I've got nothing against sports games. I haven't played any in a while, just because I don't spend that much on games, but I had the first Madden football for the SNES (before they started dating them). I can also understand why one who was really into the genre would want to buy different games that simulated the same sport (Madden, Sega Football, whaterver).
The only thing that did seem pretty difficult to swallow was the idea that someone would actually purchase the same game every single year. I know, there are slight feature enhancements, so it might be worthwhile to buy the same game every couple of years (maybe get the new version every time you get a new console), but EVERY year just seemed a bit extreme.
Likewise, I was contacted one time by a guy doing our family tree, and he mentioned that all of us fit into the same family, no matter how distantly, going back to when Germany was originally giving out last names. On top of that, my great grandfather dropped the last n (so from -mann to -man) during WWI, so it's even less common now. I've got mylastname.org registered, so why would I want.name anyway?
The one thing that I think was a fairly serious design flaw in Syndicate was the way resources worked. The second mission involved mind controlling someone, so you could just shoot her instead, and replay the mission as much as you wanted, getting more and more money from your one captured country. In fact, as I recall you didn't even have to do that, you could just let the game run on the map screen and you'd get money as time passed, but failing the second mission speeded things up somewhat.
That small problem aside, I agree, it was a pretty awesome game.
The linked article says the exact opposite, that EA is enormous, the Microsoft or Disney of the videogame world. I'm sure C&C Generals doing poorly would disappoint EA, but the article doesn't say it's dependant on those two titles doing well at all.
Also in the article, they talk a bit about sports games, saying it's the perfect franchise because fans will repurchase essentially the same game year after year to get updated player rosters. Is this actually true? I can understand buying the same game every couple years, as they add new features, and you migrate from one generation of consoles to the next. But are there really people who buy Madden 2000, Madden 2001, Madden 2002 and so forth all for the same system?
I'm also guessing that, while you evidently feel it should be your right to live in any coutry you choose, you wouldn't want your country to open up its borders to all immigrants.
Why do you guess that? I'm wholeheartedly in favor of free immigration. As for moving to other countries, it may not be the easiest thing in the world, but there are other English speaking countries (Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand are all possibilities), and as for staying near family and friends, in the era of modern jet travel, being in another country is not much farther away really than being on the other side of the United States, and I'd say a good 50% of the people I know live in a different region of the country than their parents. So, if living in the United States does not make you happy, and living somewhere where lower pay but lower hours is the norm would make your life happier, then it's something to consider.
I don't know that I'd go that far, but I did always find it a lot of fun to watch those players go flying across the screen. Really it was more like a glorified version of Rock Paper Scisors. I agree with one of the other replies, 4 player Play Action Football was pretty tight, though I don't know that it's really stood the test of time either.
First of all, I disagree with your assesment. I'm pretty young, but I've had a few full time jobs, and there is a great deal of negotiation about how many hours a week a person is willing to work. Yeah, you may get an employer who insists on 60 hour weeks, but you can always look for another job that pays less but requires fewer hours.
Regardless of that argument though, an American can always choose to move to Europe, or Europeans can always choose to move to America. You don't want to work more than 40 hours a week, but you feel that you have no other options in America? That's cool, move to Europe. It's a global economy, my friend. There's no reason to argue about this, just go wherever you're happy.
We also have the highest median income level in the world. Ain't nothing free in life (or put another way, there's no such thing as "paid vacation"). How much of your base salary would you be willing to give up for an extra week, two weeks, whatever, of vacation time? There's no right answer to this question, I'm just making a point that neither the European nor the American system are better for all people. You just have to decide what's important to you and choose your life path accordingly.
It seems unlikely that the government would pass a law like this without at least giving some thought to how they're going to enforce it. I know they've got all kinds of labor law signs posted in the break rooms that they're required by law to put up, I imagine one of those signs probably has info on how to anonymously alert the appropriate regulatory body that your employer may not be following the overtime rules.
I couldn't agree more. The only thing I found fatally flawed about the miniseries were those scenes where the Fremen burst out of the sand. What exactly was the rationale here? That they'd been hiding under the sand for hours, waiting for the enemy to happen to blunder by them? One of my favorite bits in the David Lynch movie was the massive desert war. Even if the rest of the movie is pretty crappy, that at least looks pretty cool.
