I too fly heli's and other lipo powered aircraft (Really? RC geeks hang out at slashdot? Whodathunkit?), and I think this misconception stems from the fact that on some hard impacts, a wire can get broken or even the tabs on the lipos themselves, cause a short circuit, which then leads to puffing or even fire. Post crash forensics lead to the conclusion that the damage to the battery itself led to the situation. Both improperly charging, and rapidly discharging can lead to lipo fires, but physical damage to the cell doesn't directly. It can damage a cell or bust a connection, which then leads you charging in effect a 2 cell lipo on a 3 cell setting, but I digress...
Being a necessity is doesn't change how insurance works, although having transportation is very much a requirement for life in these united states, outside 10 of the largest cities. You're surely not suggesting that we require everyone to live in a metropolis, are you? Besides, if you want to make health care a universal right, you have to start making decisions on what you think "health" is. Since that is a deeply personal decision, you are going to screw over people no matter what you do. My way, at least people who want to be informed and make good decisions about themselves can and do.
I don't think it is fine for insurance companies to make the decisions for the insured. But I also think you need to recognize that things like pre-existing conditions and expected levels of care are not something we can handle without serious compromises in a one size fits all model. We can change the existing system without chucking it and going socialist.
Yes, there is a certain percentage of people unprepared for a medical emergency, or any emergency for that matter. Loss of job, loss of property, "Act of God", whatever. I don't blame any one for it, but I have a different idea of how to fix the situation than you do. You want to extend the nanny state, pat them on the head, dole out whatever decisions and provisions mommy thinks best, and go on through out life without having to plan for when mommy isn't there. Where is the end game there? There is a close relationship between "personal responsibility" and "personal liberty". You do realize that, don't you?
My solution, what I want to do, is educate people and make them more self-reliant, and reform the existing system to make it more accountable. The technology has grown at a faster rate than the ability to govern it, but that doesn't mean it is ungovernable, or that you should chuck the system that has grown all these advances out the window and replace it entirely with government. When meat packing plants at the turn of the previous century were grinding up rat shit and human waste in their sausages, the solution wasn't to open up government ran sausage factories that gives you one choice of sausage at a fixed price, the answer was new standards and enforcement of existing ones.
Why do you assume I didn't think he was insured? I think it is clear from my comment that I knew he was, it's just that I've been where he's been and I can call BS on his victim routine.
Look, if I have car INSURANCE, and I get into five accidents in one year, guess what is going to happen. I'm going to pay a crap load in deductibles, and my rates are going to go up. If I had low, low deductibles, then I would be paying through the nose for my base insurance rates and my new adjusted rates would be astronomical. This is the real way insurance works, and should be obvious to anyone with a clue as to how economics work. You seem to have a different take on insurance, a fantasy version of insurance, but that's your problem, not mine. Socialized medicine does not change this, it will just widen out the risk pool, and change who you are paying your money to, and remove all ability of decision making on the financial side of your health care from you the patient. At the end of the day, somebody is going to make decisions on your level of health care, I prefer to have input on those decisions.
So, the parent poster paid twenty some thousand dollars on medical bills. If he were uninsured, me might have spent a quarter million on care for Lyme's disease alone. Insurance doesn't mean "you don't have to pay anything, ever." Insurance is to keep you from being RUINED by unexpected costs. The parent poster is not ruined. $25/year is not poverty. Granted, half his take home pay going to medical expenses sucks, but that is a bad year. He can make up for it in the years to come, and with better planning, the next time something like this happens he might not be in such bad shape.
The measures I recommended are what EVERYONE should do, even or especially with insurance. It is very telling that you think these are some extraordinary things one would do. If we went single payer tomorrow, I'd still have a medical savings account, I'd still save 10% of my take home pay for the unexpected and unforeseen, and I'd still spray my kid with OFF! before sending him into a West Nile and Lyme's disease breeding ground. The only thing I wouldn't do is take another job just to keep insurance coverage up, but what does that say about the new system?
