The armed forces swears to defend the constitution. It also swears to obey the orders according to the regulations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The duty to the defend the constitution is an absolute duty with no stipulations. The duty to obey a commanders order, with the president being the highest commander, is regulated and limited. The oath does not prevent disobey unlawful orders. The oath on the other hand does not give any wiggle room when it comes to defending the constitution. The constitution MUST be defended, but you can in some instances disobey an order without violating your oath.
OMFG, Google is trying to keep us from hearing about what THE MAN is doing? Quick, give me that link to that web site. In fact, while you are at it, lets quickly post about this crime in as many large news sites as possible.
*cough*PR stunt*cough*
Google doesn't give a shit. Google will index your nazi-prego-porn, anarchist revolution site, and your Google Sucks page. Far more likely is that they got delisted for good reasons, realize that this just scream conspiracy and publicity, and are dragging their heels on fixing whatever it is that has sent Google's crawler into a fit while they drum up as much publicity as they possible can by getting articles in Digg, Slashdot, and whatever high traffic sites they can find.
Don't worry, it isn't an evil government conspiracy to eat your babies.
When the US (or any other) government has full control of communications, democracy can very easily be circumvented.
The government already has full control over communications, it just doesn't exercise that control. The US government could merrily call up all the telco's and tell them to install their censorship software or else US soldiers will burn their buildings to the ground and kill and rape the families of all the employees (they could also just threaten them with banking sanctions). Coercing telco's into doing it is trivial. The government has the power.
The issue is the exercise of power. If the US government couldn't exercise the power no matter how badly they might want to. The courts merrily strike down anti-video game violence bills and would be even more emphatic in striking down censorship for political purposes. The 'government' is actually split into multiple branches, all of which love to grind against each other. The legislative and executive branches of government in particular are easily swept aside every 2 - 6 years.
Finally, if by some insanity a president refused to follow court orders and passed legislation without a legislative branch, the military would start refusing orders (the military swears and oath to the constitution, NOT the president) he would be promptly dragged out of the Whitehouse kicking and screaming... most likely by his own secret service.
There is a lot that keeps the US from being like North Korea. To is laughable to suggest other wise.
You think that's bad, wait until the US gets full control over the DNS root.
OMFG, that will be terrible! I bet the US will SHUT DOWN SLASHDOT. Now excuse me while I go look at prego-nazi-porn in one window while writing about how much of a TERRORIST GWB is.
Yeah, I am sure the US getting the keys to DNS root will be a whole hell of a lot worse then the Russian Federation clamping on the last vestiges of free media in the Russian state. Everyone knows that the US eats more babies the North Korea, China, and Russia... COMBINED.
"Soviet style" is when you round up a few million people without trial and make them slaves in work camps in some place very cold and do this such that the vast majority of them die before there 'term' (if they even got one) is up.
Take a fucking breather people. There are a lot of things to bitch about when it comes to the US and its direction. That said, the extreme hyperbole where you compare the Soviet Union justice system to the US makes you sound like an idiot not worth listening to.
I am not happy with the direction that the US is headed in many regards, but people need to screw their heads back on and get some perspective. The US is not Soviet Russia. Hell, it isn't even close to the Russian Federation or China. The US is still very much a liberal place to live, and in many regards far more liberal in some areas then Europe. The US has a long way to fall before it reaches the level of Russian Federation (much less the Soviet Union).
Incitement to hatred is not protected under the free speech in any democracy.
That simply is not true. In the US it absolutely is legal to 'incite hate'. Neo-nazi's, KKK, and all other manner of crazy fringe groups are allowed to freely distribute literature (calling it 'literature' might be a stretch) declaring that you should hate all the Jews, blacks, and Catholics. The only real line in the US is actively advocating murder. Even then, you need to be blatant. You can call for revolution without getting arrested, but telling someone to go kill someone else is indeed illegal.
You seem to forget everything on our planet and our universe takes part of a balance, so it's funny you say once we are gone the earth will be 'happy'.
If all humans are gone then we will be put back into the ecosystem as decomposition and everything we contribute (pollution as well as tree planting) will cease to be contributed and the planet will adjust to consider this. To disect these balances and understand them is Science. You seem to fail are reading comprehension. Try reading my post. I'll give you the summary version: cosmic forces are going to kill every thing on the planet at some point. After that, at some point the universe is going to tear itself apart. If you were to jump ahead trillions of years in the future, Earth (if it has not been swallowed by some other celestial body) will be a cold lifeless lump of rock in a universe that would be (from Earth's perspective) completely empty. If you were to look up at the sky, you would see nothing. There would be no heat anywhere except the minuscule amounts of background solar radiation still present.
Nature and universe are not about 'balance'. Only crystal wielding hippies are about balance. Nature and the universe on the other hand are destine to fizzle out. The only thing that can possibly prevent this would be an intelligent species with enough technological prowess to change the very laws of the universe.
Hey, global warming could turn out to be a good thing, in the long term.
Good for who? It isn't like Mother Nature is going to burst forth in forever happy animal utopia as soon as humans vanish. The Earth is going to keep getting hotter over the long term and we are actually going to run out of carbon dioxide. Once this happens, all life on the planet will promptly die. Should anything survive that, the Earth then gets turned into a molten ball of goo as the sun goes nova. After that the sun will dim and eventually wink out and Earth (if it has not already been flung off into the cosmos by some other body) will be a life less hunk of rock that will wander around for a few billion years until it is either sucked up by some other celestial body, or as it watches the lights in the universe wink out one by one as the universe accelerates away from itself into infinity.
