"...he banned any weapons research that was expected to take more than two years to deliver a weapon (probably on the theory that he would control the world in less than two years). American research is falling into this second trap."
I agree. As an American, I think it is pragmatic to think it will take at least 5 years to take over the world. I put forward that we should all sign an online petition to congress to get them to fund weapons that will put out in at least 5 years, instead of the current two year limit.
This has many advantages, not the least of which are massive robotic mechs that we can build in conjunction with our allies in Japan.
I used to be annoyed that I started on a PvP server. I got grief all the time in contested territories. Not enough to really put me off, but enough to be annoying... then I hit about level 30.
Suddenly, I started running into alliance that, with a help of a frien dor two, we could take down. A level 40 might hurt you, but 3 level 30's can take him down no problem. The game suddenly became much more fun. Just the other day I spent a solid 4 hours fighting through an non-instance dungeon, alternating between fighting off alliance and NPCs. We had running battles, lone assassians, sniper mages, and the occasional uber level 60 blast through. It was all sorts of fun.
I wouldn't mind the honor system cutting the level range that people fight in a little to +/- 15 levels, but to be honest, even if it doesn't PvP is the way to go. Your first steps into PvP land might be rough, but it only last for a solid 10 levels or so before you realize that you have some teeth too.
Nothing is better then getting together with your guild and going on a raid for shits and giggles. PvP is the only way to go and keep the game interesting in the long term.
"Why should tracks I buy from an online music store be more restrictive in what I can do with them than ones that come on red book Audio CDs?"
They shoudln't. However, I have found an excellent solution. Don't buy them. I just fail to see the problem. Okay, so the big bad evil corporation wants to DRM everything. JUST STOP BUYING IT. Corporations are by far the easiest things in the world to strike down. It just takes people to stop giving them money. They are not going to steal the money from you. They are going to ask for it. If you give it to them, you are just another fool feeding the beast.
If people really wanted to take down the RIAA, they would just stop giving them money for a single year. Hell, a single month of zero revenue is more then enough to destroy most corporations. It is just the complacenecy of the public that is the problem. People who buy iTunes crap then break the DRM are just feeding the system and shovling more cash into the mouth of the beast.
Grow some balls and stop handing out money to things you don't like.
Psst.... Mars is a barren wasteland. If there was a magic portal to dump all waste products produce by humanity right onto the surface of Mars, hence making this planet a nicer place to live, I wouldn't think twice about doing it. The pseudo-religious-enviro-nuts need to get a grip. Mars is a friggen rock, and even if it wasn't, a few robots are not going to destroy the pristene wasteland. Long after a few square feet of robots are dead, Mars will still be there.
I think a lot has changed in 10 years, we are just so used to change that we don't even notice it. 4 years ago I was the only freak with a cell phone. Every other friend I had swore they would never use one of those damn thing. Now, I know exactly one person without a cell phone and every considers HIM the freak for not having one and bitch and moan endlessly about how hard it is to keep in contact with him.
5 years ago DvDs will still considered something glitzy that only rich people bothered to get. The DvD section of blockbuster took up a shelf. Now the VHS tapes are the things stuffed away in the back.
6 years ago P2P technology was just getting off the ground. No one back then had a thousand songs on their computer unless they were hardcore geeks or music nuts. Now, everyone and their dog can boast of a few gigabytes of music.
The list goes on and on. The real difference is that people don't seem to be suffering any future shock. It seems that a ramped up explosions in technology just results in people getting bored with technology quicker. Stuff that was new just a couple of years ago doesn't seem remarkable.
I think most people would be be dumb struck how much the world has changed if they were transported back to 1995. I think they would find the world a very different place when they realized they couldn't get ahold of friends who were not setting next to the phone, had to operate a phone book, or had to actually call the movie theater to get movie times. There is a lot we do today that we couldn't do 10 years ago. Granted, you might call a lot of that trivial shit, but I don't think the idea of constantly being networked and avaliable via a cell phone to be all that trivial in terms of social change.
The world is changing, and it is changing very fast. It is changing so fast that the challenge isn't so much dealing with the change, it is realziing that it is happening.
Please. How is it different then Iran? This is a stupid law that limits who can spend how much money where. The ill thought out law also, according to one judge, also affects blogs. I give the chances of it being enforced close to nothing, and I give the chance of it being over turned very high. When someone is arrested for blogging that Bush is a jack ass, then you can complain. The American legal system has checks and balances so that this stuff can be removed.
It is different from Iran in that you can not have your canadacy revoked because the ruling theocracy decides you are not in accordance from Islamic law and have half of one parties canidates thrown out. One nation makes bloggers disappear and get torched, the other had a judge rule that one law could be used to regulate in a way the makers of the law probably did not anticipate. Does that answer your question as to how it is different?
"In the time span between two such events the ozone can re-create itself. On the other hand, destruction of ozone by human made CFC's, freons, etc are spontaneous and hence causes permenant depletion."
