You assume and make an ass of yourself. I'm not opposed to reasonable pensions. I'm opposed to the government promising pensions the government can't pay for.
The rich getting richer is another problem, but we were talking about California's budget here. Not everything that is wrong with the economy and government.
Justin Beiber wouldn't be popular unless a lot of people actually liked his music, as hard as that is to believe.
No, I think most people dislike Justin Bieber. It just happens that the very specific demographic that likes his music is also a demographic that has nothing but disposable income, oodles of time to waste listening to bad music, immature musical tastes, and a greater need to follow the crowd than any other age group. Their customers are fools with nothing they're saving their money for. That makes it the most profitable sector of the music industry, and that's why they're the most influential.
It has nothing to do with popularity among most people.
Uh, a lot of it is due to entitlements to police and fire unions. Which are decidedly pro-republican. Both parties like buying the vote with promises of costly entitlements. California is no exception, police unions are super pro-republicans and vice versa.
To pay for the ridiculous payouts promised, the government would have to raise taxes or cut other programs that they've already promised. So yeah, taxes being unable to be raised is a compounding problem. If taxes WERE raised after unions were promised too much money, maybe the practice would have been voted out long ago.
Hotly anticipated titles within a week of release get a not-too-bad return, since the demand is so high. Everything else, yeah, you get like a quarter of the price you paid for it new.
I worked at a gamestop for a summer. If that store was representative of gamestops elsewhere, they make their money on 12 to 18 year olds guys who have nothing but disposable income, buy electronic toys when they first come out at high prices, then get tired of them and would rather get a fraction of the price back than let the thing rot in their closet. They buy that stuff and sell to other 12 to 18 year olds at a markup.
That group isn't going anywhere anytime soon, sure, iphones might be the next thing, but I'm skeptical that they can make the same profit margin or sales volumes as they did with used games. I'm sure people are buying used iDevices at gamestop, but I can't see it ever eclipsing new sales, authorized refurbishers, or direct from apple. Gamestop is going to shrink as a result of this no matter how much they diversify.
It also means there's no returning a stinker though. It's rare that I buy a game soon after it comes out. It's also rare that a game I'm counting down the days until release turns out to be bad, but it has happened. Kingdom hearts 2 for example, I bought it new the day after it was released, and sold it back to gamestop about a week later. I really hated it, but ended up spending less than $10 on it because I was able to sell it back.
Not saying it helps overall, but in a few rare cases it does work out better for us.
TF classic is more of an exception than a rule. Oftentimes with games that have tacked on multiplayer, it becomes a ghost town long before the servers are taken down. GTA IV, I hopped on multiplayer maybe two years after it had come out. Aside from free roam, no one was playing. Doesn't matter if the servers are still up if no one is playing.
Presumably, any games with multiplayer options that are dead, the pricing will have to reflect that.
You simply restated GP's point without elaborating. How can you be so sure? It would be one thing if we were voting. But we're not. You can't really act like voting can't solve the problem when we haven't tried it.
According to this, voter turnout only barely gets over 50% during presidential elections. During off-years, it's down below 40%. I'm guessing voter turnout is even lower for primaries, which is, of course, where most of the decision-making for most elected positions are made.
Violent revolution is the only way to get rid of the corruption? I don't see how you can say that. We haven't really given voting a fair shot. Furthermore, if we're too lazy to bother voting, I don't really see us doing a revolution right. I'm dead certain we'd end up at the exact same place in a few years, just short a good chunk of the population.
You must not pay attention to national discourse on political issues today. Anything that is too long to fit on a bumper sticker is too long to pay attention to, even on very important issues. It's been like this for a while.
Security through obscurity: a $600 gun doesn't need any lock if it's in a closet and you don't have a sign out front saying "Gun is hidden in closet!" or kids.
And, aren't there some areas where legally you need to lock up your guns, even if you don't have kids and aren't too concerned about it getting stolen?
Yes, shot themselves in the gut. Everyone knows once google loses the war for dominance in 3D maps on iOS, it's only a matter of hours before they have to declare bankrupcy.
Out of curiosity, you haven't posted since 2008, you come back just to shill/troll for apple?
Can someone explain that one to me? Isn't DNS blocking so trivial to get around that even legislators were realizing it was a stupid waste of time with SOPA/PIPA? My understanding was that changing one number in the settings to go to openDNS would prevent that from doing anything.
Well, even if you were willing to alter your DNA in an effort to make biometric ID systems viable (and you would be insane), and even if you engineer a retrovirus that can reliably alter a given sequence in your DNA (they tend to insert their small payload at random locations in each cell) there's still the issue of your irises and fingerprints aren't based on DNA and certainly aren't maintained by continued DNA expression.
