I knew plenty of people who shared files on the campus network just by sharing their directories (read-only, no password) with everyone. Would that be banned under this action? What if they are sharing a directory of freeware or open source material?
I thought the bombs were on cargo/commercial (FedEx or UPS) planes, not passenger aircraft. If so, why are we (again) punishing the passengers for no apparent reason? Haven't we annoyed and inconvenienced the flying public enough already?
Indeed the NES Advantage was the best controller ever made for the 8-bit Nintendo, bar none. I logged many hours playing River City Ransom, Double Dragon, and other classic beat-em-ups on that. The uber-low-tech "slow motion" feature on it was amusing at times, as well - especially if you accidentally hit it on a game that brought up some sort of menu when pressing start...
Apparently it is time to rip on the Power Glove yet again. As I, unlike some of the people who write negatively about it, actually owned one, I would like to give my piece on the matter. In particular, I would like to point out that indeed there was one good game that worked with a regular controller but worked exceptionally well with the power glove.
Unfortunately, that game was not Punch-Out (with or without Mike Tyson). Punch-Out was a massive pile of failure to end all massive piles of failure with regards to the power glove. For some reason some idiot programmer thought that a good way to set up the power glove for punch-out was to move your hand forward for a punch, and then backwards for a power punch. Which of course meant your only power punch was gone pretty well immediately and then you were hosed for the rest of the round.
No, the game that worked well with the power glove (while not being power glove specific) was Top Gun. That game had very sensible controls; move your hand, move the plane. First two fingers are your weapons. You didn't need anything more than that. Unfortunately few people ever used that great combination.
I suppose it is probably a good thing that some of the MS engineers who worked on Kinect are actually too young to have ever tried to play punch-out with a power glove. Because if they had, they might have started out with the idea that motion control without a controller could never work properly.
Sure, net neutrality went out the window. But now we have legislators who are going to spend all their time working to repeal a health care overhaul bill that didn't overhaul anything. And they are led by someone who said he will not compromise on his principles.
Basically, the 2010 election only set the stage for a very early (as in this afternoon) start to the 2012 election cycle. On the plus side, the politicians will be so busy campaigning that we might not have to worry about them passing anything we don't like because they may well not pass anything at all (beyond their own gas and hot air of course). On the minus side, the politicians are already so busy campaigning that they might never pass anything at all.
Provided they don't find some way to completely destroy the world, this might indeed be the government we deserve...
It can't be done unless they gain 12 seats in the Senate and take over the presidency in 2012. Until then, enjoy your premium increases.
Yeah, because nobody ever saw their insurance premiums increase before now, right? Every premium increase, ever, in the history of our great awesome country of awesomeness, was caused by the health care bill!
After all, we all know that the great and most benevolent captains of industry who are in charge of the health insurance companies are the greatest and most benevolent leaders you could ever find, anywhere, and they would lead their companies only with your interests at heart!
Are you saying then that lying in current politics is justified by lying in past politics? I don't care much for that kind of reasoning... That sounds too similar to "I am killing you because your ancestors killed my ancestors (whose ancestors killed your ancestors' ancestors (whose ancestors killed my ancestors' ancestors' ancestors (ad naseum... )))".
At some point someone needs to rise above that crap and actually limit their message to a truthful one.
Which doesn't change the fact that it doesn't work well with a lot of systems. Even current hardware on certain operating systems cannot run flash 10 very well; for that matter flash 10 is so absurdly CPU intensive that it really can't be said to run that well on modern hardare with recent microsoft or apple OSes, either.
I can't think of a good reason why you'd want to keep an older version of Flash, unless you really want some malware.
I can think of plenty of worthwhile systems that are incapable of running flash 10. And plenty of other systems that are so crippled by flash 10 to make it not worth running on them, either.
If you think demanding people have Flash 10 is asking people to be needlessly up-to-date, requiring a HTML5 browser is even more so.
It isn't so much about what is up-to-date as what is worthwhile in terms of requirements. If all they want to do is show a video, they don't need any version of flash to do that - a lot of shitty webmasters all over the world seem to have forgotten that. And likely they could have done a good job of describing a lot of it without a video at all; they instead took the easy way out and skipped text in favor of video (or whatever else they are doing with flash).
So while it would be great to see flash disappear completely, immediately, forever, in favor of HTML5, they most likely did something that they could have done with HTML4. And every browser that is currently available for displaying web pages with graphics can do HTML4, without any plugin nonsense.
In short, they crapped all over themselves by making a really shitty web design choice.