As far as life is concerned, the only 'good' thing that can happen in the end is that some intelligent species bends the laws of physics and keeps the universe from tearing itself apart.
It is true that they take roughly the same amount of sand, but the semiconductor fab that it takes to make a 2GB chip is a few orders of magnitude more expensive to run. Making a 2GB chip is a significantly more difficult technical feat requiring dramatically new processing techniques. Raw materials is not what adds cost. The raw materials are cheap. The mutli-billion dollar fabs to build these things is what is expensive.
Breaking distance might very well be longer today, but that ignores many other features that make cares safer. Superior impact performance is the most obvious advantage that cars today have. Air bags, ABS, traction control systems, power steering, and piles of other features makes modern cars far safer then the cars of yesterday.
Further, it MUST be admitted that the speed limit of 65 on all roads is down right silly. 65 MPH might very well make sense on Mass Pike (though try telling that to Bostonians and you will get nothing but a Bostonian wave) because it is a busy and congested road. However, I can tell you that a speed limit on the dead flat and utterly empty stretches of rt 88 (expect for the speed traps that out number the actual cars) in upstate New York is down right stupid. Speed limits are not set because they are 'safe'. They are set nearly arbitrarily based upon some very basic and poor criteria.
If the government showed some sort of intelligence and flexibility in setting up speed limits, I would be inclined to obey them. As it is, I obey them as much as I have to avoid getting a ticket and other wise drive whatever I consider to be a safe speed.
That's exactly the point. Cars crumple to absorb energy that would otherwise transfer into your internal organs. Your best bet is to learn how to drive and avoid such situations in the first place. If you can't handle that, you really shouldn't have a license in the first place.
The other day I came to a T intersection. As I drove up, I had a green light. It had been green for a while, and it was still very much green as I started to go through and turn left. A big old hummer that very much had a big old red light that had been red for as long as my light had been green apparently decided that he didn't need to stop for red lights and blasted right through the intersections. He missed chopping my car if half by about 2 feet.
The point is that jack asses will be on the road. In all likelihood, if you drive in high traffic areas you will be in an accident in your life time, and there is a fair chance that you won't be at fault. Jack ass hummers that blast through red lights or uninsured women who rear end you when you are at a dead stop at a stop light (had that one happen to me) are going to make safety a question not of your driving ability, but of the safety features of your car.
Short of banning all non-compact cars at once off the road and causing a revolt in the US, any eco-friendly car needs to be roughly as safe as any other car on American roads.
The reason why cars can go faster then 65 is because people like me wouldn't buy one that can't. The simple fact is that the government fucking sucks at regulating the roads. They have not changed the speed limit in decades, yet cars today are significantly safer beasts then they were when the 65 MPH rule was put in place. No one wants to touch the speed limits. Federal government doesn't want to change the speed limits because they are incompetent. State officials don't want to change them because they fund the police force via speeding tickets. The net result is that you have a stupid government regulation that won't die.
Despite what the government says, the speed limit on Mass Pike is NOT 65 MPH unless you want to get rear-ended. It is more like 85. The speed limit on rt 88 in upstate New York is indeed 65, but only because the local cops line this flat, straight, and empty highway nabbing anyone doing more then 5 over in an effort to fund their local station. The speed limit on the Kennedy in Chicago is well, it is always like 5 MPH regardless of what the government says. I hate that god damn slow moving parking lot.
My point is this. If you tried to sell me a car that can't break 65 or 75, I (and most other Americans who don't live in a city) wouldn't buy it. Most Americans regularly ignore the post speed limits that seem to all magically top at 65 regardless of the actual circumstances of the road. Thankfully, car companies make cars to satisfy real needs, unlike the government which doesn't need to change its attitude until there people are suddenly getting elected on the single issue of speed limits, which even for American voters is a pretty unlikely act of stupidity.
I'll start laughing when iTunes lets indie labels sell at 99 cents DRM free. Until then, sinking the DRM free music by charging a higher price is not going to get an applause from me. The fact that iTunes will let EMI strip their songs of DRM (at a higher price of course) begs the question as to why in the hell they wont let indie labels do it.
The idea that Apple would sell non-DRMed music is laughable. DRM is what keeps the iTunes locked to iPods, and iPods locked to iTunes. It isn't like Apple has been begging other companies to let them strip the DRM from their products. On the contrary, indie labels that use iTunes have been begging Apple for years to let them sell their music DRM free and Apple has shown absolutely no interest in doing so.
Personally, I call April Fools. The day Apple doesn't try and tie hardware, software, and content all together is the day hell freezes over. If Apple really wanted to strip DRM from some of their music, they would have already done so for the labels that are begging for it.
I don't disagree with anything you have said. There is without a doubt a market for the current crop of MMORPGs, and I don't think that any alternatives would cut much into their business. I don't advocate burning the WoW servers because I don't like that style of gameplay.
That said, I think that there is a lot of people out there that are untapped. Lots of people have read some good old fashion Cyberpunk and completely get off on the idea of massive online (fantasy or otherwise) worlds where people fight, socialize, and in general contribute to a living and breathing world. These people step foot into WoW and don't see a living and breathing world with interesting stuff happening to take part in. They same a lame world where people kill NPCs 24/7 so that they can go kill bigger NPCs. The entire idea that the core of the game is to slaughtered literally thousands or tens of thousands of NPCs ruins whatever visions of a fantasy world they had.