My recollection is a little hazy, but wasn't the PowerPC originally called "Project Pink," on the theory that Pink is what you would get if you mixed the rainbow Apple with IBM's Big Blue?
I've never been to their facilities myself, but we do have a friend of the family who's designed a couple of the expansions Lucas has made in the past few years (also the new Moscone Center expansion). As I understand it from him, efficient use of space is a pretty low priority for their current location. That suggests they do have a fair amount of room to expand, unless there's some kind of a zoning restriction or something
I think a more likely explanation is that when the Presidio went up for sale Lucas saw a chance to grab a piece of prime real estate. There are a limited number of companies in the Bay Area that would be able to use that space (Gap and Levi already have giant HQs, so they don't need more offices), and are also stable enough that the government wouldn't be worried about them going bankrupt midway through construction (which eliminated most of the.coms that were big at the time). Over time, as the area becomes more privatized and built up, Lucas can decide if he wants to hold onto the land, or sell it for a nice profit and reconsolidate in Marin.
Back to the Future was filmed entirely in the Universal back lot. Indeed, in the days before CG, such a movie requiring total control of the set would have been impossible to do anywhere but a Hollywood backlot.
Maybe your law is true today, though. I'm not sure I can think of any movies made today that are filmed entirely on a back lot. I think those days are pretty much over.
I grew up here, so don't get me wrong, I like the city. But why on earth would you base anything movie related in San Francisco? It's just far enough away from LA that it's not convenient, but you still have to deal with an expensive US dollar and expensive US labor. Granted, being near LA is becoming less important, but why give yourself a deliberate disadvantage, no matter how small? It seems like either LA or overseas would both be better options. *shrug* Maybe Lucas is just too infatuated with having his own freeway exit:)
It should be noted that there were over 100 million voters in that election. The margin in the nationwide vote between him and Bush was not much larger than Bush's initial victory in Florida (under 2000 out of under 6 million). Gore has little more claim to having won the popular vote than Bush has to having won Florida, and can you imagine what a nightmare it would have been if we'd been trying to recount the entire nation's votes? If nothing else, at least the electoral college allows us to compartmentalize our voting irregularities.
Sorry, the parent is right. It is true that the number of people who went into the voting booth to vote for Smith is an integer. However, once they punched those ballots, some of the ballots had the whole hanging/pregnant chad issue, which means that how one person counts the votes will be different from how another person counts the votes EVEN IF neither one cares who wins the election. Many of the paper ballots are not 100% for Smith, they are, say, 60% for Smith and 40% invalid, because reasonable people can differ on whether the hole was really punched or not. Therefore, the number of final votes counted for Smith, no matter how carefully the counting is done, will have a margin of error.
A government entity exhibiting religious favoritism _is_ unconstitutional.
This kind of thing pisses me off. Let's quote the First Amendment, shall we?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
Did that say anything about favoritism? NO! It just said the government can't PREVENT someone from worshipping how they want. The government is free to favor as much as they like. Indeed, the way people like you seem to want things (that elected officials are not allowed to even talk about God) would be favoritism towards atheism.
Now then, maybe you can make the argument that the Pledge of Allegiance is forcing atheists to do something that's against their religion (by "worshipping God"). It's a bit of a stretch in my opinion, but I can see how you get there. Actually, it kind of brings up the metaphysical question of whether anything can really be considered against the religion of an atheist, since they don't believe in a deity that would punish them. I had to say the Pledge of Allegiance when I was in grade school. I'm still an agnostic, and all this crap about the PoA just makes us seem like a bunch of whiners, IMHO.
But as for your point about the US currency, there's no way that "In God we trust" could be considered to have violated the First Amendment. It doesn't interfere with any exercise of religion, it's just a phrase printed on the money. Bush suggesting that people say a prayer is not a violation of the First Amendment. Schools posting the 10 Commandments is not a violation of the First Amendment. There is no "separation of church and state" clause in the Constitution, except what I quoted above from the First Amendment.
Why should it have a name on it? Normal ballots don't have names, they just only give one ballot to each registered voter who comes in. All you have to do is record the number of registered voters who came in, and make sure the number of receipts matches up. Or print two receipts, one with a name, and one with the vote. Put them in different boxes, and make sure the two boxes end up with the same number of receipts.