Holy crap, dude. Your son suffered from a serious disease, your daughter fractured a bone, your wife suffers from a chronic and difficult to treat problem, no, make that two of them, and you wonder why health care was the single biggest expense of your year? So, what is the solution, hold a gun to my head and make me pay extra for your care? Because that's what you apparently want the government to do for you.
It seems you could have investigated major medical insurance which potentially would have covered the same things for far cheaper. You could have applied for state sponsored low income pharmacy assistance. You could have done mail order pharmacy and cut your wife's recurring RX's by at least half. You could have moonlighted at FedEx for their generally excellent insurance for part timers. You could have set up a medical savings account to avoid paying taxes on deductibles would have been another wise idea. You could have sprayed your kid with DEET before turning him lose in an area known to carry ticks with Lyme's disease, ounce of prevention and all that. I don't know. Am I being a heartless bastard here? I've got a wife, we're on meds, I've got kids, I've carried COBRA, I've self-insured while I was self-employed and unemployed, and I never made more than $60k/yr while I was doing it. We could swap war stories and see who is more or less "fortunate", but the bottom line is that if you live like a poor person, and what I mean like that is that you do not save for emergencies, you do not plan ahead, and you expect someone else to look after you, eventually you will be a poor person. Socialized medicine and security mitigates this somewhat, but does not change it. To think otherwise is fooling yourself.
I just went to the site, and it doesn't seem to say that. If you own the site, setup a robots.txt file and they will stop crawling your site in the future, AND remove the archived pages. Also, if you follow the link to the academic archiving standards they follow, they seem to be open to removing archived stuff not under your direct control, on a case by case basis.
Not to get in the way of all the "HUR! HUR!" at the accuracy problems of the museum, but as a point of fact, that picture is not of Eve. Compare and contrast:
She's quite nekkid. I wouldn't kick her out of bed. But unfortunately the naughty bits are tastefully covered in ivy and other plant material. I don't know who the other homunculus is supposed to be, but it ain't Eve. Maybe one of the inbred siblings of A&E?
Don't worry so much. All of our ancestors started out as nature worshiping morons. We managed to get this far without anyone protecting us from learning new (and possibly ignorant) things. Have a bit more respect for your fellow intelligent beings in this information rich world we live in. Myself, I was raised as a pretty scary fundamentalist type, studying books on creationism and taught all about science's "big lie", but have managed to become and adult who relies on the scientific method and accepts evolution and modern cosmology without too much fuss and muss. Heck, the only thing wrong with me is a nagging case of deism that every once in a while threatens to break out in a virulent case of weak theism, but other than that, right as rain.
Why the hell has it been decreed that because men CAN pee standing up, they must? Talk about a selfish insistance, especially if you never volunteer to clean the thing you are pissing and splashing up. Seriously, it's a nice, comfy, cool seat. You use it half the time sitting anyway, right? Why not sit down to pee? If you're outside, hell yeah, let 'er rip. If you're at a urinal, knock yourself out. But why try to stand and pee in a small seat? Give in. Nobody will see you. Sit down and pee. Read a page of a magazine while you're at it. Wasn't that nice? Didn't have to worry about aim or pissing on the rim or nothing.
This has got to be some holdover from cavemen days (with apologies to the GEICO guys). Guys sitting down to pee, when they can, is the next leap forward in the evolution of civilization.
Addiction to technology? It happens all the time. And not just with Johnny come lately PS3 and the internet. No, sir! Take the telephone. A useful tool. No one would argue that it by itself could hurt you. But taken to extremes, it can consume your life, and you wind up making obscene phone calls and engaging in telephone sex with an underling, leading to an embarrassing public lawsuit that undermines your holier-than-thou morality crap you like to push as your public persona. I tell you, it's just not worth it. So, just stay away.