It isn't that people want a FPS, a chess game, or whatever. It is that many people step into these worlds expecting to step into some grand fantasy world where things happen. Being told to go 10,000 NPCs and then they can go kill some really big NPCs, for many people, does not even begin to mesh with their vision of what a massive online world is supposed to be.
So, I agree, clearly there are lots of people who find WoW and EverQuest style games to be their drug of choice, but for many other people, it looks nothing like a Massive Online fantasy world and more like some sick demented treadmill with no purpose.
At the risk of repeating myself, since when did "Role Playing" come to mean "leveling and stats". Do yourself a favor and play a REAL Role Playing game without levels. RPG only came to mean "level and stats" because making a real RPG is hard and it is a hell of a lot easier to copy a D&D combat and advancement system almost verbatim then develop a RPG.
Only in a world with its mind rotted by D&D does "RPG" (that is Role Play Game for people who have forgotten) mean "kill shit 4 experience n u get levels, w00t".
If you think that killing bunnies to get levels is what makes a game for you, then there really is nothing that needs fixing. The current crop of MMORPGs with the possible exception of old UO follow this formula with minor variations. If this is what you want, you got it. The next "generation" if MMORPGs will almost certainly regurgitate this tried and true idea that the point of the game is to kill stuff and get more powerful, rinse and repeat until you cap out or burn out.
Personally, I think that more can be done. The idea of a massive online fantasy world with a coherent theme is not a bad one. The problem is that 'massive online fantasy world' has been tied at the balls with to hack and slash D&D. I want to see an MMORPG where the RPG stands for Role Playing Game, not D&D Leveling Game. I am open to all sorts of ways of accomplishing this. I am just sick to death of "RPG" meaning "D&D Leveling Game".
No one said a player skill (vs character skill) based game needs to be a fiercely competitive PvP game. Further, there is no reason to think that it should take one player skill to dominate. A thief might be playing a game where the 'skill' is vastly different from what a warrior or a mage uses.
Imagine if for warriors, the game was a FPS hack and slash. Charge the enemy lines, chop shit up, use your shield, slaughter, pillage, you know the game. CS with swords.
Imagine if for a thief, the game played more like the Thief series. You need to be patient, sneak around, and climb onto shit, sit in the shadows, and when you strike, do it from behind or with a bow. Your goal is to sneak into the enemy castle and open up the gates without getting caught... or just steal shit and ignore that whole battle going on.
Imagine if for a mage, the game was more like chess. The battle is raging for the castle. The warriors are tearing each other apart. Some thieves have slipped into the castle your are defending, and now you stand on the castle walls looking down. In the distance you see the enemies mages. You see them starting to cast in unison. It looks like they all agreed to cast a fog spell. It takes a good solid minute, for them to cast, but once the time is up a fog is going to descend on the battlefield rendering your archers useless. Seeing what they are up to your side quickly decides to throw down a chilling air spell. As the fog starts to descend on the battlefield, your freeze spell turns it into ice. Your archers are still working fine, but now all the warriors have to content with a slippery battlefield, which is no good for the sieging force. In response, half of the attackers start trying to heat the battle field up, while the other half start summoning bats to harass your casters and keep them from responding properly. Your side splits their efforts with a handful trying to keep the air cool so that the fog doesn't come back too fast, while another group sets about taking care of the bats, and a final group starts lobbing slow moving, but very much lethal fireballs to break up enemy formations.
The point is to give multiple options... not just make the game one big FPS. It doesn't even need to be competitive. One side could very well be NPCs and the other a band of merry adventures. The point is that it shouldn't take a complete lack of a life in order to jump and get your hands bloody. Further, the game should be fun in it of itself, not because players are like crack addicts desperate for just 5 more exp.
Time wasted^3 + experience = power
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Rethinking the MMOG
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· Score: 5, Interesting
When I used to play chess against someone who knows what they are doing, I tended to get my ass handed to me. I didn't play chess all that often, so this should not come as a surprise. For one summer, I played chess a lot. I actually got pretty decent at the game and could hold my own against most people instead of the usual ass kicking I came to expect. Even today (now out of practice) I can put up a decent fight. The same goes for FPS, even ones I have never played. Why is it that I can pick up either of these games after having not played for a while and if not dominate, at least hold my own?
The answer is simple. These are games of skill. If I decided to play chess or Counter Strike against someone who had been playing it for 2 years straight, they might kick my ass, but not because they have a super Queen that can teleport across the game board while I only have pawns, nor because everyone else starts out with shoot-through-walls rail guns while I start with a knife.
Playing most MMORPGs is like playing chess against someone with a teleporting queen while you get three pawns, or playing Counter strike where you start with a knife and everyone else gets instant kill rapid fire laser guns. MMORPGs stack the game against you twice. First, people who play more will be more skilled at playing (make sense, eh?). Second though, the game also rewards them a thousand times over for playing a lot. So, not only do you play with people who are more experienced, but have the MMORPG equivalent of teleporting Queens against your two pawns.
Start a n00b off in Counter Strike or Chess, and the n00b at least has the possibility of winning. Take the most skilled WoW player in existence, give him a level 1 character, and make him fight a level 60 no matter what happens, the level 60 will always win.
