Why is it that, when I hear of these voting "irregularities", they always mean more votes for Bush? If the "irregularities" across all the different states were really random failures or unconnected incompetence, you would expect a statistically even distribution of the errant votes.
Instead, all the uncovered irregularities favor Bush by thousands of votes. Why is that? The only two explanations I can think of are 1) Nobody's looking for irregularities that favor Kerry, because Bush's people think they won; and 2) Bush's side engaged in outright voting fraud.
You would think, though, that as these investigations gather steam, Bush's side would be more and more interested in gathering proof that some irregularities favored Kerry, too.
Being gay in the military makes the other guys uncomfortable.
You know, they made that argument against having blacks in the military, too.
You know what? The kind of guy that can't handle being around a gay man is not the kind of person that it is in our interest to entrust with the defense of our nation - they're clearly too stupid to handle it.
When someone behaves in a way that obviously isn't natural, one would think that there is something wrong with that person.
It's completely and totally natural, chief.
"But they can't reproduce!" I hear you exclaim. Kin selection, dude. Duh. Homosexuality is totally natural, and even genetically advantageous, in some ways.
Not to mention, gay people do reproduce, in exactly the same way heterosexuals do - by the union of sperm from a man and ovum from a woman. Apparently somebody missed the fact that the desire to have sex and the capability to reproduce are two entirely different things.
Oh, I hear you on that. As much fun as it is to play superhero dress-up with the game, it's obvious that the vast majority of players have absolutely no idea how to make a great looking character, or how to tie a costume into a character concept.
Yeah, same here, which is why I thought maybe you were talking about something in a new patch.
It would have been cool, though. As it is it seems like Origin decides which stores you shop at and who you get to talk to, and that's about it. Unique costume options or power animations would have been a nice touch, but maybe that's expecting too much.
Many of the allowed costume choices depend on your origin though.
Uh, are you sure about that? I've never seen that to be the case, and I must have generated 100 characters or so, just to mess around with the costuming. The choice of Origin has never, in my experience, had any effect on what costume choices I can make.
Also, has anyone actually calculated the number of combinations of all 5 archetypes and origins?
5*5 = 25 combinations of archetypes and origins.
If you meant "how many different ways can I make a first level character?", let's figure it out from the manual:
((5*5 Blaster combinations) + (6*5 Controller combinations) + (6*5 Defender combinations) + (6*4 Scrapper combinations) + (4*7 Tanker combinations)) * 5 Origins * 2 First-level power alternatives = 1370 different characters at first level.
That's a fair amount, but it's not really what I would consider open-ended. But it gets better as you go along; as characters advance, the differences between them get greater. As compared to a game like The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, where characters start off different but all approach an identical character build (maxed out in every ability and skill) with advancement.
The costume system is great, isn't it? I'm afraid I'm soured on other games now. Just did the Guild Wars preview; I was all like "what is this? I only get to pick my hairstyle? Lame..." I hope extremely detailed character design makes its way into other games. Who would have guessed that grown men would have such fun dressing up dolls?
Well, I've certainly gone through Customs about 20 times, if that's what you mean.
But I've never dealt with them negatively, no. Your milage may vary, I guess.
Don't fuck with world politics if you don't know what you are doing.
Sorry, I guess I missed that day in history class where they explained how it was American policy-makers who loaded Jews into furnaces by the roomload.
Would it be so hard to look up the ISO country codes before going off on your anti-German rant?
Did you reply to my post accidently? I never made an "anti-German rant", any more than the parent was an "anti-American rant."
But you're right, I mixed up "DE" and "DK". A harmless mistake.
Where he's from, of course, doesn't change anything about how wrong he was about what it's like in America. And nothing in your post does, either. For one who's chiding me about lacking education, you apparently slept through the day where they taught you how to respond to arguments.
Once I wanted to visit USA but now I wouldn't dream of setting foot in the states. I'd probably be arrested if I said something wrong.
Oh, for god's sake. It's not that bad. If it were, there's about 200 newspapers that would be shut down already, for endorsing the political opponent of the president. You can still stand on the street corner and hold up a big sign that says what a dickless coward you think the president is; I know, because I see people doing it all the time here in Columbia, Missouri.
