We'll just have to create robots who ask to be abused, experimented on, or disposed of when broken and unrepairable. Sortof like that animal in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe asked to be eaten in order to avoid animal rights activists protesting.
When will these things become dimmable? Or get good LED "bulbs" dimmable? I've got dimmer switches in 4 rooms of my house which means I'm not able to use these things there. I do have a few elsewhere in the house, and I'd love to use them exclusively, but they don't freakin' work in some things. If they don't freakin work, I don't freakin use them there...
he only question is, what is the best approach to encourage more honorable folks to run for office?
I think that the system as it currently is has actually become rigged to prevent this. Honest people are going to experience one of two things if they try.
1. Get sick of how the machine works, get sick of having to trade favors and do things other than what you believe in order to get people to owe you favors which you can hope to call in on things more important to you. Having to work within the "wheel & deel" mechanism that our governemtn has become would be unpleasant, they'd realize that nothing will ever really get done by staying honest and doing only what you believe. In the end, they'll quit in disgust, and no longer participate in politics.
2. Try to work within the framework of the machine, offerng favors to be owed favors in return, but instead of finding a way to use the machien to your benefit an honest person could be corrupted and become part of the machine as it is. Offering deals, giving favors, and losing the real reason they ran for office amongst it all, and in the end becoming dishonest instead of being effective in achieving their original goals.
Those are the two outcomes in my theory of "honest policitians". I don't believe there is a 3rd possibility. Either honest people can't stay politicians, or honest people become dishonest politicians. End of story. "Honest politician", "Honrable politician", and other similar terms are by definition mutually exclusive and impossible.
So, if we have this amazingly powerful thing, but it will nevr be used to full capacity, what use will we see of it? 90%? 65%? 17%? Have all these people just paid $700 or more for something they will only ever find to be equivalent to a PS2, Xbox-1, or what? Something between a PS2 and an Xbox 360? Something only slightly better than a 360?
Is this truely the light from the very first objects in the universe reaching us, or is this observable stuff just reaching us that took place long after the first things appeared, obliterated, and cycled a few times after? How do we know the observable stuff from the true first objects hasn't already reached Earth and passed us by long before we had the ability to detect it?
I'l wait until Wargames 3: Money vs People. Hackers in a cociety where common citizens cannot afford to buy luxury items such as UltraDef BR7 movies or BHD-Audio music have taken on Robin Hood roles to bring these greedy corporations to some interpretation of social "justice". They hack into DNS servers to set up internet domain names for uses other than those sanctioned by the US Department of Copyright Defense, crack API access and encryption on media storage and distribution servers, and in general just to annoy the privelaged few who are super-rich enough to enjoy a legal monthly movie rental. One rogue hacker takes over a military simulation machine in order to attempt to determine the most successful attack method on the ConglomoMedia Corp. data servers. Due to a flaw in the worm payload delivered to the military megacomputer, it mistakenly attempts to actually carry out an attack on ConglomoMedia instead of simulating it, which triggers ConglomoMedia's digital defense system and retaliates against the military megacomputer. Martial law is put into place and the ConglomoMedia army sets out to seek retribution against its vassal the UNA (United North America) government, since it has failed in its duties to police the peasants residing on the UNA's fief of land. The UNA, of course, must discover who is responsible for this most heinous of crimes and bring the hacker to justice, so that they may appease their corporate overlords and avoid their own death penalties.
You the web user do NOT have my permission to click this link to obtain a copy of the movie Talledega Nights. Nor do you have permission from the copyright owners to click this link to download a copy of their movie. You are a very bad, evil, and unpleasant human being if you click this link to download an mpeg4 of the movie to your hard drive, cook some popcorn, get a nice cold soda or beer, and watch the movie while sitting in your comfortable recliner chair. You definitely do NOT have anyone's permission to do that, especialy not mine, and especially not my ISP's permission.
I vote they get their butts into gear, bring out the whips and shackles, get them to work asap!
We all know that doesn't work. You still suffer from inefficiency. Hermes could get the whole production crew down to a single Australian guy and still finish on a quicker schedule.
My current (and first ever) call phone is the LG VX-9800 aka "The V". I got it because, of the phones available for Verizon at the time, it had the highest camera resolution, and an mp3 player. I didn't care about the fold-out qwerty keyboard because I didn't plan to use texting at all. I haven't understood why it exists (unless your deaf when it seems to make sense), and even went so far as to have text service blocked when I had to pay for a single wrong-number text.
