Maybe not as quick as in TF2 I guess. But it wasn't that slow.
"Engineers can also place them behind sentry guns and continuously repair the gun, creating a strong point."
Mmmm, spam point:p
Anyway I used to play most classes except sniper. Because you often don't need low ping to get the flag - the flag doesn't move, and most people were too busy playing deathmatch or something - so just run away (maybe drop a few grenades to slow them down) and they lose interest;). The soldier with the rocket jump can often get to places faster than other classes including the scout.
Many years ago I proposed.here as something like the DNS equivalent of RFC1918 IP addresses[1].
e.g. anyone can then use *.here for their own network (stuff like.local or.localnet would probably be for machine use - but AFAIK they are not formally reserved either).
So if you roam to a WiFi network within range, http://jukebox.here/ could control a jukebox for that location.
And http://about.here/ might actually tell you something useful. On most wifi networks this could say something like:
"Welcome to the default LinkSys WiFi homepage. The owner of this network has not set a usage policy yet. You should probably assume you're not supposed to use this network unless otherwise authorized. Please be nice:)".
But some might provide permission (maybe with some T&C).
Of course it would be safer if https was used, or the http redirected to a FQDN + https e.g. https://about.mydomain.com/.
But you'd get lots of grumbles about certs and all that...
Unfortunately I don't have millions of dollars spare to buy a TLD and then give it to the world to use.
"would simply mean prices (and incomes) would have to DECREASE over time"
The trouble with that is:
1) It means the commodity used would become relatively more expensive.
If you use gold as the commodity, it will make it very expensive. But gold is so useful for practical stuff. Not being able to afford to use it in practical ways would be a pain.
2) See my other post above[1]. The USA can't print its way out of trouble. Governments wouldn't be able to tax citizens via printing money.
3) Psychologically people always want a higher salary. It's harder to reduce people's pay (in some countries the laws make it hard too). Try explaining it to the Unions that people have to take a pay cut- everyone worked hard and that's why everything is cheaper and that's why they're going to have to take a slight pay cut (not as much as in the companies that didn't do as well).
It _was_ not a mistake at all. Think about it a bit more.
Printing money allows the US Gov to tax the rest of the world at will.
Commodities like oil, wheat, cooking oil, orange juice, milk, DRAM, CPUs are all traded in US dollars.
This means most of the countries in the world need to collectively hold trillions of US dollars to buy this stuff. I suspect there's more USD held by non-US entities than US entities.
If China or Japan do not have enough US dollars to buy oil, they sell stuff for them (it doesn't even have to be to the USA- other countries will buy them in USD). If China/Japan has more US dollars than they know what to do with, they often lend it to the USA and others (who promise to pay back in USD).
So what happens if the USA prints more money? The US Gov has more US dollars, the US citizens become poorer (boohoo), but more importantly, it means the rest of the world holding trillions of USD become poorer.
If you were Zimbabwe, and printed money, your citizens start having to use wheelbarrows to buy bread while the rest of the world just laughs at you or pities you.
Whereas if you were the US Gov and printed money the rest of the world is living in your "Zimbabwe" and using your currency. The US Gov hands some of the printed money to the US citizens (cronies) so that they will continue to help prop it up.
Thus overall it does not hurt the USA as much as printing money hurts a country like Zimbabwe. As long as the US Gov (Mugabe) hands over a cut to the citizens (cronies), the USA as a whole does OK.
Now the thing is Iran is selling oil in Euros. This undermines things a bit for the USA.
It's no fun printing money and having the rest of the world just laugh at you, instead of getting poorer.
BTW Iraq switched to selling oil in Euros before they got invaded. Naturally after they got invaded they switched to selling oil in US dollars.
Not saying that's _the_ reason why they were invaded. As they said, there were many reasons for invading Iraq.
Now the US citizens (cronies) have to be vigilant and see if their "Mugabe" is "cutting" them out from their share of the printed money. So they should regularly remind "Mugabe" that he needs them to stay in power (but is that still true?).
It would be bad for them after all, if it turns out that "Mugabe" has new cronies and has cut them out completely.
You ever tried qw Custom Team Fortress? It was great fun.
But apparently the balance has been screwed up big time. Balance was a bit messed up before, but it was still fun - now it seems people just play custom tf coop vs monsters.