This is the reason why a lot of people loath MMORPGs. I love the idea of a massive online world with other players to interact with, quest with, and fight with (or against). What I hate is that MMORPGs unlike most other multiplayer games, is that MMORPGs DEMAND that you spend thousands of hours of your life in them before you are even given something that kinda-sorta resembles and even footing with the top players.
Why can't we have an MMORPG where the older and more experience are not given the double bonus of l33t stats and equipment in addition to superior skill at playing that they should have developed?
Hell, I'll answer the question. The reason why MMORPGs used this worthless system is because they have simple and basic gameplay. If in an MMORPG your stats/numbers/equipment didn't constantly slide upwards, people would simply quit the game. The game play is so dull that MMORPGs need to rely on addiction to seeing stats go up to keep people in these games. Take out of the 'achievement' aspect that comes with killing 10,000 kobolds and people would not suffer the horrible and repetitive gamplay of an MMORPG. The gameplay of MMORPGs does not stand on its own for very long. Hence, we have piles of MMORPGs with atrocious game play that retain players by keeping them addicted to the 'achievement' aspect of their repetitive gameplay.
When you see an MMORPG that can stand on the merits of its actual game play and not rely on hopeless addiction to watching stats slowly tick up, you will be seeing the first TRUE second generation MMORPG... not the copy cat Everquest crap that is spaming the market right now.
No, autos are the least interesting reason to invent new batteries. Automobiles need energy dense, quick to charge batteries far more then they need eco-friendly batteries. Don't get me wrong, environmentally friendly batteries would be nice, but that means starting over at square one with a new technology. It is far more likely that we will be able to squeeze enough out of an old technology by modifying it in some way to achieve what we need. The eco-friendly stuff will come after the roads are clogged with less-then-friendly battery powered cars.
The idea is neat and has been around for some time, but the article fails to answer some pretty basic questions. The most important question is if they can actually get these batteries to pump out enough juice to power anything of importance. They said that they got the battery to run a calculator, but calculators are EXTREMELY low powered devices. The fact that you can run a calculator with a tiny primitive solar strip gives you an idea of how little power some calculators actually need. When they get one of these batteries (even a large one) powering a MP3 player, I will be impressed. Until then, I am deeply skeptical that there is anything to this.
The other issue here is size. Even if they can pump out enough juice, they need the batteries to be small to be useful in most modern applications. The batteries for most electronic devices need to very small. There might be a niche market for this sort of thing, but I am very skeptical it is going to make any sort of splash in the consumer electronics field.
Sure, your scenario might happen. There is an alternative though. It could be that when they got to renegotiate and Apple stands firm that the labels pulls out and iTunes gets tossed into the shitter.
The alternative is that Apple stands firm, strips the DRM from their music because they no longer have any lame excuses to keep it, and continues to sell music from indie labels at a reasonable price without DRM. Apple's massive market share then leads sudden boom for these independent labels as they become the only option. Artist would suddenly have the choice as to which label they want as the indie labels would have cash too. Consumers could also get a choice, as they could take the new reasonably priced DRM free music, or they could change to a service with DRM and a crappy price. You would actually get some healthy competition going on. If the competition was healthy enough, just like how the old labels were tossed out when radio came around and they fought the new medium, the current crop of labels would then find themselves on the street.
Who cares if she read it. I could invoke Godwin's law, but I won't and will leave it up to your imagination.
My point is that I doubt she gives a shit what Jobs says. She is far more interested in what he actually does. Allowing DRM free music for the labels that want it would probably deflect a LOT of the criticism that Apple gets these days.
Spare me the excuses about how Apple can't do it because it is technical feat that is too hard for them. I read the same halfassed excuse too. I don't buy for a nanosecond that a company that can make dozens of OSes can't somehow figure out a way to tell iTunes to NOT slap DRM all over their music. Hell, the music isn't even stored in the iTunes server with DRM on it... it is packaged into the music as it is being sent out! If Apple can't figure out a way to turn off slapping DRM into their product, I will avoid buying anything with an Apple OS. If they can't solve that one minor technical problem in the few years iTunes has been out, I dread the difficulties they must have getting a decent OS to working.
All of that said, I am all for letting capitalism run its course. I think that Apple should be able to seal their music into whatever crappy format they want with whatever DRM they want. I think I should be able to legally crack that DRM open without DMCA laws trying to smack me down. If Apple doesn't want to sell its independent music DRM free, fine. Let's toss out the DMCA and let the market sort this shit out.
Explain your concerns to your supervisor via e-mail. By doing it with e-mail, you are making a record of your worries. This way, if any information is stolen, you can wave your e-mail around saying, "I told you so!" This leaves you in a pretty strong position to spearhead improvements to the system and score yourself a raise.
I would make a 5 slide presentation as to what your concerns are. Make it brief, but make the security concerns clear. Present this to your boss. If he still doesn't react... well, you tried. You have a record of your concerns and you clearly made a strong attempt to do something about it. The only thing you could possibly do after that is go over your bosses head. This generally is not a terribly wise idea if you want to stay with this company for the long term. You take a gamble when you go over your bosses head, and it is a gamble that a lot of people loose. Unless someone above your boss decides to champion your cause, you will just wind up with a boss that is pissed off at you who can make your life miserable. Even if a champion takes up your cause, unless they change who you report to, you still could have a boss pissed off at you.
I probably would not risk it unless you really don't care all that much if you get fired. Just do your best, make a record, and practice your smirk for when data is stolen... oh, and if data is stolen, be sure to forward your old e-mail to your bosses boss.