Guess what, I __HATE__ this phone. It's a terribel camera. Sure, we expect cell phone cameras to not be as good as a dedicated digital camera, but this is unacceptably bad even for casual use where quality isn't particularly important. It's also not a super mp3 player, as the battery can't hold a charge for more than a day sitting in my pocket not doing anythign at all, actually having it doing stuff kills it even faster. And as a phone, well, it's not very good at it's primary function either. I can't even use it at my house because of the poor signal reception. And it's freakin huge. Even more freakin huge with the super-capacity battery. Unacceptably huge.
So I've learned the error of my ways. I now have an ipod for mp3s, I have a good digital camera, and my next phone will be bought because it's a good phone, not because of any fancy features that end up unacceptably not as good compared to dedicated products. I've regretted getting this phone since the first week I had it. I do have complaints abotu Verizon's policies, customer service, etc. but I won't deny that I do also have a bad phone in addition to those other problems, and I hope not to make that mistake if/when I replace this POS. Replacing it will most likely be with a phone from another provider, as I'll probably be too cheap to buy a new phone for continuing with Verizon, even if it would be a huge improvement.
I've been unhappy with verizon. I get poor reception at my house, but my roommates with Tmobile and Cingular get far better reception. Might be my phone, who knows, but I can't use it there as it either won't connect to start with or drops calls like crazy. It rarely rings when people call me, but somehow it's able to tell me when I have a voicemail and I can listen to voicemails fine, just not talk to people.
When I got a phone for my mom, they created two phone numbers for it, on different accounts, and one of these accounts was registered at my mom's address instead of mine, which is really strange because I don't rmember giving them her address. As no one knew this existed, I didn't pay the bills for this phantom account, though I did pay the bills for the account we all knew about for the same phone. Then my mom opened one of the enveloped in my name at her address one day and foud a delinquency notice for the phantom account which had no phone associated with it. Somehow in two months time it had gone up to over US$300 in bills from a $40/month plan. I have no idea what kind of voodoo math they used to do that. Plus the reps had difficulty figuring out what happened, and when they did they also had difficulty cleaning up the mess, apparently needing permission from some higher-up people to credit the phantom account which should never have existed.
I also accuse them of bank fraud. I accidentally switched checks in my bills last June, cable TV check went in the Verizon envelope and the verizon check went in the cable TV envelope. Cable company sent the verizon check back and I of course had to pay them again, somehoe it all happened in time that I wasn't late. But Verizon cashed the wrong check, which was clearly written out as payable to the cable company. The Verizon rep made it sound like they do this pretty often, cashing car loan payments, mortgage payments, and everything they get, because they have a computer scanning the checks instead of people. But their electronic transaction on my bank statement (no copy of check returned to the bank, but I do have my carbons) got the amount I owed the cable company exactly correct from the check, and also scanned the check number properly, do I don't understand why it can't be told to look if it's actually payable to Verizon or not. They won't answer my requests for an explanation as to why they feel they have the right to cash someone else's check, and I feel some peoploe are getting screwed big-time if they do this and don't have enough cash left to write a new check to the mortgage company on time while they wait 4 to 6 weeks for a refund from Verizon.If that's not bank fraud, then repalce the term with whatever the correct term is, but whatever it's truely called it's pretty shady IMHO.
Their reps also try to change me from a 1 year to a 2 year contract every time I ask any question at all. They don't ask me if I want to switch, they just assume and I have to call back and get it fixed again later. Damn it, I said one year, please stop trying to trick me into being trapped for 2 years. I'm glad I took the shorter term, as after going through all this crap with them I want out as soon as possible.
So... accountability in voting will be a joke for the foreseeable future because it costs too much?
No. Accountability in voting will be a joke because that would be an inconvenience to the Inner Party achieving their goals, whatever those may be. Cost is simply an excuse for the public.
What about getting the kind of equipment used to work with these RFID tags, and clear it out so it no longer has any interesting info to steal? Is that possible, or are these things read-only? You could also try to microwave it.:)
First, you're getting on the highway and merging into traffic. The guy that ends up behind you was fine with the previous person in front of him, but when you merge in between them now he's screwed.
Second, one cop mans the spacing gun and another merges in front of you just as the gun checks on your distance to the new car in front of you.
Hopefully after the first few court things they'll find a need to define what is OK and what is not, and figure out that there may be some situations where measuring that (like merging traffic before there's time to spread out again) that this won't be blatantly evil.
>Why do governments tax anything in the first place? It's because public services cost money, and that's a >convenient way to of collecting said money (and because they are usually the ones that have all the guns).
What public services are involved with playing World of Warcraft?
