Yup. Typical MS "we make standards to lock you in" behavior. Eris forbid that they should actually use the real standards that are developed.
OTOH this sort of thing might bite them. The SVG standard is being used with several projects, including projects for Windows based machines, if MS doesn't support real SVG icons it might wind up hurting them a bit. I have little doubt that someone will kludge up a converter, but they shouldn't have to. That's why we have standards.
Heh. Just realized that means MS doesn't have standards ^_^
I hope so, coz linux software is free and I'll never pay full price for Photoshop
How that got modded "Insightful" I'll never know...
For the hard of thinking: not all software on Linux is free in either sense. Certainly not all software on Linux is free in the financial sense. If Photoshop were released for Linux (quite possible, really, considering that it runs on Mac and that's Unix), I have little doubt it will cost as much as Photoshop on any other platform.
One nice benefit of Photoshop for Linux would be that it might spur other software companies to release for Linux as well. Don't misunderstand, I like free software. I think the Gimp is great. But the availability of non-free software for Linux is a step in the right direction. Once most packages that people are used to using (Photoshop, MacroMedia Flash, Quickbooks and Quicken, etc) are available for Linux more people will be using it. As a consiquence there will be spillover benefit for the free software development. A larger OS userbase definately has its plus points.
1. There is a "hold your fire" command in Starcraft; you have to continually hit the "stop" command.
No, that's continually hitting a button. A "hold your fire command" would not require me to do nothing but keep hitting a button, it would be a command, like the "attack" command. Don't misunderstand, I like StarCraft, its a fun game. But my liking of it doesn't blind me to its flaws. Everything has flaws and by analyzing those flaws we can make the future versions better. I really do want to see StarCraft 2, and I sincerely hope that the good people at Blizzard make serious improvements over what we've seen in WC3 when they make it.
I think my points are valid, it is true that some very twitchy people are able to both micromanage and try some simple tactics, but that doesn't change the fact that people shouldn't have to twitch so much. I'm sure that there are people out there who can get some combat use out of the High Templar's Psychic Storm attack (to keep using SC as our example here), but most can't because of the purely insane way you have to use that attack. The point is that micromanagement twitch gets in the way of tactical thinking and strategy. It won't be possible to completely eleminate micromanagement for a long time, but we can use several simple techniques to reduce it. Then we can see some real strategy in our RTSes.
Turn based strategy. It's a lot more macro based and you don't have to deal with each individual unit within time constraints. Personally it's not my bag of tea but there are also plenty of people that claimed WC3 was already way too automated and that it reduced the strategy and skill level required to play the game.
I play TBS games as well, and like them. However I think that RTS games are also fun, but would be more fun it you didn't have to be a twitchy micromanager. As for WC3, I'd say they made the bare minimum of acceptable automation, the ability to set newly generated units to a task, the ability to have certain obvious spell effects autofire, etc. Those who want to have to click each unit individually then activate its special abilities are proof that there is such a thing as being too twitchy. They need to play some UT or Quake to get it out of their systems:)
There's pleanty to do that isn't micromanagement. Its called "strategy". We don't really have Real Time Strategy games, we have Real Time Micromanagement games. If my units are behaving according to my standing orders than I can spend my time doing the more significant micromanagement. Setting up tactics, executing flank attacks, etc.
Frankly, due to the micromanagement of vast hoards approach we see virtually no strategy in RTS games. When was the last time you saw a well executed flanking maneuver? Or lead your opponent into an ambush (in StarCraft there isn't even a "hold your fire" command, anytime there's an enemy unit in range your units attack, no possibilities for subtelty there...) People are so busy with the nonesense that actual tactics and strategy are almost completely gone.
As I said in my original post, a commander should be working on proper unit mix for the situation, planning tactics and strategy, building expansions, etc. I'll freely admit that it would remove some of the challenge of fighting the computer, but the real challenge has always been found fighting other humans online. I'd much rather match my tactical and strategic skills than match my ability to click a lot. General Colin Powel, General Tommy Franks, etc don't spend time telling individual soldiers what to do, but they're hardly just sitting back and watching either.
At the very least I'd like to see those things as options, that way if you want to see who is the best at controling vast numbers of units you can set up an online game that doesn't allow those options, and people like me can play the other way. It may be that you are correct and a game with those options would be boring (I don't think so, but I'll admit the possibility), but I'd like to see a game set up that way so we can actually give it a try instead of sitting around debating weather it might be boring to try something different.
