Wow, the complete opposite here. The last time I bought a game at Wal-Mart I had to wander the electronic section for a while before I even saw an employee that I could ask for help.... Who then said that this wasn't their section and vanished with a promise to get someone to help me get a game. A few more minutes later a surly employee came out, unlocked the game case and sold me the thing with no more than a few grunts of communication. Nice.
My local game stores (Game Crazy, Gamespot, EB) are all open past 9PM so availability doesn't factor for me. Plus I can get used games and greater selection at the game stores. My local Wal-Mart has about a dozen games for each system, about one tenth of what I can find at one of the game stores (and that's not counting the used games).
That's not really surprising, everyone and their goats were predicting similar things. I remember being full of all kinds of dread when we elected the leader with golem eyes.
(Look back at the 2000 debates, Bush had a strange and disturbing twinkle in his eyes.)
Sorry, but even then nothing will happen because the ability to record shows the way we used to will have been replaced by New Shiny Thing like the ability to watch past episodes from any show in the history of television for a dollar per episode.
Of course the episodes are one pay one display, with all kinds of DRM software and hardware to prevent recording and such. "Why record? Just a dollar per episode! Don't waste money on tapes or other recordable media; we store, you watch!"
You mean their wasn't twisted nature to that book already? Or does the submitter mean that the happy spin added by Disney is twisted back to the creepiness of the book with this movie?
Won't happen, Apple will always be tied to Apple branded hardware. Sure, OS X will probably be hacked to run on generic PCs; but it won't be supported so why would they care if it works well or not?
We've had a run of convenience-store robberies lately; the guy walks in, kills the clerk, and robs the joint, for less than $100 each time.
And you think that didn't happen ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred, one thousand years ago? It did, but there wasn't a national or global news network to spread the stories around in minutes.
I'd argue that playing outside as a kid is safer now because criminals know just how quickly they can be tracked down. Sure there are extreme cases that are reported, but they are just that, extreme cases. It's not like they sit on a few dozen child kidnapping stories and leave them unreported.
Yes, Access sucks hard. At work I wanted to switch my office PC for a Mac (not an uncommon request). But our office uses several Access databases (setup by the barely above clueless tech guy who thinks that Access is The Database Of All Goodness).
Beijing needs to relax, maybe we could dope up the place on Valium or something. But is it really surprising considering their past one hundred years of history? I guess they are scared to death of their fledgling government crumbling around them as passionate uprisings explode around the coutnry; which happened more than a few times since 1900.
In fact, that's exactly how the CCP managed to wrest power from the dominant GMD. That whole Red Guard explosion, down with evils, etc. It's weird but China's government now is truly only fifty years old.
I hope eventually they learn that they can't just keep smothering the fire, and that a little passion isn't really anything to worry about. But I guess old imperial habits die hard? Especially when many founders of the CCP were the children and grandchildren of the former dynastic lords.
PetrifiedTruth: talked about activists in prison, a sad relic of China's old ways. But not about Tibet. HRW isn't propaganda, this is a serious problem and you demean it by attempting to say that one wrong means proof of another.
Tibet.ca: Of course the Lama has much to complain about, and rightfully so. But he's kind of as far to one of the sides as you can get. That would be like me arguing with some real propaganda from the Chinese State Department.
Derechos: notice how this is about the Uighurs in Xinjiang? While this is not good can we truly fault their fearful repression of Islam given the state that Bush has put the world in?
Ah, something truly related to Tibet. 1st Amnesty link: Namdrol's story is a sad one. China needs to learn that locking up outspoken individuals does nothing but further their cause. Thanks to a lot of time and energy we are finally getting them to turn around, we hope anyway.
2nd Amnesty link: this is a good one. A nice summary of the current problems of China, of which there are many. Torture is still used, protesters are locked up when too outspoken, and the war on Terror has given them a new sense of liberty to justify it all. It is rather disheartening, but I take heart in the fact that it has been much, much worse and got better even so.
And are these truly the best you find? You need to update your links. I would have at least tried to smack me down with this great speech by Amalia Rubin.
Dude. Mao killed millions of people as a result of his policies. Did my postings ever deny that the Cultural Revolution took place? Sorry, but I assumed that I was dealing with someone somewhat familiar with Chinese history. Clearly not as you call China communist when, by the definition of Communism, it has never been. It certinaly called itself Communist and made the motions so that it could have political support from the Soviet Union; but it is no more Communist than the United States. It is a totalitarian government with all the trouble that brings though.
