Right. So they agree that climate change is actually occurring, and there is not complete agreement over the cause, or more specifically how much humans are responsible. It may be obvious to many that the single largest threat to the habitability of the planet is people, but those pesky scientists always insist on evidence.
I hope they continue to invest in more economicly-friendly power generation, because over the last decade China's production and consumption of coal, and their share of the world's total CO2 output, has skyrocketed.
No it doesn't. If evolution simply meant change then we would call it change instead of evolution.
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations.
Notice that definition does not stop after the fourth word.
The gradual development of something, esp. from a simple to a more complex form.
A piece of a rock is no more complex than the whole rock. When something goes from a complex to a simple form we typically refer to that as devolution. Which is still not what the rock is doing. What the rock is doing is referred to as "breaking". If I crash my car and the doors fall off I don't claim that my car has just evolved. It's broken now, it's less than it was, it's not a higher being.
Fire does sorta throw water on the definition, though. It definitely "feeds", and reproduces in the sense of expanding. So do crystal formations, which aren't considered alive.
I'm not a biologist.
I think you can distinguish fire vs. life by metabolism. With metabolism, chemical processes inside the organism occur to fuel the organism. With fire, those processes do not happen within the flame, they happen inside the fuel. I can't think of an organism which fuels itself by chemically transforming fuel outside of its "body". This may be shaky, because you could argue that the chemical processes would not happen were it not for the presence of the flame. Fire doesn't sound like it fits the definition of metabolism though, unless you view the flame as simply the result of the metabolism and the organism itself which produces the fire through metabolizing the fuel is unknown.
With crystals growing in a liquid, matter which is dissolved in the surrounding liquid gets added to the crystal. There is no real chemical change that takes place, the dissolved particulates just coalesce on something else. When the liquid and its particulates is removed the crystal no longer grows, but the crystal itself does not take the particulates out of the liquid. The particulates simply adhere to the crystal (or any other structure on which the crystal starts).
It's pretty hard to justify confiscating a drive. If this is anything like the little 128MB version I've got, the "flight safe" version is where you physically detach the drive from the knife housing, and then you're only carrying the actual drive.
Since there is a separation between the two AHs it means that anything worthwhile will be only available on the money AH and the regular AH will be littered with trash items that people are hoping to pawn off.
Not if what the person with the "worthwhile" things only wants is in-game gold.
I guess, in conclusion to my own question, all I've seen from people are speculation that the auction house is going to be either bad or really bad, but a bunch of normal, casual gamers using it in a casual way is apparently not one of the possibilities. I don't see any negative effects of the existence of the auction house on a single-player game, and any negative effects on multiplayer are pure speculation instead of specific grievances. It seems like it would only enhance the game if my character has a bunch of gold and I decide to browse the auction house to see what I can use my gold for.
Anyway, I guess that answers my question. Most of the criticism has been the always-online connection and the auction house, but I don't see any reason why the auction house would be a negative. I seriously doubt that Blizzard would allow the thing to become the den of iniquity and corruption that people automatically assume it already is. Regardless, the lack of offline play is enough to make me look elsewhere for my games.
But what happens when the core items/content of a game become for-sale, where it is absolutely no longer adequate to simply buy the game in order to play it, but your enjoyment / ability to partake in the content is driven by how many dollars you put into the game?
Ah, answer a question with a question. I don't see how that relates to single-player gaming though, I'm not competing with anyone else.
And given that ActiBlizzard profits from the gold farmer activity, they will tweak the system to encourage their continued and active presence.
Again, I don't see how that negatively affects the single-player experience. Frankly, I don't see how it negatively affects the multi-player experience either. I've never run into a game where a "continued and active presence" by the community is considered a bad thing.
There are other arguments, but to me that is the main one. It gives them an incentive to tweak the game to drive profits rather than just make the best game they can.
I'm pretty sure that any developer not releasing everything for free has an incentive to drive profits. Most developers do that by making a quality game, and based on previous versions of Blizzard games I would imagine that they would also strive for that, regardless of any other profit makers.
Unless you want the good weapons, of course. Or the gear good enough to get the good weapons.
So you're just assuming that the best items are going to be listed in the auction house, presumably sold directly by Blizzard, and will not be obtainable in the actual game? That's some pretty serious speculation.
What's the negative aspect of the auction house? From what I see there's one auction house that uses in-game gold and another that uses real currency, and as far as I can tell neither of them are required for a player to use.
Nice. I've never been selected for screening while not wearing that shirt, and I have been selected with it on. Maybe it's truly random, but I can't help but die a little bit inside when government agents look at me with suspicion because I'm wearing a shirt with a very true observation from one of the founders of our country.
I typically don't respond to personal attacks, but let me just say that I do not accept the tradeoff of my rights in the name of security. I never have accepted that, and I never will. I'm interested in discussing the issues around the TSA (specifically, how to get rid of DHS), and I'll play the devil's advocate, but don't think that because of that you can lob insults at me and assume I'm just standing by approving of everything the government does. I'm not the type of person who's the problem. I've seen those types of people in the security line, who are willing to do anything to just make it through the line, and I'm not one of them.