Well, I don't think I'd say WC3 was terrible, but it was fairly lackluster. The 3d aspect was incredibly poorly implemented, whoever decided to make a 3d game and not implement any real 3d controls was definately not thinking (for the "WC3 is the best game ever crowd": I know you can bring the camera closer to the ground. However, *real* 3d games include the amazing ability to rotate the camera to different angles, zoom, etc.)
The "heros" aspect was newish, but I think it detracted from the game, really. If I want to play an RPG I'll play an RPG.
What bothers me is that after all these years of RTS games they still don't have the improvements I was looking for after playing my first. Specifically, ways to avoid micromanagement. I want
User definable attack priority lists. I want to be able to tell each unit, or unit type, or group what priority to assign to which enemy types.
User alterable aggression levels.
The ability to set the level at which my damaged units will retreat and get healing.
User definable "response zones" so that I can establish a rapid reaction force and order it to aid any attacked unit inside its response zone, or to ignore attacks in certain areas.
The ability to order units with special attacks to bloody use the damn attacks so I don't have to fricking micromanage each damn unit's special attack. WC3 at least gave you the ability to set *some* specials to work automatically, but it wasn't very specific. I'd like to be able to order my special units to use X amount of their mana/energy/whatever for defense, Y for offense, and Z for support. Again, on either an individual basis, a unit type basis, or a group basis.
None of this requires true AI, none of this is impossible for today's programmers. Some of what I want existed in the game Dark Reign (aggression levels, for example). Why has the actual mechanic of playing RTS games been left unimproved since day one? If I want a game where I have to be twitchy I'll play an FPS game. I don't want to micromanage anything. That isn't strategy.
I figure that its much more important in a *strategy* game to set proper "standing orders" than it is to individually tell each and every grunt specifically what to attack. The commander should be thinking about the big picture, where to expand, what unit mix to use, the broad strokes of the attack, where to put forward staging areas, where to place support units (repair bays, etc), not focusing on individual units.
The thing about the RIAA is that they are self-evidently not in the business of helping artists. It is quite easy for a musician to sell millions of albums and come out with a profit of around $50K. The actual financial benefit coming to an artist from an RIAA authorized CD is around $.05-$.25. The lions share of the rest of the $16-$20 goes streight to the RIAA with a small bit given to various middlemen.
It is obvious that artists deserve compensation for their work. Anyone who claims otherwise is a twit. However it is also obvious that the RIAA is not the way to give artists compensation for their work. I agree that it'd be nice to build a perfect replacement for the RIAA then dismantle the RIAA. Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world, so that isn't going to happen. Whatever we replace the RIAA with will also have problems and unfairness built into it, I guarantee. I think that a "pay the musicians internet tax" is a very bad idea, as are taxes on blank media. The main reason is that a) under the current setup the money goes to the RIAA, not artists, b) it charges everyone not just people who want music, and c) It means that my money goes to support bands I don't like, I want more specific payments.
The "Tip Jar" model has multiple problems, primary among them is that it relies on the honesty and generosity of Joe/Jane average. I honestly don't know what a good solution will be, I do know that to meet my definition of "good" any solution must include the destruciton of the RIAA. Not because I hate them, but because its self evident that they are leeches who impede the idea of getting money to artists.
I do know this though: if we can find a way to get even $.50 to a band for every album downloaded they'd be making double what they make now. Hell, I'd pay $.25 per track (around $2.50 per album at an average of ten tracks per album). I think that given the relatively low price people may be more willing to pay than conventional wisdom says they are. How to get and gather those payments I don't know.
Wow. That's one of the most inspiring quotes from history I've heard in a LONG time. If this is the origin of the "my country, right or wrong" quote thrown around by, as you say, jingoistic buffoons, then they're taking it way, way out of context.
It is a nice quote, isn't it? However the Senator was twisting the "my country, right or wrong" people's language against them, he didn't actually coin the phrase. Still, I prefer his version over the original.
True, but there will be pleanty of benefit in seeing what stopped each robot, what went wrong with its pathfinding algorithms, etc. I'll bet you that if they hold the event again next year they'd get to at least 14 miles, possibly even have one finish.
While I agree that in general we shouldn't define "success" to mean "learning something", don't forget that this whole project was for research. The whole object of research is to learn things, so I can see the granparent's point.
