yes the clear response to my post is getting angry
A liberal judge on a liberal circuit appointed by a liberal president writes an opinion upholding liberal laws and calls the original arrest "baseless".
This judge is most assuredly off in "la-de-da-liberal-land". You should probably readjust your perspective on reality to accomodate for that fact. Thanks in advance!
Counterstrike was certainly realistic for its era. As the parent stated, FPS games at the time all had ridiculous futuristic weapons which, despite their increased power, took much longer to kill people than do contemporary weapons. Most games at the time didn't even pretend to care where a shot landed, and Counterstrike's universal implementation of headshots was both innovative and appreciated by players. In addition to that, Counterstrike created its game format, where death was an actual penalty compared to instant respawn deathmatch.
The problem isn't realism, the problem is half-hearted realism.
This is the point of the article. Realism is essentially so difficult to implement in a videogame that it can only be approximated. It will always leave gaping surrealities in a supposedly realistic world, accentuating the contrast so much that it becomes not only easier to spot, but more aggravating and more difficult to ignore. A cartoony game with surreal, but consistent, physics is much easier for a player to accept and have fun with than a supposedly realistic world with decidedly unrealistic behavior, even when it is a relatively minor portion of the game.
The US had 1-2% deflation per year during the years after the Civil War.
The US experienced deflation after the Civil War because of comically high inflation and debt prior to and during the war.
In fact, what country has succeeded over 50+ years with Keynesian policies? (Everyone answers 'Germany', but Germany has only done relatively well, not absolutely well, e.g. 1% average GDP growth over the last 12 years.)
If that is your only criteria, then the US and UK? Why is that even a question? The guy died in the 1940s. What country has succeeded over 80+ years with Keynesian policies? Everyone doesn't bother answering that, because it's an inane question.
It would be nice if you would make your point clear, other than an apparent dislike of Keynes. Really high inflation is bad. Deflation for any serious length of time is bad. Huge swings in the economy are bad. What else is there? A slow rate of inflation year-to-year is more manageable, less harmful than the alternatives, and has some of its own benefits. Thus, "inflation is good". It's really "a stable currency is good", and mild inflation is the only real choice for providing that.
You're right, it wouldn't be worth the same. Deflation would cause it be worth more.
Right. The point is that whatever used as currency or for trade would almost necessarily experience a fairly large swing in value over the course of a century. Inflation, especially on a barely perceptible level year-to-year, is much more desirable because of its economic benefits and manageability when compared to deflation, or higher rates of inflation.
Exerting government influence over the economy in order to cause currency to seemingly have the same value century-to-century is not plausible nor desirable.
It would only experience inflation if the amount of gold being mined and added to the money supply substantially outpaces the addition of new labor into the workforce.
Right. The point is that its value would not likely be constant.
I'd like for you to try to explain how the US Government should pay for anything without any amount of debt. Realistically, you either want the government to pay for absolutely nothing at all -- not exist -- or you want the government to sit on piles of taxpayer cash, unspent, in the event of future spending.
Why would you want that? The USG is not saving for retirement, it just needs to pay bills. Rather than taxing people's money just to sit on it, doing nothing, it borrows money to pay bills, and then pays the debt with tax revenue. This makes sense, and is why there is a seemingly endless amount of debt -- because nobody wants the government sitting on money, they want it to spend it or return it.
This is why the credit rating stays good: the government constantly borrows money, and everyone knows it's going to pay it back. Until the House of Representatives is half full of people who know nothing about economies or money or how to do their jobs other than preach demagoguery against taxation. Thanks, Tea Party.
A certain amount of inflation is a good thing, especially considering the growth of the population and the economy since the USA's inception. Money wouldn't even have the same real value today compared to a hundred years ago without inflation, since it would experience deflation. Even an entirely gold-based economy would experience inflation.
The debt limit is not only artificial -- it's a Congress-imposed limit on Congress, who controls spending in the first place -- but it has also been raised numerous times over the century it has been around. The only reason for its existence is essentially to shift the blame of increased spending away from Congress onto some nebulous nobody.
If ratings downgrades affect the government's ability to spend money (which it does by borrowing money), then the Tea Party people responsible for this have fucked up beyond belief.
You need to learn how to read the very charts you're linking to. The Clinton administration absolutely did have a surplus, and you can see it in the taxpolicycenter.org spreadsheet which you linked to, specifically in 1998, 1999, and 2000, including the first year of Bush's term, 2001.
This is also where you learn that surplus refers to a budget surplus, as in the difference between revenue and spending. It does not refer to outstanding debts in any way, which is what your treasurydirect.gov link refers to.
Thanks in advance for not spreading misinformation in the future under the pretense of stopping the spread of misinformation with your newfound experience with statistics and FAQs.
