There are a few things I would trim out and shed few tears about:
1) A trimming of defense. Since so much of the economy is tied to this by now, it'd have to be trimmed slowly, progressively. A weaning will cause less fallout than slashing. 2) The Department of Education. There's one thing that this department does that I'd like seen preserved in some way: low-cost student loans and grants. I can't think of a single thing the department does otherwise that should be spared. The states handle all the school and staff and curriculum, the DoEd is just a thick layer of bureaucracy on top. 3) Farm subsidies. Should there be some subsidies? Maybe. But right now the system is used to dole out rewards to political supporters, artificially increase/decrease prices on crops like corn, and prop up certain crops (corn again) at the expense of others. It leads directly to the disproportionate amount of influence that those subsidy states wield, from favorable legislation to their early primary status, etc. 4) Medicare. I'll admit I don't really know what the solution here is, but the amount we spend on health care is wildly out of control. This is one of those areas though that you CANNOT cut because seniors vote more than anyone else. Political suicide.
A big difference between China and Somalia is that China's government is extremely powerful and centralized and they interfere all the time -- specifically, interfere to favor business growth, whether it's to manipulate the entire country's currency to ensure products can be sold abroad for cheap to drive out foreign competition, or perform industrial sabotage or spying of other countries' companies.
Perhaps, but capitalism is specifically designed to institutionalize and increase that divide. For capitalism, a growing inequality between rich and poor is a feature, not a bug
Only in the very short term. Nothing benefited capitalism more than the existence of the middle class -- without masses -able- to buy goods, industries wither.
Well... it kind of happened. Only we called it feudalism. And, as far as we can see, it "ended" exactly where we are.
In certain areas it happened in the 1800s as well. The Pinkertons still have a bad reputation thanks to their use as factory guards, strike breakers, and goon squads for fellows like Andrew Carnegie. According to Wikipedia, they were a private security force that was larger than the US Army towards the end of the 19th century.
Streaming is like radio, but instead of it being free for you with record companies giving the radio companies payola, you'll be paying the streaming companies.
Can't happen without a change of law, the US has compulsory licensing for audio recordings with rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board.
Audio recordings, but does that apply to video recordings? Disney releases movies in theaters and on home video, they they remove them from circulation, making them impossible to acquire outside of the used or piracy markets, the former of which would be eliminated by a streaming-only model. Video streaming is also in a horribly broken state, with each streaming service having a different amount of the overall library of titles.
If one provider dies, hope there is another. If there isn't, your SOL. If RIAA decides that a song violates a copyright and pulls it from all streaming... tough.
Has that happened? Band releases a single, it goes on the radio, then it's yanked for all eternity? If it happens at all, it's rare. A better example would be Disney and their "Vault."
I think a very real danger would be "The RIAA decides that YOU have violated copyright and bar you from their music streaming services." A very easy way to punish people who break their policies, as without the physical media you have no way to listen/watch anything you'd enjoyed from the streaming services in the previous years.
Isn't USA a member of UN? What are you comparing UN to?
There are a number of countries, some on the Security Council, who oppose any action taken in Syria. Russia, for instance, and China. The UN council is set up in a way that favors deadlock, and all countries must be in agreement for any action to be taken. It's rare now that you can get anything done without complete agreement from the security council.
No, following ITU rules is voluntary, but why would the US or Europe refuse to do so? We follow ITU rules for radio all the time.
Your point is well taken, and elsewhere where you've posted the regulations applied to ham radio it comes out to a fairly chilling list.
That said, I don't think these situations are all that analogous for the simple reason that the ham radio rules did not affect that many people -- even in its heyday, ham radio was nowhere close to popularity or importance that the Internet is today. It's closer to the state the Internet was in in 1995.
Far more people use the Internet today, and far more businesses do. Far more commercial and non-commercial organizations rely on it now (like, oh, The Drudge Report, The Daily Show, charities, right-wing groups, left-wing groups, Facebook, etc) who have political clout and would be damaged by ITU control. Messing with the structure of the Internet would affect more people and elicit far more outcry than amateur radio ever would have.
It's basically placing full sanctions on one's own country. The sanctions that we fully expect will topple regimes in a country. It never seems to work out that way, but the people certainly do suffer. The OP might say that the US is far more self-reliant than Iran or North Korea, but the country is very dependent on foreign trade now, far more than in, say, the 30s. The US -needs- foreign oil. The US -needs- foreign-produced goods since we can't manufacture our own anymore.
The US has already pissed away its sovereignty, it just hasn't realized it.
And my argument was: "What business is that of mine, or yours? It may be true by our standards, but how dare you make moral judgments for some other entire culture?
It's very easy to make those judgments, right and wrong are not necessarily cultural relative.