When they published the official media hand recount, as I recall, there was only one scenario under which Gore came out ahead: if every ballot had been hand counted, as you said. However, the margin was tiny. I want to say 5 votes, but it may have been a little bigger. Certainly less than 100.
Even that is a little suspicious, however. Who did those recounts? Probably bitter Democrats, because it's going to be tedious work recounting ballots, so Republicans are probably not going to want to do it (because they won, so why risk a recount that would undermine Bush?). As evidence, when they compared the media hand recounts to the official hand recounts (for those regions that completed their recounts before the courts ordered a halt), the media count showed more Gore votes than the government count (with official observers from both parties).
Anyway, I don't know why I felt a need to go into that, it really is best put behind us. One thing I do find kind of amusing is that I have an uncle who voted for Bush in Palm Beach County, butterfly ballot and all.
So's Hawaii. Maybe we should have cut it off at 48?
On the other hand, I don't recall the Electoral College helping to keep the southern states from trying to break away back in 1860 either. In fact, it was probably the strict plurality voting method that lead to Lincoln's election, and by extension the Civil War. Australia's system would have served us better in that instance.
(We could debate all day whether the Civil War was "good" or not, because it ended slavery. This is a difficult issue, so I'm not even going to go there.)
I think this is the issue that the parent was trying to get at. Wearing fetish/opposite sex clothing in public is not how many gay people want to express their identity. Nor do many adults think it is appropriate. You never see black people marching around in loincloths to celebrate their African roots, because they want to be taken seriously, and because they want to disassociate from the stereotype that they're savages.
For you to use it as advertising, sure, whatever, I don't have an issue. It's more a matter of, why are there all these other people, who DON'T have anything to sell, who seem to be trying to make it more difficult for the rest of the gay community to fit in?
IANAL, but as I understand it, the individuals would have to sue. They could be bankrolled by someone else, of course. This is why the FSF insists that you give them the copyright for any code that you submit to their projects, so that they can sue for any violation.
I would guess that in this case, Linus himself (or Alan Cox, or one of the other major contributors) wrote enough of the code that he can sue alone for infringement on those particular portions that he wrote.
When you settle out of court, you create a contract. The contract will usually specify what happens if Acacia's patent is found to be invalid. Likewise, one of the ways Microsoft managed to get a bunch of states to settle out of court with them was by giving them something (I can't remember if it was just software licenses, or cash as well), and also agreeing to give them the same deal that the states which didn't settle got, if the courts imposed more severe reparations. So, the states were certain to get at least something, and if the other states managed to get something better, they'd get a piece of that, too.
My guess is that in this case, Acacia doesn't expect to be able to take on the big boys, so all their out of court settlements probably force the companies to pay, whether or not the patent is later found invalid.
I was damn curious about that myself. My guess is just sloppy workmanship. As one of the other replies alluded to, they're probably just using a standard distro install, rather than actually hacking things down to just the drivers and software that they actually need. Maybe some kind of an autoupdate feature/spyware too?
My Rio Sport has a little bit less capacity, only 256. However, it's all solid state, the only moving parts are the buttons. That's the biggest problem with the MP3 CD players. That and the fact that unless you've got really big pockets (like maybe on a jacket or something) you've got to carry it.
Anyway, that's not to put down the CD player, it has legitimate uses. However, it's hemmed in on the low end by flashcard players, and on the high end by hard drive players. You call them overpriced, but a 5 gig iPod is only $300 MSRP, versus $200 for your iRiver. So if you can deal with moving parts (ie, you're not going to be running with it on a daily basis), then for just a little more money you can septuple your capacity with an iPod (which can fit in a standard pants pocket). So the market segment that wants an mp3 player with more than 256 megs of space, doesn't mind a device with a large diameter, doesn't mind having moving parts, and yet isn't willing to shell out the extra $100 for an iPod is just not very large.
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The only thing that did seem pretty difficult to swallow was the idea that someone would actually purchase the same game every single year. I know, there are slight feature enhancements, so it might be worthwhile to buy the same game every couple of years (maybe get the new version every time you get a new console), but EVERY year just seemed a bit extreme.
Likewise, I was contacted one time by a guy doing our family tree, and he mentioned that all of us fit into the same family, no matter how distantly, going back to when Germany was originally giving out last names. On top of that, my great grandfather dropped the last n (so from -mann to -man) during WWI, so it's even less common now. I've got mylastname.org registered, so why would I want .name anyway?
