and discovered that their front page is advertising EVE now being available for Mac and linux. Maybe we'll see future Bioware/Pandemic games, or any IP acquired by EA in the merger, ported to these systems as well? That could be neat.
Transgaming Inc, the company behind the technology that allowed EA to port their Direct-X based PC games to Mac, now has had a successful implementation of their conversion engine on a large scale. This could be used to port ANY DirectX game to an x86 Mac. I know for a fact that all four of the Mac games released work perfectly fine on Intel macs, as I have run them all myself - are you running a g4 or g5? If so, that's why it's not working.
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I do, of course, realize that our government and legislation is highly based on precedent. If the legislature has previously passed a bill similar to a newly proposed one, it is much easier to pass.
And yes, I am a political scientist.
I did not say that everything from DHS is bad. I said that this is from DHS, and that this is bad. I actually did not mean to imply that all DHS work is bad. The point is that if there is a charge for getting a RealID, which there will be, and if the RealID is required to get a job, for instance, then people who are poor will suffer even more than they do now.
I wonder if the DHS consciously constructs slippery slopes and has timelines drawn up for when to feed what to the American people, or if they're just really good at accidentally destroying our civil liberties...
Start training toddlers, and send 'em by the time they're seven. Pre-screen them for early puberty, too. That, or just use robots. :)
Of course nobody's run spore on WINE yet. Spore isn't out yet.
As a fellow CoH/CoV player, I wholeheartedly endorse both your posts. :) Been playing since launch, and the game has gotten better and better... I'm the Games staff writer for the Tufts Daily and I really wanted to review Issue 11 - it's a damn shame that such issues are not accounted for in the traditional "Game of the Year" competitions.
Of course, even if she was innocent of murder, she's now guilty of whatever charge Indiana has on its books for escaping from prison...
Additionally, the tidal forces of the moon are slowly robbing the Earth of its momentum. The Earth used to spin much faster, rotating as many as 400 times during a single orbit of the sun. Taking a tiny chunk out of that slowdown might not be such a bad thing, eh?
No, it doesn't matter if one person would prefer it that way, it only matters if there is no objection from any member of the social contract. In a truly fair system, nothing is imposed upon anyone - all is agreed upon by all. What you claim is a "rational" system, that being the system optimized for the fewest total casualties to natural causes, does not take into account the quality of life of those sacrificed for the whole. This is held to be immoral if one believes that humans cannot be deprived of their right to pursue happiness.
It is unethical because nobody would choose to be the lab-human from behind the veil of ignorance In other words, if you were designing society's rules from a position where you had no idea which role you would be cast into, you would not create the role of "person to die in lab experiments for the greater good" because you yourself would not want to take on that role.
The research doesn't confirm anything. In fact, no science does. It just shows that there's yet another phenomenon which does not demonstrate the prominent possibility to be incorrect. It seems a minor distinction, but it's important to science that science can't "prove" anything - only attempt to disprove by null hypothesis.
Technically, "Grand theft auto" does not mean a spree of carjacking - Auto is a modifier on the crime of Grand Theft, which is any theft valued over $1,000. Thus, Grand Theft Auto is when you steal something worth more than $1000, and that thing happens to be a car. You would, of course, be charged with a count of this felony for every car you stole in a spree.
There currently is a one-mile strip of highway outside of Los Angeles that can actually be driven automatically by properly equipped cars. It doesn't rely on GPS, though - instead, it has magnets implanted in the roadway and the cars have sensors on their undersides to allow them to detect where lanes are. The next step would be for onboard computers to use short-distance wireless band to do p2p navigation by finding where other vehicles are. This way, the system is less reliant on space-based, US-controlled systems.
The article mentions iRobot, the company behind Roombas, but this Garage company is not necessarily working on bots with personality right now either. Instead, they're looking to use robots to do other things humans don't want to do - like take a month-long journey on the sea to survey temperature conditions of remote sections of water, or drive in traffic. Imagine how much work you could get done (or fun you could have :P) if you didn't have to drive your car yourself? Life would be much more relaxing, and potentially much more safe.
