The federal budget should never have a surplus. The government should collect *exactly* as much as it needs to provide essential services (I'll leave out the debate what constitutes "essential"). The government is not a business, has no need to seek profit and should never operate at a loss. The debt that we have now should be paid down at a reasonable pace and taxes should be planned in the budget and collected for that purpose. Any unneeded revenue the government collects should be returned to the taxpayers at the end of the year, not arbitrarily assigned for other purposes.
I disagree wholeheartedly. The problem isn't that we have moderation and compromise, the problem is that, currently, we're making many of the WRONG compromises. Which, as it is, still creates a much better society for regular, middle-class people.
History has demonstrated time and again that attempts to create an excessively left-leaning society result in inefficiency, stagnation, economic ruin and, ultimately, evil. Excessively right-leaning societies on the other hand create efficiency, innovation, economic stability and, ultimately, evil.
You're assuming that all corporations are equal. They may all be equally greedy. They may all be equally unethical. However, the GP is talking about channeling money to corporations that educate people as opposed to channeling money to corporations that kill people. Do you truly believe that both are equally offensive?
I agree that the government *should* have as little money as possible, but I'd be much more comfortable living in a country that pissed away my money inefficiently trying to help people rather than pissing my money away efficiently killing people and reducing my civil liberties.
I don't get that then..at least in the US, we actually PAY farmers subsidies $$$ to not farm parts of their land..etc. We give freakin' subsidies to corn farmers....so, it isn't like we don't have a ton of potential farmland out there we could use in addition to the excess of crops we already produce.
It's not a question of not having enough farmland (yet), the problem is that ethanol subsidies are artificially driving up the price of food corn. Farmers are trying to make a living, they're not going to sell cheap food when they could use the same product to sell expensive fuel. So even though there is more than enough corn to eat, it costs more than it should. Corn is also the primary food source for livestock, so raising the price of corn indirectly raises the price of meat because those animals now cost more to feed over the course of their lives.
However, if we were to switch entirely from oil to corn ethanol there would not be enough farmland, even if we grew NO FOOD, to meet our fuel needs. We would have both a food and a fuel shortage.
You make some good points about using other crops to create ethanol, which may turn out to be effective, but there is no sensible reason to use corn for fuel now or in the future. The entire process is simply too inefficient.
Even if all your points were 100% correct, which they're not, are suggesting that all non-vegetarians are or should be entirely carnivorous and thus exempt from this environmental destruction? Unless you are, vegetables will still be grown. That flour for all those hot dog and hamburger buns has to come from somewhere, so do those potatoes sitting next to your steak.
Vegetables use irritation which makes the land salty and eventually depletes the soil.
Most all farms (with the recent exception of subsidized corn for ethanol) use crop rotation to keep the nutrients in the soil. It's been a common (and necessary) practice for centuries.
Plowing weeding planting, ferilizing, storing and drying consume energy. In contrast with beef, the cows are self propelled, and can even deliver themselves to colllection points. 100% of the animal is used. And only the high density nutritious parts have to be shipped.
Are you suggesting the refrigeration for meat lockers, shipping containers, rail cars and grocery stores requires no energy?
Beef will graze in forests...
Will they? Where have you seen that? I've certainly never heard of these magical forest-cows. Unless you're referring to deer, but they're usually called "venison", not "beef".
Vegetables use irritation which requires energy to move the water (most large scale irrigation is done in proximity to hydro electric dams for a reason: water+power.
Granted, irrigation certainly has its flaws, but you're conveniently ignoring the fact hydro-electric power doesn't produce greenhouse gases.
I've grown bored of responding to your nonsense, so I'll leave it at that.
Maybe it's worth the 93 years of greenhouse gasses just to get everyone switched over to an ethanol system...
Possibly. But if you subscribe to the currently accepted beliefs of most climatologists, we don't have 93 years to make the problem worse before we make it better.
Environmental issues aside, we already know that economically it's better to feed people with that corn (directly or indirectly through feeding livestock) unless you're a corn farmer collecting government subsidies.
I'd rather not the take the chance of making the problem worse for a century just to subsidize corporate farmers using more energy to make less fuel.
your statement is flawed, otherwise i'd reply to it Clearly, you're a powerful orator, skilled in the subtleties of debate. Have you considered running for public office?