What's the real story behind Mr. Hyneman?
on
Ask The Mythbusters
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Wikipedia mentions in his write up that he "has a degree in Russian language and literature. He has had a variety of careers, including scuba diver, wilderness survival expert, boat captain, linguist, pet shop owner, animal wrangler, machinist and chef." Adam has (jokingly?) referred to his murky past as a special forces member, an outlaw running guns in the jungle and spending time in third world prisons. That's Adam being funny, but even the Wikipedia article sounds like hyperbole. The thing is, Jamie's such a man's man that I'd just about believe anything about him. The guy appears freakishly strong, can engineer anything, and manages to pull off the bespectacled / shaved-head / beret / moustache combo with panache. What can't he do?
Where do you come from? How did you go from scuba and boats to special effects? And why don't you drop any Russian on us for the show?
Hey guys, love the show. I wonder if you ever pull stuff back off the shelf to mess with again for fun. I'm thinking in particular of the jetpack myth. You guys spent so much time on that, and seemed like you were almost there, maybe some work with the shrouds or change of props and you'd be there. And lots of other stuff, too, like high powered chicken firing air canons and civil war era rocketry. There again, the result you got in two days was amazing, I'd be tempted to put in a bit more modern engineering and go for the X-prize. Do you guys ever get an idea from a myth that you'd just like to run with for the fun of it?
I noticed that Microsoft lists their virtual PC software as a problem with SP2. According to their page, it performs slower than a virtual PC with sp1 loaded. I noticed the same thing when I tested it months ago. However, disabling the firewall increased performance dramatically.
Also, my wife's 1.2ghz machine with 256mb of ram was brought to its knees by SP2. Sure enough, disabling the firewall brought the machine back up to snuff. We're behind a hardware based firewall, so I'm not terribly concerned, but what exactly is going on here? There are a lot of sub 1ghz machines with XP deployed out there, and it looks to me like for those unfortunate users the performance of a spyware ladden PC is roughly the same if not better as one running the supposedly more secure SP2.
First, if all you have is W2s, you're foolish to do anything but grab the forms and do it yourself. They still have 1040EZ, don't they? Its basic math, and a lookup table or two. You can handle this stuff.
Second, if you have other sources of income, like savings accounts, investments, income on the side, then maybe you'll need something like Turbotax to help you out.
I've had a small six-figure consultant shop going for three years, and I've used a tax consultant, and I've use turbotax. The tax consultant asked me to organize my documents and led me through a long series of questions and answers to figure out how much I owe. Turbo tax asked me to organize my documents and led me through a long series of questions to figure out how much I owe. I never get returns, but I owed less with Turbotax, spent less money and had to endure less small talk.
If you're documents are in good order and you stay on top of things and you arent' doing creative accounting, you'll be fine. If not, you're going to have problems no matter what you do. I'd consider using accountants and tax professionals when you start having to deal with employees and with-holding and your yearly tax liabilities start to get deeper into the five and six figure ranges.
Attack takes everything I like about Axis and Allies (different units with offensive/defensive capabilities, an economic system, naval combat) with everything I like about Risk (picking your own territory and more or less random unit placement for a less predictable tactics and strategy) and manages to avoid most of the bad stuff from both. It can be found at Toys R Us currently for about $20, or you can order it from http://eaglegames.net/ for $30.
Best of all, if you like the basic game, which contains all the economic cards, land units, cards representing naval units, and a board representing the western hemisphere of the world, you can buy an expansion. The expansion contains plastic naval units with more complex combat rules, a political system (your governments can be fascists, communist, monarcy, or democracy, with different bonuses and strengths for each), and a board representing the other half of the world. The basic game is good for six players and three to six hours of play, the full game can support 10-12 for some all-day sessions.
The games rules are fairly easy to learn in one go, although the implications as far as tactics go take a while to sink in. The units and board look great, and are large and detailed. The game single handedly reawakened my group's interest in the genre, bridging the gap between beer and pretzels and more serious wargaming. (I don't want to mislead the grognards, its still pretty beer and pretzels, but if all you've played is Risk and A&A, it can stretch you a bit.)