I'm not saying any writing that disagrees with me is propaganda, but any writing that only serves up the religious repression perspective and gives no treatment to the peasants who now have their own land for the first time in thousands of years of history is definitely propaganda.
And, wow. The "sources" you referred to earlier are just Joe Simpson and his fellow team members? He encountered a group of refugees fleeing Tibet and from his interpretation of their experiences you extrapolate the nature of an entire country!? The refugees fleeing were defeated Tibetian guerillas; is it any wonder that they'd be bitter?
Let me put this to you this way. How did the colonists treat American Indians on coming to the west. Are their cities still intact? Are they still living in their homes? Are their religious sites still there? Say what you want, but I don't think I imagined Lhasa and the pilgrimage there on Saga Dawa.
Go to Tibet. Speak with the people, speak with a Lama. It is a fascinating place. And it is very impressive to chat with a Lama in English, then see him speak to other groups in German, Japanese, and other languages just as easily.
BTW, don't call the holocaust a "disaster"; disaster implies that it was an accident which it certainly wasn't. You might get away with calling China's famine a disaster because you could argue that it wasn't intentioned, but it's still on the edge.
Revisionism is dangerous and in many parts of the world illegal.
What an odd remark, I agree with the first half (which is why I dislike Free Tibet) but the second half is strange. I've never heard of anyone being arrested for revisionism, can we get them after George Bush?
Yeah, you're right. I do go too far to the extreme. I do admit that there are some circumstances where Bush could do something and I'd be glad he did it.
And this could indeed be on of those things, if properly done. We stand to make some serious cash if they don't mess it up, cash we rather desparately need. The commercial exploitation of space will be like the great boon the New World was to the countries of Europe that had intercontinental sea travel, but without the killing of native life.
Unless we discover life on the Moon (or Comet, Asteroid, or other valued object.)
ask this seriously: is there any set of circumstances in which Bush could propose something you'd like and you'd be happy he did it?
No. Because, good deeds do not erase bad deeds. He has already done enough bad to completely bury any good deed as far as I'm concerned. (Unless it was on the level of curing cancer. In that case he might have a shot at praise from me.)
It's almost over though, I heard that there is almost nothing left of what was once Tibet.
Oh sorry, I didn't realize that you were actually one of the Free Tibet people. Oh well. All the Tibetian people I know want modernization except for a few. Should most be held back in their subsistence farming and Yak harvesting because of them? Most want a better quality of life.
Freetibet.org : what did I already say about the Free Tibet people? They are propaganda to the extreme, fighting for a cause they don't fully understand and trying to keep Tibet "pure" from western influences.
RFA.org : So China permitted prayers but didn't send their own envoy to the Pope's funeral. Woo-de-do. China is an offically atheist state. Of course China will never allow direct ties to the Vatican from within the government, they hold their separation of Church and State more highly than the United States does. While this is a holdover from Mao's anti-religion, anti-history campaigns it's one of the old CCP precepts they still hold to today.
Chiesa.espressoline.it : more about China not having a connection to the Pope. Wasn't this about Tibet? Once again, China will never allow a religious influence to come over their government. Not Buddhist, not Catholic, not even Scientology.
Betterworldlinks.org : Ahh, Falon Gong. Still further from Tibet. Well let me summarize the history that you are apparently unfamiliar with. FG started as an extreme religious movement but was tolerated/ignored by the government and mildly interesting to the intellectuals. Then the silent protests started. Groups of hundreds of people standing silently unmoving outside of government buildings. A little weird, but nothing official was done. But then the extremism started, and several FG members (including of their members who happened to be a young girl) set themselves on fire in protest. Then FG lost the support of the intellectuals and the government campaign against it started, and rightly so.
HRW: Talking about the supression of Muslims in China. Still not Tibet and something I am less famliar with, Xinjiang province is outside my field of study. But I wouldn't be surprised that Islam was heavily suppressed given its track history in the region (Indonesia, etc). Hell, this is from 2005 and is about China fighting against a religion-based separatist movement. Next you'll be saying that the US should have peacefully let the south secede.
Amazon.com: Something semi-relevant, but still about religious repression. Remember that I never argued that Tibetian Buddhism wasn't repressed, it certainly was. But that's why many Tibetian Peasants are happier now than they were. Again, read about the history of Tibet and who held the land up until the 1950s. Sure the Buddhist priests have a lot to complain about, but what do you except when their power and autonomy was taken and their land given to the peasantry?