No, not why did they do it - that part is obvious. Rather, why did they write such a short meaningless summary and then embed a flash 10 video in it? The website is damned close to worthless for anyone who isn't running the latest flash.
There are enough sites that obnoxiously require flash to find the most benign content. I generally make it a practice to avoid those sites, and now I'll be avoiding these ones as well.
There is spin, distortion, and outright lies from both sides. Which is why I said
If either side was actually honest about their side of the issue, they could gain more traction
Instead the issue is coming through like any other political crap; lots of emotion from both sides, lots of extreme (and at least in part lacking in fact) opinions, and very little honesty. Perhaps it is an effect of the current political climate that favors this kind of crap, or perhaps it was always attached to this issue anyways. Either way, neither side is truly honest.
Yes, both sides are dishonest. The people who support prop 19 (and other legalization initiatives) should say "most users of pot can use it responsibly, and should be able to buy it legally". Instead, they opt for a much more extreme statement of "legalizing pot will solve every problem the world has ever faced, ever, immediately". And being as the supporters of prop 19 need a majority in order to achieve their desired change, they need to present a convincing argument.
Of course, there is plenty of dishonesty from the other side as well. The nonsense about "gateway drugs" and what not is just the tip of the iceberg. However the people who oppose prop 19 don't need to deliver a profound argument for the continued criminalization of pot; they just need to show that the argument for prop 19 has significant holes in it. As long as more people vote against prop 19 than vote for it, the law remains as it is currently written.
Of course, the difference between how it is written, and how it is actually enforced, is another matter.
Only one side is dishonest, and it ain't the potheads.
Wrong. There are dishonest people on both sides. While some of the people in support of prop 19 are honest enough to just come forward and say they want to use pot, others have resorted to lying about the (perceived) benefits of legalization.
Some honesty. If either side was actually honest about their side of the issue, they could gain more traction. But when the pro side of the issue can't be honest about what they want, they shouldn't be surprised when people don't find their argument convincing.
Where I did my undergraduate, one department spent money on the Hermann Miller Aeron chairs in a large purchase. As a public university, all our purchasing decisions had to be shared with the state, so of course those chairs were known to have been purchased by the department who chose them. Mind you, the Aeron chairs were not the most expensive for the purpose they were going for - in particular these were chairs for employees, not students, to use.
Around the same time it was announced that the Aeron chair would be included in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NYC. Those who have been to or are familiar with MoMA know that there are a lot of items at MoMA that are recognized for their utility or design that are not necessarily of high price.
Nonetheless, those two news items reached one news station in town close to simultaneously. This quickly then became one news item for them - "Local University Purchases Museum-Quality Furniture with YOUR tax dollars" - which of course brought way more attention to an office chair purchase than should ever be bestowed.
In the end, the University decided that it simply wasn't worth the hassle to even keep the Aerons in the regular list of available chairs for departments. The Aeron became a "special order only" item, that almost required a chiropractic evaluation before the university would approve state funds for it's purchase. Yet other, similar, chairs were available, at and higher prices than what we were quoted for the Aerons.
So the moral of the story is don't do it. Improve something less controversial, like lunchroom food or overhead projectors. Hell, buy Bose speakers for your auditorium if you want. Just don't buy well known expensive furniture or you'll be dealing with pitchfork-wielding protestors.
The government handout, which is stereotypically thought of as coming from "liberals", comes from people who didn't willingly give that money for that purpose.
So then at what point does tax revenue become a handout? From my point of view, military spending is a government handout because we don't need the wars we are involved in. Similarly the wall street bailout, and the health care reform bill are both enormous corporate handouts.
Although for that matter, you should probably look further into where tax revenue actually comes from in this country before you try for sweeping statements about whose money is going where. Under the current taxation system, the more money you make, the less you pay (in terms of total percent of income) in taxes - it's called regressive taxation and is one of Ronald Reagan's great "accomplishments".
I seem to recall hearing of a certain young republican who went to an Ivy League school and partied through his undergraduate on his father's dime (and reputation). He pulled pretty lackluster grades, really nothing to be proud of at all considering he wasn't working at the time and had nothing else that he needed to do beyond school. He then went to another Ivy League school afterwards for an MBA, also on his father's dime and reputation. He was known for using drugs and alcohol during those times as well, and didn't get particularly good grades as an MBA student either.
He then attempted to run a few businesses, with some assistance from his dad at getting in to those businesses. Most of those, he ran into the ground (including a petroleum company in a petroleum-rich state when petroleum was only continuing to gain in value).