But that's neither here nor there, as women had far more rights when Hussein was in power than most other Muslim states in the region, and more freedom than they do now.
No, it's right. If everyone is verified to be weaponless, then, get this, everyone is weaponless.
I think you two are arguing about two different things. You say everyone is verified to be weaponless at the security line.The OP says everyone is not guaranteed to be weaponless when they step on the plane.
I always wondered how Cops was able to get footage of police kicking in doors and running through backyards and such. Did the residents actually give permission for that footage to be released?
Only a moron would complain about cheating on public servers in D2. You realize the character files for those are stored on your own computer? You can't even call it cheating if it is that easy.
"Cheating" is cheating if you bring it to a Multiplayer game. Open Battle.Net was utterly useless. Forget getting into random games with your Single Player character! You could only do that with friends in closed TCP/IP games.
Only closed battle.net is the supposedly cheater-free zone
Supposedly, but back then Blizzard was pretty bad about keeping it so. Cheaters wrecked the Closed Battle.Net economy to the point that duplicated/hacked items became the common currency to buy and sell items with. It was a disincentive for me getting World of Warcraft when it came out because I had little confidence in either Blizzard or the people who played their games given the multiplayer annoyances of Diablo II.
I'm tired of people bitching about the internet connection requirement...do you really disconnect your computer from the internet often when gaming?
You must have a good, stable Internet connection to say such a thing. Realize that in many sections of the US that is a luxury, and outside of the US it can be even MORE of a luxury.
Hell, the largest broadband ISP in the US (comcast) is notorious for providing shoddy unreliable service.
Now pair this with Hardcore mode, where when you die, your character is permanently disabled. Many gamers feel it's the only exciting way to play, since there's real risk to making mistakes. If you have a crappy Internet connection then it's only a matter of time before your character dies through no fault of your own.
You could say "well, hardcore isn't an option for people with bad connections," and that's actually the answer to most multiplayer games. But it doesn't mean those people don't get angry when a game that -could- be single-player isn't.
Hell, I heard rumblings of this before D3, and the poorly-implemented Diablo III launch only justified those complaints.
This is a lie, strip out the AH and add separate achievements for offline that are not published. Done.
They already have separate rules for regular and hard core. It would be no different.
It's a lot more than that -- they would have to remove a lot of code from the server side and integrate it into the client. It'd probably be a rewrite, a lot more than a simple patch.
Not that it's impossible, that was Diablo II's design after all, but Diablo III's development went in a different direction.
I'm with the gamer on this one, Blizzard sucks, and your continued enthusiasm for supporting Blizzard makes you seem incredibly like an astroturfer (is there a better noun for this?) to me.
There has to be, I'm not sure that someone who claims to be a Blizzard employee (at least at one time) could be called an astroturfer. But "astroturfer" is a label misused and thrown around on Slashdot even more than "no true Scotsman." It makes me want to stab my eyes out every time I see them. Those terms need to be retired due to abuse.
Blizzard's Warden has gotten things wrong before. Probably the most notorious incident was about four years ago when it mistakenly identified wine as a cheating program. Several months later (bans are handed out en mass at a later date, not when the cheating is detected), thousands of wine users were banned for "cheating."
Shortly after, Blizzard announced they were working with Crossover, and any cedega user who was registered with Crossover -before- the ban went out would have the ban lifted. I'm glad we used cedega back then, as I was able to get the ban on my co-worker lifted because he was using my cedega account. It was a bit frustrating because Tseric was being a bit of a douche and stridently, arrogantly insisted that the Warden was perfect and everyone (including co-workers whom I know were not cheating) banned was a cheater who got what they deserved. He didn't last at the company much longer. These days since no one uses cedega for Blizzard games anymore, I'm not sure what we'd do, but my understanding is that wine is on Blizzard's radar while before it was not.
it has to be online to prevent people cheating in the online space.
Yea, how's that working out for Blizzard?;)
I don't work for Blizzard, but overall I'd guess it's working out pretty well. Cheating doesn't have to be 0% for an anti-cheating measure to be considered effective. The cheating online is nothing compared to the cheating in Diablo 2. In that game, Open Battle.Net was completely pointless to play. It should have just been removed.
Even when playing solo, it's built for you to use the auction house.
Using the Auction House is the -worst- way to play the game. The game is an item hunt, and the auction house takes all the enjoyment out of the item hunt part of the game.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a few things I would trim out and shed few tears about:
1) A trimming of defense. Since so much of the economy is tied to this by now, it'd have to be trimmed slowly, progressively. A weaning will cause less fallout than slashing.