Finally, WorldFuturefund: This is a Chinese government document against Mao written in 1981. Remember at this time the country was just pulling out of the Cultural Revolution and Mao was only five years gone. Deng Xiaopeng and the CCP had to distance themselves from his government (rightly so) and restore public faith in the government lest the country separate into disparate parts as it had in the early 1900s after the fall of the Qing Dynasty. Look how they clearly state that: Cultural Revolution? Mao's fault. Any serious problem? Oh totally Mao's fault. It wasn't us, it was all Mao.
So, yeah. None of those links really talked at all about Tibet. And those that marginally talked about it talk about religious repression, not on what happened to the peasants. Want to actually study something next time? Seriously, take a course. And remember to think twice about anything written on Tibetian History from the Priestly landlord class' point of view, there are a few other sides to the story. Also visit Tibet and talk to the people. The light is very cool there, it's very white and bluer; strange looking but awesome.
As a quick link because I have to start working: Tibetian History. Relevant quoting (emph mine and in bold):
"The situation of Tibet resembled Qianlong's time (1720) of Ching Dynasty. The General of `Tibetan military zone' replaced Tsu Tsan Dachen, the govern
Why not just use a printer to print out the latest CSS or HTML reference sheets? Then you don't have it bound to an annoying stiff spined book (at the end of the book to boot) that wants to stay closed when you want it to stay open.
Slashdot Mirror
Meh, the Republicians are more to the right than the Democrats are to the left; skewing results towards the right.
If it's allowed by the game and the level, then how is that not "who can play the best"?
If you only perform actions allowed by the game itself (no hacking, network tricks, scripting, etc) and you win then...you played the best!
Wow, the complete opposite here. The last time I bought a game at Wal-Mart I had to wander the electronic section for a while before I even saw an employee that I could ask for help. ... Who then said that this wasn't their section and vanished with a promise to get someone to help me get a game. A few more minutes later a surly employee came out, unlocked the game case and sold me the thing with no more than a few grunts of communication. Nice.
My local game stores (Game Crazy, Gamespot, EB) are all open past 9PM so availability doesn't factor for me. Plus I can get used games and greater selection at the game stores. My local Wal-Mart has about a dozen games for each system, about one tenth of what I can find at one of the game stores (and that's not counting the used games).
That's not really surprising, everyone and their goats were predicting similar things. I remember being full of all kinds of dread when we elected the leader with golem eyes.
(Look back at the 2000 debates, Bush had a strange and disturbing twinkle in his eyes.)
Sorry, but even then nothing will happen because the ability to record shows the way we used to will have been replaced by New Shiny Thing like the ability to watch past episodes from any show in the history of television for a dollar per episode.
Of course the episodes are one pay one display, with all kinds of DRM software and hardware to prevent recording and such. "Why record? Just a dollar per episode! Don't waste money on tapes or other recordable media; we store, you watch!"
You mean their wasn't twisted nature to that book already? Or does the submitter mean that the happy spin added by Disney is twisted back to the creepiness of the book with this movie?
Won't happen, Apple will always be tied to Apple branded hardware. Sure, OS X will probably be hacked to run on generic PCs; but it won't be supported so why would they care if it works well or not?
We've had a run of convenience-store robberies lately; the guy walks in, kills the clerk, and robs the joint, for less than $100 each time.
And you think that didn't happen ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred, one thousand years ago? It did, but there wasn't a national or global news network to spread the stories around in minutes.
I'd argue that playing outside as a kid is safer now because criminals know just how quickly they can be tracked down. Sure there are extreme cases that are reported, but they are just that, extreme cases. It's not like they sit on a few dozen child kidnapping stories and leave them unreported.
Well, to be fair, it does have something to do with soldering; which is clearly something.
It's more than a stretch to make it relevant to the topic though.
Wow, as an impartial 3rd observer I have to say that's pretty crazy. You might want to back off the caffeine or something?
On any Apple.
And last I checked, Fair Use isn't illegal (or well defined, but that's another post).
Next chapter buttons aren't.
Besides, when the commercials are that annoying just rip down the DVD to "feature only".