Ah, the old "other people were worse" argument. As a patriot I do not accept the idea that because other governments have done worse it somehow excuses the fact that the US Government has done wrong. Maybe in your world the fact that the US supplied fewer weapons to Saddam than the Soviet Union makes it all right. I think my government should be better than that.
The simple fact remains: the US government supplied weapons, technology, and money, to Iraq during a period when it was known that Saddam Hussain was engaging in murder, rape, torture, etc. Donald Rumsfeld (currently Secretary of Defense) visited Iraq during this period, shook hands with Hussain (known at the time to be a vile dictator), offered help, etc. Whether other countries did worse is irrelivant. The actions of the Regan and Bush I administrations make it pathetically obvious that concern for human rights in Iraq is not the reason for the current war. The actions of the Bush II government in supporting and providing aid to the thugs in charge of Uzbekistan (among other places) demonstrate two things: 1) they haven't learned not to cozy up to dictators yet, and 2) human rights simply aren't a concern for them. This leads directly to the conclusion that there must be a non-human rights motive for the war. Nothing you wrote did anything to disprove this conclusion. Do try again though, I would be interested in anything that could prove my conclusion wrong.
I will also add that during the lead up to the current US/Iraq war several members of the Bush government, including President Bush himself, specificially excluded human rights violations as a justification for war. It is only now, after the fact, that the Bush government is claiming that human rights abuses were among their cuases for war.
I will also mention that this is not a partisin issue. The Clinton administration, and all administrations during the past 50 years, have made it policy to support dictators and surpress democracy. The actions of the US government are directly opposed to the values that make the US a great country. I am curious as to why you want to defend these anti-American people and their policies. Could you explain?
To an extent, you are correct. However never forget that in the absence of a war the weapons manufacturers make less money. Thus they will be lobbying (that is, bribing) politicians to start unnecessary wars. The weapons makers make a bundle of money in wartime so its in their best interests to ensure that there's a war every few years. Notice that the recent war in Iraq, for example, has cost several billion dollars that would not have been spent were it not for the fact that we needed to resupply various expendible munitions that were used in the course of the war.
Depending on the model a single cruise missile costs between $500,000 and $1,900,000. Obviously a percentage of that price tag is profit to the company making the crusie missile. During peacetime the military will use some expendible munitions in live fire exercises (necessary to keep the personnel trained), this provides a trickle of income to the manufacturer. In a war we may use hundreds of cruise missiles per day (during the opening phases at least). Thus the trickle becomes a flood. Tell me that the munitions companies don't have a vested interest in having a war every few years.
One other thought here. The draft would be much less objectionable if the immediate family of all politicians were automatically drafted into a special infantry unit which is always put where the fighting is the thickest. If the draft is good enough for us, it bloody well ought to be good enough for the children, siblings, spouses and cousins of the people deciding to go to war. I'd also like to see that "special draft" include the family of major weapons manufacturers. Perhaps then they'd be a bit less eager to fight pointless wars.
If the military was seen as providing something to their employees, they wouldn't have a recruiting problem.
If the military paid its employees a good wage I think they'd be seen in a better light. In today's world a smaller military made of more highly trained career soldiers makes a lot of sense (at least so say a number of Generals at the Pentagon, I assume they know what they're talking about). You can't get that when the military pay is diddily squat though. I'm not talking about officers here, I'm talking about the low level soldiers who actually do the fighting and dying.
Just to put a little moderating spin on this whole discussion (not necessarily you) - We seem to have this "us" vs. "them" mentality. The government _is_ "us".
Only true if your vote counts. I live in Texas and I voted against Bush (I couldn't find anyone to vote *for* mind you). However, due to the insanity we call the Electoral College my vote was promptly tossed into the trash can. I'm all for abolishing that bizarre 18th century anachronism, but if we can't abolish the EC, can we at least require that all states split their Electoral Votes? That way my vote might actually count for something. A Bush supporter in New York or California is in the same situation. Honestly, I don't know why I bother voting in presidental elections, it *literally* does not make any difference.
We normally wouldn't even need to use the Reserves except that a prior administration decided we didn't need as large of an armed forces and proceeded to downsize the military.
Ahh, the old "it doesn't matter what the topic is, blame Clinton" argument. I have a bit of advice for you fanatic Clinton-haters: he hasn't been President for more than three years now, get over it. Blaming Clinton is nothing more than pathetic looserism at this stage in the game. If Clinton's military cuts were so horrible, Bush has had three bloody years to correct them. I note with interest that Mr. Bush did not, in fact, immediately set about increasing the size of the army when he got into office, so obviously it wasn't a priority with him either.