Speaking of Risk, I also like the new Risk 2210. Its classic Risk, but with "hero" units that can roll eight sided die against the standard six, sea and moon bases to conquer, some battle and diplomacy cards (somewhat similar to Castle Risk), and nuclear devastation tokens that can completely alter the board from game to game. Its a pretty fun diversion for Risk fans.
Additionally, Social Security is something like a Ponzi scheme, and as such, if you stop paying into it now, then those who have already paid into it won't be able to get back what they put into it.
Actually, its more of a Fonzi scheme. You try and touch it, and the AARP steps in and says "Eyyyyyyy..."
I think the point is not that whether you "fancy" her or not, but the point is she is a non-exploitive female character in a game. No big tits, no skin tight leather, no navel piercings, no cowering or helplessness, no over the top "sass". Just a regular female freedom fighter in a post apocalyptic world.:-)
The problem with Samus is that yes, she is an awesome female character, and yes, she would no doubt be a good rolemodel for young girls, but... the only way we know she is a girl is the fact that she takes off her suit in ever more revealing fashion depending on how well you complete the game. Thus, she is part of an enterprise that is just a step above the various video strip poker games.
IMO, nintendo should have ditched that concept after the first Metroid back on the NES. Taking off the helmet to reveal Samus is a girl is cool and progressive, "HOLY CRAP now she's got a bikini! Smoking!" is not.
Re:HL2 worth mentioning, but you're being extreme
on
Getting the Girl
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· Score: 1
GOTY is a subjective opinion. There isn't an official gaming body like the AP that hands down from on high and official nomination. HL2 is my personal GOTY, and has got the nod from other places as well. I think it stands above the comp with its physics engine, SDK, and improvements in character modeling, and will be as actively supported as the original Half-life. If valve is an EE, then the world could use more of their brand of evil. At any rate, it doesn't really detract from my main point.
I thought Alyx was a pretty well realized female character. Tough, feminine, sexy without being a slutty, smart as hell, and she even possessed a figure without Laura-Croftian... embellishments. I think it says positive things that the top game of the year has a female character that can stand up with the men in the game, and possibly has a future in her own game. I'd *love* to see an Alyx and DOG game, or just Alyx for that matter.
Sure, you can find stereotypes in trashy games like BloodRayne and various fighters, but there are plenty of male stereotypes to be found over there as well.
I've always said that video games don't affect people in real life, but now I'm not so sure. People sizing up cars and thinking, no matter how briefly, of jacking on? Picking "human shaped targets" out when you are at the park? Actually reaching for the parking brake before entering a high speed corner with your wife and kids in tow before you "catch" yourself?
I have never, not once, in my 25 year gaming career ever confused a gameworld with reality. I mean, I've said jokey stuff with my friends about "failing a save" when I do something embarassing, but I don't actually think that.
I remember this Old Man Murray article making fun of a guy who wrote an alarmist article about how playing FPS games made him see the games "morbid reality" descend upon him "like a grid of hyper-real euphoria." It was funny because the conceit was that surely only someone off his psycho-meds would experience such a thing. Maybe you guys "blurring the line" a bit should lay off and stop playing, before you don't "catch yourself" and slide through an intersection and kill some other poor slobs family.
Next time slashdot runs a "parent sues video game developer" over their kid blasting someone, maybe there should be a link to this story.
I've been doing this for sometime, recording about an hour of 3WK each night for listening to on the way to work. I've used bluecanard's freeware software sound recorder. It converts any sound on your system to MP3, and is command line driven. So, I just make a batch file that opens up the stream in my browser, then wait a few seconds, and fires off the commands to record it.
Although, now that I notice it, it seems they have a beta version of an internet radio recorder that would be right up your alley, and mine too. Answered a question, and learned something new and beneficial myself. Wow, gotta love how THAT worked out.