You're thinking of POTUS Richard Nixon in 1971 and 1972, with Henry Kissinger as the National Security Advisor, and George H.W. Bush as the US ambassador to the UN.
Ford and Carter later reaffirmed the policies which had already been set in motion.
In (1), the monkeys wouldn't have produced it by chance together. One of the monkeys would basically be indistinguishable from Shakespeare, and type the entire works in succession.
Whaling as a profession peaked towards the latter half of the 19th century when it became industrialized out of New Bedford in New England. That trailed off and then died out in the early 1900s, but it was gaining popularity in places like Norway, where it became even more efficient with the advent of 20th century technologies. Although it wasn't as dominant an economic and cultural force, more whales were actually being killed in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s than at any time before in history when motorized ships could venture out farther, and for longer, and kill more whales with modern weapons which were being found with modern technologies like SONAR.
Any way you look at it you are just flat out wrong. At best you are off by a century, and with any research into the numbers of whale kills it makes it clear you are off by more than that, since whaling took its biggest toll in terms of numbers in the middle of the 20th century, at a time you think they were replenishing their stocks back to prior levels.
If whaling destroyed the populations, how can whale populations be at their highest level in several centuries? When exactly do you think whaling took place?
"Voluntary compliance" with a government is never necessarily voluntary, considering the weight behind government suggestions. If the government wants people to do it, it should be a law. It's not a law because it's invasive and improper. This doesn't mean the government can lean on businesses to get what it wants extralegally, because it can be indistinguishable from a threat.
Having the ability to censor anything with the only justification being "because the state says so" means the state deserves to continue existing only because it already does, regardless of what anyone thinks, or how they are living, and no matter how reprehensible the state's other actions are. This line of reasoning equates "saving lives by stopping a riot" or whatever with "fascist regime deserves to stay fascist", even in the most vile and reprehensible cases like the DPRK, North Korea. I mean, really, you think this makes sense? You think The State deserves to have power because it already has power?
The peace seen in the USA is built on foundations of freedom and business. This is only possible in aAn environment which fosters confidence in both businesses and consumers to allow both of them to freely engage in commerce and trade. In many places around the world, business is stifled because of the lack of these qualities, where vendors are harassed by local government, low-quality or dangerous goods are produced, and where there is little faith in the economy to work on anything but a small scale. The government of the USA ensuring that a fair and free business environment exists is the reason for copyright laws, as poorly implemented as they may be, and it's not in any way comparable to a fascist regime's censorship.
Not to mention the penalties! There may be no punishment for searching for these phrases on the web, or evading the ban through a vpn to do a search, but what happens if you are a provider who disagrees with the idea that there may be violence and wishes to enable searches? What if you are a person who peacefully and respectfully disagrees with the censorship, and speak out against it publicly? Nobody hears about it much because people are too afraid to do it or because those who do this are secretly jailed.
The "censorship" in the US has a clear, detailed, explained rationale behind it, is accountable to another entity, and establishes recourse for any wrongdoing such as inadvertantly "censoring" something which should not have been.
The censorship in China is established by a small group of elites who are not held accountable to anyone in particular, can be completely arbitrary, and is absolute, in that there is no real way to petition wrongful censorship or actions tainted by corruption. When the justification for this censorship is "because the state says so", it means that the punishment for evading the censorship can be anything, including death, because the state says so. There is no recourse for that!
Places like Qatar and Abu Dhabi have demonstrated that they have more money than sense for decades, building one extravagant, useless building after another.
People have said the same thing about America for almost as long as it has existed.
In China, internet traffic which has been deemed by the party as "unharmonious" is essentially completely blocked and even attempting to use those services can lead to jail time.
Sorry, but I think you're making up the second part. So, I want to know (1) where it says in the Chinese penal code that circumventing the firewall is punishable by jail
I guess if you view the internet as some kind of one-way reader, it works out alright.
Perhaps people who believe that Obama was not born in the US are more likely to be watchers of fox news, not the other way around?
If you're a viewer of Fox News, and you can't even get past a slashdot headline:
"Survey Shows that Fox News Makes You Less Informed"
to the short summary directly below it:
"One of the most interesting questions was about President Obama's birthplace. 63 percent of Fox viewers believe Obama was not born in the US (or that it is unclear)"
then you're probably made more misinformed by almost anything you trust (in this case, Fox News).
I guess if you view the internet as some kind of one-way reader, it works out alright.
If you're fortunate enough to have enough wealth and education to know technical solutions to get around it, and only if you plan on reading content, not saying anything like "I wish we could hold officials accountable" ("China should be more democratic").
Other than those small details, sure, it's only 'technically' illegal, and you can do it without getting in trouble for it. Until you run into an official who's willing to blackmail you, which seems to be guaranteed if you try to run a business. Then your technically-illegal-but-largely-unpunished actions catch up to you again.