You mean because you can't opt out of it? I don't think this is equivalent to slavery. As citizens, there are several obligations we have to the government, some of them onerous: like taxes. This is just one of them--a particularly onerous one--but since it's temporary and reasonably humane I don't think you can compare it to slavery.
Disagree. Taxes are non-fatal. The draft requires that a person who disagrees with the policy of his government risk his life for the policies he disagrees with. This is similar to a measure requiring that you vote for a particular party.
Voluntary military service can be thought of as the ultimate form of democracy: can't get enough people to volunteer to fight your war? Too bad, guess you can't fight it then. I can't see how forcing me to kill for a cause I disagree with is anything but slavery.
Taxes are a different deal, mainly in that they don't force me to kill, or force me to risk my life. I may disagree with how my tax dollars are spent, but as a civilian I still have all my rights and can aggitate for change. A soldier can, quite legally, be punished for disagreeing with government policy (this is why you no longer see non-anonymous interviews with soldiers who disagree with the Bush Government's policy. The first few who did so non-anonymously suffered retribution). A civilian can protest, write nasty letters, run for office against the politician who is spending his money, etc. A soldier can do none of those things. The draft is not equivilant to paying taxes.
Perhaps if you have no sense of what it means to serve your country in the first place, you ought to strongly consider moving to Canada, or some third world country where you belong.
Well Bub, I don't know what country *you* want to serve, but *my* country is the USA and we're based on the idea of freedom. Slave armies are not, by definition, something that can be associated with freedom. The draft is the singular most un-American idea that has ever been put forth, and as a patriot I find it revolting that we've allowed it to continue as long as we have.
I'm continually astonished that people who will object to environmental regulation, "because it violates my property rights", will at the same time support the notion of the draft. Working to abolish the draft, in all forms, sounds like my patriotic duty. Blind support of the government, and forcing others to die for, and to kill for, policy they disagree with hardly sounds like serving *my* country. Maybe you live in a dictatorship, but I live in the USA.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." -- Senator Carl Schurz -- February 29, 1872. That's patriotism. The word for what you are endorsing is "jingoism". I prefer patriotism, it takes more thought, and requires more bravery.
we made Saddam Hussein, put him in power, and it was our job to scrape him off the sidewalk after what he did to his own people.
Not to get into a major derail here, but you seem to have your sequence of events confused. Hussein was using chemical weapons "on his own people" both prior to receiving massive US military giveaways and during the time he was getting massive US military giveaways. He got the chemical weapons he used on his own people from the US government. Rape, murder, torture, and the other hallmarks of Saddam's government are not a recent development. During the Regan and Bush I administrations while he was getting millions in US support the human rights violations were well known and completely ignored.
My point here is that the rationale that the US invaded Iraq for humanitarian reasons is demonstorably false. If the US government had cared about the plight of the victims of Hussein's government they wouldn't have given him all the money and technology they did. Since we have established that the US government gave him aid while it was aware of his behavior we can only conclude that there is a non-humanitarian reason for the invasion.
Don't misunderstand, one less evil bastard in the word is a good thing. But the US government continues to persue a policy of giving money and technology to similar evil bastards (the thugs in charge of Uzbekistan, for example). Thus the procolamations of concern for the Iraqi people can only be a rather revoltingly hypocritical smokescreen to try and hide their true motives.
Just *what* the true motives of the US government are I won't pretend to know, but I will say that its quite obvious that their stated motives are not what's really pushing policy. I suspect that the real motives are a mixture of economic desires (oil), military foreward planning (Iraq is centrally located, thus stragetically valuable), and distraction ("don't worry about the economy, there's a war on!"). That's merely what I suspect, but there can be no doubt that humanitarian reasons are not the cause for the war.
Actually, I've always thought that would be a possible solution for the whole prepetual copyright argument. Anyone can maintain copyright for as long as they want, provided that they continue to offer the copyrighted material for sale (at fair market price, that is, no [Dr Evil] "sure you can buy it, for $100,000,000" [/Dr Evil]
My basic line of reasoning here is that if copyright is prepetual and the copyright holder can simply stop selling the copyrighted material than it can easily be erased from existance. Disney, for example, would probably dearly love for their movie "Song of the South" to be erased, Soviet Union style. There are several very good reasons why it is a bad idea to let things fall into the memory hole. I think the idea of offering the simple choice: sell it, or let it become public domain, is fairly workable. Obviously there are details to work out, but I can't see a real horrible problem with the basic idea. Can anyone poke holes in it?