It's an interesting strategy outlined in the article - that they're less worried about making money quickly and more worried about making robotics a sustainable sector of the economy means they'll either crash and burn early, or their efforts will single-handedly help to define a new generation of technology. Quite the fun dichotomy. :)
I'm honestly astonished this didn't happen sooner. Casual game apps as an option for email accounts would be a huge draw to the much-vaunted 12-20 yo demographic.
Erm, if Congress passed a law giving them oversight over the executive on domestic wiretapping, Bush could and probably would just veto it.
While I would agree that Halo and GTA are worlds apart, and hope that this controversy catalyzes much-needed revamping of the ESRB's functionality, I still find it out of place that churches are using Halo to bring young men to services. "Thou shalt not kill" does not mesh well with "Thou shalt kill aliens in copious numbers". Also, it just strikes me of bribery - they should be there because they're interested in the religion, not because they wanna get a mad sic deathmatch in after church lets out. But maybe that's just me.
Well, the real loss would be on the peripherals - you'll lose a lot reselling those as used.
You'd miss out on a lot by buying it on the PS2, I would think, as all Sony console downloads will probably be done through PSN, and it's very hard to get the PS2 online at all. To clarify, by hard, I mean the peripherals cost a lot and the console is not built to make it easy, unlike the ps3 and 360.
as if millions of Sims cried out in pain... and then were silent.
I don't know how the BBFC works, but the ESRB pulls in volunteers who are parents of school-age kids to watch 30 minutes of footage from any given game and has them conference to determine the game's rating. The footage is required to show anything which may tip the rating - they publish a list of "potentially pertinent" factors and send them to every developer so the devs know what to make sure they get in.
It's silly nonetheless, though, because you've got parents who don't necessarily know the first thing about games rating things based on a total lack of context and usually not even a tenth of the game on screen. A packet is also submitted with the game footage which contains a list of all ratings-pertinent content, but generally that pretty matches the video.
If the BBFC works the same way, they wouldn't even be able to give a list of "what to change" to the developer - they'd have pulled an entirely different committee of people who might object to totally different aspects of things.
As for the MMO plan, from the first gamasutra story linked in the original post:
;-)
"As for how the 10 new franchises spaced out over the next few years, the company confirmed that it would be fairly evenly over the 2009, 2010, and 2011 fiscal years, revealing that the BioWare MMO currently in development at BioWare Austin is planned towards the back half of that three year outlook."
As far as funding goes, I'm sure part of Bioware's motivation in this deal was the security of publishing it would give them for their MMO. As an independent developer, no matter how successful, they simply wouldn't have had the cashflow to self-publish an MMO. Assuming EA just lets them do their jobs and tries not to interfere with the typically awesome work that they do, I don't see the Bioware MMO going the way of previous EA led MMOs. Also, I'd be willing to bet that part of EA's motivation in acquiring Bioware was in buying up whatever in-house MMO engine they were coming up with, so that they can use it on other properties. But I guess only time will tell.
It should be free always, as part of a patch, on PC. I've got no problem with charging for it on Live or PSN, as they don't really have the precedent of free content updates... but microtransactions paying for getting your game *finished* on PC are inexcusable.
Sad times. =/
Just a thought... I ventured over to http://www.transgaming.com/ , the company that EA worked with to do their Mac ports, and discovered that their front page is advertising EVE now being available for Mac and linux. Maybe we'll see future Bioware/Pandemic games, or any IP acquired by EA in the merger, ported to these systems as well? That could be neat.
Transgaming Inc, the company behind the technology that allowed EA to port their Direct-X based PC games to Mac, now has had a successful implementation of their conversion engine on a large scale. This could be used to port ANY DirectX game to an x86 Mac. I know for a fact that all four of the Mac games released work perfectly fine on Intel macs, as I have run them all myself - are you running a g4 or g5? If so, that's why it's not working.