But I like spamming:). My ping is > 300ms. Grenades help with area of effect damage.
The engineer already had a dispenser back in quakeworld TF.
And the teleporter, invis, high jump+hoverboots was available in quakeworld custom TF (which had lots of other stuff and was quite fun but the dev apparently has now gone way overboard and screwed up balance).
The reason why I stopped playing custom TF years ago was the rampant cheating.
e.g. when you're invisible with scanner jammer, and someone keeps head shotting you, you suspect they are cheating. And when you're moving fast they still head shot you, your suspicion grows.
Then when you stand in front of the same person and sidestep very rapidly left and right[1] and he keeps missing you shot after shot, it pretty much confirms it for me;).
[1] Due to latency the aimbots shoot at your predicted location, if you move left and right very quickly, the aimbots tend to miss - a good human sniper won't miss a person who is clearly wiggling on the spot. Of course, someone might build a better aimbot that can be switched to average things out for some shots. Anyway you can't really wiggle all the time (well at least I couldn't), so the high amounts of cheating got tiresome.
"The people that hold the power are the people who control the information."
The people who control the information _influence_ the power.
The President of the USA still has power even if people feed him bad info. He can still choose to get his information from other sources. And he still is _responsible_.
Same goes for the voters. They have their powers and their responsibilities. They may not have that much power, but they have more power than in a Dictatorship.
They all can't go around saying "It's not my fault I misused my power, they were feeding me crap info". OK they can, but it still is mainly their fault. Yes the people providing bad info have their share of the blame, but if the one pulling the trigger is sane, it's his fault.
I agree with you that the problem is due to something like this:
"people are perfectly happy accepting whatever decisions are made in their name"
Hey if that is true then the leaders are doing what the people want. And you have a working Democracy. It may be butt ugly, but it is a fair representation of the people's will.
As I have been saying over and over, if people are not happy, they should vote, and vote for someone else rather than more of the same. If they are content with things, go ahead vote for more of the same.
If that's what they have been doing then that's Democracy at work for you.
So why should I fix the anti-intellectual problems in America? It'll be against the will of the people.
Fixing the anti-intellectual problem would affect most of the voters drastically. Too drastically probably.
Think about it Bush was _reelected_.
62 million for Bush, 59 million for someone else, and > 60 million - don't care or say "it doesn't make a difference whether I vote or not".
Lastly, even if the anti-intellectual problem should be fixed, I think it is beyond my ability to do so.
I already tried with you. Whether or not I was successful depends on whether you vote or not (or even run for election;) ).
You're bitter because more voters voted for the "wrong choice". But that's part of Democracy. It does not mean you shouldn't vote. If you don't play the Democracy game you'll never win.
p.s.
"People see PATRIOT ACT and think it would be unpatriotic to vote against it"
Hey people saw "Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund" and "Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Fund" and they bought it. Trouble is they may have bought it with your pension money.
He might not remember the actual incident - since the brain cells involved might have died at the 130 to zero.
I'm not surprised a 750cc turbo bike can go 50-130 in 2 seconds.
Thing is, for most cars your brakes (when warmed up) are stronger than your engine. So if you stomp on both brakes and throttle, your car should still stop.
Quote: I'm not sure why you laugh off the "right to bear arms".
After all this you think your votes won't make a difference but your bullets will?
I laugh it off because of what you and others like you say.
To paraphrase you: you seem to be under the rather misguided impression that once your bullets start flying the person who gets into power won't be a criminal too. You seem to hold the strange notion that the people in public office actually want to serve the public. You seem to be confused about "serve the public".
Wake up!
Face the truth: violent revolutions tend to end up with Dictatorships.
Because the person willing and capable of exerting the most violence (aka kill lots of people) will rise to the top. Then once that person has got all that power, that person very rarely hands it to "The People". In most cases that person says "kill everyone who opposes me".
That is why so many Communist Revolutions ended up as Dictatorships almost immediately. Because they followed Marx's implementation plan which had violence in it from the start.
And why should a Dictator hold elections - if what you say is true, the other candidates will be wolves too.
Quote: "I bet if we all hold hands and sing kumbaya loud enough we will suddenly change the course of human history where those in power are suddenly beholden to those in not."