So what ever happened to this young republican? He decided to follow his dad into politics. There he also couldn't get far without his dad's help; eventually being appointed president of the united states by some of his dad's close friends.
If you're asking for a cure, you already are leaning towards a particular view. Your statement of a "cure" is just you stating that you feel people of a particular persuasion need to be "fixed".
... But I'm actually a little too short for it. The actor who was in the costume was 6' 6.5", I don't quite make that height. And really, what good is a Vader costume that you can't wear?
You would have to believe that the court was indeed not knowledgable on the existing legal loopholes. Which would require you to believe that none of the supreme court justices, or their clerks, knew of this problem. If that is the case, then indeed the people who sit on the highest court in the land are not the most knowledgable people in the land with regards to the laws of the same land.
Which may well be a good argument against lifetime appointments to that bench. Of course, if you believe instead that they were aware of the problem, and ruled as they did with indifference to it, then that may be an argument in the same direction.
Imagine if Tiger Woods just gave up the first time he swung a golf club because he didnt get a hole in one? What if Michael Jordan gave up because he couldnt dunk straight away? Both Golf and Basketball are games just like any other game, you play because its fun and in time you learn to play better and improve.
Well, if Tiger Woods had to play his first ever game of golf against Jack Nicklaus, he probably would have been so frustrated with the experience that he might have considered not bothering. That is how multiplayer (your favorite FPS here) is for many people. That is exactly why I only played the first Quake for about an hour - and the rest of the series not at all. People who are new to the games end up in multiplayer games against people who play it 16 hours a day and hence find themselves annihilated faster than they can even figure out which button opens a door and which button changes weapons.
People aren't giving up games quickly because they are hard - more often they are giving up because there is no point in trying to compete when there are no new players around. It would be as it there was no such thing as amateur boxing, everyone had to get started by fighting Mike Tyson; many people wouldn't even consider it out of fear of immediate death.
Slashdot Mirror
Captain Kirk...? Is that really you!?
I ... can't ... answer ... that question ... right now!
Meh.
I hacked the test and scored 142%. That is how an Ubergeek shows a crappy website who's boss.
I knew plenty of people who shared files on the campus network just by sharing their directories (read-only, no password) with everyone. Would that be banned under this action? What if they are sharing a directory of freeware or open source material?
I thought the bombs were on cargo/commercial (FedEx or UPS) planes, not passenger aircraft. If so, why are we (again) punishing the passengers for no apparent reason? Haven't we annoyed and inconvenienced the flying public enough already?
Indeed the NES Advantage was the best controller ever made for the 8-bit Nintendo, bar none. I logged many hours playing River City Ransom, Double Dragon, and other classic beat-em-ups on that. The uber-low-tech "slow motion" feature on it was amusing at times, as well - especially if you accidentally hit it on a game that brought up some sort of menu when pressing start...
Apparently it is time to rip on the Power Glove yet again. As I, unlike some of the people who write negatively about it, actually owned one, I would like to give my piece on the matter. In particular, I would like to point out that indeed there was one good game that worked with a regular controller but worked exceptionally well with the power glove.
Unfortunately, that game was not Punch-Out (with or without Mike Tyson). Punch-Out was a massive pile of failure to end all massive piles of failure with regards to the power glove. For some reason some idiot programmer thought that a good way to set up the power glove for punch-out was to move your hand forward for a punch, and then backwards for a power punch. Which of course meant your only power punch was gone pretty well immediately and then you were hosed for the rest of the round.
No, the game that worked well with the power glove (while not being power glove specific) was Top Gun. That game had very sensible controls; move your hand, move the plane. First two fingers are your weapons. You didn't need anything more than that. Unfortunately few people ever used that great combination.
I suppose it is probably a good thing that some of the MS engineers who worked on Kinect are actually too young to have ever tried to play punch-out with a power glove. Because if they had, they might have started out with the idea that motion control without a controller could never work properly.
Bah. Here in the states we are about to start two years of darkness.
Sure, net neutrality went out the window. But now we have legislators who are going to spend all their time working to repeal a health care overhaul bill that didn't overhaul anything. And they are led by someone who said he will not compromise on his principles.
Basically, the 2010 election only set the stage for a very early (as in this afternoon) start to the 2012 election cycle. On the plus side, the politicians will be so busy campaigning that we might not have to worry about them passing anything we don't like because they may well not pass anything at all (beyond their own gas and hot air of course). On the minus side, the politicians are already so busy campaigning that they might never pass anything at all.