That's a lot of qualifiers added to the argument that circumventing the great firewall is acceptable.
Really? I used to think that, but I have not been able to find evidence for that. As far as I can tell, plenty of people circumvent the great Chinese firewall without consequences.
Yes, they do, but most of them would not want it brought to anyone's attention.
Slashdot Mirror
yes the clear response to my post is getting angry
A liberal judge on a liberal circuit appointed by a liberal president writes an opinion upholding liberal laws and calls the original arrest "baseless".
this one's for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
This judge is most assuredly off in "la-de-da-liberal-land". You should probably readjust your perspective on reality to accomodate for that fact. Thanks in advance!
oh.
Counterstrike was certainly realistic for its era. As the parent stated, FPS games at the time all had ridiculous futuristic weapons which, despite their increased power, took much longer to kill people than do contemporary weapons. Most games at the time didn't even pretend to care where a shot landed, and Counterstrike's universal implementation of headshots was both innovative and appreciated by players. In addition to that, Counterstrike created its game format, where death was an actual penalty compared to instant respawn deathmatch.
This is the point of the article. Realism is essentially so difficult to implement in a videogame that it can only be approximated. It will always leave gaping surrealities in a supposedly realistic world, accentuating the contrast so much that it becomes not only easier to spot, but more aggravating and more difficult to ignore. A cartoony game with surreal, but consistent, physics is much easier for a player to accept and have fun with than a supposedly realistic world with decidedly unrealistic behavior, even when it is a relatively minor portion of the game.
The US experienced deflation after the Civil War because of comically high inflation and debt prior to and during the war.
If that is your only criteria, then the US and UK? Why is that even a question? The guy died in the 1940s. What country has succeeded over 80+ years with Keynesian policies? Everyone doesn't bother answering that, because it's an inane question.
It would be nice if you would make your point clear, other than an apparent dislike of Keynes. Really high inflation is bad. Deflation for any serious length of time is bad. Huge swings in the economy are bad. What else is there? A slow rate of inflation year-to-year is more manageable, less harmful than the alternatives, and has some of its own benefits. Thus, "inflation is good". It's really "a stable currency is good", and mild inflation is the only real choice for providing that.
Right. The point is that whatever used as currency or for trade would almost necessarily experience a fairly large swing in value over the course of a century. Inflation, especially on a barely perceptible level year-to-year, is much more desirable because of its economic benefits and manageability when compared to deflation, or higher rates of inflation.
Exerting government influence over the economy in order to cause currency to seemingly have the same value century-to-century is not plausible nor desirable.
Right. The point is that its value would not likely be constant.
I'd like for you to try to explain how the US Government should pay for anything without any amount of debt. Realistically, you either want the government to pay for absolutely nothing at all -- not exist -- or you want the government to sit on piles of taxpayer cash, unspent, in the event of future spending.
Why would you want that? The USG is not saving for retirement, it just needs to pay bills. Rather than taxing people's money just to sit on it, doing nothing, it borrows money to pay bills, and then pays the debt with tax revenue. This makes sense, and is why there is a seemingly endless amount of debt -- because nobody wants the government sitting on money, they want it to spend it or return it.
This is why the credit rating stays good: the government constantly borrows money, and everyone knows it's going to pay it back. Until the House of Representatives is half full of people who know nothing about economies or money or how to do their jobs other than preach demagoguery against taxation. Thanks, Tea Party.
A certain amount of inflation is a good thing, especially considering the growth of the population and the economy since the USA's inception. Money wouldn't even have the same real value today compared to a hundred years ago without inflation, since it would experience deflation. Even an entirely gold-based economy would experience inflation.
The debt limit is not only artificial -- it's a Congress-imposed limit on Congress, who controls spending in the first place -- but it has also been raised numerous times over the century it has been around. The only reason for its existence is essentially to shift the blame of increased spending away from Congress onto some nebulous nobody.
If ratings downgrades affect the government's ability to spend money (which it does by borrowing money), then the Tea Party people responsible for this have fucked up beyond belief.
You need to learn how to read the very charts you're linking to. The Clinton administration absolutely did have a surplus, and you can see it in the taxpolicycenter.org spreadsheet which you linked to, specifically in 1998, 1999, and 2000, including the first year of Bush's term, 2001.
This is also where you learn that surplus refers to a budget surplus, as in the difference between revenue and spending. It does not refer to outstanding debts in any way, which is what your treasurydirect.gov link refers to.
I recommend you take a look at their faq here, specifically the second question, which explains your misunderstanding of debt and deficit: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/resources/faq/faq_publicdebt.htm
Thanks in advance for not spreading misinformation in the future under the pretense of stopping the spread of misinformation with your newfound experience with statistics and FAQs.
hi,
You're thinking of POTUS Richard Nixon in 1971 and 1972, with Henry Kissinger as the National Security Advisor, and George H.W. Bush as the US ambassador to the UN.