Actually, WinXP comes with that built in. You can set XP to create restore points at regular intervals, or you can create them manually at certain points. Not quite a realtime solution, but if you set it to make restore points ever 12 hours you never loose more than 12 hours worth of work.
Personally, I'm with the people who've been migrating their friends and family to Linux or Mac, but if you need to run Windows for some reason, the system restore function is great.
$60 buys you a copy of CrossoverOffice which will allow any Linux machine to run MS Office. Compare to the $100 you pay for a copy of Windows and you see an immediate savings of forty bucks. Use that to buy a bigger hard drive, more RAM, whatever.
Personally, as a gamer I keep a Windows partition around for the games that won't run under WineX (though that's getting to be fewer every day). Still, I don't much like rebooting, so anything I can run in Linux is a bonus.
Hey, that's ok, I stopped reading, and similarly decided you were stupid when I read:
Things like this exist because jobless wonders with no skills and no future see an easy out and sue the doctor for some assinine bullshit, then ignorant juries award this sinister behavior when crooked lawyers trump things up around the "poor, suffering victim".
Maybe we should both start reading each other's posts all the way through:)
Heh, and we'd all be better off if the government paid attention to the 5th ammendment (here for example), the 1st ammendment (where, exactly does it say "except for obscenity"), etc.
None of which addresses William's statement that we'd all be better off if only the aristocracy got to vote. His final sentence is nothing more than an attempt to distract from his central premise which is that only rich people should get to vote. I mentioned misc tax problems as a side note. My main point was that voter requirements have historically been a very bad idea.
Williams used to be one of the conservative columnists I frequently agreed with, lately he seems to have gone off the deep end. Proposing that only the aristocracy get to vote is positively anti-American, as well as being a historically proven bad idea.
On the various sideshow issues you bring up, I will mention that there is nothing in the preamble to the US Constitution which states that the clause "promote the general welfare" is specifically intended to mean the general welfare of the federal government. Other clauses in the same sentence are quite obviously refering to individuals.
More importantly, this is not 1776 anymore. Things have changed in the past 228 years. At the time the constitution was written we had, essentially, 13 separate nations which were mutually distrustful and only united under threat from an outside power. As you may have noticed today things are quite different and we have need of a different type of government. This is reflected in the various ammendments made to the constitution. It is also reflected in the interpretation of constitutional law by the Supreme Court, which has not found any constitutional reasons to object to things like the federal highway system (not specified in the constitution), rural electrification, etc. Our founding fathers were damn smart, but they designed that document in different times to meet different needs.
Things like this exist because jobless wonders with no skills and no future see an easy out and sue the doctor for some assinine bullshit, then ignorant juries award this sinister behavior when crooked lawyers trump.......
Yeah! Its absolutely impossible that some doctors are incompetent quacks who deserve to loose their license to practice medicine. Anyone with an income of less than $100,000 is automatically a greedy looser who magically has the power to fool 12 otherwise intelligent people. No possible way any medical malpractice suit has any merit at all. In other nwes, the Earth is banana shaped, evolution is a lie, and astrology isn't total BS!
Sheesh... Unclench your fists of rage, grab a beer, and realize that not everyone is a crooked liar. Around 98,000 deaths are caused by medical malpractice per year. Most are due to accident rather than incompetence, as evidenced by the fact that significantly fewer than 98,000 medical malpractice suits are entered per year. I'm not saying that there aren't frivilous lawsuits, of course there are. I am saying that not all of the lawsuits are frivilous. The real crooks here are the insurance companies. Remember, they raise insurance premiums regardless of the legal climate. After California passed a law capping malpractice awards in 1976 the insurance companies jacked up malpractice rates by 190% in the following 12 years. The point is that caps don't acually do diddily to help doctors. Until we reign in the HMO's and the malpractice insurance companies we will still have problems.
The reason why the doc in the emergency room doesn't have enough time is often due to chronic understaffing. The medical field is a crappy field to work in. This is not due to any necessity, but simply due to the HMO's, insurance companies, for profit hospital boards, etc wanting to squeeze their doctors and nurses as much as they can.
Personally the thought of going to a hospital scares me. I know a couple of people in the medical field and I know that they are working well past the point where they become tired and begin to loose focus. The problem is not medical malpractice claims, the problem is the way medical care is organized. We have a system designed not to produce the best possible medical care, but to produce the maximum profits for the HMO's. Personally I'm constantly amazed by the fact that our medical professionals don't make more mistakes given the godawful conditions they work under.