Provided they don't find some way to completely destroy the world, this might indeed be the government we deserve...
It can't be done unless they gain 12 seats in the Senate and take over the presidency in 2012. Until then, enjoy your premium increases.
Yeah, because nobody ever saw their insurance premiums increase before now, right? Every premium increase, ever, in the history of our great awesome country of awesomeness, was caused by the health care bill!
After all, we all know that the great and most benevolent captains of industry who are in charge of the health insurance companies are the greatest and most benevolent leaders you could ever find, anywhere, and they would lead their companies only with your interests at heart!
Are you saying then that lying in current politics is justified by lying in past politics? I don't care much for that kind of reasoning... That sounds too similar to "I am killing you because your ancestors killed my ancestors (whose ancestors killed your ancestors' ancestors (whose ancestors killed my ancestors' ancestors' ancestors (ad naseum ... )))".
At some point someone needs to rise above that crap and actually limit their message to a truthful one.
Flash 10 has been around for ages
Which doesn't change the fact that it doesn't work well with a lot of systems. Even current hardware on certain operating systems cannot run flash 10 very well; for that matter flash 10 is so absurdly CPU intensive that it really can't be said to run that well on modern hardare with recent microsoft or apple OSes, either.
I can't think of a good reason why you'd want to keep an older version of Flash, unless you really want some malware.
I can think of plenty of worthwhile systems that are incapable of running flash 10. And plenty of other systems that are so crippled by flash 10 to make it not worth running on them, either.
If you think demanding people have Flash 10 is asking people to be needlessly up-to-date, requiring a HTML5 browser is even more so.
It isn't so much about what is up-to-date as what is worthwhile in terms of requirements. If all they want to do is show a video, they don't need any version of flash to do that - a lot of shitty webmasters all over the world seem to have forgotten that. And likely they could have done a good job of describing a lot of it without a video at all; they instead took the easy way out and skipped text in favor of video (or whatever else they are doing with flash).
So while it would be great to see flash disappear completely, immediately, forever, in favor of HTML5, they most likely did something that they could have done with HTML4. And every browser that is currently available for displaying web pages with graphics can do HTML4, without any plugin nonsense.
In short, they crapped all over themselves by making a really shitty web design choice.
No, not why did they do it - that part is obvious. Rather, why did they write such a short meaningless summary and then embed a flash 10 video in it? The website is damned close to worthless for anyone who isn't running the latest flash.
There are enough sites that obnoxiously require flash to find the most benign content. I generally make it a practice to avoid those sites, and now I'll be avoiding these ones as well.
If either side was actually honest about their side of the issue, they could gain more traction
Instead the issue is coming through like any other political crap; lots of emotion from both sides, lots of extreme (and at least in part lacking in fact) opinions, and very little honesty. Perhaps it is an effect of the current political climate that favors this kind of crap, or perhaps it was always attached to this issue anyways. Either way, neither side is truly honest.
Both sides dishonest?
Yes, both sides are dishonest. The people who support prop 19 (and other legalization initiatives) should say "most users of pot can use it responsibly, and should be able to buy it legally". Instead, they opt for a much more extreme statement of "legalizing pot will solve every problem the world has ever faced, ever, immediately". And being as the supporters of prop 19 need a majority in order to achieve their desired change, they need to present a convincing argument.
Of course, there is plenty of dishonesty from the other side as well. The nonsense about "gateway drugs" and what not is just the tip of the iceberg. However the people who oppose prop 19 don't need to deliver a profound argument for the continued criminalization of pot; they just need to show that the argument for prop 19 has significant holes in it. As long as more people vote against prop 19 than vote for it, the law remains as it is currently written.
Of course, the difference between how it is written, and how it is actually enforced, is another matter.
Only one side is dishonest, and it ain't the potheads.
Wrong. There are dishonest people on both sides. While some of the people in support of prop 19 are honest enough to just come forward and say they want to use pot, others have resorted to lying about the (perceived) benefits of legalization.
Some honesty. If either side was actually honest about their side of the issue, they could gain more traction. But when the pro side of the issue can't be honest about what they want, they shouldn't be surprised when people don't find their argument convincing.
Where I did my undergraduate, one department spent money on the Hermann Miller Aeron chairs in a large purchase. As a public university, all our purchasing decisions had to be shared with the state, so of course those chairs were known to have been purchased by the department who chose them. Mind you, the Aeron chairs were not the most expensive for the purpose they were going for - in particular these were chairs for employees, not students, to use.