2) The Department of Education. There's one thing that this department does that I'd like seen preserved in some way: low-cost student loans and grants. I can't think of a single thing the department does otherwise that should be spared. The states handle all the school and staff and curriculum, the DoEd is just a thick layer of bureaucracy on top.
3) Farm subsidies. Should there be some subsidies? Maybe. But right now the system is used to dole out rewards to political supporters, artificially increase/decrease prices on crops like corn, and prop up certain crops (corn again) at the expense of others. It leads directly to the disproportionate amount of influence that those subsidy states wield, from favorable legislation to their early primary status, etc.
4) Medicare. I'll admit I don't really know what the solution here is, but the amount we spend on health care is wildly out of control. This is one of those areas though that you CANNOT cut because seniors vote more than anyone else. Political suicide.
That's a decent start, anyway.
A big difference between China and Somalia is that China's government is extremely powerful and centralized and they interfere all the time -- specifically, interfere to favor business growth, whether it's to manipulate the entire country's currency to ensure products can be sold abroad for cheap to drive out foreign competition, or perform industrial sabotage or spying of other countries' companies.
Perhaps, but capitalism is specifically designed to institutionalize and increase that divide. For capitalism, a growing inequality between rich and poor is a feature, not a bug
Only in the very short term. Nothing benefited capitalism more than the existence of the middle class -- without masses -able- to buy goods, industries wither.
Well... it kind of happened. Only we called it feudalism. And, as far as we can see, it "ended" exactly where we are.
In certain areas it happened in the 1800s as well. The Pinkertons still have a bad reputation thanks to their use as factory guards, strike breakers, and goon squads for fellows like Andrew Carnegie. According to Wikipedia, they were a private security force that was larger than the US Army towards the end of the 19th century.
Those of us who hate the "No True Scotsman Fallacy" understand it, we simply see it misapplied all the time.
Streaming is like radio, but instead of it being free for you with record companies giving the radio companies payola, you'll be paying the streaming companies.
RIAA revokes the licenses
Can't happen without a change of law, the US has compulsory licensing for audio recordings with rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board.
Audio recordings, but does that apply to video recordings? Disney releases movies in theaters and on home video, they they remove them from circulation, making them impossible to acquire outside of the used or piracy markets, the former of which would be eliminated by a streaming-only model. Video streaming is also in a horribly broken state, with each streaming service having a different amount of the overall library of titles.
Moot. Your issue is moot moot.
If one provider dies, hope there is another. If there isn't, your SOL. If RIAA decides that a song violates a copyright and pulls it from all streaming... tough.
Has that happened? Band releases a single, it goes on the radio, then it's yanked for all eternity? If it happens at all, it's rare.
A better example would be Disney and their "Vault."
I think a very real danger would be "The RIAA decides that YOU have violated copyright and bar you from their music streaming services." A very easy way to punish people who break their policies, as without the physical media you have no way to listen/watch anything you'd enjoyed from the streaming services in the previous years.
Isn't USA a member of UN? What are you comparing UN to?
There are a number of countries, some on the Security Council, who oppose any action taken in Syria. Russia, for instance, and China. The UN council is set up in a way that favors deadlock, and all countries must be in agreement for any action to be taken. It's rare now that you can get anything done without complete agreement from the security council.
No, following ITU rules is voluntary, but why would the US or Europe refuse to do so? We follow ITU rules for radio all the time.
Your point is well taken, and elsewhere where you've posted the regulations applied to ham radio it comes out to a fairly chilling list.
That said, I don't think these situations are all that analogous for the simple reason that the ham radio rules did not affect that many people -- even in its heyday, ham radio was nowhere close to popularity or importance that the Internet is today. It's closer to the state the Internet was in in 1995.
Far more people use the Internet today, and far more businesses do. Far more commercial and non-commercial organizations rely on it now (like, oh, The Drudge Report, The Daily Show, charities, right-wing groups, left-wing groups, Facebook, etc) who have political clout and would be damaged by ITU control. Messing with the structure of the Internet would affect more people and elicit far more outcry than amateur radio ever would have.
It's basically placing full sanctions on one's own country.
The sanctions that we fully expect will topple regimes in a country. It never seems to work out that way, but the people certainly do suffer.
The OP might say that the US is far more self-reliant than Iran or North Korea, but the country is very dependent on foreign trade now, far more than in, say, the 30s.
The US -needs- foreign oil. The US -needs- foreign-produced goods since we can't manufacture our own anymore.
The US has already pissed away its sovereignty, it just hasn't realized it.
So you'd "take" the fiber bundles and "turn then over" to the "Member States" and the companies would have to "lease them" back?
Keep in mind many of those fibers were paid for by the government in the first place.
And my argument was: "What business is that of mine, or yours? It may be true by our standards, but how dare you make moral judgments for some other entire culture?