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OTOH this sort of thing might bite them. The SVG standard is being used with several projects, including projects for Windows based machines, if MS doesn't support real SVG icons it might wind up hurting them a bit. I have little doubt that someone will kludge up a converter, but they shouldn't have to. That's why we have standards.
Heh. Just realized that means MS doesn't have standards ^_^
For the hard of thinking: not all software on Linux is free in either sense. Certainly not all software on Linux is free in the financial sense. If Photoshop were released for Linux (quite possible, really, considering that it runs on Mac and that's Unix), I have little doubt it will cost as much as Photoshop on any other platform.
One nice benefit of Photoshop for Linux would be that it might spur other software companies to release for Linux as well. Don't misunderstand, I like free software. I think the Gimp is great. But the availability of non-free software for Linux is a step in the right direction. Once most packages that people are used to using (Photoshop, MacroMedia Flash, Quickbooks and Quicken, etc) are available for Linux more people will be using it. As a consiquence there will be spillover benefit for the free software development. A larger OS userbase definately has its plus points.
I think my points are valid, it is true that some very twitchy people are able to both micromanage and try some simple tactics, but that doesn't change the fact that people shouldn't have to twitch so much. I'm sure that there are people out there who can get some combat use out of the High Templar's Psychic Storm attack (to keep using SC as our example here), but most can't because of the purely insane way you have to use that attack. The point is that micromanagement twitch gets in the way of tactical thinking and strategy. It won't be possible to completely eleminate micromanagement for a long time, but we can use several simple techniques to reduce it. Then we can see some real strategy in our RTSes.
Frankly, due to the micromanagement of vast hoards approach we see virtually no strategy in RTS games. When was the last time you saw a well executed flanking maneuver? Or lead your opponent into an ambush (in StarCraft there isn't even a "hold your fire" command, anytime there's an enemy unit in range your units attack, no possibilities for subtelty there...) People are so busy with the nonesense that actual tactics and strategy are almost completely gone.
As I said in my original post, a commander should be working on proper unit mix for the situation, planning tactics and strategy, building expansions, etc. I'll freely admit that it would remove some of the challenge of fighting the computer, but the real challenge has always been found fighting other humans online. I'd much rather match my tactical and strategic skills than match my ability to click a lot. General Colin Powel, General Tommy Franks, etc don't spend time telling individual soldiers what to do, but they're hardly just sitting back and watching either.
At the very least I'd like to see those things as options, that way if you want to see who is the best at controling vast numbers of units you can set up an online game that doesn't allow those options, and people like me can play the other way. It may be that you are correct and a game with those options would be boring (I don't think so, but I'll admit the possibility), but I'd like to see a game set up that way so we can actually give it a try instead of sitting around debating weather it might be boring to try something different.
The "heros" aspect was newish, but I think it detracted from the game, really. If I want to play an RPG I'll play an RPG.
What bothers me is that after all these years of RTS games they still don't have the improvements I was looking for after playing my first. Specifically, ways to avoid micromanagement. I want
- User definable attack priority lists. I want to be able to tell each unit, or unit type, or group what priority to assign to which enemy types.
- User alterable aggression levels.
- The ability to set the level at which my damaged units will retreat and get healing.
- User definable "response zones" so that I can establish a rapid reaction force and order it to aid any attacked unit inside its response zone, or to ignore attacks in certain areas.
- The ability to order units with special attacks to bloody use the damn attacks so I don't have to fricking micromanage each damn unit's special attack. WC3 at least gave you the ability to set *some* specials to work automatically, but it wasn't very specific. I'd like to be able to order my special units to use X amount of their mana/energy/whatever for defense, Y for offense, and Z for support. Again, on either an individual basis, a unit type basis, or a group basis.
None of this requires true AI, none of this is impossible for today's programmers. Some of what I want existed in the game Dark Reign (aggression levels, for example). Why has the actual mechanic of playing RTS games been left unimproved since day one? If I want a game where I have to be twitchy I'll play an FPS game. I don't want to micromanage anything. That isn't strategy.I figure that its much more important in a *strategy* game to set proper "standing orders" than it is to individually tell each and every grunt specifically what to attack. The commander should be thinking about the big picture, where to expand, what unit mix to use, the broad strokes of the attack, where to put forward staging areas, where to place support units (repair bays, etc), not focusing on individual units.