Slashdot Mirror
I too fly heli's and other lipo powered aircraft (Really? RC geeks hang out at slashdot? Whodathunkit?), and I think this misconception stems from the fact that on some hard impacts, a wire can get broken or even the tabs on the lipos themselves, cause a short circuit, which then leads to puffing or even fire. Post crash forensics lead to the conclusion that the damage to the battery itself led to the situation. Both improperly charging, and rapidly discharging can lead to lipo fires, but physical damage to the cell doesn't directly. It can damage a cell or bust a connection, which then leads you charging in effect a 2 cell lipo on a 3 cell setting, but I digress...
Being a necessity is doesn't change how insurance works, although having transportation is very much a requirement for life in these united states, outside 10 of the largest cities. You're surely not suggesting that we require everyone to live in a metropolis, are you? Besides, if you want to make health care a universal right, you have to start making decisions on what you think "health" is. Since that is a deeply personal decision, you are going to screw over people no matter what you do. My way, at least people who want to be informed and make good decisions about themselves can and do.
I don't think it is fine for insurance companies to make the decisions for the insured. But I also think you need to recognize that things like pre-existing conditions and expected levels of care are not something we can handle without serious compromises in a one size fits all model. We can change the existing system without chucking it and going socialist.
Yes, there is a certain percentage of people unprepared for a medical emergency, or any emergency for that matter. Loss of job, loss of property, "Act of God", whatever. I don't blame any one for it, but I have a different idea of how to fix the situation than you do. You want to extend the nanny state, pat them on the head, dole out whatever decisions and provisions mommy thinks best, and go on through out life without having to plan for when mommy isn't there. Where is the end game there? There is a close relationship between "personal responsibility" and "personal liberty". You do realize that, don't you?
My solution, what I want to do, is educate people and make them more self-reliant, and reform the existing system to make it more accountable. The technology has grown at a faster rate than the ability to govern it, but that doesn't mean it is ungovernable, or that you should chuck the system that has grown all these advances out the window and replace it entirely with government. When meat packing plants at the turn of the previous century were grinding up rat shit and human waste in their sausages, the solution wasn't to open up government ran sausage factories that gives you one choice of sausage at a fixed price, the answer was new standards and enforcement of existing ones.
Why do you assume I didn't think he was insured? I think it is clear from my comment that I knew he was, it's just that I've been where he's been and I can call BS on his victim routine.
Look, if I have car INSURANCE, and I get into five accidents in one year, guess what is going to happen. I'm going to pay a crap load in deductibles, and my rates are going to go up. If I had low, low deductibles, then I would be paying through the nose for my base insurance rates and my new adjusted rates would be astronomical. This is the real way insurance works, and should be obvious to anyone with a clue as to how economics work. You seem to have a different take on insurance, a fantasy version of insurance, but that's your problem, not mine. Socialized medicine does not change this, it will just widen out the risk pool, and change who you are paying your money to, and remove all ability of decision making on the financial side of your health care from you the patient. At the end of the day, somebody is going to make decisions on your level of health care, I prefer to have input on those decisions.
So, the parent poster paid twenty some thousand dollars on medical bills. If he were uninsured, me might have spent a quarter million on care for Lyme's disease alone. Insurance doesn't mean "you don't have to pay anything, ever." Insurance is to keep you from being RUINED by unexpected costs. The parent poster is not ruined. $25/year is not poverty. Granted, half his take home pay going to medical expenses sucks, but that is a bad year. He can make up for it in the years to come, and with better planning, the next time something like this happens he might not be in such bad shape.
The measures I recommended are what EVERYONE should do, even or especially with insurance. It is very telling that you think these are some extraordinary things one would do. If we went single payer tomorrow, I'd still have a medical savings account, I'd still save 10% of my take home pay for the unexpected and unforeseen, and I'd still spray my kid with OFF! before sending him into a West Nile and Lyme's disease breeding ground. The only thing I wouldn't do is take another job just to keep insurance coverage up, but what does that say about the new system?
Holy crap, dude. Your son suffered from a serious disease, your daughter fractured a bone, your wife suffers from a chronic and difficult to treat problem, no, make that two of them, and you wonder why health care was the single biggest expense of your year? So, what is the solution, hold a gun to my head and make me pay extra for your care? Because that's what you apparently want the government to do for you.