Yes, Access sucks hard. At work I wanted to switch my office PC for a Mac (not an uncommon request). But our office uses several Access databases (setup by the barely above clueless tech guy who thinks that Access is The Database Of All Goodness).
:-(
So that means no Mac for me
At last, we somewhat agree.
Beijing needs to relax, maybe we could dope up the place on Valium or something. But is it really surprising considering their past one hundred years of history? I guess they are scared to death of their fledgling government crumbling around them as passionate uprisings explode around the coutnry; which happened more than a few times since 1900.
In fact, that's exactly how the CCP managed to wrest power from the dominant GMD. That whole Red Guard explosion, down with evils, etc. It's weird but China's government now is truly only fifty years old.
I hope eventually they learn that they can't just keep smothering the fire, and that a little passion isn't really anything to worry about. But I guess old imperial habits die hard? Especially when many founders of the CCP were the children and grandchildren of the former dynastic lords.
Cheers!
I've seen those episodes on DVD, they are all kinds of awesome. Just like the rest of the series.
I find it odd that you say the characters had finished developing. If nothing else, what about the fake preacher?
PetrifiedTruth: talked about activists in prison, a sad relic of China's old ways. But not about Tibet. HRW isn't propaganda, this is a serious problem and you demean it by attempting to say that one wrong means proof of another.
Tibet.ca: Of course the Lama has much to complain about, and rightfully so. But he's kind of as far to one of the sides as you can get. That would be like me arguing with some real propaganda from the Chinese State Department.
Derechos: notice how this is about the Uighurs in Xinjiang? While this is not good can we truly fault their fearful repression of Islam given the state that Bush has put the world in?
Ah, something truly related to Tibet. 1st Amnesty link: Namdrol's story is a sad one. China needs to learn that locking up outspoken individuals does nothing but further their cause. Thanks to a lot of time and energy we are finally getting them to turn around, we hope anyway.
2nd Amnesty link: this is a good one. A nice summary of the current problems of China, of which there are many. Torture is still used, protesters are locked up when too outspoken, and the war on Terror has given them a new sense of liberty to justify it all. It is rather disheartening, but I take heart in the fact that it has been much, much worse and got better even so.
And are these truly the best you find? You need to update your links. I would have at least tried to smack me down with this great speech by Amalia Rubin.
Dude. Mao killed millions of people as a result of his policies. Did my postings ever deny that the Cultural Revolution took place? Sorry, but I assumed that I was dealing with someone somewhat familiar with Chinese history. Clearly not as you call China communist when, by the definition of Communism, it has never been. It certinaly called itself Communist and made the motions so that it could have political support from the Soviet Union; but it is no more Communist than the United States. It is a totalitarian government with all the trouble that brings though.
I'm not saying any writing that disagrees with me is propaganda, but any writing that only serves up the religious repression perspective and gives no treatment to the peasants who now have their own land for the first time in thousands of years of history is definitely propaganda.
And, wow. The "sources" you referred to earlier are just Joe Simpson and his fellow team members? He encountered a group of refugees fleeing Tibet and from his interpretation of their experiences you extrapolate the nature of an entire country!? The refugees fleeing were defeated Tibetian guerillas; is it any wonder that they'd be bitter?
Let me put this to you this way. How did the colonists treat American Indians on coming to the west. Are their cities still intact? Are they still living in their homes? Are their religious sites still there? Say what you want, but I don't think I imagined Lhasa and the pilgrimage there on Saga Dawa.
Go to Tibet. Speak with the people, speak with a Lama. It is a fascinating place. And it is very impressive to chat with a Lama in English, then see him speak to other groups in German, Japanese, and other languages just as easily.
BTW, don't call the holocaust a "disaster"; disaster implies that it was an accident which it certainly wasn't. You might get away with calling China's famine a disaster because you could argue that it wasn't intentioned, but it's still on the edge.
Revisionism is dangerous and in many parts of the world illegal.
What an odd remark, I agree with the first half (which is why I dislike Free Tibet) but the second half is strange. I've never heard of anyone being arrested for revisionism, can we get them after George Bush?
That's because the full length Pinky and the Brain cartoons were not so good. The best were the shorts contained in the Animaniacs series.
Well excuuuuse me. My brothers and I loved the show tons. We used to look forward to every Friday afternoon, Zelda Day!
Yeah, you're right. I do go too far to the extreme. I do admit that there are some circumstances where Bush could do something and I'd be glad he did it.