Where are you now, exactly? Germany, looks like, from your URL? Germany is cool. I'd like to visit again. Did a day in Berlin and it was neat. I don't know what we have over here that they don't have in Germany, so I don't know why you'd want to visit. But for god's sake we're still the land of the free (markets). Let's keep a little perspective, people, and stay realistic. Nobody's going to get in the way of a European coming over here to spend their money, after all.
And I would point out that yours is the country that still restricts free expression, at least if you choose to express yourself in the manner of Nazis. (Can you even read this in Germany if I say "Nazi"?)
If you want to visit, do so. Now's a great time, in fact - you can see our political circus at full tilt. Call Bush an asshole, if you want. Nobody's going to stop you. We call him worse in our newspapers every day. Yours is a great country. But I love mine, and for all the faults of the past 4 years, I'd rather live in mine than yours. (Not the least of which because I don't speak German.)
Think of it like a Rubik's Cube where the sides are, I dunno, corporate logos or something.
The fact that its delivering a marketing "payload" and making you aware of a brand doesn't change the fact that its a clever and engaging puzzle, at least to some people.
So its a kind of advertising. So what? Advertising makes people like us watch the Superbowl, which we'd never ever do otherwise. Just because something is advertising doesn't make it evil or not fun. Christ, lighten up.
Uh, no. The data set did nothing to suggest that the hole was human caused. Only that it was there.
Uh, yes. The discovery was not just that there was a hole; it was that the hole was getting larger, and that there were some indicators that this was an anomalous event in Earth's history.
That's what substantiated the human causality; a set of data extending into the past.
But, of course, why bother aquainting yourself with the facts when they might prove inconvinient to your argument?
If only I had the P.J. O'Rourke quote from Clinton about how he believed there to be WMDs in Iraq as well...
Oh? How many times did Clinton invade Iraq, then?
Do you think that maybe there's a difference between saying "yeah, Saddam's probably got 'em, but I don't really know, since I can't prove it" and saying "I'm so sure that Saddam's got 'em, I'm gonna invade his country to prove it"? That maybe there's just a little difference in certainty, there?
But I guess being right is more important to your ilk than doing the right thing.
I don't recall they're waiting a 'couple more years' before squealing that humans were responsible and linking it to the end-of-the-world scenarios.
Yeah, that's the funny thing about uncovering trends already in progress. If your data set extends far enough into the past, you don't have to wait for more. Sadly, nobody's found a way to measure events that haven't happened yet, so we need to wait a while to gather data on new trends. Funny, that.
Didn't the Onion have a thing where they "announced" that they were going to have Jonathan Lipnicki play the young "Darth Helmet" in the Spaceballs prequel? A friend of mine thought that the perfect name for that would be "Spaceballs -2" (Spaceballs 1 minus the difference between Star Wars I and Star Wars IV).
But Jon Lipnicki does look like a really young Rick Moranis, or did, so that would actually be pretty funny.
If nothing else, I love a good swashbuckling movie.
Especially one where everybody's naked! Or, maybe not.
Nobody else is maybe just a little apprehensive of the idea of a fantasy swashbuckling movie dominated by John Carter's dangly bits? Nobody? Did we forget that little detail from the books - all the characters are naked?
What are you asking for, exactly? Clearly the story has a resounding appeal to thousands of readers, if not more. I imagine it'd be nice for your ego if they all abandoned their own preferences and adopted yours, which, I'm sure are way more informed and well-reasoned to you.
You'll have to pardon the others, though, if they don't quite see it that way.
To Eve I think the issue is a much more primitive issue of power and obediance than morality -- she did the one thing her creator told her not to do.
But that's a moral issue. The only reason she wouldn't have decided to disobey would be because she would know that was wrong. But she didn't know right from wrong. Ergo, she had no reason to obey.
It's unreasonable for God to expect obedience from a human who lacks the knowledge to know that disobedience is wrong. It's unreasonable to punish Adam and Eve for doing something that they had no moral sense to prevent them from doing. Especially when that sin was the development of moral sense.