Transgenic mice are generally made by homologous recombination in single embryonic stem cells which are then turned into whole mice through a complicated process. So you would need to grow a new human to be able to manipulate DNA like we can in mice, and that's not been done yet. I have yet to hear about DNA sequences correlating to iris patterns, though it could be that no one is particularly interested in looking at something so trivial.
So... no. We can't. You could conceivably identify DNA regions that correlate to iris pattern, clone yourself and alter the DNA of the one-cell stage, make a chimeric male and female from that, have them mate, then get a fully transgenic human which you could then steal the irises from the abomination that would result and thereby change your iris pattern, but that would require you to break a whole lot of ethics, do several noble-prize level research accomplishments, and wait about 20 years for the two generations of clones to mature, all for something that would be lot simpler to do with a good model or printout.
How sure are you of the statistics behind that factoid? I've heard that among majors of students taking the MCAT, philosophy is often at the top of the list, with "pre-med" being average. That doesn't imply though that a philosophy degree will prepare you for med school better. It's more likely that only very exceptional people major in philosophy and then decide to take the MCAT, while the average or below people who want to go med school major in pre-med.
I'd guess a similar thing is going on there. The people who have no greater interest than teaching take the safe approach, while people who may be more interested in physics but decide to abandon it and go into teaching are more likely to be interesting people with active brains on their necks.
I guess the two explanations are not mutually exclusive, there could be some indoctrination in education degrees that encourages thinking inside the box too.
I'll turn in my nerd card, but first I have to admit to having never heard of either of those. Seems to me that hollywood picks up superhero movies because people have already heard of the characters. Marketing being the most important thing to studios. I was a little surprised that watchmen got made.
All these rehashes of old franchises and non-movies being turned into movies... there isn't a shortage of source material or even shortage of creative people who can make up ENTIRELY NEW stories and characters. There's just a shortage of companies willing to give big budgets to make such movies. The only way big budget movies get made seems to be that some people would buy their tickets based entirely off of the movie title.
I mean, spiderman 3. They don't seem to have even bothered hiring a writer, just took the name, threw in some actors from the previous movies, and added explosions and computer graphics, and sold it.
I was unclear. I was saying that as an agnostic, I don't see how either side are so sure of themselves. There's no clear evidence that I can see either way. So, to me, atheists and theists both are making unproven assertions of faith.
I wonder if you could just point out that atheism by some standards is just as much a religion as theism. You believe there are no gods, you can prove it only as much as one can prove there ARE gods.
I wonder how naturally an object oriented design worked out
I don't know the details, but if they really did replicate the results from a diverse range of 900 or so studies, then that to me says their simulation is pretty good.
I think "we" meant "biologists" there, and "THE storage medium" as "that a cell uses."
And that would be true, most biologists tend to assume that the nucleus is where the vast majority of the data of the cell is. We're aware that DNA is not the end all be all of the cell, but we often don't think about the other inputs into a cell's behavior as being as important. For instance, we often study isolated human cells isolated in a petri dish, and what changes when we turn off or on different genes. There's a lot to be learned there that isn't wrong, but we do know that cells typically behave very differently in their native context.
I'm blanking on the details, but there were reports that neurons migrating required some gene, based on how they moved in a culture system. You delete that gene, they don't migrate right in the dish. However, when people looked at what happened when you deleted that gene from a whole organism, their brain cell migration was fine. Perhaps the body provides information that makes that bit of DNA redundant. Realizing that DNA isn't the only information a cell responds to moves that initial discovery from pretty important to fairly trivial. Of course, factoring in all the different things acting on a cell is probably well beyond any human comprehension without the aid of a computer.
I don't think a press release in response to an online poll necessarily shows the DHS will never get smaller, I think it merely shows that we can't get rid of it by wishing. The whitehouse petitions are clearly a ploy to get young people interested in the Obama administration. Nothing more. The petitions are at best going to change some of Obama's speeches, nothing more. The fact that TSA responded is merely poor PR, it's not proof that voting (ACTUAL voting) can't get rid of DHS. Of course, most voters don't see the DHS as a bad thing, so the uphill battle is convincing them that DHS is bad.
I like G+ as well, but just don't see how it ever reaches critical mass, and even if it does, will it supplant facebook, or will it just become as annoying as facebook.
Maybe, but what annoys me about facebook is 1. the friend requests I have accepted on facebook when I was new to it, not going to make that mistake again, and 2. the design of facebook. Other google services have managed not to annoy me so far.
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You assume and make an ass of yourself. I'm not opposed to reasonable pensions. I'm opposed to the government promising pensions the government can't pay for.