Giuliani is nobody's candidate. He's pro-abortion, anti-guns, pro-war and anti-freedom. Conservatives dislike him for the first two, liberals dislike him for the last two.
Only New Yorkers who like him for cleaning up crime and those who still think it's appropriate to live in a state of constant fear of random terrorist attacks would vote for him.
Thus he's no longer in the running.
BTW - I'm not arguing that McCain will choose Giuliani, he probably will, I just doubt it will help get him any votes.
Since based on what I've heard so far, not one of these is actually happening (with the possible exception of #1), I am not optimistic.
You should dig a little deeper and try to hear a little more. They're actually addressing almost all of those issues.
As you already acknowledged #1, I'll skip it.
I haven't heard anything specific on this one, but it's an issue related to the answer for #3.
"I'm working on magic items right now. A previous version of the rules had magic items that were just too complex and too numerous, so we're stripping off a couple layers of complexity. You won't be a magic item Christmas tree any more, but you might be a Christmas shrub or a Charlie Brown Christmas tree." link
"Each level from 1 - 30 each character will have interesting character development options to choose." link
Actually, if you read up on what the designers have commented about classes, you'd find out that the imbalance between the various classes is one of the primary things they're addressing.
Neither of us knows exactly what's in the rules, and their decisions may turn out to be less fun or more difficult, but you're just not paying attention if you think they aren't trying to address your issues.
I'm very interested in it, though I was initially skeptical.
It obviously borrows liberally from WoW, and I was disgusted and offended by that at first. I've come to realize that as long as the game is pen and paper they can't add the things I hate about WoW (plotless grinding, etc, etc.), and frankly, I don't object to the rules they're adding.
Unless they change the medium they can't FORCE the role playing out the game, and they don't want to. If they can make character development more interesting and combat easier and more fun to resolve then that just makes more time for story and role playing. Or more hack & slash, if that's your bag.
I enjoy 3rd edition, but sometimes I feel that's in spite of the rules, not because of them.
I don't have a link to the article, but from what I recall reading about Naval rail guns the primary advantages are 1. cost (CHEAP projectiles, rather than millions for a single cruise missile) and 2. speed - your typical cruise missile doesn't get anywhere near mach 8.
In the US, if you receive something in the mail that's addressed to you, you own it. That particular physical copy of whatever happens to be in your package. It doesn't mean you have distribution rights to the film if someone mails you a DVD. Likewise, if someone mails you a copyrighted (*chuckle*) cease-and-desist letter, you own that sheet of paper, not the rights to the work printed on it.
If your country has copyright laws, I'd be willing to wager that the laws of your country, in this specific issue, are very similar.
Portal has some of the best writing in the history of gaming. The settings are generally visually bland, and the way the writing compliments, contrasts and enhances the environment is amazing.
As the gameplay alone would make that game playable, it shows Valve's commitment to their craft that they took the time and the money to work in dialog that actually made me laugh out loud. In a puzzle game with one talking character!
Having a simple story doesn't mean you don't have good writing.
I'm typing this connected wirelessly to a 2.4Ghz router that sits within 3 feet of an xbox 360. I've never had the slightest problem with my connection.
That's what I don't get about this. How would decoupling IE or making MS follow web-standards benefit Opera at all? It would benefit me as a web developer, but it's not going to change the fact that Opera is totally unknown to mainstream computer users, none of whom are going to go out of their way to find out about Opera. OEMs, you say? Why pay Opera when they can choose to bundle the new reasonably-standards-compliant IE or good ol' Firefox? Hell, they could even bundle Safari. Each of which, individually, make Opera look totally irrelevant in the desktop market.
If there is one constant in human history: War kills people. Always has, always will.
There's an episode of Star Trek where two planets have waged war for so many years that they simply began to accept it as a way of life. They used computers to simulate their battles and then systematically exterminated X amount of their own people in order to avoid "real" war.
They took all the collateral damage out of war and it allowed them to wage war ceaselessly until it never even occurred to them to want peace.
My explanation is pretty bad, but it's an interesting episode and a great example of classic, thoughtful sci-fi.