People pay $13 or so monthly to Blizzard to keep the WOW servers running. My internet connection costs me $50/month which goes to Comcast. I know there's already taxes related to my internet bill, I'm not sure what all is itemized in that Blizzard monthly fee. The taxes on my Comcast bill might go toward keeping the internet at large running, I'm not sure. Some of the rest of what I pay goes to keeping Comcast's private wires alive. Some of the Blizzard fee goes to keeping the game servers alive, toward their internet connection, and thus probably taxes to their internet provider to again help keep the internet at large running. Any real-life public survives are already being catered to somehow, as I'm not a big gamer and most of my internet time is email and web browsing. The internet isn't going to die if we all stop playing MMORPGs... Roads aren't going to crumble. North Korea isnt' going to take over America without a scuffle. All those public services are already paid for.
Since government is not involved with the running of the game universe, they aren't virtually building virtual roads, they aren't virtually protecting the alliance from the hoard, they aren't virtually protecting us from virtual pickpockets, they aren't virtually doing anything for my virtual character. If I'm not getting any benefit from my governemtn inside of my game, then what virtual public services are they providing which my virtual character needs to pay for beyond the real-life taxes that is being paid for my and Blizzard's internet connection fees?
Can that amount of money be spent responsibly in that amount of time? I hope it all gets used for research and the good stuff, not fluffed on new carpeting for the lab offices because there isn't enough useful equipment or scientists to spend it on...
Some of the Mac ads have felt like they are from some parallel anti-universe.
Like the one where the new Japanese digital camera chic could talk to the Mac but no tto the PC. Huh? Show me one digital camera available at the time of that commercial that did not work with a PC. Seriously...
Or how they make the PC into some business-only thing that isn't any fun. Come on, show me how to run HalfLife 2 on a Mac... OK, I've seen Quake 4 and WOW retail boxes for Macs at the store, but that shelf is a great deal smaller than the PC gaming shelf.
I'm not against Macs or anything, in fact I just got an iBook a couple months ago to find out what they're like. Yea, it's a couple years old, but that's what I'm willin got pay up for to do an evaluation of the platform. I'm not going to pay for a brand-new MacBook to evaluate the platform... What can I do with it? Well, there's all those iDVD, iPhoto, etc. apps that I haven't had reason to try. iTunes, well, I already had that for my PC. Same for Thunderbird and Firefox and OpenOffice. I got one of the later Myst games which runs well enough, and the PCB layout software I'd like to use is available for it as well. I played my free demo of WOW on the PC for 3 days and never logged back in, hopefully they aren't charging my credit card since I'm not actually playing the game, and so don't see much reason to get that. The DVD player works well enough, but I had to get some 3rd party hack utility to change resolutions to extermal monitors connected such as my 720P projector. I had to get powerstrip for Windows to do the same thing though, and Windows still messes up somehow, the projected image seems OK but it appears to be scaling the framebuffer to something larger than 720P and only showing the top-left 720P portion of that larger framebuffer, which sucks so the Mac is better for that. (Yes, I do have a box that I intend to install MythTV on if the kubuntu installer ever manages to complete without hanging, but it's not usable yet)
Anyway... I think some people who might consider a Mac are seeign some of these ads and not believing them. Yes, PCs ARE fun. Yes, cameras work with Windows. Why are you fibbing to me? I don't think people like hearing things they don't believe to be true like that. Besides, most younger people are coming into PCs looking for the new games. That leaves out Macs, Linux, Amigas, QNX, BSD, and a number of other alternatives to Windows. Of course most sales for that age bracket will go to Windows.
He's some very republican guy who tries to force his opinion of things on everyone via the Fox News network. A previous roommate used to watch him, and it was kindof funny at times. He has people on his show to di "interviews" or discuss things, but the person he's interviewing or discussing with never has a chance to say anything. If they try to get a word in he just gets louder and starts telling them how their differing opinion is wrong. He will forcefully interrupt any attempt for anyone else to speak at all, which makes me wonder why people bother to be there, he can do his interviews without the other person present just as well. You can read some of his stuff on www.foxnews.com to get an idea of how seriously you care to take this dude.
OK, so I don't know what temperature it is. Who cares? If I feel cold enough, I'll put on a jacket. If it feels warm enough, I don't. I dont' need to decide that jackets go on at 67farenheight and jackets go off at 66farenheight, and have some scale to make my decision for me.