Slashdot Mirror
The armed forces swears to defend the constitution. It also swears to obey the orders according to the regulations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The duty to the defend the constitution is an absolute duty with no stipulations. The duty to obey a commanders order, with the president being the highest commander, is regulated and limited. The oath does not prevent disobey unlawful orders. The oath on the other hand does not give any wiggle room when it comes to defending the constitution. The constitution MUST be defended, but you can in some instances disobey an order without violating your oath.
OMFG, Google is trying to keep us from hearing about what THE MAN is doing? Quick, give me that link to that web site. In fact, while you are at it, lets quickly post about this crime in as many large news sites as possible.
*cough*PR stunt*cough*
Google doesn't give a shit. Google will index your nazi-prego-porn, anarchist revolution site, and your Google Sucks page. Far more likely is that they got delisted for good reasons, realize that this just scream conspiracy and publicity, and are dragging their heels on fixing whatever it is that has sent Google's crawler into a fit while they drum up as much publicity as they possible can by getting articles in Digg, Slashdot, and whatever high traffic sites they can find.
Don't worry, it isn't an evil government conspiracy to eat your babies.
When the US (or any other) government has full control of communications, democracy can very easily be circumvented.
The government already has full control over communications, it just doesn't exercise that control. The US government could merrily call up all the telco's and tell them to install their censorship software or else US soldiers will burn their buildings to the ground and kill and rape the families of all the employees (they could also just threaten them with banking sanctions). Coercing telco's into doing it is trivial. The government has the power.
The issue is the exercise of power. If the US government couldn't exercise the power no matter how badly they might want to. The courts merrily strike down anti-video game violence bills and would be even more emphatic in striking down censorship for political purposes. The 'government' is actually split into multiple branches, all of which love to grind against each other. The legislative and executive branches of government in particular are easily swept aside every 2 - 6 years.
Finally, if by some insanity a president refused to follow court orders and passed legislation without a legislative branch, the military would start refusing orders (the military swears and oath to the constitution, NOT the president) he would be promptly dragged out of the Whitehouse kicking and screaming... most likely by his own secret service.
There is a lot that keeps the US from being like North Korea. To is laughable to suggest other wise.
You think that's bad, wait until the US gets full control over the DNS root.
OMFG, that will be terrible! I bet the US will SHUT DOWN SLASHDOT. Now excuse me while I go look at prego-nazi-porn in one window while writing about how much of a TERRORIST GWB is.
Yeah, I am sure the US getting the keys to DNS root will be a whole hell of a lot worse then the Russian Federation clamping on the last vestiges of free media in the Russian state. Everyone knows that the US eats more babies the North Korea, China, and Russia... COMBINED.
"Soviet style" is when you round up a few million people without trial and make them slaves in work camps in some place very cold and do this such that the vast majority of them die before there 'term' (if they even got one) is up.
Take a fucking breather people. There are a lot of things to bitch about when it comes to the US and its direction. That said, the extreme hyperbole where you compare the Soviet Union justice system to the US makes you sound like an idiot not worth listening to.
I am not happy with the direction that the US is headed in many regards, but people need to screw their heads back on and get some perspective. The US is not Soviet Russia. Hell, it isn't even close to the Russian Federation or China. The US is still very much a liberal place to live, and in many regards far more liberal in some areas then Europe. The US has a long way to fall before it reaches the level of Russian Federation (much less the Soviet Union).
Incitement to hatred is not protected under the free speech in any democracy.
That simply is not true. In the US it absolutely is legal to 'incite hate'. Neo-nazi's, KKK, and all other manner of crazy fringe groups are allowed to freely distribute literature (calling it 'literature' might be a stretch) declaring that you should hate all the Jews, blacks, and Catholics. The only real line in the US is actively advocating murder. Even then, you need to be blatant. You can call for revolution without getting arrested, but telling someone to go kill someone else is indeed illegal.
If all humans are gone then we will be put back into the ecosystem as decomposition and everything we contribute (pollution as well as tree planting) will cease to be contributed and the planet will adjust to consider this. To disect these balances and understand them is Science. You seem to fail are reading comprehension. Try reading my post. I'll give you the summary version: cosmic forces are going to kill every thing on the planet at some point. After that, at some point the universe is going to tear itself apart. If you were to jump ahead trillions of years in the future, Earth (if it has not been swallowed by some other celestial body) will be a cold lifeless lump of rock in a universe that would be (from Earth's perspective) completely empty. If you were to look up at the sky, you would see nothing. There would be no heat anywhere except the minuscule amounts of background solar radiation still present.
Nature and universe are not about 'balance'. Only crystal wielding hippies are about balance. Nature and the universe on the other hand are destine to fizzle out. The only thing that can possibly prevent this would be an intelligent species with enough technological prowess to change the very laws of the universe.
Hey, global warming could turn out to be a good thing, in the long term.
Good for who? It isn't like Mother Nature is going to burst forth in forever happy animal utopia as soon as humans vanish. The Earth is going to keep getting hotter over the long term and we are actually going to run out of carbon dioxide. Once this happens, all life on the planet will promptly die. Should anything survive that, the Earth then gets turned into a molten ball of goo as the sun goes nova. After that the sun will dim and eventually wink out and Earth (if it has not already been flung off into the cosmos by some other body) will be a life less hunk of rock that will wander around for a few billion years until it is either sucked up by some other celestial body, or as it watches the lights in the universe wink out one by one as the universe accelerates away from itself into infinity.