God's essentially faulting humanity for making the moral choice to gain moral sense. That's inherently paradoxical and to my mind, unfair.
Reading the preceding verses, you see that the serpent tempted Eve, not with knowledge, but with Godliness.
Well, now, wait a minute - the very verse you quoted puts that to the lie.
The serpant told Eve that
1) God had lied to her 2) She could be like God
Take it one step further - in what way will she be like God? The verse tells us:
For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
So it's fairly disingenuous to claim that Eve's goal was Godness and not knowledge, when the verse itself tells us that she would achieve Godness only in the limited aspect of knowing good from evil.
Moreover how someone without the knowledge of good and evil could be held accountable for the moral choice to disobey God is beyond me. Like George Bush, God seems to have no trouble putting to death those who lack the mental maturity to make informed moral decisions.
...but I can't help but think that running off to carpetbag in a war zone might not be the best idea.
I mean, c'mon. People are killing and beheading people there. People just like you. This isn't some monty haul dungeon adventure, because they have the weapons and you don't.
But it definitely helps me understand others, and on that level I have to defend it.
Well, if it works for you, I'm glad, but does it really tell you anything that you wouldn't find out just by getting to know the person?
I'd have to be on pretty good terms with somebody to sit down and take the MBTI for them. At that point, what are they going to find out about me that they don't already know through friendship?
For instance, once I know my artist friend is an INFJ, I know she would have a hard time criticising me and I have to be particularly sensitive when she does.
Sure, but is that really something that you wouldn't have learned through anything but a 2-hour personality inventory?
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it that, when I hear of these voting "irregularities", they always mean more votes for Bush? If the "irregularities" across all the different states were really random failures or unconnected incompetence, you would expect a statistically even distribution of the errant votes.
Instead, all the uncovered irregularities favor Bush by thousands of votes. Why is that? The only two explanations I can think of are 1) Nobody's looking for irregularities that favor Kerry, because Bush's people think they won; and 2) Bush's side engaged in outright voting fraud.
You would think, though, that as these investigations gather steam, Bush's side would be more and more interested in gathering proof that some irregularities favored Kerry, too.
I figured they were doing it so that the President's mention of the "Internets" looked prescient instead of stupid.
Lookin' out for the Commander in Chief, I guess.
Being gay in the military makes the other guys uncomfortable.
You know, they made that argument against having blacks in the military, too.
You know what? The kind of guy that can't handle being around a gay man is not the kind of person that it is in our interest to entrust with the defense of our nation - they're clearly too stupid to handle it.
When someone behaves in a way that obviously isn't natural, one would think that there is something wrong with that person.
It's completely and totally natural, chief.
"But they can't reproduce!" I hear you exclaim. Kin selection, dude. Duh. Homosexuality is totally natural, and even genetically advantageous, in some ways.
Not to mention, gay people do reproduce, in exactly the same way heterosexuals do - by the union of sperm from a man and ovum from a woman. Apparently somebody missed the fact that the desire to have sex and the capability to reproduce are two entirely different things.
Oh, I hear you on that. As much fun as it is to play superhero dress-up with the game, it's obvious that the vast majority of players have absolutely no idea how to make a great looking character, or how to tie a costume into a character concept.
Yeah, same here, which is why I thought maybe you were talking about something in a new patch.
It would have been cool, though. As it is it seems like Origin decides which stores you shop at and who you get to talk to, and that's about it. Unique costume options or power animations would have been a nice touch, but maybe that's expecting too much.
For instance, Magic origin has access to hoods that others don't.
Uh, no, it doesn't.
There's only two hoods you can take when you design your first-level costume; they don't change when you change your origin.
I know, because I just checked.
Many of the allowed costume choices depend on your origin though.
Uh, are you sure about that? I've never seen that to be the case, and I must have generated 100 characters or so, just to mess around with the costuming. The choice of Origin has never, in my experience, had any effect on what costume choices I can make.
Also, has anyone actually calculated the number of combinations of all 5 archetypes and origins?
5*5 = 25 combinations of archetypes and origins.