And as for what time it is, I don't need to care about that either. I eat when I'm hungry, not by what time of day it is. I sleep when I'm tired, not because of where the hands on my clock point. I go to work when I wake up in the morning and leave when stuff is done or I can't concentrate anymore. I don't participate in the semi-annual time-change for daylight savings because I think it's a dirt stupid idea. I stay on daylight savings time of summer because I like that better that "real" time during the winter. Been doing this for 5 or 6 years now and haven't felt any ill effects because of it. And since I got a Tivo, what my clock tells me no longer has any bearing on my watching what shows I like.
OK, so he's right that I don't know some things about reality, but I dont' see any motivating reasons to care or change my ways. I've got more interesting things to do than stare at clocks and thermometers all day like he must do. Cavemen didn't know what temperature it was or what time it was, and yet humans still exist so I don't consider such things as important to survival. Really, why should I know these things?
Don't think it's possible to get an honest person as president, and here's why.
The system already has a certain amount of corruption present. It's been corroding for a long time, and while it's hard to say exactly how corrupt it is, it's very hard to say it's still clean.
The corrupted system, regardless of the extent of corruption, makes it hard to get things done. You have to wheel & deal, offer favors in return for other members of the system to do what's supposed to be their job to do, give in on certain less important things you don't believe in so that someone owes you a favor so you can do something good that's more important later.
Honest people are going to have a hard time with that. They'll either get sick of how the system works and quit, or they'll become corrupted, yet another piece of an already broken machine. You can't be honest and work with the system as it is. Trying to do what is genuinely best for the people the government serves will go nowhere, as the financially greedy/power hungry types will lobby other political entities to vote against what is "good for the people" in order to maintain their money/power, and honest guy loses. To get anything done, you need to become what's wrong with it all, at which point the guy may no longer have motivation to do what's right.
No, I don' thave a very high opinion of the current implementation of my government. And no, I don't see it getting any better.
If you boil off all the stories, supernatural stuff, and cultural traditions, what do you have? A set of rules. Don't kill, don't steal, don't sleep with someone else's spouse, etc. The very core of most religions is basically a message to be nice to each other. How is that a bad thing?
I was raised a christian. I haven't been to church for a number of years now, but I haven't turned my back on it. I don't think atheists are bad people. I believe that even without religion, atheists can feel bad when bad things happen, I believe they can feel guilt, compassion, empathy, and all that stuff. I don't believe you need to believe in god in order to "be nice" to other people or to be a good person. I don't believe you need to call god by a certain name to be a good person, and I don't believe you need to believe that some guy named Jesus had magical powers because he was half god in order to be good people. I'd be suprised if I'm alone in that.
It's the zealots that ruin it for everyone. I don't believe that Islam is bad, but I believe Bin Laden and friends are bad people. I believe that most people in any culture, race, religion or whatever category are good people, and I also believe that there are a relatively small number of bad people in any and all such categories as well. The bad individuals don't make their category a bad category, it makes them bad individuals.
My drives don't die on a set schedule, so I replace them in more of a random timeline. I had a bout of bad luck a few years ago when they died only a couple months after purchase and I bought a number of them for my MythTV box. But after I stopped buying Western Digital it seems to be taking a lot longer to get to a death/replacement cycle.
Yea. Last night I hung my new projector system, and was thinking of getting Cedega to run WOW on my MythTV box. It'd be cool to have the game up on the big screen! But alas, Blizzard does not want me to enjoy their cool game that way, and I don't want to have two computers in my home theater or dual-boot Windows and Linux/Myth. Lucky me I only have a free trial account. Actually, I've had that for a few weeks now and haven't checked for a while, I hope I haven't paid them for something I haven't logged into for a couple weeks...
How well informed are those who think they are? "I voted for that guy because he said he supports side A of issue X and I agree". Well, both Bush41 and Clinton said "no new taxes", and both of them broke that promise and raised taxes anyway. Sure, we can go look up web pages for candidates and see what they say about issues, but how do we know they'll actually vote that way when it comes to that?
My dad thinks he's informed. He votes for candidates because they have an R next to their name. He thinks that's the right thing to do. Doesn't matter who it is or what kind of a person they are, as long as they're R then they deserve the job. D's are a bunch of socialist commies who want to take his guns away, R's are going to let him keep his guns. That's all that matters to my dad. Is he "informed" enough to rationally vote for the best suited candidate for each and every individual office from the candidates available to choose from? I don't think so, but he does. Ironically it seems to me that his R buddies in government are working toward disarming the people via all the gradually more restrictive "anti-terrorist" nonsense they're turning into laws, but he won't hear any of that.
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We'll just have to create robots who ask to be abused, experimented on, or disposed of when broken and unrepairable. Sortof like that animal in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe asked to be eaten in order to avoid animal rights activists protesting.