It is obvious that artists deserve compensation for their work. Anyone who claims otherwise is a twit. However it is also obvious that the RIAA is not the way to give artists compensation for their work. I agree that it'd be nice to build a perfect replacement for the RIAA then dismantle the RIAA. Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world, so that isn't going to happen. Whatever we replace the RIAA with will also have problems and unfairness built into it, I guarantee. I think that a "pay the musicians internet tax" is a very bad idea, as are taxes on blank media. The main reason is that a) under the current setup the money goes to the RIAA, not artists, b) it charges everyone not just people who want music, and c) It means that my money goes to support bands I don't like, I want more specific payments.
The "Tip Jar" model has multiple problems, primary among them is that it relies on the honesty and generosity of Joe/Jane average. I honestly don't know what a good solution will be, I do know that to meet my definition of "good" any solution must include the destruciton of the RIAA. Not because I hate them, but because its self evident that they are leeches who impede the idea of getting money to artists.
I do know this though: if we can find a way to get even $.50 to a band for every album downloaded they'd be making double what they make now. Hell, I'd pay $.25 per track (around $2.50 per album at an average of ten tracks per album). I think that given the relatively low price people may be more willing to pay than conventional wisdom says they are. How to get and gather those payments I don't know.
While I agree that in general we shouldn't define "success" to mean "learning something", don't forget that this whole project was for research. The whole object of research is to learn things, so I can see the granparent's point.
The simple fact remains: the US government supplied weapons, technology, and money, to Iraq during a period when it was known that Saddam Hussain was engaging in murder, rape, torture, etc. Donald Rumsfeld (currently Secretary of Defense) visited Iraq during this period, shook hands with Hussain (known at the time to be a vile dictator), offered help, etc. Whether other countries did worse is irrelivant. The actions of the Regan and Bush I administrations make it pathetically obvious that concern for human rights in Iraq is not the reason for the current war. The actions of the Bush II government in supporting and providing aid to the thugs in charge of Uzbekistan (among other places) demonstrate two things: 1) they haven't learned not to cozy up to dictators yet, and 2) human rights simply aren't a concern for them. This leads directly to the conclusion that there must be a non-human rights motive for the war. Nothing you wrote did anything to disprove this conclusion. Do try again though, I would be interested in anything that could prove my conclusion wrong.
I will also add that during the lead up to the current US/Iraq war several members of the Bush government, including President Bush himself, specificially excluded human rights violations as a justification for war. It is only now, after the fact, that the Bush government is claiming that human rights abuses were among their cuases for war.
I will also mention that this is not a partisin issue. The Clinton administration, and all administrations during the past 50 years, have made it policy to support dictators and surpress democracy. The actions of the US government are directly opposed to the values that make the US a great country. I am curious as to why you want to defend these anti-American people and their policies. Could you explain?
Depending on the model a single cruise missile costs between $500,000 and $1,900,000. Obviously a percentage of that price tag is profit to the company making the crusie missile. During peacetime the military will use some expendible munitions in live fire exercises (necessary to keep the personnel trained), this provides a trickle of income to the manufacturer. In a war we may use hundreds of cruise missiles per day (during the opening phases at least). Thus the trickle becomes a flood. Tell me that the munitions companies don't have a vested interest in having a war every few years.
Voluntary military service can be thought of as the ultimate form of democracy: can't get enough people to volunteer to fight your war? Too bad, guess you can't fight it then. I can't see how forcing me to kill for a cause I disagree with is anything but slavery.
Taxes are a different deal, mainly in that they don't force me to kill, or force me to risk my life. I may disagree with how my tax dollars are spent, but as a civilian I still have all my rights and can aggitate for change. A soldier can, quite legally, be punished for disagreeing with government policy (this is why you no longer see non-anonymous interviews with soldiers who disagree with the Bush Government's policy. The first few who did so non-anonymously suffered retribution). A civilian can protest, write nasty letters, run for office against the politician who is spending his money, etc. A soldier can do none of those things. The draft is not equivilant to paying taxes.
I'm continually astonished that people who will object to environmental regulation, "because it violates my property rights", will at the same time support the notion of the draft. Working to abolish the draft, in all forms, sounds like my patriotic duty. Blind support of the government, and forcing others to die for, and to kill for, policy they disagree with hardly sounds like serving *my* country. Maybe you live in a dictatorship, but I live in the USA.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." -- Senator Carl Schurz -- February 29, 1872. That's patriotism. The word for what you are endorsing is "jingoism". I prefer patriotism, it takes more thought, and requires more bravery.