In the OP's question, the search most certainly *is* mandatory. He has been *ordered* by a police officer to comply, and has no reasonable freedom to walk away. He is, literally, under arrest at this point.
The presence of a police officer wasn't stated, and the government has taken steps to make it clear that TSA are not police and do not have their authority. The TSA cannot arrest you, if they think you've broken a law they call an actual police officer to arrest you.
Technically, that's right. I would say that an amendment is needed to clarify the freedom of movement issue with regard to modes of transportation. It's been too long since we've had an amendment. I think it's time to update the letter of the law for today's world to match the spirit in which it was drafted.
I appreciate everyone questioning my intelligence, but I'm only playing the devil's advocate here.
People are not secure in their persons, and there is no warrants being issued, with our without probable cause, let alone sworn.
People are secure, because the search is not mandatory, and they don't need a warrant when they ask and you agree.
I completely disagree with the entire approach of the TSA, but I'm not sure it's unconstitutional. But that doesn't stop me from wearing my Benjamin Franklin quote t-shirt to the airport and demanding they cup by balls instead of nuke them.
No, but moving around from place to place IS a right.
No one's freedom of movement is being restricted, only the methods that they use to move. Like was said above, the letter of the law is upheld even if the spirit is not.
That's fine, but that doesn't mean that all OSs are free, just like not all web browsers are free. It's a strange thing, but various companies and vendors are actually able to choose the terms for their own products.
But there's already an OS that's better than Windows that's available free with source, so this is not an unreasonable expectation any more. Even more importantly, there's not one but two web browsers that are available for free with source which are both better than IE, so it's unreasonable for IE to not have these same terms.
First, your claims of superiority are completely subjective, and second, who are you to define what is and is not reasonable? If you want to claim that there is an OS that is better than Windows, then name the OS and show some sort of evidence to back up your claim. If company X's business model says that their software is proprietary, who are you to say that's not reasonable? If the software has no value, or if everything the software does can be duplicated by free software, then they wouldn't have any customers. Which is the most popular desktop OS again?
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Right. So they agree that climate change is actually occurring, and there is not complete agreement over the cause, or more specifically how much humans are responsible. It may be obvious to many that the single largest threat to the habitability of the planet is people, but those pesky scientists always insist on evidence.
I hope they continue to invest in more economicly-friendly power generation, because over the last decade China's production and consumption of coal, and their share of the world's total CO2 output, has skyrocketed.
Evolution simply means change.
No it doesn't. If evolution simply meant change then we would call it change instead of evolution.
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations.
Notice that definition does not stop after the fourth word.
The gradual development of something, esp. from a simple to a more complex form.
A piece of a rock is no more complex than the whole rock. When something goes from a complex to a simple form we typically refer to that as devolution. Which is still not what the rock is doing. What the rock is doing is referred to as "breaking". If I crash my car and the doors fall off I don't claim that my car has just evolved. It's broken now, it's less than it was, it's not a higher being.
Ah. So life should be defined as anything that a puppy will bark at.
A mule is alive because it was created though reproduction. Sterility does not mean that something is not alive.
Fire does sorta throw water on the definition, though. It definitely "feeds", and reproduces in the sense of expanding. So do crystal formations, which aren't considered alive.
I'm not a biologist.
I think you can distinguish fire vs. life by metabolism. With metabolism, chemical processes inside the organism occur to fuel the organism. With fire, those processes do not happen within the flame, they happen inside the fuel. I can't think of an organism which fuels itself by chemically transforming fuel outside of its "body". This may be shaky, because you could argue that the chemical processes would not happen were it not for the presence of the flame. Fire doesn't sound like it fits the definition of metabolism though, unless you view the flame as simply the result of the metabolism and the organism itself which produces the fire through metabolizing the fuel is unknown.
With crystals growing in a liquid, matter which is dissolved in the surrounding liquid gets added to the crystal. There is no real chemical change that takes place, the dissolved particulates just coalesce on something else. When the liquid and its particulates is removed the crystal no longer grows, but the crystal itself does not take the particulates out of the liquid. The particulates simply adhere to the crystal (or any other structure on which the crystal starts).
There may even be planets that resemble the Tunisian desert, or Norwegian glaciers.
A rock falling and breaking is not evolution.
I was just trying to make the point that you're not flying with some sort of "flight-safe" knife, you're probably able to detach the actual drive.
It's pretty hard to justify confiscating a drive. If this is anything like the little 128MB version I've got, the "flight safe" version is where you physically detach the drive from the knife housing, and then you're only carrying the actual drive.
Since there is a separation between the two AHs it means that anything worthwhile will be only available on the money AH and the regular AH will be littered with trash items that people are hoping to pawn off.
Not if what the person with the "worthwhile" things only wants is in-game gold.