When will these things become dimmable? Or get good LED "bulbs" dimmable? I've got dimmer switches in 4 rooms of my house which means I'm not able to use these things there. I do have a few elsewhere in the house, and I'd love to use them exclusively, but they don't freakin' work in some things. If they don't freakin work, I don't freakin use them there...
he only question is, what is the best approach to encourage more honorable folks to run for office?
I think that the system as it currently is has actually become rigged to prevent this. Honest people are going to experience one of two things if they try.
1. Get sick of how the machine works, get sick of having to trade favors and do things other than what you believe in order to get people to owe you favors which you can hope to call in on things more important to you. Having to work within the "wheel & deel" mechanism that our governemtn has become would be unpleasant, they'd realize that nothing will ever really get done by staying honest and doing only what you believe. In the end, they'll quit in disgust, and no longer participate in politics.
2. Try to work within the framework of the machine, offerng favors to be owed favors in return, but instead of finding a way to use the machien to your benefit an honest person could be corrupted and become part of the machine as it is. Offering deals, giving favors, and losing the real reason they ran for office amongst it all, and in the end becoming dishonest instead of being effective in achieving their original goals.
Those are the two outcomes in my theory of "honest policitians". I don't believe there is a 3rd possibility. Either honest people can't stay politicians, or honest people become dishonest politicians. End of story. "Honest politician", "Honrable politician", and other similar terms are by definition mutually exclusive and impossible.
So, if we have this amazingly powerful thing, but it will nevr be used to full capacity, what use will we see of it? 90%? 65%? 17%? Have all these people just paid $700 or more for something they will only ever find to be equivalent to a PS2, Xbox-1, or what? Something between a PS2 and an Xbox 360? Something only slightly better than a 360?
Is this truely the light from the very first objects in the universe reaching us, or is this observable stuff just reaching us that took place long after the first things appeared, obliterated, and cycled a few times after? How do we know the observable stuff from the true first objects hasn't already reached Earth and passed us by long before we had the ability to detect it?
I'l wait until Wargames 3: Money vs People. Hackers in a cociety where common citizens cannot afford to buy luxury items such as UltraDef BR7 movies or BHD-Audio music have taken on Robin Hood roles to bring these greedy corporations to some interpretation of social "justice". They hack into DNS servers to set up internet domain names for uses other than those sanctioned by the US Department of Copyright Defense, crack API access and encryption on media storage and distribution servers, and in general just to annoy the privelaged few who are super-rich enough to enjoy a legal monthly movie rental. One rogue hacker takes over a military simulation machine in order to attempt to determine the most successful attack method on the ConglomoMedia Corp. data servers. Due to a flaw in the worm payload delivered to the military megacomputer, it mistakenly attempts to actually carry out an attack on ConglomoMedia instead of simulating it, which triggers ConglomoMedia's digital defense system and retaliates against the military megacomputer. Martial law is put into place and the ConglomoMedia army sets out to seek retribution against its vassal the UNA (United North America) government, since it has failed in its duties to police the peasants residing on the UNA's fief of land. The UNA, of course, must discover who is responsible for this most heinous of crimes and bring the hacker to justice, so that they may appease their corporate overlords and avoid their own death penalties.
OK, so don't provide "permission".
You the web user do NOT have my permission to click this link to obtain a copy of the movie Talledega Nights. Nor do you have permission from the copyright owners to click this link to download a copy of their movie. You are a very bad, evil, and unpleasant human being if you click this link to download an mpeg4 of the movie to your hard drive, cook some popcorn, get a nice cold soda or beer, and watch the movie while sitting in your comfortable recliner chair. You definitely do NOT have anyone's permission to do that, especialy not mine, and especially not my ISP's permission.
I vote they get their butts into gear, bring out the whips and shackles, get them to work asap!
We all know that doesn't work. You still suffer from inefficiency. Hermes could get the whole production crew down to a single Australian guy and still finish on a quicker schedule.
My current (and first ever) call phone is the LG VX-9800 aka "The V". I got it because, of the phones available for Verizon at the time, it had the highest camera resolution, and an mp3 player. I didn't care about the fold-out qwerty keyboard because I didn't plan to use texting at all. I haven't understood why it exists (unless your deaf when it seems to make sense), and even went so far as to have text service blocked when I had to pay for a single wrong-number text.