I'm sorry, you lost me on that little logic leap. Natural stuff can be repaired... human stuff can't be... cause it is 'spontaneous'? Verse the sun throwing out a solar blast is not 'spontaneous'? Right... either you need to go back and look at your logic, or go back and look at your dictionary, because something is wrong with that statement.
The ozone hole has been shrinking over the last few years. Granted it could be coincidence, but it also corresponds to CFC reduction. Regardless if the ozone size shifts are natural or man made, I think the moral of the story is that ozone is actually pretty robust. You can rip a hole in it, and within a reasonable amount of time it will repair itself. Granted, that is not an invitation to dump super heated CFC gas into ozone, but it does mean that with a minimal amount of work you can get that good old natural barrier up and running again.
Actually, a neat theory I heard about depression is that it comes into existence because the world doesn't suck. The basic idea is this. In nature a human be under constant life and death adversity. You would always be hungry and always searching for food. Depression in such in instance would offer up a defense against a lack of food. If you ran out of food, you would become depressed, expend less energy, and spend your time worrying how to obtain more food. Hopefully, you would find more food and resume a normal life.
Fast forward to today. You are a 16 year old girl in America. You are never going to starve. Survival will never be an issue for you. You have a mechanism that is designed to deal with life and death situations, but there are none. Instead, it goes crazy. It picks something that has absolutely nothing to do with survival, like boys, school, grades, popularity, or whatever. Worse still, none of these problems are easily satisfied. You can find plentiful food and be totally full, but how do satisfy more abstract worries like relationships and school? These are problems that can never be totally solved.
That is one BS theory I heard anyways. I have also heard something similar about allergies. People's immune systems are used to looking for environmental containments in nature, but when you live in a sterile environment it goes nuts and over reacts.
Why is 160 million excessive? If you can make 160 million, why not? The whole idea behind making a pile of money is that you can never have too much. Forget making money just for the sake of making a profit. Just look at it from a business side. Sure, WoW is wildly successful right now, but guess what? Not everything Blizzard makes smells like roses and sells. They lose money all the time on other things. For all they know, the next MMORPG they might try will fail horribly and they will be down a few million. What happens of the economy suddenly goes belly up? A few million padding could get them through a hard time. A few extra million could let them expand if the economy takes off.
As far as cutting out the middle man, that is one of those things 160 million could do. They are already locked into a contract with their publisher right now, and so they couldn't cut him out now if they wanted to. That said, next time around when they make an MMORPG, they might very well decide to cut out their publisher and use all of that cash they have sitting around to build the infrastructure to be their own distributor.
There are a lot of reasons to have a pile of profit on hand, but I can't think of a reason NOT to have pile of profit on hand. You can't even make a moralistic argument. It is a fucking video game, not a life saving drug. It isn't like they have some moral duty to make sure that everyone can play WoW. The only duty they have is to make a big fat pile of money, and to set aside some of that pile for making the servers not suck and developing new games.
So, before you respond again, just answer, why not make 160 million in profit?
I think WoW made the wisest decision they have ever made by making the game quick to level up in. High school kids and people out of work just don't understand how much games like Everquest SUCKS for people who can't play all day long. If the game was any harder, I wouldn't be giving them my money. I want to put in a few hours a week and feel like I am actually moving somewhere. If that pisses off the kiddies with too much time on their hands, good.
If the people with 12 hours a day to blow on video games out number the people with jobs and wives who don't take kindly to spending 12 hours a day on video games, you would have a point. What you miss though is that the people who burn out because they got too high are the minority. Further, they are also the most likely people to be broke. Appealing to people with jobs and a pay check where $15 a month is considered pocket change and not life and death is the way to go.
You can try and disagree, but I think WoW's player numbers speak for themselves. The number of people that can get addicted to MMORPGs such that they treat it like a drug is miniscule compared to the number of people with a few hours a week that just want to blow off steam. Appealing to MMORPG addicts might make your message boards quiter, but it won't do anything good for your bottom line.
I know I could have another character, but I think the point you missed is that I want to have a character with my friends. If I wanted to play the game solo, I wouldn't waste my time with an MMORPG. In case you have not noticed, MMORPGs absolutely suck when it comes to the RPG part. The only thing that makes an MMORPG worth while is PvP and socializing. Seeing as how PvP in WoW is worthless, it seems pretty stupid to decapitate the last worth while piece of the game.
Err, is that a bad thing? I kinda thought the whole point of making the game was to rake in some money. It seems pretty clear that everyone is happy in the deal. Developers get a pile of cash, gamers get a game that they feel is worth a monthly fee (or else they wouldn't pay it), and interest is generated in the industry so that the next generation of MMORPGs will be bigger and more bad ass. Other then the 16 year old kid who can't get mom to give him a credit card and is too much of a bum to get a job and by a WoW game card, I don't see any loosers.
Blizzard isn't going for break even. They want a big fat pile of cash. If they keep on putting out good games, then they deserve it. I happily pay out my $13 a month. Hell, that is less then an hours worth of work for a whole month of video game goodness. What is there not to like?