I don't know about that. While I would consider Mac OS acceptably stable for my day-to-day work, I would never say that "stability" was one of its prime advantages. My Mac is generally acceptable, but I've have several crashes and other stability issues with both 10.3 and 10.4 (they might have fixed things with 10.5, but I've heard some horror stories). By contrast, I don't seem to ever have any issues with my XP machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Because Microsoft gives them the requirements for applying a "Vista Capable" sticker, and they followed Microsoft's requirements.
I'd be willing to speculate that these companies are also strongly "encouraged" to use those stickers.
The federal budget should never have a surplus. The government should collect *exactly* as much as it needs to provide essential services (I'll leave out the debate what constitutes "essential"). The government is not a business, has no need to seek profit and should never operate at a loss. The debt that we have now should be paid down at a reasonable pace and taxes should be planned in the budget and collected for that purpose. Any unneeded revenue the government collects should be returned to the taxpayers at the end of the year, not arbitrarily assigned for other purposes.
I disagree wholeheartedly. The problem isn't that we have moderation and compromise, the problem is that, currently, we're making many of the WRONG compromises. Which, as it is, still creates a much better society for regular, middle-class people.
History has demonstrated time and again that attempts to create an excessively left-leaning society result in inefficiency, stagnation, economic ruin and, ultimately, evil. Excessively right-leaning societies on the other hand create efficiency, innovation, economic stability and, ultimately, evil.
I would never voluntarily live in either.
You're assuming that all corporations are equal. They may all be equally greedy. They may all be equally unethical. However, the GP is talking about channeling money to corporations that educate people as opposed to channeling money to corporations that kill people. Do you truly believe that both are equally offensive?
I agree that the government *should* have as little money as possible, but I'd be much more comfortable living in a country that pissed away my money inefficiently trying to help people rather than pissing my money away efficiently killing people and reducing my civil liberties.
It's not a question of not having enough farmland (yet), the problem is that ethanol subsidies are artificially driving up the price of food corn. Farmers are trying to make a living, they're not going to sell cheap food when they could use the same product to sell expensive fuel. So even though there is more than enough corn to eat, it costs more than it should. Corn is also the primary food source for livestock, so raising the price of corn indirectly raises the price of meat because those animals now cost more to feed over the course of their lives.
However, if we were to switch entirely from oil to corn ethanol there would not be enough farmland, even if we grew NO FOOD, to meet our fuel needs. We would have both a food and a fuel shortage.
You make some good points about using other crops to create ethanol, which may turn out to be effective, but there is no sensible reason to use corn for fuel now or in the future. The entire process is simply too inefficient.
I know you're just trolling, but I'll bite.
Even if all your points were 100% correct, which they're not, are suggesting that all non-vegetarians are or should be entirely carnivorous and thus exempt from this environmental destruction? Unless you are, vegetables will still be grown. That flour for all those hot dog and hamburger buns has to come from somewhere, so do those potatoes sitting next to your steak.
Vegetables use irritation which makes the land salty and eventually depletes the soil.Most all farms (with the recent exception of subsidized corn for ethanol) use crop rotation to keep the nutrients in the soil. It's been a common (and necessary) practice for centuries.
Plowing weeding planting, ferilizing, storing and drying consume energy. In contrast with beef, the cows are self propelled, and can even deliver themselves to colllection points. 100% of the animal is used. And only the high density nutritious parts have to be shipped.Are you suggesting the refrigeration for meat lockers, shipping containers, rail cars and grocery stores requires no energy?
Beef will graze in forests...Will they? Where have you seen that? I've certainly never heard of these magical forest-cows. Unless you're referring to deer, but they're usually called "venison", not "beef".
Vegetables use irritation which requires energy to move the water (most large scale irrigation is done in proximity to hydro electric dams for a reason: water+power.Granted, irrigation certainly has its flaws, but you're conveniently ignoring the fact hydro-electric power doesn't produce greenhouse gases.
I've grown bored of responding to your nonsense, so I'll leave it at that.
Possibly. But if you subscribe to the currently accepted beliefs of most climatologists, we don't have 93 years to make the problem worse before we make it better.
Environmental issues aside, we already know that economically it's better to feed people with that corn (directly or indirectly through feeding livestock) unless you're a corn farmer collecting government subsidies.
I'd rather not the take the chance of making the problem worse for a century just to subsidize corporate farmers using more energy to make less fuel.