Guess what, I __HATE__ this phone. It's a terribel camera. Sure, we expect cell phone cameras to not be as good as a dedicated digital camera, but this is unacceptably bad even for casual use where quality isn't particularly important. It's also not a super mp3 player, as the battery can't hold a charge for more than a day sitting in my pocket not doing anythign at all, actually having it doing stuff kills it even faster. And as a phone, well, it's not very good at it's primary function either. I can't even use it at my house because of the poor signal reception. And it's freakin huge. Even more freakin huge with the super-capacity battery. Unacceptably huge.
So I've learned the error of my ways. I now have an ipod for mp3s, I have a good digital camera, and my next phone will be bought because it's a good phone, not because of any fancy features that end up unacceptably not as good compared to dedicated products. I've regretted getting this phone since the first week I had it. I do have complaints abotu Verizon's policies, customer service, etc. but I won't deny that I do also have a bad phone in addition to those other problems, and I hope not to make that mistake if/when I replace this POS. Replacing it will most likely be with a phone from another provider, as I'll probably be too cheap to buy a new phone for continuing with Verizon, even if it would be a huge improvement.
I've been unhappy with verizon. I get poor reception at my house, but my roommates with Tmobile and Cingular get far better reception. Might be my phone, who knows, but I can't use it there as it either won't connect to start with or drops calls like crazy. It rarely rings when people call me, but somehow it's able to tell me when I have a voicemail and I can listen to voicemails fine, just not talk to people.
When I got a phone for my mom, they created two phone numbers for it, on different accounts, and one of these accounts was registered at my mom's address instead of mine, which is really strange because I don't rmember giving them her address. As no one knew this existed, I didn't pay the bills for this phantom account, though I did pay the bills for the account we all knew about for the same phone. Then my mom opened one of the enveloped in my name at her address one day and foud a delinquency notice for the phantom account which had no phone associated with it. Somehow in two months time it had gone up to over US$300 in bills from a $40/month plan. I have no idea what kind of voodoo math they used to do that. Plus the reps had difficulty figuring out what happened, and when they did they also had difficulty cleaning up the mess, apparently needing permission from some higher-up people to credit the phantom account which should never have existed.
I also accuse them of bank fraud. I accidentally switched checks in my bills last June, cable TV check went in the Verizon envelope and the verizon check went in the cable TV envelope. Cable company sent the verizon check back and I of course had to pay them again, somehoe it all happened in time that I wasn't late. But Verizon cashed the wrong check, which was clearly written out as payable to the cable company. The Verizon rep made it sound like they do this pretty often, cashing car loan payments, mortgage payments, and everything they get, because they have a computer scanning the checks instead of people. But their electronic transaction on my bank statement (no copy of check returned to the bank, but I do have my carbons) got the amount I owed the cable company exactly correct from the check, and also scanned the check number properly, do I don't understand why it can't be told to look if it's actually payable to Verizon or not. They won't answer my requests for an explanation as to why they feel they have the right to cash someone else's check, and I feel some peoploe are getting screwed big-time if they do this and don't have enough cash left to write a new check to the mortgage company on time while they wait 4 to 6 weeks for a refund from Verizon.If that's not bank fraud, then repalce the term with whatever the correct term is, but whatever it's truely called it's pretty shady IMHO.
Their reps also try to change me from a 1 year to a 2 year contract every time I ask any question at all. They don't ask me if I want to switch, they just assume and I have to call back and get it fixed again later. Damn it, I said one year, please stop trying to trick me into being trapped for 2 years. I'm glad I took the shorter term, as after going through all this crap with them I want out as soon as possible.
So ... accountability in voting will be a joke for the foreseeable future because it costs too much?
No. Accountability in voting will be a joke because that would be an inconvenience to the Inner Party achieving their goals, whatever those may be. Cost is simply an excuse for the public.
What about getting the kind of equipment used to work with these RFID tags, and clear it out so it no longer has any interesting info to steal? Is that possible, or are these things read-only? You could also try to microwave it. :)
OK, so two conspiracy ideas.
First, you're getting on the highway and merging into traffic. The guy that ends up behind you was fine with the previous person in front of him, but when you merge in between them now he's screwed.
Second, one cop mans the spacing gun and another merges in front of you just as the gun checks on your distance to the new car in front of you.
Hopefully after the first few court things they'll find a need to define what is OK and what is not, and figure out that there may be some situations where measuring that (like merging traffic before there's time to spread out again) that this won't be blatantly evil.
>Why do governments tax anything in the first place? It's because public services cost money, and that's a
>convenient way to of collecting said money (and because they are usually the ones that have all the guns).
What public services are involved with playing World of Warcraft?