As far as life is concerned, the only 'good' thing that can happen in the end is that some intelligent species bends the laws of physics and keeps the universe from tearing itself apart.
It is true that they take roughly the same amount of sand, but the semiconductor fab that it takes to make a 2GB chip is a few orders of magnitude more expensive to run. Making a 2GB chip is a significantly more difficult technical feat requiring dramatically new processing techniques. Raw materials is not what adds cost. The raw materials are cheap. The mutli-billion dollar fabs to build these things is what is expensive.
Breaking distance might very well be longer today, but that ignores many other features that make cares safer. Superior impact performance is the most obvious advantage that cars today have. Air bags, ABS, traction control systems, power steering, and piles of other features makes modern cars far safer then the cars of yesterday.
Further, it MUST be admitted that the speed limit of 65 on all roads is down right silly. 65 MPH might very well make sense on Mass Pike (though try telling that to Bostonians and you will get nothing but a Bostonian wave) because it is a busy and congested road. However, I can tell you that a speed limit on the dead flat and utterly empty stretches of rt 88 (expect for the speed traps that out number the actual cars) in upstate New York is down right stupid. Speed limits are not set because they are 'safe'. They are set nearly arbitrarily based upon some very basic and poor criteria.
If the government showed some sort of intelligence and flexibility in setting up speed limits, I would be inclined to obey them. As it is, I obey them as much as I have to avoid getting a ticket and other wise drive whatever I consider to be a safe speed.
That's exactly the point. Cars crumple to absorb energy that would otherwise transfer into your internal organs. Your best bet is to learn how to drive and avoid such situations in the first place. If you can't handle that, you really shouldn't have a license in the first place.
The other day I came to a T intersection. As I drove up, I had a green light. It had been green for a while, and it was still very much green as I started to go through and turn left. A big old hummer that very much had a big old red light that had been red for as long as my light had been green apparently decided that he didn't need to stop for red lights and blasted right through the intersections. He missed chopping my car if half by about 2 feet.
The point is that jack asses will be on the road. In all likelihood, if you drive in high traffic areas you will be in an accident in your life time, and there is a fair chance that you won't be at fault. Jack ass hummers that blast through red lights or uninsured women who rear end you when you are at a dead stop at a stop light (had that one happen to me) are going to make safety a question not of your driving ability, but of the safety features of your car.
Short of banning all non-compact cars at once off the road and causing a revolt in the US, any eco-friendly car needs to be roughly as safe as any other car on American roads.
The reason why cars can go faster then 65 is because people like me wouldn't buy one that can't. The simple fact is that the government fucking sucks at regulating the roads. They have not changed the speed limit in decades, yet cars today are significantly safer beasts then they were when the 65 MPH rule was put in place. No one wants to touch the speed limits. Federal government doesn't want to change the speed limits because they are incompetent. State officials don't want to change them because they fund the police force via speeding tickets. The net result is that you have a stupid government regulation that won't die.
Despite what the government says, the speed limit on Mass Pike is NOT 65 MPH unless you want to get rear-ended. It is more like 85. The speed limit on rt 88 in upstate New York is indeed 65, but only because the local cops line this flat, straight, and empty highway nabbing anyone doing more then 5 over in an effort to fund their local station. The speed limit on the Kennedy in Chicago is well, it is always like 5 MPH regardless of what the government says. I hate that god damn slow moving parking lot.
My point is this. If you tried to sell me a car that can't break 65 or 75, I (and most other Americans who don't live in a city) wouldn't buy it. Most Americans regularly ignore the post speed limits that seem to all magically top at 65 regardless of the actual circumstances of the road. Thankfully, car companies make cars to satisfy real needs, unlike the government which doesn't need to change its attitude until there people are suddenly getting elected on the single issue of speed limits, which even for American voters is a pretty unlikely act of stupidity.
I'll start laughing when iTunes lets indie labels sell at 99 cents DRM free. Until then, sinking the DRM free music by charging a higher price is not going to get an applause from me. The fact that iTunes will let EMI strip their songs of DRM (at a higher price of course) begs the question as to why in the hell they wont let indie labels do it.
The idea that Apple would sell non-DRMed music is laughable. DRM is what keeps the iTunes locked to iPods, and iPods locked to iTunes. It isn't like Apple has been begging other companies to let them strip the DRM from their products. On the contrary, indie labels that use iTunes have been begging Apple for years to let them sell their music DRM free and Apple has shown absolutely no interest in doing so.
Personally, I call April Fools. The day Apple doesn't try and tie hardware, software, and content all together is the day hell freezes over. If Apple really wanted to strip DRM from some of their music, they would have already done so for the labels that are begging for it.
...I come with a BS in Chemical Engineering, and I would have voted yes on that poll.
More stupid Americans means less competition for me.
I don't disagree with anything you have said. There is without a doubt a market for the current crop of MMORPGs, and I don't think that any alternatives would cut much into their business. I don't advocate burning the WoW servers because I don't like that style of gameplay.
That said, I think that there is a lot of people out there that are untapped. Lots of people have read some good old fashion Cyberpunk and completely get off on the idea of massive online (fantasy or otherwise) worlds where people fight, socialize, and in general contribute to a living and breathing world. These people step foot into WoW and don't see a living and breathing world with interesting stuff happening to take part in. They same a lame world where people kill NPCs 24/7 so that they can go kill bigger NPCs. The entire idea that the core of the game is to slaughtered literally thousands or tens of thousands of NPCs ruins whatever visions of a fantasy world they had.