The rich getting richer is another problem, but we were talking about California's budget here. Not everything that is wrong with the economy and government.
Justin Beiber wouldn't be popular unless a lot of people actually liked his music, as hard as that is to believe.
No, I think most people dislike Justin Bieber. It just happens that the very specific demographic that likes his music is also a demographic that has nothing but disposable income, oodles of time to waste listening to bad music, immature musical tastes, and a greater need to follow the crowd than any other age group. Their customers are fools with nothing they're saving their money for. That makes it the most profitable sector of the music industry, and that's why they're the most influential.
It has nothing to do with popularity among most people.
Uh, a lot of it is due to entitlements to police and fire unions. Which are decidedly pro-republican. Both parties like buying the vote with promises of costly entitlements. California is no exception, police unions are super pro-republicans and vice versa.
To pay for the ridiculous payouts promised, the government would have to raise taxes or cut other programs that they've already promised. So yeah, taxes being unable to be raised is a compounding problem. If taxes WERE raised after unions were promised too much money, maybe the practice would have been voted out long ago.
Hotly anticipated titles within a week of release get a not-too-bad return, since the demand is so high. Everything else, yeah, you get like a quarter of the price you paid for it new.
I worked at a gamestop for a summer. If that store was representative of gamestops elsewhere, they make their money on 12 to 18 year olds guys who have nothing but disposable income, buy electronic toys when they first come out at high prices, then get tired of them and would rather get a fraction of the price back than let the thing rot in their closet. They buy that stuff and sell to other 12 to 18 year olds at a markup.
That group isn't going anywhere anytime soon, sure, iphones might be the next thing, but I'm skeptical that they can make the same profit margin or sales volumes as they did with used games. I'm sure people are buying used iDevices at gamestop, but I can't see it ever eclipsing new sales, authorized refurbishers, or direct from apple. Gamestop is going to shrink as a result of this no matter how much they diversify.
It also means there's no returning a stinker though. It's rare that I buy a game soon after it comes out. It's also rare that a game I'm counting down the days until release turns out to be bad, but it has happened. Kingdom hearts 2 for example, I bought it new the day after it was released, and sold it back to gamestop about a week later. I really hated it, but ended up spending less than $10 on it because I was able to sell it back.
Not saying it helps overall, but in a few rare cases it does work out better for us.
TF classic is more of an exception than a rule. Oftentimes with games that have tacked on multiplayer, it becomes a ghost town long before the servers are taken down. GTA IV, I hopped on multiplayer maybe two years after it had come out. Aside from free roam, no one was playing. Doesn't matter if the servers are still up if no one is playing.
Presumably, any games with multiplayer options that are dead, the pricing will have to reflect that.
You simply restated GP's point without elaborating. How can you be so sure? It would be one thing if we were voting. But we're not. You can't really act like voting can't solve the problem when we haven't tried it.
According to this, voter turnout only barely gets over 50% during presidential elections. During off-years, it's down below 40%. I'm guessing voter turnout is even lower for primaries, which is, of course, where most of the decision-making for most elected positions are made.
Violent revolution is the only way to get rid of the corruption? I don't see how you can say that. We haven't really given voting a fair shot. Furthermore, if we're too lazy to bother voting, I don't really see us doing a revolution right. I'm dead certain we'd end up at the exact same place in a few years, just short a good chunk of the population.
You must not pay attention to national discourse on political issues today. Anything that is too long to fit on a bumper sticker is too long to pay attention to, even on very important issues. It's been like this for a while.
TL:DR: yes.
Why protect a $600 gun with a $15 lockbox?
Security through obscurity: a $600 gun doesn't need any lock if it's in a closet and you don't have a sign out front saying "Gun is hidden in closet!" or kids.
And, aren't there some areas where legally you need to lock up your guns, even if you don't have kids and aren't too concerned about it getting stolen?
Yes, shot themselves in the gut. Everyone knows once google loses the war for dominance in 3D maps on iOS, it's only a matter of hours before they have to declare bankrupcy.
Out of curiosity, you haven't posted since 2008, you come back just to shill/troll for apple?
He had to refuel twice.
Can someone explain that one to me? Isn't DNS blocking so trivial to get around that even legislators were realizing it was a stupid waste of time with SOPA/PIPA? My understanding was that changing one number in the settings to go to openDNS would prevent that from doing anything.
Well, even if you were willing to alter your DNA in an effort to make biometric ID systems viable (and you would be insane), and even if you engineer a retrovirus that can reliably alter a given sequence in your DNA (they tend to insert their small payload at random locations in each cell) there's still the issue of your irises and fingerprints aren't based on DNA and certainly aren't maintained by continued DNA expression.