That small problem aside, I agree, it was a pretty awesome game.
Also in the article, they talk a bit about sports games, saying it's the perfect franchise because fans will repurchase essentially the same game year after year to get updated player rosters. Is this actually true? I can understand buying the same game every couple years, as they add new features, and you migrate from one generation of consoles to the next. But are there really people who buy Madden 2000, Madden 2001, Madden 2002 and so forth all for the same system?
Why do you guess that? I'm wholeheartedly in favor of free immigration. As for moving to other countries, it may not be the easiest thing in the world, but there are other English speaking countries (Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand are all possibilities), and as for staying near family and friends, in the era of modern jet travel, being in another country is not much farther away really than being on the other side of the United States, and I'd say a good 50% of the people I know live in a different region of the country than their parents. So, if living in the United States does not make you happy, and living somewhere where lower pay but lower hours is the norm would make your life happier, then it's something to consider.
I don't know that I'd go that far, but I did always find it a lot of fun to watch those players go flying across the screen. Really it was more like a glorified version of Rock Paper Scisors. I agree with one of the other replies, 4 player Play Action Football was pretty tight, though I don't know that it's really stood the test of time either.
Regardless of that argument though, an American can always choose to move to Europe, or Europeans can always choose to move to America. You don't want to work more than 40 hours a week, but you feel that you have no other options in America? That's cool, move to Europe. It's a global economy, my friend. There's no reason to argue about this, just go wherever you're happy.
We also have the highest median income level in the world. Ain't nothing free in life (or put another way, there's no such thing as "paid vacation"). How much of your base salary would you be willing to give up for an extra week, two weeks, whatever, of vacation time? There's no right answer to this question, I'm just making a point that neither the European nor the American system are better for all people. You just have to decide what's important to you and choose your life path accordingly.
It seems unlikely that the government would pass a law like this without at least giving some thought to how they're going to enforce it. I know they've got all kinds of labor law signs posted in the break rooms that they're required by law to put up, I imagine one of those signs probably has info on how to anonymously alert the appropriate regulatory body that your employer may not be following the overtime rules.
I couldn't agree more. The only thing I found fatally flawed about the miniseries were those scenes where the Fremen burst out of the sand. What exactly was the rationale here? That they'd been hiding under the sand for hours, waiting for the enemy to happen to blunder by them? One of my favorite bits in the David Lynch movie was the massive desert war. Even if the rest of the movie is pretty crappy, that at least looks pretty cool.
My recollection is a little hazy, but wasn't the PowerPC originally called "Project Pink," on the theory that Pink is what you would get if you mixed the rainbow Apple with IBM's Big Blue?
I think a more likely explanation is that when the Presidio went up for sale Lucas saw a chance to grab a piece of prime real estate. There are a limited number of companies in the Bay Area that would be able to use that space (Gap and Levi already have giant HQs, so they don't need more offices), and are also stable enough that the government wouldn't be worried about them going bankrupt midway through construction (which eliminated most of the .coms that were big at the time). Over time, as the area becomes more privatized and built up, Lucas can decide if he wants to hold onto the land, or sell it for a nice profit and reconsolidate in Marin.
Maybe your law is true today, though. I'm not sure I can think of any movies made today that are filmed entirely on a back lot. I think those days are pretty much over.
I grew up here, so don't get me wrong, I like the city. But why on earth would you base anything movie related in San Francisco? It's just far enough away from LA that it's not convenient, but you still have to deal with an expensive US dollar and expensive US labor. Granted, being near LA is becoming less important, but why give yourself a deliberate disadvantage, no matter how small? It seems like either LA or overseas would both be better options. *shrug* Maybe Lucas is just too infatuated with having his own freeway exit :)
It should be noted that there were over 100 million voters in that election. The margin in the nationwide vote between him and Bush was not much larger than Bush's initial victory in Florida (under 2000 out of under 6 million). Gore has little more claim to having won the popular vote than Bush has to having won Florida, and can you imagine what a nightmare it would have been if we'd been trying to recount the entire nation's votes? If nothing else, at least the electoral college allows us to compartmentalize our voting irregularities.