People pay $13 or so monthly to Blizzard to keep the WOW servers running. My internet connection costs me $50/month which goes to Comcast. I know there's already taxes related to my internet bill, I'm not sure what all is itemized in that Blizzard monthly fee. The taxes on my Comcast bill might go toward keeping the internet at large running, I'm not sure. Some of the rest of what I pay goes to keeping Comcast's private wires alive. Some of the Blizzard fee goes to keeping the game servers alive, toward their internet connection, and thus probably taxes to their internet provider to again help keep the internet at large running. Any real-life public survives are already being catered to somehow, as I'm not a big gamer and most of my internet time is email and web browsing. The internet isn't going to die if we all stop playing MMORPGs... Roads aren't going to crumble. North Korea isnt' going to take over America without a scuffle. All those public services are already paid for.
Since government is not involved with the running of the game universe, they aren't virtually building virtual roads, they aren't virtually protecting the alliance from the hoard, they aren't virtually protecting us from virtual pickpockets, they aren't virtually doing anything for my virtual character. If I'm not getting any benefit from my governemtn inside of my game, then what virtual public services are they providing which my virtual character needs to pay for beyond the real-life taxes that is being paid for my and Blizzard's internet connection fees?
Can that amount of money be spent responsibly in that amount of time? I hope it all gets used for research and the good stuff, not fluffed on new carpeting for the lab offices because there isn't enough useful equipment or scientists to spend it on...
I for one welcome our new Thought Police overlords.
Some of the Mac ads have felt like they are from some parallel anti-universe.
Like the one where the new Japanese digital camera chic could talk to the Mac but no tto the PC. Huh? Show me one digital camera available at the time of that commercial that did not work with a PC. Seriously...
Or how they make the PC into some business-only thing that isn't any fun. Come on, show me how to run HalfLife 2 on a Mac... OK, I've seen Quake 4 and WOW retail boxes for Macs at the store, but that shelf is a great deal smaller than the PC gaming shelf.
I'm not against Macs or anything, in fact I just got an iBook a couple months ago to find out what they're like. Yea, it's a couple years old, but that's what I'm willin got pay up for to do an evaluation of the platform. I'm not going to pay for a brand-new MacBook to evaluate the platform... What can I do with it? Well, there's all those iDVD, iPhoto, etc. apps that I haven't had reason to try. iTunes, well, I already had that for my PC. Same for Thunderbird and Firefox and OpenOffice. I got one of the later Myst games which runs well enough, and the PCB layout software I'd like to use is available for it as well. I played my free demo of WOW on the PC for 3 days and never logged back in, hopefully they aren't charging my credit card since I'm not actually playing the game, and so don't see much reason to get that. The DVD player works well enough, but I had to get some 3rd party hack utility to change resolutions to extermal monitors connected such as my 720P projector. I had to get powerstrip for Windows to do the same thing though, and Windows still messes up somehow, the projected image seems OK but it appears to be scaling the framebuffer to something larger than 720P and only showing the top-left 720P portion of that larger framebuffer, which sucks so the Mac is better for that. (Yes, I do have a box that I intend to install MythTV on if the kubuntu installer ever manages to complete without hanging, but it's not usable yet)
Anyway... I think some people who might consider a Mac are seeign some of these ads and not believing them. Yes, PCs ARE fun. Yes, cameras work with Windows. Why are you fibbing to me? I don't think people like hearing things they don't believe to be true like that. Besides, most younger people are coming into PCs looking for the new games. That leaves out Macs, Linux, Amigas, QNX, BSD, and a number of other alternatives to Windows. Of course most sales for that age bracket will go to Windows.
He's some very republican guy who tries to force his opinion of things on everyone via the Fox News network. A previous roommate used to watch him, and it was kindof funny at times. He has people on his show to di "interviews" or discuss things, but the person he's interviewing or discussing with never has a chance to say anything. If they try to get a word in he just gets louder and starts telling them how their differing opinion is wrong. He will forcefully interrupt any attempt for anyone else to speak at all, which makes me wonder why people bother to be there, he can do his interviews without the other person present just as well. You can read some of his stuff on www.foxnews.com to get an idea of how seriously you care to take this dude.
OK, so I don't know what temperature it is. Who cares? If I feel cold enough, I'll put on a jacket. If it feels warm enough, I don't. I dont' need to decide that jackets go on at 67farenheight and jackets go off at 66farenheight, and have some scale to make my decision for me.