If you meant "how many different ways can I make a first level character?", let's figure it out from the manual:
((5*5 Blaster combinations) + (6*5 Controller combinations) + (6*5 Defender combinations) + (6*4 Scrapper combinations) + (4*7 Tanker combinations)) * 5 Origins * 2 First-level power alternatives = 1370 different characters at first level.
That's a fair amount, but it's not really what I would consider open-ended. But it gets better as you go along; as characters advance, the differences between them get greater. As compared to a game like The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, where characters start off different but all approach an identical character build (maxed out in every ability and skill) with advancement.
The costume system is great, isn't it? I'm afraid I'm soured on other games now. Just did the Guild Wars preview; I was all like "what is this? I only get to pick my hairstyle? Lame..." I hope extremely detailed character design makes its way into other games. Who would have guessed that grown men would have such fun dressing up dolls?
You obviously haven't dealt with U.S. customs..
Well, I've certainly gone through Customs about 20 times, if that's what you mean.
But I've never dealt with them negatively, no. Your milage may vary, I guess.
Don't fuck with world politics if you don't know what you are doing.
Sorry, I guess I missed that day in history class where they explained how it was American policy-makers who loaded Jews into furnaces by the roomload.
Would it be so hard to look up the ISO country codes before going off on your anti-German rant?
Did you reply to my post accidently? I never made an "anti-German rant", any more than the parent was an "anti-American rant."
But you're right, I mixed up "DE" and "DK". A harmless mistake.
Where he's from, of course, doesn't change anything about how wrong he was about what it's like in America. And nothing in your post does, either. For one who's chiding me about lacking education, you apparently slept through the day where they taught you how to respond to arguments.
Once I wanted to visit USA but now I wouldn't dream of setting foot in the states. I'd probably be arrested if I said something wrong.
Oh, for god's sake. It's not that bad. If it were, there's about 200 newspapers that would be shut down already, for endorsing the political opponent of the president. You can still stand on the street corner and hold up a big sign that says what a dickless coward you think the president is; I know, because I see people doing it all the time here in Columbia, Missouri.
Where are you now, exactly? Germany, looks like, from your URL? Germany is cool. I'd like to visit again. Did a day in Berlin and it was neat. I don't know what we have over here that they don't have in Germany, so I don't know why you'd want to visit. But for god's sake we're still the land of the free (markets). Let's keep a little perspective, people, and stay realistic. Nobody's going to get in the way of a European coming over here to spend their money, after all.
And I would point out that yours is the country that still restricts free expression, at least if you choose to express yourself in the manner of Nazis. (Can you even read this in Germany if I say "Nazi"?)
If you want to visit, do so. Now's a great time, in fact - you can see our political circus at full tilt. Call Bush an asshole, if you want. Nobody's going to stop you. We call him worse in our newspapers every day. Yours is a great country. But I love mine, and for all the faults of the past 4 years, I'd rather live in mine than yours. (Not the least of which because I don't speak German.)
... whats the big deal?
Think of it like a Rubik's Cube where the sides are, I dunno, corporate logos or something.
The fact that its delivering a marketing "payload" and making you aware of a brand doesn't change the fact that its a clever and engaging puzzle, at least to some people.
So its a kind of advertising. So what? Advertising makes people like us watch the Superbowl, which we'd never ever do otherwise. Just because something is advertising doesn't make it evil or not fun. Christ, lighten up.
um... actually during the Clinton administration we bombed Iraq every two or three days.
To enforce the "no-fly zone" that was a result of Bush's Gulf War, yes.
As I said, how many times did Clinton invade Iraq?
Uh, no. The data set did nothing to suggest that the hole was human caused. Only that it was there.
Uh, yes. The discovery was not just that there was a hole; it was that the hole was getting larger, and that there were some indicators that this was an anomalous event in Earth's history.
That's what substantiated the human causality; a set of data extending into the past.
But, of course, why bother aquainting yourself with the facts when they might prove inconvinient to your argument?
If only I had the P.J. O'Rourke quote from Clinton about how he believed there to be WMDs in Iraq as well...
Oh? How many times did Clinton invade Iraq, then?