And this could indeed be on of those things, if properly done. We stand to make some serious cash if they don't mess it up, cash we rather desparately need. The commercial exploitation of space will be like the great boon the New World was to the countries of Europe that had intercontinental sea travel, but without the killing of native life.
Unless we discover life on the Moon (or Comet, Asteroid, or other valued object.)
ask this seriously: is there any set of circumstances in which Bush could propose something you'd like and you'd be happy he did it?
No. Because, good deeds do not erase bad deeds. He has already done enough bad to completely bury any good deed as far as I'm concerned. (Unless it was on the level of curing cancer. In that case he might have a shot at praise from me.)
It's almost over though, I heard that there is almost nothing left of what was once Tibet.
Oh sorry, I didn't realize that you were actually one of the Free Tibet people. Oh well. All the Tibetian people I know want modernization except for a few. Should most be held back in their subsistence farming and Yak harvesting because of them? Most want a better quality of life.
Ha ha. Okay. I'll rumble.
Freetibet.org : what did I already say about the Free Tibet people? They are propaganda to the extreme, fighting for a cause they don't fully understand and trying to keep Tibet "pure" from western influences.
RFA.org : So China permitted prayers but didn't send their own envoy to the Pope's funeral. Woo-de-do. China is an offically atheist state. Of course China will never allow direct ties to the Vatican from within the government, they hold their separation of Church and State more highly than the United States does. While this is a holdover from Mao's anti-religion, anti-history campaigns it's one of the old CCP precepts they still hold to today.
Chiesa.espressoline.it : more about China not having a connection to the Pope. Wasn't this about Tibet? Once again, China will never allow a religious influence to come over their government. Not Buddhist, not Catholic, not even Scientology.
Betterworldlinks.org : Ahh, Falon Gong. Still further from Tibet. Well let me summarize the history that you are apparently unfamiliar with. FG started as an extreme religious movement but was tolerated/ignored by the government and mildly interesting to the intellectuals. Then the silent protests started. Groups of hundreds of people standing silently unmoving outside of government buildings. A little weird, but nothing official was done. But then the extremism started, and several FG members (including of their members who happened to be a young girl) set themselves on fire in protest. Then FG lost the support of the intellectuals and the government campaign against it started, and rightly so.
HRW: Talking about the supression of Muslims in China. Still not Tibet and something I am less famliar with, Xinjiang province is outside my field of study. But I wouldn't be surprised that Islam was heavily suppressed given its track history in the region (Indonesia, etc). Hell, this is from 2005 and is about China fighting against a religion-based separatist movement. Next you'll be saying that the US should have peacefully let the south secede.
Amazon.com: Something semi-relevant, but still about religious repression. Remember that I never argued that Tibetian Buddhism wasn't repressed, it certainly was. But that's why many Tibetian Peasants are happier now than they were. Again, read about the history of Tibet and who held the land up until the 1950s. Sure the Buddhist priests have a lot to complain about, but what do you except when their power and autonomy was taken and their land given to the peasantry?
Finally, WorldFuturefund: This is a Chinese government document against Mao written in 1981. Remember at this time the country was just pulling out of the Cultural Revolution and Mao was only five years gone. Deng Xiaopeng and the CCP had to distance themselves from his government (rightly so) and restore public faith in the government lest the country separate into disparate parts as it had in the early 1900s after the fall of the Qing Dynasty. Look how they clearly state that: Cultural Revolution? Mao's fault. Any serious problem? Oh totally Mao's fault. It wasn't us, it was all Mao.
So, yeah. None of those links really talked at all about Tibet. And those that marginally talked about it talk about religious repression, not on what happened to the peasants. Want to actually study something next time? Seriously, take a course. And remember to think twice about anything written on Tibetian History from the Priestly landlord class' point of view, there are a few other sides to the story. Also visit Tibet and talk to the people. The light is very cool there, it's very white and bluer; strange looking but awesome.
As a quick link because I have to start working: Tibetian History. Relevant quoting (emph mine and in bold):
"The situation of Tibet resembled Qianlong's time (1720) of Ching Dynasty. The General of `Tibetan military zone' replaced Tsu Tsan Dachen, the govern
Why not just use a printer to print out the latest CSS or HTML reference sheets? Then you don't have it bound to an annoying stiff spined book (at the end of the book to boot) that wants to stay closed when you want it to stay open.
Ha! It's a crazy world.