I guess, in conclusion to my own question, all I've seen from people are speculation that the auction house is going to be either bad or really bad, but a bunch of normal, casual gamers using it in a casual way is apparently not one of the possibilities. I don't see any negative effects of the existence of the auction house on a single-player game, and any negative effects on multiplayer are pure speculation instead of specific grievances. It seems like it would only enhance the game if my character has a bunch of gold and I decide to browse the auction house to see what I can use my gold for.
Anyway, I guess that answers my question. Most of the criticism has been the always-online connection and the auction house, but I don't see any reason why the auction house would be a negative. I seriously doubt that Blizzard would allow the thing to become the den of iniquity and corruption that people automatically assume it already is. Regardless, the lack of offline play is enough to make me look elsewhere for my games.
But what happens when the core items/content of a game become for-sale, where it is absolutely no longer adequate to simply buy the game in order to play it, but your enjoyment / ability to partake in the content is driven by how many dollars you put into the game?
Ah, answer a question with a question. I don't see how that relates to single-player gaming though, I'm not competing with anyone else.
And given that ActiBlizzard profits from the gold farmer activity, they will tweak the system to encourage their continued and active presence.
Again, I don't see how that negatively affects the single-player experience. Frankly, I don't see how it negatively affects the multi-player experience either. I've never run into a game where a "continued and active presence" by the community is considered a bad thing.
There are other arguments, but to me that is the main one. It gives them an incentive to tweak the game to drive profits rather than just make the best game they can.
I'm pretty sure that any developer not releasing everything for free has an incentive to drive profits. Most developers do that by making a quality game, and based on previous versions of Blizzard games I would imagine that they would also strive for that, regardless of any other profit makers.
Unless you want the good weapons, of course. Or the gear good enough to get the good weapons.
So you're just assuming that the best items are going to be listed in the auction house, presumably sold directly by Blizzard, and will not be obtainable in the actual game? That's some pretty serious speculation.
What's the negative aspect of the auction house? From what I see there's one auction house that uses in-game gold and another that uses real currency, and as far as I can tell neither of them are required for a player to use.
Nice. I've never been selected for screening while not wearing that shirt, and I have been selected with it on. Maybe it's truly random, but I can't help but die a little bit inside when government agents look at me with suspicion because I'm wearing a shirt with a very true observation from one of the founders of our country.
I typically don't respond to personal attacks, but let me just say that I do not accept the tradeoff of my rights in the name of security. I never have accepted that, and I never will. I'm interested in discussing the issues around the TSA (specifically, how to get rid of DHS), and I'll play the devil's advocate, but don't think that because of that you can lob insults at me and assume I'm just standing by approving of everything the government does. I'm not the type of person who's the problem. I've seen those types of people in the security line, who are willing to do anything to just make it through the line, and I'm not one of them.
In the OP's question, the search most certainly *is* mandatory. He has been *ordered* by a police officer to comply, and has no reasonable freedom to walk away. He is, literally, under arrest at this point.
The presence of a police officer wasn't stated, and the government has taken steps to make it clear that TSA are not police and do not have their authority. The TSA cannot arrest you, if they think you've broken a law they call an actual police officer to arrest you.
Technically, that's right. I would say that an amendment is needed to clarify the freedom of movement issue with regard to modes of transportation. It's been too long since we've had an amendment. I think it's time to update the letter of the law for today's world to match the spirit in which it was drafted.
I appreciate everyone questioning my intelligence, but I'm only playing the devil's advocate here.
People are not secure in their persons, and there is no warrants being issued, with our without probable cause, let alone sworn.
People are secure, because the search is not mandatory, and they don't need a warrant when they ask and you agree.
I completely disagree with the entire approach of the TSA, but I'm not sure it's unconstitutional. But that doesn't stop me from wearing my Benjamin Franklin quote t-shirt to the airport and demanding they cup by balls instead of nuke them.
No, but moving around from place to place IS a right.
No one's freedom of movement is being restricted, only the methods that they use to move. Like was said above, the letter of the law is upheld even if the spirit is not.
Seeing as they just passed a defence bill allowing indefinite detention without trial for suspected terrorists, for now I would just go with it.
Factually incorrect.
That's incorrect, every word was truthful.
Man, debating rocks when you don't need to back anything up.
Possibly the lack of availability of a DVD image from Microsoft.
That's fine, but that doesn't mean that all OSs are free, just like not all web browsers are free. It's a strange thing, but various companies and vendors are actually able to choose the terms for their own products.
But there's already an OS that's better than Windows that's available free with source, so this is not an unreasonable expectation any more. Even more importantly, there's not one but two web browsers that are available for free with source which are both better than IE, so it's unreasonable for IE to not have these same terms.
First, your claims of superiority are completely subjective, and second, who are you to define what is and is not reasonable? If you want to claim that there is an OS that is better than Windows, then name the OS and show some sort of evidence to back up your claim. If company X's business model says that their software is proprietary, who are you to say that's not reasonable? If the software has no value, or if everything the software does can be duplicated by free software, then they wouldn't have any customers. Which is the most popular desktop OS again?