Sorry, the parent is right. It is true that the number of people who went into the voting booth to vote for Smith is an integer. However, once they punched those ballots, some of the ballots had the whole hanging/pregnant chad issue, which means that how one person counts the votes will be different from how another person counts the votes EVEN IF neither one cares who wins the election. Many of the paper ballots are not 100% for Smith, they are, say, 60% for Smith and 40% invalid, because reasonable people can differ on whether the hole was really punched or not. Therefore, the number of final votes counted for Smith, no matter how carefully the counting is done, will have a margin of error.
This kind of thing pisses me off. Let's quote the First Amendment, shall we?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
Did that say anything about favoritism? NO! It just said the government can't PREVENT someone from worshipping how they want. The government is free to favor as much as they like. Indeed, the way people like you seem to want things (that elected officials are not allowed to even talk about God) would be favoritism towards atheism.
Now then, maybe you can make the argument that the Pledge of Allegiance is forcing atheists to do something that's against their religion (by "worshipping God"). It's a bit of a stretch in my opinion, but I can see how you get there. Actually, it kind of brings up the metaphysical question of whether anything can really be considered against the religion of an atheist, since they don't believe in a deity that would punish them. I had to say the Pledge of Allegiance when I was in grade school. I'm still an agnostic, and all this crap about the PoA just makes us seem like a bunch of whiners, IMHO.
But as for your point about the US currency, there's no way that "In God we trust" could be considered to have violated the First Amendment. It doesn't interfere with any exercise of religion, it's just a phrase printed on the money. Bush suggesting that people say a prayer is not a violation of the First Amendment. Schools posting the 10 Commandments is not a violation of the First Amendment. There is no "separation of church and state" clause in the Constitution, except what I quoted above from the First Amendment.
Why should it have a name on it? Normal ballots don't have names, they just only give one ballot to each registered voter who comes in. All you have to do is record the number of registered voters who came in, and make sure the number of receipts matches up. Or print two receipts, one with a name, and one with the vote. Put them in different boxes, and make sure the two boxes end up with the same number of receipts.
Even that is a little suspicious, however. Who did those recounts? Probably bitter Democrats, because it's going to be tedious work recounting ballots, so Republicans are probably not going to want to do it (because they won, so why risk a recount that would undermine Bush?). As evidence, when they compared the media hand recounts to the official hand recounts (for those regions that completed their recounts before the courts ordered a halt), the media count showed more Gore votes than the government count (with official observers from both parties).
Anyway, I don't know why I felt a need to go into that, it really is best put behind us. One thing I do find kind of amusing is that I have an uncle who voted for Bush in Palm Beach County, butterfly ballot and all.
On the other hand, I don't recall the Electoral College helping to keep the southern states from trying to break away back in 1860 either. In fact, it was probably the strict plurality voting method that lead to Lincoln's election, and by extension the Civil War. Australia's system would have served us better in that instance.
(We could debate all day whether the Civil War was "good" or not, because it ended slavery. This is a difficult issue, so I'm not even going to go there.)
For you to use it as advertising, sure, whatever, I don't have an issue. It's more a matter of, why are there all these other people, who DON'T have anything to sell, who seem to be trying to make it more difficult for the rest of the gay community to fit in?
I would guess that in this case, Linus himself (or Alan Cox, or one of the other major contributors) wrote enough of the code that he can sue alone for infringement on those particular portions that he wrote.
My guess is that in this case, Acacia doesn't expect to be able to take on the big boys, so all their out of court settlements probably force the companies to pay, whether or not the patent is later found invalid.
P.S. IANAL
I was damn curious about that myself. My guess is just sloppy workmanship. As one of the other replies alluded to, they're probably just using a standard distro install, rather than actually hacking things down to just the drivers and software that they actually need. Maybe some kind of an autoupdate feature/spyware too?
Anyway, that's not to put down the CD player, it has legitimate uses. However, it's hemmed in on the low end by flashcard players, and on the high end by hard drive players. You call them overpriced, but a 5 gig iPod is only $300 MSRP, versus $200 for your iRiver. So if you can deal with moving parts (ie, you're not going to be running with it on a daily basis), then for just a little more money you can septuple your capacity with an iPod (which can fit in a standard pants pocket). So the market segment that wants an mp3 player with more than 256 megs of space, doesn't mind a device with a large diameter, doesn't mind having moving parts, and yet isn't willing to shell out the extra $100 for an iPod is just not very large.