Ford and Carter later reaffirmed the policies which had already been set in motion.
In (1), the monkeys wouldn't have produced it by chance together. One of the monkeys would basically be indistinguishable from Shakespeare, and type the entire works in succession.
I question where you're finding your information.
Whaling as a profession peaked towards the latter half of the 19th century when it became industrialized out of New Bedford in New England. That trailed off and then died out in the early 1900s, but it was gaining popularity in places like Norway, where it became even more efficient with the advent of 20th century technologies. Although it wasn't as dominant an economic and cultural force, more whales were actually being killed in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s than at any time before in history when motorized ships could venture out farther, and for longer, and kill more whales with modern weapons which were being found with modern technologies like SONAR.
Any way you look at it you are just flat out wrong. At best you are off by a century, and with any research into the numbers of whale kills it makes it clear you are off by more than that, since whaling took its biggest toll in terms of numbers in the middle of the 20th century, at a time you think they were replenishing their stocks back to prior levels.
If whaling destroyed the populations, how can whale populations be at their highest level in several centuries? When exactly do you think whaling took place?
why do people say things like this?
"Voluntary compliance" with a government is never necessarily voluntary, considering the weight behind government suggestions. If the government wants people to do it, it should be a law. It's not a law because it's invasive and improper. This doesn't mean the government can lean on businesses to get what it wants extralegally, because it can be indistinguishable from a threat.
How much more wrong could you be?
Having the ability to censor anything with the only justification being "because the state says so" means the state deserves to continue existing only because it already does, regardless of what anyone thinks, or how they are living, and no matter how reprehensible the state's other actions are. This line of reasoning equates "saving lives by stopping a riot" or whatever with "fascist regime deserves to stay fascist", even in the most vile and reprehensible cases like the DPRK, North Korea. I mean, really, you think this makes sense? You think The State deserves to have power because it already has power?
The peace seen in the USA is built on foundations of freedom and business. This is only possible in aAn environment which fosters confidence in both businesses and consumers to allow both of them to freely engage in commerce and trade. In many places around the world, business is stifled because of the lack of these qualities, where vendors are harassed by local government, low-quality or dangerous goods are produced, and where there is little faith in the economy to work on anything but a small scale. The government of the USA ensuring that a fair and free business environment exists is the reason for copyright laws, as poorly implemented as they may be, and it's not in any way comparable to a fascist regime's censorship.
Not to mention the penalties! There may be no punishment for searching for these phrases on the web, or evading the ban through a vpn to do a search, but what happens if you are a provider who disagrees with the idea that there may be violence and wishes to enable searches? What if you are a person who peacefully and respectfully disagrees with the censorship, and speak out against it publicly? Nobody hears about it much because people are too afraid to do it or because those who do this are secretly jailed.
The "censorship" in the US has a clear, detailed, explained rationale behind it, is accountable to another entity, and establishes recourse for any wrongdoing such as inadvertantly "censoring" something which should not have been.
The censorship in China is established by a small group of elites who are not held accountable to anyone in particular, can be completely arbitrary, and is absolute, in that there is no real way to petition wrongful censorship or actions tainted by corruption. When the justification for this censorship is "because the state says so", it means that the punishment for evading the censorship can be anything, including death, because the state says so. There is no recourse for that!
People have said the same thing about America for almost as long as it has existed.
"Peak freedom" was during the period of time where making alcohol for your own consumption was banned?
yeah, okay.
One of these days, the accusations of criminal behavior will join together to form the script of Hamlet.
Elect better politicians, then deregulate.
I thought you were arguing for deregulation, but then you said this, which makes it obvious you want regulation to continue forever.
I'm so confused!
If that frightens you, you should log off the internets before you see how people online use the word rape.
Sorry, but I think you're making up the second part. So, I want to know (1) where it says in the Chinese penal code that circumventing the firewall is punishable by jail
I guess if you view the internet as some kind of one-way reader, it works out alright.
If you're a viewer of Fox News, and you can't even get past a slashdot headline:
to the short summary directly below it:
then you're probably made more misinformed by almost anything you trust (in this case, Fox News).
I guess if you view the internet as some kind of one-way reader, it works out alright.
If you're fortunate enough to have enough wealth and education to know technical solutions to get around it, and only if you plan on reading content, not saying anything like "I wish we could hold officials accountable" ("China should be more democratic").
Other than those small details, sure, it's only 'technically' illegal, and you can do it without getting in trouble for it. Until you run into an official who's willing to blackmail you, which seems to be guaranteed if you try to run a business. Then your technically-illegal-but-largely-unpunished actions catch up to you again.
That's a lot of qualifiers added to the argument that circumventing the great firewall is acceptable.
Yes, they do, but most of them would not want it brought to anyone's attention.