Do you think that maybe there's a difference between saying "yeah, Saddam's probably got 'em, but I don't really know, since I can't prove it" and saying "I'm so sure that Saddam's got 'em, I'm gonna invade his country to prove it"? That maybe there's just a little difference in certainty, there?
But I guess being right is more important to your ilk than doing the right thing.
I don't recall they're waiting a 'couple more years' before squealing that humans were responsible and linking it to the end-of-the-world scenarios.
Yeah, that's the funny thing about uncovering trends already in progress. If your data set extends far enough into the past, you don't have to wait for more. Sadly, nobody's found a way to measure events that haven't happened yet, so we need to wait a while to gather data on new trends. Funny, that.
Didn't the Onion have a thing where they "announced" that they were going to have Jonathan Lipnicki play the young "Darth Helmet" in the Spaceballs prequel? A friend of mine thought that the perfect name for that would be "Spaceballs -2" (Spaceballs 1 minus the difference between Star Wars I and Star Wars IV).
But Jon Lipnicki does look like a really young Rick Moranis, or did, so that would actually be pretty funny.
So if he thinks LOTR sucks, that's automatically his "ego"?
Perhaps you didn't read my post closely enough. Certainly your response bears no relation to it.
He's free to think that LOTR sucks. Where the ego comes into it is, he obviously thinks we all should agree.
If nothing else, I love a good swashbuckling movie.
Especially one where everybody's naked! Or, maybe not.
Nobody else is maybe just a little apprehensive of the idea of a fantasy swashbuckling movie dominated by John Carter's dangly bits? Nobody? Did we forget that little detail from the books - all the characters are naked?
Because it's good, maybe?
What are you asking for, exactly? Clearly the story has a resounding appeal to thousands of readers, if not more. I imagine it'd be nice for your ego if they all abandoned their own preferences and adopted yours, which, I'm sure are way more informed and well-reasoned to you.
You'll have to pardon the others, though, if they don't quite see it that way.
To Eve I think the issue is a much more primitive issue of power and obediance than morality -- she did the one thing her creator told her not to do.
But that's a moral issue. The only reason she wouldn't have decided to disobey would be because she would know that was wrong. But she didn't know right from wrong. Ergo, she had no reason to obey.
It's unreasonable for God to expect obedience from a human who lacks the knowledge to know that disobedience is wrong. It's unreasonable to punish Adam and Eve for doing something that they had no moral sense to prevent them from doing. Especially when that sin was the development of moral sense.
God's essentially faulting humanity for making the moral choice to gain moral sense. That's inherently paradoxical and to my mind, unfair.
Reading the preceding verses, you see that the serpent tempted Eve, not with knowledge, but with Godliness.
Well, now, wait a minute - the very verse you quoted puts that to the lie.
The serpant told Eve that
1) God had lied to her
2) She could be like God
Take it one step further - in what way will she be like God? The verse tells us:
For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
So it's fairly disingenuous to claim that Eve's goal was Godness and not knowledge, when the verse itself tells us that she would achieve Godness only in the limited aspect of knowing good from evil.
Moreover how someone without the knowledge of good and evil could be held accountable for the moral choice to disobey God is beyond me. Like George Bush, God seems to have no trouble putting to death those who lack the mental maturity to make informed moral decisions.
...but I can't help but think that running off to carpetbag in a war zone might not be the best idea.
I mean, c'mon. People are killing and beheading people there. People just like you. This isn't some monty haul dungeon adventure, because they have the weapons and you don't.
But it definitely helps me understand others, and on that level I have to defend it.
Well, if it works for you, I'm glad, but does it really tell you anything that you wouldn't find out just by getting to know the person?
I'd have to be on pretty good terms with somebody to sit down and take the MBTI for them. At that point, what are they going to find out about me that they don't already know through friendship?
For instance, once I know my artist friend is an INFJ, I know she would have a hard time criticising me and I have to be particularly sensitive when she does.
Sure, but is that really something that you wouldn't have learned through anything but a 2-hour personality inventory?
These things are horseshit. Seriously. Does anyone else think these things read like a Chinese Horoscope?
Honestly you can match people's personalities just about as well using the Dungeons and Dragons alignment system.