My point here is that the rationale that the US invaded Iraq for humanitarian reasons is demonstorably false. If the US government had cared about the plight of the victims of Hussein's government they wouldn't have given him all the money and technology they did. Since we have established that the US government gave him aid while it was aware of his behavior we can only conclude that there is a non-humanitarian reason for the invasion.
Don't misunderstand, one less evil bastard in the word is a good thing. But the US government continues to persue a policy of giving money and technology to similar evil bastards (the thugs in charge of Uzbekistan, for example). Thus the procolamations of concern for the Iraqi people can only be a rather revoltingly hypocritical smokescreen to try and hide their true motives.
Just *what* the true motives of the US government are I won't pretend to know, but I will say that its quite obvious that their stated motives are not what's really pushing policy. I suspect that the real motives are a mixture of economic desires (oil), military foreward planning (Iraq is centrally located, thus stragetically valuable), and distraction ("don't worry about the economy, there's a war on!"). That's merely what I suspect, but there can be no doubt that humanitarian reasons are not the cause for the war.
My basic line of reasoning here is that if copyright is prepetual and the copyright holder can simply stop selling the copyrighted material than it can easily be erased from existance. Disney, for example, would probably dearly love for their movie "Song of the South" to be erased, Soviet Union style. There are several very good reasons why it is a bad idea to let things fall into the memory hole. I think the idea of offering the simple choice: sell it, or let it become public domain, is fairly workable. Obviously there are details to work out, but I can't see a real horrible problem with the basic idea. Can anyone poke holes in it?
Personally, I'm with the people who've been migrating their friends and family to Linux or Mac, but if you need to run Windows for some reason, the system restore function is great.
Personally, as a gamer I keep a Windows partition around for the games that won't run under WineX (though that's getting to be fewer every day). Still, I don't much like rebooting, so anything I can run in Linux is a bonus.
Maybe we should both start reading each other's posts all the way through
None of which addresses William's statement that we'd all be better off if only the aristocracy got to vote. His final sentence is nothing more than an attempt to distract from his central premise which is that only rich people should get to vote. I mentioned misc tax problems as a side note. My main point was that voter requirements have historically been a very bad idea.
Williams used to be one of the conservative columnists I frequently agreed with, lately he seems to have gone off the deep end. Proposing that only the aristocracy get to vote is positively anti-American, as well as being a historically proven bad idea.
On the various sideshow issues you bring up, I will mention that there is nothing in the preamble to the US Constitution which states that the clause "promote the general welfare" is specifically intended to mean the general welfare of the federal government. Other clauses in the same sentence are quite obviously refering to individuals.
More importantly, this is not 1776 anymore. Things have changed in the past 228 years. At the time the constitution was written we had, essentially, 13 separate nations which were mutually distrustful and only united under threat from an outside power. As you may have noticed today things are quite different and we have need of a different type of government. This is reflected in the various ammendments made to the constitution. It is also reflected in the interpretation of constitutional law by the Supreme Court, which has not found any constitutional reasons to object to things like the federal highway system (not specified in the constitution), rural electrification, etc. Our founding fathers were damn smart, but they designed that document in different times to meet different needs.
Sheesh... Unclench your fists of rage, grab a beer, and realize that not everyone is a crooked liar. Around 98,000 deaths are caused by medical malpractice per year. Most are due to accident rather than incompetence, as evidenced by the fact that significantly fewer than 98,000 medical malpractice suits are entered per year. I'm not saying that there aren't frivilous lawsuits, of course there are. I am saying that not all of the lawsuits are frivilous. The real crooks here are the insurance companies. Remember, they raise insurance premiums regardless of the legal climate. After California passed a law capping malpractice awards in 1976 the insurance companies jacked up malpractice rates by 190% in the following 12 years. The point is that caps don't acually do diddily to help doctors. Until we reign in the HMO's and the malpractice insurance companies we will still have problems.
Personally the thought of going to a hospital scares me. I know a couple of people in the medical field and I know that they are working well past the point where they become tired and begin to loose focus. The problem is not medical malpractice claims, the problem is the way medical care is organized. We have a system designed not to produce the best possible medical care, but to produce the maximum profits for the HMO's. Personally I'm constantly amazed by the fact that our medical professionals don't make more mistakes given the godawful conditions they work under.