It seems you could have investigated major medical insurance which potentially would have covered the same things for far cheaper. You could have applied for state sponsored low income pharmacy assistance. You could have done mail order pharmacy and cut your wife's recurring RX's by at least half. You could have moonlighted at FedEx for their generally excellent insurance for part timers. You could have set up a medical savings account to avoid paying taxes on deductibles would have been another wise idea. You could have sprayed your kid with DEET before turning him lose in an area known to carry ticks with Lyme's disease, ounce of prevention and all that. I don't know. Am I being a heartless bastard here? I've got a wife, we're on meds, I've got kids, I've carried COBRA, I've self-insured while I was self-employed and unemployed, and I never made more than $60k/yr while I was doing it. We could swap war stories and see who is more or less "fortunate", but the bottom line is that if you live like a poor person, and what I mean like that is that you do not save for emergencies, you do not plan ahead, and you expect someone else to look after you, eventually you will be a poor person. Socialized medicine and security mitigates this somewhat, but does not change it. To think otherwise is fooling yourself.
I just went to the site, and it doesn't seem to say that. If you own the site, setup a robots.txt file and they will stop crawling your site in the future, AND remove the archived pages. Also, if you follow the link to the academic archiving standards they follow, they seem to be open to removing archived stuff not under your direct control, on a case by case basis.
Well, maybe she is Eve after the fall. If so, I gotta quote Ash: "Honey, you got real ugly." That's what sin'll do for ya, I guess.
As for the ark, what's the problem? The fancy bow and stern? Otherwise, it's pretty much giant tar-covered wood box FTW!
Not to get in the way of all the "HUR! HUR!" at the accuracy problems of the museum, but as a point of fact, that picture is not of Eve. Compare and contrast:
i n/set-72157600301874014/i n/set-72157600301874014/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drjonboyg/526898164/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drjonboyg/526988591/
She's quite nekkid. I wouldn't kick her out of bed. But unfortunately the naughty bits are tastefully covered in ivy and other plant material. I don't know who the other homunculus is supposed to be, but it ain't Eve. Maybe one of the inbred siblings of A&E?
Don't worry so much. All of our ancestors started out as nature worshiping morons. We managed to get this far without anyone protecting us from learning new (and possibly ignorant) things. Have a bit more respect for your fellow intelligent beings in this information rich world we live in. Myself, I was raised as a pretty scary fundamentalist type, studying books on creationism and taught all about science's "big lie", but have managed to become and adult who relies on the scientific method and accepts evolution and modern cosmology without too much fuss and muss. Heck, the only thing wrong with me is a nagging case of deism that every once in a while threatens to break out in a virulent case of weak theism, but other than that, right as rain.
Why the hell has it been decreed that because men CAN pee standing up, they must? Talk about a selfish insistance, especially if you never volunteer to clean the thing you are pissing and splashing up. Seriously, it's a nice, comfy, cool seat. You use it half the time sitting anyway, right? Why not sit down to pee? If you're outside, hell yeah, let 'er rip. If you're at a urinal, knock yourself out. But why try to stand and pee in a small seat? Give in. Nobody will see you. Sit down and pee. Read a page of a magazine while you're at it. Wasn't that nice? Didn't have to worry about aim or pissing on the rim or nothing.
This has got to be some holdover from cavemen days (with apologies to the GEICO guys). Guys sitting down to pee, when they can, is the next leap forward in the evolution of civilization.
More like, PHONEAGE.
Not to mention soaking your consumers for $600 bucks when you could have gotten by with half the hardware.
Addiction to technology? It happens all the time. And not just with Johnny come lately PS3 and the internet. No, sir! Take the telephone. A useful tool. No one would argue that it by itself could hurt you. But taken to extremes, it can consume your life, and you wind up making obscene phone calls and engaging in telephone sex with an underling, leading to an embarrassing public lawsuit that undermines your holier-than-thou morality crap you like to push as your public persona. I tell you, it's just not worth it. So, just stay away.