In the USA the voters actually hold the power, unless they have abdicated.
If 70 million of you actually voted for somebody else or even "none of the above" you would change things a bit. Don't believe me? Try it.
My suggestion would actually work. The big problem with my suggestion is it doesn't work if there are too many people who just "roll over and bleat".
So airliners do not have to fall out of the sky like a stone when they are out of fuel.
The trouble with airliners is, it's far easier to find a safe landing spot for birds than for airliners.
If you're out of fuel it's hard to have a second try at a landing spot.
Jet fighters might not glide as well (and even if they do have good glide ratios I suspect they might require high descent rates while doing so - which would make the process of landing a bit more stressful;) )...
I think the F4 was notorious for having a bad glide ratio - some people say about 5:1.
If micropayments work and are convenient maybe you could actually make a fair bit from repeat customers.
How many of you have copies of files/info you know you already have _somewhere_, but it's faster/easier for you to use google, find it, download it, than for you to search your hard drive for it.
Will the masses really have stuff so organized that they can find "that song" they want when they want it? Or even remember they already have it?;)
If a song is really cheap, they might go, ah nevermind just buy it again - since it's so easy to do it.
And if your online music channel has a better idea of what each listener likes than their ipods, they might just pay for it.
It's just a thought, it might not be viable - the costs could be more than the profits. But the costs may go down in the future.
Think harder. If Z gets elected, even if he is a criminal, he won't be as powerful as X and Y just for the very reason he is new. He wouldn't have immediate access to an entrenched power base built up over decades. It takes time for the lobbyists and corporations to figure out what his buttons are.
Most importantly at the _start_ he is likely to put on a semi-decent show of serving the public.
Whereas just look at Bush and gang, they've accumulated so much power (direct and defacto granted by people like you) that they're not even bothering to put on a half-credible show. Look at what they have been doing - retroactive immunity, "WMD in Iraq". Look at how much they have got away with.
They're stomping on you all, your beloved Constitution and more, and all you are doing is rolling over and bleating.
I get the nagging suspicion that it's all lame excuses and you are all just _abdicating_ so that you can spend time with your beloved TV or something.
The trouble is there appear to be millions who also illogically think that voting won't help AND at the same time believe that when stuff gets even worse, they can exercise their "right to bear arms" and somehow their guns are going to put people in charge that will actually serve the public.
Hilarious.
The fact that you said you only had two choices probably means I'm wasting my time on you, but I thought I'd try anyway. Plus maybe others might decide to try, if not you.
Otherwise, yes there is no point making a big fuss over crappy e-voting machines.
Not because you have crappy choices. But because if you all aren't going to vote anyway, they might as well rig it.
Hopefully the US will stop producing elections where there are more votes than voters. Those were funny, but even Saddam never had > 100% of the votes in his elections.
Maybe they should declare the results _before_ the elections and save you all the trouble.
It is not certain that the people at the top of Iran really believe what they say in public.
If Iran used nukes, it would make it harder for the people at the top from visiting brothels and having a "fun time" (like getting prostitutes to pretend to _pray_ in the nude) - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,550156,00.html
The theocracy talk is just to keep the sheep in line. Do you actually think the people at the top really believe what they say?
If you notice those notorious muslim leaders never strap bombs to their chests and charge. They make others do the suicide thing. Using a nuke would be suicide. They're having too much fun at the top to quit.
BUT- not having a nuke might be suicide. Iraq didn't have nukes, look where it got Saddam.
Pakistan has nukes and is a muslim country as well. People made lots of nasty noises, but now Pakistan is an ally of the USA. Go figure.
Despite what Hellman says and does, the odds of the USA disarming are practically ZERO.
Yes the odds of a nuke war are too high, but meanwhile since the USA is never going to disarm, no surprise if other countries decide to build nukes - it seems the best way to get some respect from the USA.
If you have nukes, the USA is less likely to back you into a corner or bully you. If you overtly use them on the USA you will be "glassed".
Even if Iran uses nukes on some other neighbouring country instead of the USA[1], how sure can Iran be that Russia, China etc would not say "OK Iran does deserve to be nuked?" After all if Iran is nuked, I suppose only the countries with high enough tech level will be able to operate the oilfields and thus take most of the oil revenues.