It isn't that people want a FPS, a chess game, or whatever. It is that many people step into these worlds expecting to step into some grand fantasy world where things happen. Being told to go 10,000 NPCs and then they can go kill some really big NPCs, for many people, does not even begin to mesh with their vision of what a massive online world is supposed to be.
So, I agree, clearly there are lots of people who find WoW and EverQuest style games to be their drug of choice, but for many other people, it looks nothing like a Massive Online fantasy world and more like some sick demented treadmill with no purpose.
At the risk of repeating myself, since when did "Role Playing" come to mean "leveling and stats". Do yourself a favor and play a REAL Role Playing game without levels. RPG only came to mean "level and stats" because making a real RPG is hard and it is a hell of a lot easier to copy a D&D combat and advancement system almost verbatim then develop a RPG.
http://www.armageddon.org/
Only in a world with its mind rotted by D&D does "RPG" (that is Role Play Game for people who have forgotten) mean "kill shit 4 experience n u get levels, w00t".
If you think that killing bunnies to get levels is what makes a game for you, then there really is nothing that needs fixing. The current crop of MMORPGs with the possible exception of old UO follow this formula with minor variations. If this is what you want, you got it. The next "generation" if MMORPGs will almost certainly regurgitate this tried and true idea that the point of the game is to kill stuff and get more powerful, rinse and repeat until you cap out or burn out.
Personally, I think that more can be done. The idea of a massive online fantasy world with a coherent theme is not a bad one. The problem is that 'massive online fantasy world' has been tied at the balls with to hack and slash D&D. I want to see an MMORPG where the RPG stands for Role Playing Game, not D&D Leveling Game. I am open to all sorts of ways of accomplishing this. I am just sick to death of "RPG" meaning "D&D Leveling Game".
No one said a player skill (vs character skill) based game needs to be a fiercely competitive PvP game. Further, there is no reason to think that it should take one player skill to dominate. A thief might be playing a game where the 'skill' is vastly different from what a warrior or a mage uses.
Imagine if for warriors, the game was a FPS hack and slash. Charge the enemy lines, chop shit up, use your shield, slaughter, pillage, you know the game. CS with swords.
Imagine if for a thief, the game played more like the Thief series. You need to be patient, sneak around, and climb onto shit, sit in the shadows, and when you strike, do it from behind or with a bow. Your goal is to sneak into the enemy castle and open up the gates without getting caught... or just steal shit and ignore that whole battle going on.
Imagine if for a mage, the game was more like chess. The battle is raging for the castle. The warriors are tearing each other apart. Some thieves have slipped into the castle your are defending, and now you stand on the castle walls looking down. In the distance you see the enemies mages. You see them starting to cast in unison. It looks like they all agreed to cast a fog spell. It takes a good solid minute, for them to cast, but once the time is up a fog is going to descend on the battlefield rendering your archers useless. Seeing what they are up to your side quickly decides to throw down a chilling air spell. As the fog starts to descend on the battlefield, your freeze spell turns it into ice. Your archers are still working fine, but now all the warriors have to content with a slippery battlefield, which is no good for the sieging force. In response, half of the attackers start trying to heat the battle field up, while the other half start summoning bats to harass your casters and keep them from responding properly. Your side splits their efforts with a handful trying to keep the air cool so that the fog doesn't come back too fast, while another group sets about taking care of the bats, and a final group starts lobbing slow moving, but very much lethal fireballs to break up enemy formations.
The point is to give multiple options... not just make the game one big FPS. It doesn't even need to be competitive. One side could very well be NPCs and the other a band of merry adventures. The point is that it shouldn't take a complete lack of a life in order to jump and get your hands bloody. Further, the game should be fun in it of itself, not because players are like crack addicts desperate for just 5 more exp.
When I used to play chess against someone who knows what they are doing, I tended to get my ass handed to me. I didn't play chess all that often, so this should not come as a surprise. For one summer, I played chess a lot. I actually got pretty decent at the game and could hold my own against most people instead of the usual ass kicking I came to expect. Even today (now out of practice) I can put up a decent fight. The same goes for FPS, even ones I have never played. Why is it that I can pick up either of these games after having not played for a while and if not dominate, at least hold my own?
The answer is simple. These are games of skill. If I decided to play chess or Counter Strike against someone who had been playing it for 2 years straight, they might kick my ass, but not because they have a super Queen that can teleport across the game board while I only have pawns, nor because everyone else starts out with shoot-through-walls rail guns while I start with a knife.
Playing most MMORPGs is like playing chess against someone with a teleporting queen while you get three pawns, or playing Counter strike where you start with a knife and everyone else gets instant kill rapid fire laser guns. MMORPGs stack the game against you twice. First, people who play more will be more skilled at playing (make sense, eh?). Second though, the game also rewards them a thousand times over for playing a lot. So, not only do you play with people who are more experienced, but have the MMORPG equivalent of teleporting Queens against your two pawns.
Start a n00b off in Counter Strike or Chess, and the n00b at least has the possibility of winning. Take the most skilled WoW player in existence, give him a level 1 character, and make him fight a level 60 no matter what happens, the level 60 will always win.