Wikipedia mentions in his write up that he "has a degree in Russian language and literature. He has had a variety of careers, including scuba diver, wilderness survival expert, boat captain, linguist, pet shop owner, animal wrangler, machinist and chef." Adam has (jokingly?) referred to his murky past as a special forces member, an outlaw running guns in the jungle and spending time in third world prisons. That's Adam being funny, but even the Wikipedia article sounds like hyperbole. The thing is, Jamie's such a man's man that I'd just about believe anything about him. The guy appears freakishly strong, can engineer anything, and manages to pull off the bespectacled / shaved-head / beret / moustache combo with panache. What can't he do?
Where do you come from? How did you go from scuba and boats to special effects? And why don't you drop any Russian on us for the show?
Hey guys, love the show. I wonder if you ever pull stuff back off the shelf to mess with again for fun. I'm thinking in particular of the jetpack myth. You guys spent so much time on that, and seemed like you were almost there, maybe some work with the shrouds or change of props and you'd be there. And lots of other stuff, too, like high powered chicken firing air canons and civil war era rocketry. There again, the result you got in two days was amazing, I'd be tempted to put in a bit more modern engineering and go for the X-prize. Do you guys ever get an idea from a myth that you'd just like to run with for the fun of it?
...dropped a largem ferocious-looking fish with some sort of optical device attached to its head...
What would a shark do with an intellimouse(tm)?
I noticed that Microsoft lists their virtual PC software as a problem with SP2. According to their page, it performs slower than a virtual PC with sp1 loaded. I noticed the same thing when I tested it months ago. However, disabling the firewall increased performance dramatically.
Also, my wife's 1.2ghz machine with 256mb of ram was brought to its knees by SP2. Sure enough, disabling the firewall brought the machine back up to snuff. We're behind a hardware based firewall, so I'm not terribly concerned, but what exactly is going on here? There are a lot of sub 1ghz machines with XP deployed out there, and it looks to me like for those unfortunate users the performance of a spyware ladden PC is roughly the same if not better as one running the supposedly more secure SP2.
First, if all you have is W2s, you're foolish to do anything but grab the forms and do it yourself. They still have 1040EZ, don't they? Its basic math, and a lookup table or two. You can handle this stuff.
Second, if you have other sources of income, like savings accounts, investments, income on the side, then maybe you'll need something like Turbotax to help you out.
I've had a small six-figure consultant shop going for three years, and I've used a tax consultant, and I've use turbotax. The tax consultant asked me to organize my documents and led me through a long series of questions and answers to figure out how much I owe. Turbo tax asked me to organize my documents and led me through a long series of questions to figure out how much I owe. I never get returns, but I owed less with Turbotax, spent less money and had to endure less small talk.
If you're documents are in good order and you stay on top of things and you arent' doing creative accounting, you'll be fine. If not, you're going to have problems no matter what you do. I'd consider using accountants and tax professionals when you start having to deal with employees and with-holding and your yearly tax liabilities start to get deeper into the five and six figure ranges.
Attack takes everything I like about Axis and Allies (different units with offensive/defensive capabilities, an economic system, naval combat) with everything I like about Risk (picking your own territory and more or less random unit placement for a less predictable tactics and strategy) and manages to avoid most of the bad stuff from both. It can be found at Toys R Us currently for about $20, or you can order it from http://eaglegames.net/ for $30.
Best of all, if you like the basic game, which contains all the economic cards, land units, cards representing naval units, and a board representing the western hemisphere of the world, you can buy an expansion. The expansion contains plastic naval units with more complex combat rules, a political system (your governments can be fascists, communist, monarcy, or democracy, with different bonuses and strengths for each), and a board representing the other half of the world. The basic game is good for six players and three to six hours of play, the full game can support 10-12 for some all-day sessions.