It's very easy to make those judgments, right and wrong are not necessarily cultural relative.
But that's neither here nor there, as women had far more rights when Hussein was in power than most other Muslim states in the region, and more freedom than they do now.
Wrong.
No, it's right. If everyone is verified to be weaponless, then, get this, everyone is weaponless.
I think you two are arguing about two different things. You say everyone is verified to be weaponless at the security line.The OP says everyone is not guaranteed to be weaponless when they step on the plane.
UK is in Europe ???
Are you saying it's not?
I always wondered how Cops was able to get footage of police kicking in doors and running through backyards and such. Did the residents actually give permission for that footage to be released?
Only a moron would complain about cheating on public servers in D2. You realize the character files for those are stored on your own computer? You can't even call it cheating if it is that easy.
"Cheating" is cheating if you bring it to a Multiplayer game. Open Battle.Net was utterly useless. Forget getting into random games with your Single Player character! You could only do that with friends in closed TCP/IP games.
Only closed battle.net is the supposedly cheater-free zone
Supposedly, but back then Blizzard was pretty bad about keeping it so. Cheaters wrecked the Closed Battle.Net economy to the point that duplicated/hacked items became the common currency to buy and sell items with. It was a disincentive for me getting World of Warcraft when it came out because I had little confidence in either Blizzard or the people who played their games given the multiplayer annoyances of Diablo II.
I'm tired of people bitching about the internet connection requirement...do you really disconnect your computer from the internet often when gaming?
You must have a good, stable Internet connection to say such a thing. Realize that in many sections of the US that is a luxury, and outside of the US it can be even MORE of a luxury.
Hell, the largest broadband ISP in the US (comcast) is notorious for providing shoddy unreliable service.
Now pair this with Hardcore mode, where when you die, your character is permanently disabled. Many gamers feel it's the only exciting way to play, since there's real risk to making mistakes. If you have a crappy Internet connection then it's only a matter of time before your character dies through no fault of your own.
You could say "well, hardcore isn't an option for people with bad connections," and that's actually the answer to most multiplayer games. But it doesn't mean those people don't get angry when a game that -could- be single-player isn't.
Hell, I heard rumblings of this before D3, and the poorly-implemented Diablo III launch only justified those complaints.
This is a lie, strip out the AH and add separate achievements for offline that are not published. Done.
They already have separate rules for regular and hard core. It would be no different.
It's a lot more than that -- they would have to remove a lot of code from the server side and integrate it into the client. It'd probably be a rewrite, a lot more than a simple patch.
Not that it's impossible, that was Diablo II's design after all, but Diablo III's development went in a different direction.
Moderators: Please mod the above -1, Puns that Make My Brain Hurt.
Or being David Bowie.
I'm with the gamer on this one, Blizzard sucks, and your continued enthusiasm for supporting Blizzard makes you seem incredibly like an astroturfer (is there a better noun for this?) to me.
There has to be, I'm not sure that someone who claims to be a Blizzard employee (at least at one time) could be called an astroturfer.
But "astroturfer" is a label misused and thrown around on Slashdot even more than "no true Scotsman." It makes me want to stab my eyes out every time I see them. Those terms need to be retired due to abuse.
Blizzard's Warden has gotten things wrong before. Probably the most notorious incident was about four years ago when it mistakenly identified wine as a cheating program. Several months later (bans are handed out en mass at a later date, not when the cheating is detected), thousands of wine users were banned for "cheating."
Shortly after, Blizzard announced they were working with Crossover, and any cedega user who was registered with Crossover -before- the ban went out would have the ban lifted. I'm glad we used cedega back then, as I was able to get the ban on my co-worker lifted because he was using my cedega account. It was a bit frustrating because Tseric was being a bit of a douche and stridently, arrogantly insisted that the Warden was perfect and everyone (including co-workers whom I know were not cheating) banned was a cheater who got what they deserved. He didn't last at the company much longer. These days since no one uses cedega for Blizzard games anymore, I'm not sure what we'd do, but my understanding is that wine is on Blizzard's radar while before it was not.
it has to be online to prevent people cheating in the online space.
Yea, how's that working out for Blizzard? ;)
I don't work for Blizzard, but overall I'd guess it's working out pretty well. Cheating doesn't have to be 0% for an anti-cheating measure to be considered effective.
The cheating online is nothing compared to the cheating in Diablo 2. In that game, Open Battle.Net was completely pointless to play. It should have just been removed.
Even when playing solo, it's built for you to use the auction house.
Using the Auction House is the -worst- way to play the game.
The game is an item hunt, and the auction house takes all the enjoyment out of the item hunt part of the game.