This is the reason why a lot of people loath MMORPGs. I love the idea of a massive online world with other players to interact with, quest with, and fight with (or against). What I hate is that MMORPGs unlike most other multiplayer games, is that MMORPGs DEMAND that you spend thousands of hours of your life in them before you are even given something that kinda-sorta resembles and even footing with the top players.
Why can't we have an MMORPG where the older and more experience are not given the double bonus of l33t stats and equipment in addition to superior skill at playing that they should have developed?
Hell, I'll answer the question. The reason why MMORPGs used this worthless system is because they have simple and basic gameplay. If in an MMORPG your stats/numbers/equipment didn't constantly slide upwards, people would simply quit the game. The game play is so dull that MMORPGs need to rely on addiction to seeing stats go up to keep people in these games. Take out of the 'achievement' aspect that comes with killing 10,000 kobolds and people would not suffer the horrible and repetitive gamplay of an MMORPG. The gameplay of MMORPGs does not stand on its own for very long. Hence, we have piles of MMORPGs with atrocious game play that retain players by keeping them addicted to the 'achievement' aspect of their repetitive gameplay.
When you see an MMORPG that can stand on the merits of its actual game play and not rely on hopeless addiction to watching stats slowly tick up, you will be seeing the first TRUE second generation MMORPG... not the copy cat Everquest crap that is spaming the market right now.
No, autos are the least interesting reason to invent new batteries. Automobiles need energy dense, quick to charge batteries far more then they need eco-friendly batteries. Don't get me wrong, environmentally friendly batteries would be nice, but that means starting over at square one with a new technology. It is far more likely that we will be able to squeeze enough out of an old technology by modifying it in some way to achieve what we need. The eco-friendly stuff will come after the roads are clogged with less-then-friendly battery powered cars.
The idea is neat and has been around for some time, but the article fails to answer some pretty basic questions. The most important question is if they can actually get these batteries to pump out enough juice to power anything of importance. They said that they got the battery to run a calculator, but calculators are EXTREMELY low powered devices. The fact that you can run a calculator with a tiny primitive solar strip gives you an idea of how little power some calculators actually need. When they get one of these batteries (even a large one) powering a MP3 player, I will be impressed. Until then, I am deeply skeptical that there is anything to this.
The other issue here is size. Even if they can pump out enough juice, they need the batteries to be small to be useful in most modern applications. The batteries for most electronic devices need to very small. There might be a niche market for this sort of thing, but I am very skeptical it is going to make any sort of splash in the consumer electronics field.
Sure, your scenario might happen. There is an alternative though. It could be that when they got to renegotiate and Apple stands firm that the labels pulls out and iTunes gets tossed into the shitter.
The alternative is that Apple stands firm, strips the DRM from their music because they no longer have any lame excuses to keep it, and continues to sell music from indie labels at a reasonable price without DRM. Apple's massive market share then leads sudden boom for these independent labels as they become the only option. Artist would suddenly have the choice as to which label they want as the indie labels would have cash too. Consumers could also get a choice, as they could take the new reasonably priced DRM free music, or they could change to a service with DRM and a crappy price. You would actually get some healthy competition going on. If the competition was healthy enough, just like how the old labels were tossed out when radio came around and they fought the new medium, the current crop of labels would then find themselves on the street.
Who cares if she read it. I could invoke Godwin's law, but I won't and will leave it up to your imagination.
My point is that I doubt she gives a shit what Jobs says. She is far more interested in what he actually does. Allowing DRM free music for the labels that want it would probably deflect a LOT of the criticism that Apple gets these days.
Spare me the excuses about how Apple can't do it because it is technical feat that is too hard for them. I read the same halfassed excuse too. I don't buy for a nanosecond that a company that can make dozens of OSes can't somehow figure out a way to tell iTunes to NOT slap DRM all over their music. Hell, the music isn't even stored in the iTunes server with DRM on it... it is packaged into the music as it is being sent out! If Apple can't figure out a way to turn off slapping DRM into their product, I will avoid buying anything with an Apple OS. If they can't solve that one minor technical problem in the few years iTunes has been out, I dread the difficulties they must have getting a decent OS to working.
All of that said, I am all for letting capitalism run its course. I think that Apple should be able to seal their music into whatever crappy format they want with whatever DRM they want. I think I should be able to legally crack that DRM open without DMCA laws trying to smack me down. If Apple doesn't want to sell its independent music DRM free, fine. Let's toss out the DMCA and let the market sort this shit out.
Explain your concerns to your supervisor via e-mail. By doing it with e-mail, you are making a record of your worries. This way, if any information is stolen, you can wave your e-mail around saying, "I told you so!" This leaves you in a pretty strong position to spearhead improvements to the system and score yourself a raise.
I would make a 5 slide presentation as to what your concerns are. Make it brief, but make the security concerns clear. Present this to your boss. If he still doesn't react... well, you tried. You have a record of your concerns and you clearly made a strong attempt to do something about it. The only thing you could possibly do after that is go over your bosses head. This generally is not a terribly wise idea if you want to stay with this company for the long term. You take a gamble when you go over your bosses head, and it is a gamble that a lot of people loose. Unless someone above your boss decides to champion your cause, you will just wind up with a boss that is pissed off at you who can make your life miserable. Even if a champion takes up your cause, unless they change who you report to, you still could have a boss pissed off at you.
I probably would not risk it unless you really don't care all that much if you get fired. Just do your best, make a record, and practice your smirk for when data is stolen... oh, and if data is stolen, be sure to forward your old e-mail to your bosses boss.