The games rules are fairly easy to learn in one go, although the implications as far as tactics go take a while to sink in. The units and board look great, and are large and detailed. The game single handedly reawakened my group's interest in the genre, bridging the gap between beer and pretzels and more serious wargaming. (I don't want to mislead the grognards, its still pretty beer and pretzels, but if all you've played is Risk and A&A, it can stretch you a bit.)
Speaking of Risk, I also like the new Risk 2210. Its classic Risk, but with "hero" units that can roll eight sided die against the standard six, sea and moon bases to conquer, some battle and diplomacy cards (somewhat similar to Castle Risk), and nuclear devastation tokens that can completely alter the board from game to game. Its a pretty fun diversion for Risk fans.
Additionally, Social Security is something like a Ponzi scheme, and as such, if you stop paying into it now, then those who have already paid into it won't be able to get back what they put into it.
Actually, its more of a Fonzi scheme. You try and touch it, and the AARP steps in and says "Eyyyyyyy..."
I think the point is not that whether you "fancy" her or not, but the point is she is a non-exploitive female character in a game. No big tits, no skin tight leather, no navel piercings, no cowering or helplessness, no over the top "sass". Just a regular female freedom fighter in a post apocalyptic world. :-)
The problem with Samus is that yes, she is an awesome female character, and yes, she would no doubt be a good rolemodel for young girls, but... the only way we know she is a girl is the fact that she takes off her suit in ever more revealing fashion depending on how well you complete the game. Thus, she is part of an enterprise that is just a step above the various video strip poker games.
IMO, nintendo should have ditched that concept after the first Metroid back on the NES. Taking off the helmet to reveal Samus is a girl is cool and progressive, "HOLY CRAP now she's got a bikini! Smoking!" is not.
GOTY is a subjective opinion. There isn't an official gaming body like the AP that hands down from on high and official nomination. HL2 is my personal GOTY, and has got the nod from other places as well. I think it stands above the comp with its physics engine, SDK, and improvements in character modeling, and will be as actively supported as the original Half-life. If valve is an EE, then the world could use more of their brand of evil. At any rate, it doesn't really detract from my main point.
I thought Alyx was a pretty well realized female character. Tough, feminine, sexy without being a slutty, smart as hell, and she even possessed a figure without Laura-Croftian... embellishments. I think it says positive things that the top game of the year has a female character that can stand up with the men in the game, and possibly has a future in her own game. I'd *love* to see an Alyx and DOG game, or just Alyx for that matter.
Sure, you can find stereotypes in trashy games like BloodRayne and various fighters, but there are plenty of male stereotypes to be found over there as well.
I've always said that video games don't affect people in real life, but now I'm not so sure. People sizing up cars and thinking, no matter how briefly, of jacking on? Picking "human shaped targets" out when you are at the park? Actually reaching for the parking brake before entering a high speed corner with your wife and kids in tow before you "catch" yourself?
I have never, not once, in my 25 year gaming career ever confused a gameworld with reality. I mean, I've said jokey stuff with my friends about "failing a save" when I do something embarassing, but I don't actually think that.
I remember this Old Man Murray article making fun of a guy who wrote an alarmist article about how playing FPS games made him see the games "morbid reality" descend upon him "like a grid of hyper-real euphoria." It was funny because the conceit was that surely only someone off his psycho-meds would experience such a thing. Maybe you guys "blurring the line" a bit should lay off and stop playing, before you don't "catch yourself" and slide through an intersection and kill some other poor slobs family.
Next time slashdot runs a "parent sues video game developer" over their kid blasting someone, maybe there should be a link to this story.
I've been doing this for sometime, recording about an hour of 3WK each night for listening to on the way to work. I've used bluecanard's freeware software sound recorder. It converts any sound on your system to MP3, and is command line driven. So, I just make a batch file that opens up the stream in my browser, then wait a few seconds, and fires off the commands to record it.
Although, now that I notice it, it seems they have a beta version of an internet radio recorder that would be right up your alley, and mine too. Answered a question, and learned something new and beneficial myself. Wow, gotta love how THAT worked out.