Do you think they'll be able to enable Aero?
Giuliani is nobody's candidate. He's pro-abortion, anti-guns, pro-war and anti-freedom. Conservatives dislike him for the first two, liberals dislike him for the last two.
Only New Yorkers who like him for cleaning up crime and those who still think it's appropriate to live in a state of constant fear of random terrorist attacks would vote for him.
Thus he's no longer in the running.
BTW - I'm not arguing that McCain will choose Giuliani, he probably will, I just doubt it will help get him any votes.
You should dig a little deeper and try to hear a little more. They're actually addressing almost all of those issues.
Neither of us knows exactly what's in the rules, and their decisions may turn out to be less fun or more difficult, but you're just not paying attention if you think they aren't trying to address your issues.
I'm very interested in it, though I was initially skeptical.
It obviously borrows liberally from WoW, and I was disgusted and offended by that at first. I've come to realize that as long as the game is pen and paper they can't add the things I hate about WoW (plotless grinding, etc, etc.), and frankly, I don't object to the rules they're adding.
Unless they change the medium they can't FORCE the role playing out the game, and they don't want to. If they can make character development more interesting and combat easier and more fun to resolve then that just makes more time for story and role playing. Or more hack & slash, if that's your bag.
I enjoy 3rd edition, but sometimes I feel that's in spite of the rules, not because of them.
Who you callin' a heap, boy? Them's fightin' words!
I liked it better as "Join me and together we'll rule the galaxy as father and son!"
Next thing you know, they'll have Netscape shooting first.
He didn't deserve it, but asked for it.
I don't have a link to the article, but from what I recall reading about Naval rail guns the primary advantages are 1. cost (CHEAP projectiles, rather than millions for a single cruise missile) and 2. speed - your typical cruise missile doesn't get anywhere near mach 8.
In the US, if you receive something in the mail that's addressed to you, you own it. That particular physical copy of whatever happens to be in your package. It doesn't mean you have distribution rights to the film if someone mails you a DVD. Likewise, if someone mails you a copyrighted (*chuckle*) cease-and-desist letter, you own that sheet of paper, not the rights to the work printed on it.
If your country has copyright laws, I'd be willing to wager that the laws of your country, in this specific issue, are very similar.
Portal has some of the best writing in the history of gaming. The settings are generally visually bland, and the way the writing compliments, contrasts and enhances the environment is amazing.
As the gameplay alone would make that game playable, it shows Valve's commitment to their craft that they took the time and the money to work in dialog that actually made me laugh out loud. In a puzzle game with one talking character!
Having a simple story doesn't mean you don't have good writing.
Alcoholics will benefit tremendously from this technology.
I'm typing this connected wirelessly to a 2.4Ghz router that sits within 3 feet of an xbox 360. I've never had the slightest problem with my connection.
I agree that Apple is a much better manufacturer than Dell. That doesn't mean Mac OS is more stable than XP.
That's what I don't get about this. How would decoupling IE or making MS follow web-standards benefit Opera at all? It would benefit me as a web developer, but it's not going to change the fact that Opera is totally unknown to mainstream computer users, none of whom are going to go out of their way to find out about Opera. OEMs, you say? Why pay Opera when they can choose to bundle the new reasonably-standards-compliant IE or good ol' Firefox? Hell, they could even bundle Safari. Each of which, individually, make Opera look totally irrelevant in the desktop market.
And their market share makes Safari look like a viable target platform.
If there is one constant in human history: War kills people. Always has, always will.
There's an episode of Star Trek where two planets have waged war for so many years that they simply began to accept it as a way of life. They used computers to simulate their battles and then systematically exterminated X amount of their own people in order to avoid "real" war.
They took all the collateral damage out of war and it allowed them to wage war ceaselessly until it never even occurred to them to want peace.
My explanation is pretty bad, but it's an interesting episode and a great example of classic, thoughtful sci-fi.
I don't know about that. While I would consider Mac OS acceptably stable for my day-to-day work, I would never say that "stability" was one of its prime advantages. My Mac is generally acceptable, but I've have several crashes and other stability issues with both 10.3 and 10.4 (they might have fixed things with 10.5, but I've heard some horror stories). By contrast, I don't seem to ever have any issues with my XP machine.