There is at least one reason for the USA to invade Iran though - Iran is selling oil in Euros and not USD. That's very damaging to the USA - it makes it far more painful for the USA to print money. If too many countries do what Iran does, when USA prints money they end up like Zimbabwe printing money.
[1] Does Iran even have missiles that can reach the USA?
While the above is not proof and more anecdotal (but I'm sure everyone was happy that the skull finally healed for whatever reason), it is also claimed to have worked with rats before:
So, just another step, not a leap. Useful step no doubt:).
I think there are plenty of people doing research in this area. Good news for the people who have grown extensive reserves;). 1 kg of fat stem cells needed? No problem for them.
Slashdot Mirror
The dispenser definitely created ammo.
:p
;). The soldier with the rocket jump can often get to places faster than other classes including the scout.
Maybe not as quick as in TF2 I guess. But it wasn't that slow.
"Engineers can also place them behind sentry guns and continuously repair the gun, creating a strong point."
Mmmm, spam point
Anyway I used to play most classes except sniper. Because you often don't need low ping to get the flag - the flag doesn't move, and most people were too busy playing deathmatch or something - so just run away (maybe drop a few grenades to slow them down) and they lose interest
Many years ago I proposed .here as something like the DNS equivalent of RFC1918 IP addresses[1].
e.g. anyone can then use *.here for their own network (stuff like .local or .localnet would probably be for machine use - but AFAIK they are not formally reserved either).
So if you roam to a WiFi network within range, http://jukebox.here/ could control a jukebox for that location.
And http://about.here/ might actually tell you something useful. On most wifi networks this could say something like:
"Welcome to the default LinkSys WiFi homepage. The owner of this network has not set a usage policy yet. You should probably assume you're not supposed to use this network unless otherwise authorized. Please be nice :)".
But some might provide permission (maybe with some T&C).
Of course it would be safer if https was used, or the http redirected to a FQDN + https e.g. https://about.mydomain.com/.
But you'd get lots of grumbles about certs and all that...
Unfortunately I don't have millions of dollars spare to buy a TLD and then give it to the world to use.
[1] http://www.watersprings.org/pub/id/draft-yeoh-tldhere-01.txt
http://www.circleid.com/posts/top_level_domains_for_addressing_by_physical_context/
How fast do sensory signals travel in a bug?
Basically once the bug goes splat fast enough that the brain is gone before the signals get to it, then there's not much difference to the bug.
Otherwise if it's slower the bug's brain will get the signals - though the brain may not quite perceive it fully.
I think sensory nerve impulses in a human can travel at about 270kph. The pain impulses are about 90kph.
The bug might tend to bounce or be pushed aside, so the actual collision speed might be different.
Anyway it's safe to assume there's no difference between 800 mph and 1000mph to the bug. Since 800mph is faster than the speed of sound.
"would simply mean prices (and incomes) would have to DECREASE over time"
The trouble with that is:
1) It means the commodity used would become relatively more expensive.
If you use gold as the commodity, it will make it very expensive. But gold is so useful for practical stuff. Not being able to afford to use it in practical ways would be a pain.
2) See my other post above[1]. The USA can't print its way out of trouble. Governments wouldn't be able to tax citizens via printing money.
3) Psychologically people always want a higher salary. It's harder to reduce people's pay (in some countries the laws make it hard too). Try explaining it to the Unions that people have to take a pay cut- everyone worked hard and that's why everything is cheaper and that's why they're going to have to take a slight pay cut (not as much as in the companies that didn't do as well).
[1] http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1006095&cid=25493341
Child abuse is an ambiguous term.
It could be dad was in a bad mood because the internet access was so slow, so he smacked his kids a bit harder when they were naughty.
It _was_ not a mistake at all. Think about it a bit more.
Printing money allows the US Gov to tax the rest of the world at will.
Commodities like oil, wheat, cooking oil, orange juice, milk, DRAM, CPUs are all traded in US dollars.
This means most of the countries in the world need to collectively hold trillions of US dollars to buy this stuff. I suspect there's more USD held by non-US entities than US entities.
If China or Japan do not have enough US dollars to buy oil, they sell stuff for them (it doesn't even have to be to the USA- other countries will buy them in USD). If China/Japan has more US dollars than they know what to do with, they often lend it to the USA and others (who promise to pay back in USD).