And as for what time it is, I don't need to care about that either. I eat when I'm hungry, not by what time of day it is. I sleep when I'm tired, not because of where the hands on my clock point. I go to work when I wake up in the morning and leave when stuff is done or I can't concentrate anymore. I don't participate in the semi-annual time-change for daylight savings because I think it's a dirt stupid idea. I stay on daylight savings time of summer because I like that better that "real" time during the winter. Been doing this for 5 or 6 years now and haven't felt any ill effects because of it. And since I got a Tivo, what my clock tells me no longer has any bearing on my watching what shows I like.
OK, so he's right that I don't know some things about reality, but I dont' see any motivating reasons to care or change my ways. I've got more interesting things to do than stare at clocks and thermometers all day like he must do. Cavemen didn't know what temperature it was or what time it was, and yet humans still exist so I don't consider such things as important to survival. Really, why should I know these things?
Don't think it's possible to get an honest person as president, and here's why.
The system already has a certain amount of corruption present. It's been corroding for a long time, and while it's hard to say exactly how corrupt it is, it's very hard to say it's still clean.
The corrupted system, regardless of the extent of corruption, makes it hard to get things done. You have to wheel & deal, offer favors in return for other members of the system to do what's supposed to be their job to do, give in on certain less important things you don't believe in so that someone owes you a favor so you can do something good that's more important later.
Honest people are going to have a hard time with that. They'll either get sick of how the system works and quit, or they'll become corrupted, yet another piece of an already broken machine. You can't be honest and work with the system as it is. Trying to do what is genuinely best for the people the government serves will go nowhere, as the financially greedy/power hungry types will lobby other political entities to vote against what is "good for the people" in order to maintain their money/power, and honest guy loses. To get anything done, you need to become what's wrong with it all, at which point the guy may no longer have motivation to do what's right.
No, I don' thave a very high opinion of the current implementation of my government. And no, I don't see it getting any better.
If you boil off all the stories, supernatural stuff, and cultural traditions, what do you have? A set of rules. Don't kill, don't steal, don't sleep with someone else's spouse, etc. The very core of most religions is basically a message to be nice to each other. How is that a bad thing?
I was raised a christian. I haven't been to church for a number of years now, but I haven't turned my back on it. I don't think atheists are bad people. I believe that even without religion, atheists can feel bad when bad things happen, I believe they can feel guilt, compassion, empathy, and all that stuff. I don't believe you need to believe in god in order to "be nice" to other people or to be a good person. I don't believe you need to call god by a certain name to be a good person, and I don't believe you need to believe that some guy named Jesus had magical powers because he was half god in order to be good people. I'd be suprised if I'm alone in that.
It's the zealots that ruin it for everyone. I don't believe that Islam is bad, but I believe Bin Laden and friends are bad people. I believe that most people in any culture, race, religion or whatever category are good people, and I also believe that there are a relatively small number of bad people in any and all such categories as well. The bad individuals don't make their category a bad category, it makes them bad individuals.
My drives don't die on a set schedule, so I replace them in more of a random timeline. I had a bout of bad luck a few years ago when they died only a couple months after purchase and I bought a number of them for my MythTV box. But after I stopped buying Western Digital it seems to be taking a lot longer to get to a death/replacement cycle.
Yea. Last night I hung my new projector system, and was thinking of getting Cedega to run WOW on my MythTV box. It'd be cool to have the game up on the big screen! But alas, Blizzard does not want me to enjoy their cool game that way, and I don't want to have two computers in my home theater or dual-boot Windows and Linux/Myth. Lucky me I only have a free trial account. Actually, I've had that for a few weeks now and haven't checked for a while, I hope I haven't paid them for something I haven't logged into for a couple weeks...
The robot also has a speaker to warn the intruder to surrender or get a perfect headshot.
I hope they spent more time debugging this bit of code than OCP did with their model.
How well informed are those who think they are? "I voted for that guy because he said he supports side A of issue X and I agree". Well, both Bush41 and Clinton said "no new taxes", and both of them broke that promise and raised taxes anyway. Sure, we can go look up web pages for candidates and see what they say about issues, but how do we know they'll actually vote that way when it comes to that?
My dad thinks he's informed. He votes for candidates because they have an R next to their name. He thinks that's the right thing to do. Doesn't matter who it is or what kind of a person they are, as long as they're R then they deserve the job. D's are a bunch of socialist commies who want to take his guns away, R's are going to let him keep his guns. That's all that matters to my dad. Is he "informed" enough to rationally vote for the best suited candidate for each and every individual office from the candidates available to choose from? I don't think so, but he does. Ironically it seems to me that his R buddies in government are working toward disarming the people via all the gradually more restrictive "anti-terrorist" nonsense they're turning into laws, but he won't hear any of that.