Around the same time it was announced that the Aeron chair would be included in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NYC. Those who have been to or are familiar with MoMA know that there are a lot of items at MoMA that are recognized for their utility or design that are not necessarily of high price.
Nonetheless, those two news items reached one news station in town close to simultaneously. This quickly then became one news item for them - "Local University Purchases Museum-Quality Furniture with YOUR tax dollars" - which of course brought way more attention to an office chair purchase than should ever be bestowed.
In the end, the University decided that it simply wasn't worth the hassle to even keep the Aerons in the regular list of available chairs for departments. The Aeron became a "special order only" item, that almost required a chiropractic evaluation before the university would approve state funds for it's purchase. Yet other, similar, chairs were available, at and higher prices than what we were quoted for the Aerons.
So the moral of the story is don't do it. Improve something less controversial, like lunchroom food or overhead projectors. Hell, buy Bose speakers for your auditorium if you want. Just don't buy well known expensive furniture or you'll be dealing with pitchfork-wielding protestors.
and the typical voter is smart enough to weigh that speech on it's merits (or lack thereof) when deciding how to cast his ballot?
If people on the right actually uniformly believed that, then we wouldn't have have the swift boat veterans for "truth", amongst many others.
The government handout, which is stereotypically thought of as coming from "liberals", comes from people who didn't willingly give that money for that purpose.
So then at what point does tax revenue become a handout? From my point of view, military spending is a government handout because we don't need the wars we are involved in. Similarly the wall street bailout, and the health care reform bill are both enormous corporate handouts.
Although for that matter, you should probably look further into where tax revenue actually comes from in this country before you try for sweeping statements about whose money is going where. Under the current taxation system, the more money you make, the less you pay (in terms of total percent of income) in taxes - it's called regressive taxation and is one of Ronald Reagan's great "accomplishments".
I seem to recall hearing of a certain young republican who went to an Ivy League school and partied through his undergraduate on his father's dime (and reputation). He pulled pretty lackluster grades, really nothing to be proud of at all considering he wasn't working at the time and had nothing else that he needed to do beyond school. He then went to another Ivy League school afterwards for an MBA, also on his father's dime and reputation. He was known for using drugs and alcohol during those times as well, and didn't get particularly good grades as an MBA student either.
He then attempted to run a few businesses, with some assistance from his dad at getting in to those businesses. Most of those, he ran into the ground (including a petroleum company in a petroleum-rich state when petroleum was only continuing to gain in value).
So what ever happened to this young republican? He decided to follow his dad into politics. There he also couldn't get far without his dad's help; eventually being appointed president of the united states by some of his dad's close friends.
Don't tell us republicans don't get hand-outs.
If you're asking for a cure, you already are leaning towards a particular view. Your statement of a "cure" is just you stating that you feel people of a particular persuasion need to be "fixed".
... But I'm actually a little too short for it. The actor who was in the costume was 6' 6.5", I don't quite make that height. And really, what good is a Vader costume that you can't wear?
You would have to believe that the court was indeed not knowledgable on the existing legal loopholes. Which would require you to believe that none of the supreme court justices, or their clerks, knew of this problem. If that is the case, then indeed the people who sit on the highest court in the land are not the most knowledgable people in the land with regards to the laws of the same land.
Which may well be a good argument against lifetime appointments to that bench. Of course, if you believe instead that they were aware of the problem, and ruled as they did with indifference to it, then that may be an argument in the same direction.
a satan-worshiping negro marxist as President
Should be:
a satan-worshiping atheist muslim negro arab marxist fascist anarchist as President
You'd better get back to class, Billy-Bob; you'll make us look foolish.
Imagine if Tiger Woods just gave up the first time he swung a golf club because he didnt get a hole in one? What if Michael Jordan gave up because he couldnt dunk straight away? Both Golf and Basketball are games just like any other game, you play because its fun and in time you learn to play better and improve.
Well, if Tiger Woods had to play his first ever game of golf against Jack Nicklaus, he probably would have been so frustrated with the experience that he might have considered not bothering. That is how multiplayer (your favorite FPS here) is for many people. That is exactly why I only played the first Quake for about an hour - and the rest of the series not at all. People who are new to the games end up in multiplayer games against people who play it 16 hours a day and hence find themselves annihilated faster than they can even figure out which button opens a door and which button changes weapons.
People aren't giving up games quickly because they are hard - more often they are giving up because there is no point in trying to compete when there are no new players around. It would be as it there was no such thing as amateur boxing, everyone had to get started by fighting Mike Tyson; many people wouldn't even consider it out of fear of immediate death.