So what happens if the USA prints more money? The US Gov has more US dollars, the US citizens become poorer (boohoo), but more importantly, it means the rest of the world holding trillions of USD become poorer.
If you were Zimbabwe, and printed money, your citizens start having to use wheelbarrows to buy bread while the rest of the world just laughs at you or pities you.
Whereas if you were the US Gov and printed money the rest of the world is living in your "Zimbabwe" and using your currency. The US Gov hands some of the printed money to the US citizens (cronies) so that they will continue to help prop it up.
Thus overall it does not hurt the USA as much as printing money hurts a country like Zimbabwe. As long as the US Gov (Mugabe) hands over a cut to the citizens (cronies), the USA as a whole does OK.
Now the thing is Iran is selling oil in Euros. This undermines things a bit for the USA.
It's no fun printing money and having the rest of the world just laugh at you, instead of getting poorer.
BTW Iraq switched to selling oil in Euros before they got invaded. Naturally after they got invaded they switched to selling oil in US dollars.
Not saying that's _the_ reason why they were invaded. As they said, there were many reasons for invading Iraq.
Now the US citizens (cronies) have to be vigilant and see if their "Mugabe" is "cutting" them out from their share of the printed money. So they should regularly remind "Mugabe" that he needs them to stay in power (but is that still true?).
It would be bad for them after all, if it turns out that "Mugabe" has new cronies and has cut them out completely.
I think it's almost necessary to provide a skin.
Otherwise the next time someone makes you laugh while drinking, some liquids might end up sprayed into your computer.
Or something might drop into it.
You ever tried qw Custom Team Fortress? It was great fun.
But apparently the balance has been screwed up big time. Balance was a bit messed up before, but it was still fun - now it seems people just play custom tf coop vs monsters.
But I like spamming :). My ping is > 300ms. Grenades help with area of effect damage.
;).
The engineer already had a dispenser back in quakeworld TF.
And the teleporter, invis, high jump+hoverboots was available in quakeworld custom TF (which had lots of other stuff and was quite fun but the dev apparently has now gone way overboard and screwed up balance).
The reason why I stopped playing custom TF years ago was the rampant cheating.
e.g. when you're invisible with scanner jammer, and someone keeps head shotting you, you suspect they are cheating. And when you're moving fast they still head shot you, your suspicion grows.
Then when you stand in front of the same person and sidestep very rapidly left and right[1] and he keeps missing you shot after shot, it pretty much confirms it for me
[1] Due to latency the aimbots shoot at your predicted location, if you move left and right very quickly, the aimbots tend to miss - a good human sniper won't miss a person who is clearly wiggling on the spot. Of course, someone might build a better aimbot that can be switched to average things out for some shots. Anyway you can't really wiggle all the time (well at least I couldn't), so the high amounts of cheating got tiresome.
"The people that hold the power are the people who control the information."
;) ).
The people who control the information _influence_ the power.
The President of the USA still has power even if people feed him bad info. He can still choose to get his information from other sources. And he still is _responsible_.
Same goes for the voters. They have their powers and their responsibilities. They may not have that much power, but they have more power than in a Dictatorship.
They all can't go around saying "It's not my fault I misused my power, they were feeding me crap info". OK they can, but it still is mainly their fault. Yes the people providing bad info have their share of the blame, but if the one pulling the trigger is sane, it's his fault.
I agree with you that the problem is due to something like this:
"people are perfectly happy accepting whatever decisions are made in their name"
Hey if that is true then the leaders are doing what the people want. And you have a working Democracy. It may be butt ugly, but it is a fair representation of the people's will.
As I have been saying over and over, if people are not happy, they should vote, and vote for someone else rather than more of the same. If they are content with things, go ahead vote for more of the same.
If that's what they have been doing then that's Democracy at work for you.
So why should I fix the anti-intellectual problems in America? It'll be against the will of the people.
Fixing the anti-intellectual problem would affect most of the voters drastically. Too drastically probably.
Think about it Bush was _reelected_.
62 million for Bush, 59 million for someone else, and > 60 million - don't care or say "it doesn't make a difference whether I vote or not".
Lastly, even if the anti-intellectual problem should be fixed, I think it is beyond my ability to do so.