Transgenic mice are generally made by homologous recombination in single embryonic stem cells which are then turned into whole mice through a complicated process. So you would need to grow a new human to be able to manipulate DNA like we can in mice, and that's not been done yet. I have yet to hear about DNA sequences correlating to iris patterns, though it could be that no one is particularly interested in looking at something so trivial.
So... no. We can't. You could conceivably identify DNA regions that correlate to iris pattern, clone yourself and alter the DNA of the one-cell stage, make a chimeric male and female from that, have them mate, then get a fully transgenic human which you could then steal the irises from the abomination that would result and thereby change your iris pattern, but that would require you to break a whole lot of ethics, do several noble-prize level research accomplishments, and wait about 20 years for the two generations of clones to mature, all for something that would be lot simpler to do with a good model or printout.
How sure are you of the statistics behind that factoid? I've heard that among majors of students taking the MCAT, philosophy is often at the top of the list, with "pre-med" being average. That doesn't imply though that a philosophy degree will prepare you for med school better. It's more likely that only very exceptional people major in philosophy and then decide to take the MCAT, while the average or below people who want to go med school major in pre-med.
I'd guess a similar thing is going on there. The people who have no greater interest than teaching take the safe approach, while people who may be more interested in physics but decide to abandon it and go into teaching are more likely to be interesting people with active brains on their necks.
I guess the two explanations are not mutually exclusive, there could be some indoctrination in education degrees that encourages thinking inside the box too.
I'll turn in my nerd card, but first I have to admit to having never heard of either of those. Seems to me that hollywood picks up superhero movies because people have already heard of the characters. Marketing being the most important thing to studios. I was a little surprised that watchmen got made.
All these rehashes of old franchises and non-movies being turned into movies... there isn't a shortage of source material or even shortage of creative people who can make up ENTIRELY NEW stories and characters. There's just a shortage of companies willing to give big budgets to make such movies. The only way big budget movies get made seems to be that some people would buy their tickets based entirely off of the movie title.
I mean, spiderman 3. They don't seem to have even bothered hiring a writer, just took the name, threw in some actors from the previous movies, and added explosions and computer graphics, and sold it.
I was unclear. I was saying that as an agnostic, I don't see how either side are so sure of themselves. There's no clear evidence that I can see either way. So, to me, atheists and theists both are making unproven assertions of faith.
Well, no, I'm an agnostic. I'm not convinced of either side. Anyone who says they know one way or the other must know something I don't.
I wonder if you could just point out that atheism by some standards is just as much a religion as theism. You believe there are no gods, you can prove it only as much as one can prove there ARE gods.
I wonder how naturally an object oriented design worked out
I don't know the details, but if they really did replicate the results from a diverse range of 900 or so studies, then that to me says their simulation is pretty good.
I think "we" meant "biologists" there, and "THE storage medium" as "that a cell uses."
And that would be true, most biologists tend to assume that the nucleus is where the vast majority of the data of the cell is. We're aware that DNA is not the end all be all of the cell, but we often don't think about the other inputs into a cell's behavior as being as important. For instance, we often study isolated human cells isolated in a petri dish, and what changes when we turn off or on different genes. There's a lot to be learned there that isn't wrong, but we do know that cells typically behave very differently in their native context.
I'm blanking on the details, but there were reports that neurons migrating required some gene, based on how they moved in a culture system. You delete that gene, they don't migrate right in the dish. However, when people looked at what happened when you deleted that gene from a whole organism, their brain cell migration was fine. Perhaps the body provides information that makes that bit of DNA redundant. Realizing that DNA isn't the only information a cell responds to moves that initial discovery from pretty important to fairly trivial. Of course, factoring in all the different things acting on a cell is probably well beyond any human comprehension without the aid of a computer.
I don't think a press release in response to an online poll necessarily shows the DHS will never get smaller, I think it merely shows that we can't get rid of it by wishing. The whitehouse petitions are clearly a ploy to get young people interested in the Obama administration. Nothing more. The petitions are at best going to change some of Obama's speeches, nothing more. The fact that TSA responded is merely poor PR, it's not proof that voting (ACTUAL voting) can't get rid of DHS. Of course, most voters don't see the DHS as a bad thing, so the uphill battle is convincing them that DHS is bad.
I know this much: the first one of them to start allowing you to blast shitty music on your friends' computers? Invest heavily in the other company.
I like G+ as well, but just don't see how it ever reaches critical mass, and even if it does, will it supplant facebook, or will it just become as annoying as facebook.
Maybe, but what annoys me about facebook is 1. the friend requests I have accepted on facebook when I was new to it, not going to make that mistake again, and 2. the design of facebook. Other google services have managed not to annoy me so far.