I already tried with you. Whether or not I was successful depends on whether you vote or not (or even run for election
You're bitter because more voters voted for the "wrong choice". But that's part of Democracy. It does not mean you shouldn't vote. If you don't play the Democracy game you'll never win.
p.s.
"People see PATRIOT ACT and think it would be unpatriotic to vote against it"
Hey people saw "Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund" and "Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Fund" and they bought it. Trouble is they may have bought it with your pension money.
I've played qw custom teamfortress (still do sometimes), seems like they put a few ideas from that into TF2.
But also heard they did away with the per class grens.
Not convinced that that's a good idea.
Tribes is not a mod of a game in itself is it?
Stuff like DoTA, Counterstrike, TeamFortress are/were mods of games.
That shows how much they qualify for "Successful Game Mods".
That said I don't know why the complainers didn't spot the counter-strike mention smack in the middle of the first page.
FWIW I prefer Team Fortress to CS.
Haven't tried TF2.
He might not remember the actual incident - since the brain cells involved might have died at the 130 to zero.
I'm not surprised a 750cc turbo bike can go 50-130 in 2 seconds.
Thing is, for most cars your brakes (when warmed up) are stronger than your engine. So if you stomp on both brakes and throttle, your car should still stop.
Is that true for bikes?
It's for the snakes in-flight meal.
The rats on the plane tend to be too large for the snake to swallow.
Quote: I'm not sure why you laugh off the "right to bear arms".
After all this you think your votes won't make a difference but your bullets will?
I laugh it off because of what you and others like you say.
To paraphrase you: you seem to be under the rather misguided impression that once your bullets start flying the person who gets into power won't be a criminal too. You seem to hold the strange notion that the people in public office actually want to serve the public. You seem to be confused about "serve the public".
Wake up!
Face the truth: violent revolutions tend to end up with Dictatorships.
Because the person willing and capable of exerting the most violence (aka kill lots of people) will rise to the top. Then once that person has got all that power, that person very rarely hands it to "The People". In most cases that person says "kill everyone who opposes me".
That is why so many Communist Revolutions ended up as Dictatorships almost immediately. Because they followed Marx's implementation plan which had violence in it from the start.
And why should a Dictator hold elections - if what you say is true, the other candidates will be wolves too.
Quote: "I bet if we all hold hands and sing kumbaya loud enough we will suddenly change the course of human history where those in power are suddenly beholden to those in not."
In the USA the voters actually hold the power, unless they have abdicated.
If 70 million of you actually voted for somebody else or even "none of the above" you would change things a bit. Don't believe me? Try it.
My suggestion would actually work. The big problem with my suggestion is it doesn't work if there are too many people who just "roll over and bleat".
"What are you doing taking a hamster on vacation?"
It's to feed the snake.
Sounds a bit like the music industry to me.
When the time comes for the artists to get paid...
Disclaimer: I am not a pilot, nor do I have any aerospace training.
Apparently the 747 has a glide ratio of about 15:1 or 17:1 which is better than many birds.
And the "Gimli Glider" (a 767) did 12:1 sustained when it ran out of fuel.
12:1 is a rather unstonelike glide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glide_ratio
So airliners do not have to fall out of the sky like a stone when they are out of fuel.
The trouble with airliners is, it's far easier to find a safe landing spot for birds than for airliners.
If you're out of fuel it's hard to have a second try at a landing spot.
Jet fighters might not glide as well (and even if they do have good glide ratios I suspect they might require high descent rates while doing so - which would make the process of landing a bit more stressful ;) )...
I think the F4 was notorious for having a bad glide ratio - some people say about 5:1.
Sure, but I believe if you're out of a job in some of those "crazy socialist" countries, you still get enough money to survive from the taxpayers.
So the "what will I do to survive" problem is solved.
That means you could work on that project you've been itching to do, but never had the time to when you had a full time job.
And who's to say that project won't be OSS? Those "crazy socialist people" might like that sort of thing y'know.
If micropayments work and are convenient maybe you could actually make a fair bit from repeat customers.
;)
How many of you have copies of files/info you know you already have _somewhere_, but it's faster/easier for you to use google, find it, download it, than for you to search your hard drive for it.
Will the masses really have stuff so organized that they can find "that song" they want when they want it? Or even remember they already have it?
If a song is really cheap, they might go, ah nevermind just buy it again - since it's so easy to do it.
And if your online music channel has a better idea of what each listener likes than their ipods, they might just pay for it.
It's just a thought, it might not be viable - the costs could be more than the profits. But the costs may go down in the future.
Think harder. If Z gets elected, even if he is a criminal, he won't be as powerful as X and Y just for the very reason he is new. He wouldn't have immediate access to an entrenched power base built up over decades. It takes time for the lobbyists and corporations to figure out what his buttons are.
Most importantly at the _start_ he is likely to put on a semi-decent show of serving the public.
Whereas just look at Bush and gang, they've accumulated so much power (direct and defacto granted by people like you) that they're not even bothering to put on a half-credible show. Look at what they have been doing - retroactive immunity, "WMD in Iraq". Look at how much they have got away with.
They're stomping on you all, your beloved Constitution and more, and all you are doing is rolling over and bleating.
I get the nagging suspicion that it's all lame excuses and you are all just _abdicating_ so that you can spend time with your beloved TV or something.
The trouble is there appear to be millions who also illogically think that voting won't help AND at the same time believe that when stuff gets even worse, they can exercise their "right to bear arms" and somehow their guns are going to put people in charge that will actually serve the public.
Hilarious.
The fact that you said you only had two choices probably means I'm wasting my time on you, but I thought I'd try anyway. Plus maybe others might decide to try, if not you.
Otherwise, yes there is no point making a big fuss over crappy e-voting machines.
Not because you have crappy choices.
But because if you all aren't going to vote anyway, they might as well rig it.
Hopefully the US will stop producing elections where there are more votes than voters. Those were funny, but even Saddam never had > 100% of the votes in his elections.
Maybe they should declare the results _before_ the elections and save you all the trouble.
There's one thing you should be aware off though.
It is not certain that the people at the top of Iran really believe what they say in public.
If Iran used nukes, it would make it harder for the people at the top from visiting brothels and having a "fun time" (like getting prostitutes to pretend to _pray_ in the nude) - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,550156,00.html
The theocracy talk is just to keep the sheep in line. Do you actually think the people at the top really believe what they say?
If you notice those notorious muslim leaders never strap bombs to their chests and charge. They make others do the suicide thing. Using a nuke would be suicide. They're having too much fun at the top to quit.
BUT- not having a nuke might be suicide. Iraq didn't have nukes, look where it got Saddam.
Pakistan has nukes and is a muslim country as well. People made lots of nasty noises, but now Pakistan is an ally of the USA. Go figure.
Despite what Hellman says and does, the odds of the USA disarming are practically ZERO.
Yes the odds of a nuke war are too high, but meanwhile since the USA is never going to disarm, no surprise if other countries decide to build nukes - it seems the best way to get some respect from the USA.
If you have nukes, the USA is less likely to back you into a corner or bully you. If you overtly use them on the USA you will be "glassed".
Even if Iran uses nukes on some other neighbouring country instead of the USA[1], how sure can Iran be that Russia, China etc would not say "OK Iran does deserve to be nuked?" After all if Iran is nuked, I suppose only the countries with high enough tech level will be able to operate the oilfields and thus take most of the oil revenues.
There is at least one reason for the USA to invade Iran though - Iran is selling oil in Euros and not USD. That's very damaging to the USA - it makes it far more painful for the USA to print money. If too many countries do what Iran does, when USA prints money they end up like Zimbabwe printing money.
[1] Does Iran even have missiles that can reach the USA?
"Who's in power again? Is it the parliament or the MAFIAA? And does it matter?"
The voters were.
But they abdicated so that they could spend more time with their beloved TV/PC/mall.
I don't.
Especially since:
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/wire/sns-ap-skull-stem-cells,0,5876836.story
While the above is not proof and more anecdotal (but I'm sure everyone was happy that the skull finally healed for whatever reason), it is also claimed to have worked with rats before:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4873
And also they've been coaxed into smooth muscle:
http://www.physorg.com/news72983041.html
So, just another step, not a leap. Useful step no doubt :).
I think there are plenty of people doing research in this area. Good news for the people who have grown extensive reserves ;). 1 kg of fat stem cells needed? No problem for them.