Why is the monthly fee as high as it is? Because people will pay it. That, I think WoW tapped into "not living with my parents and have a job" market much better then any other MMORPG to date. When you are 15, $13 a month might be a big deal. When you have a real job it is less then an hours work. Would I pay less then one hour worth of wages to play a game all month long that I enjoy? Hell yeah and screw the kiddies.
I think WoW needs to get their priorities straight. I am browsing Slashdot because I am looking at a 30 minute line to get into my server. Just let people transfer servers, increase their capacity, just do SOMETHING. All of that great content and what not doesn't do me any good if I can't even log in.
I would like to watch electric formula 1 too, but then again, I am a sucker for blood sports. I am sure they could get electric cars to go as fast as current race cars, there is just one small little problem, they couldn't even begin to meet the safety requirements. They can either crawl around a track like what you would expect from a massively under powered car stuffed with safety equipment, or they could blitz around the track and disintegrate upon impact with the wall.
Electric car racing might be interesting, especially if you can replace the battery in the pit. Solar powered cars though will never happen. There is a very finite amount of energy you can get per square meter from the sun, and it doesn't even come close to being comparable to what you get form fossil fuels.
Solar cars could never reach the safety standards of a modern car. Period. Yes, the argument could be made that if we were all zipping around in our ultra light weight cars we would be less likely to be flattened by an SUV. However, that ignores the fundamental problem of the fact that if you are plowing along at 100 kph, your tire blows, and you end up eating a tree, guard rail, or anything else solid, you want to be in something with a nice big old engine and sturdy frame to absorb the impact.
Maybe for some people it is practical to get a light weight car that skimps on safety, but for someone like me who has to drive an hour each day, I want to know that if my tire blows and I eat a tree, I am likely going to be okay. The sturdy frame of my Honda Accord, a few air bags, and an engine to eat some kinetic energy as a tree goes through it makes me feel a lot safer.
I would say it is pretty safe to say that we have not hit the peak yet. Yes, prices have gone up, but you need to realize that oil prices do not fluctuate in a normal supply/demand fashion. OPEC is an oil cartel that manipulates oil prices higher. Politics, stability in oil producing nations, and economic fluctuations have a lot more to do with the price of oil then the actual supply.
Further, you also need to realize that right now oil is cheap. Sure, the news makes a big deal out of the price of a barrel of oil, and they like to declare it "the highest it has ever been", but this is really just scare mongering for ratings. Oil does cost more then it ever has... if you blatantly ignore inflation. If you include inflation, you would realize that the price of oil could double and it would still be cheaper then it has been in the past. If you just look at the price without inflation, bread is the most expensive it has ever been, yet that really is not much of a reason to panic.
Oil will eventually run out, but it is going to be a pretty slow and steady thing. Most oil never gets drilled. There is a lot of oil that oil companies simply don't remove from the ground because it is too expensive to remove it. I think I recall the figure as being only 3% of the oil is ever actually removed. The rest is simply left there because it would cost too much to remove it from the ground and process it into something usable. So, when the oil peak is hit, we are not going to suddenly see the price go through the roof. Instead, the price will slowly start to rise as companies get more and more expensive oil. We will never likely run out, the cost will simply get too high for anyone to want to pay.
We should be planning ahead and finding new technologies to deal with our energy needs, but fear mongering isn't the way to do it. There are plenty of good reasons to invest in new energy sources that we shouldn't have lie and make up untrue ones.
Hydrogen is actually not that unsafe. The thing about hydrogen is that when it leaks, it goes straight up, REALLY fast. This makes it much safer then what we currently use today in many ways.
An antidotal story is that about a month or two back at National Semiconductor in South Portland Maine, they had a hydrogen explosion. Basically, a guy with a hydrogen truck pulled up to the building and got ready to pump the hydrogen into the tanks. When he went to go ground himself, he created a spark and this caused an explosion. Now, this truck isn't your average car, we are talking a freaking tank of liquid hydrogen under massive pressure.
So, what happened? The explosion was loud enough that people inside the building thought an airplane had crashed (they are right next to an air port). The operator of the truck was totally unharmed. The explosion went straight up. It made a lot of noise, but did no damage. The high pressure of the tank meant that instead of the explosion running into the tank and, well, exploding, it acted like a blow torch. No one got hurt, and in the end the only thing that happened was that they just left the truck slowly burning its fuel until away until it was empty.
In a properly designed car, safety is not a problem. You just need to make sure that your gas tank is well ventilated. So long as it can't build up and has a place to go, a hydrogen explosion is really not that bad. They are quick, loud, and straight up. It is an engineering probably easily solved.
That said, I am not a fan of hydrogen. Hydrogen is cleaner the gas to be sure, but his a low energy density (IE, you need a bigger tank or you are not going to go as far), and more importantly, it is just a method of power translation. Hydrogen is like a power cable to your house, not the actual power plant. Hydrogen just takes dirty power (coal) or expensive power (nuclear, green) that we already blows some of the energy to the wind, and then stuffs it in your car.
What we REALLY need to do is solve the power problems with the grid that we have right now first, THEN start worrying about cars. Once we can get some sort of green energy that is cost effective and reliable to replace our dirty and expensive methods of generating power, then you talk about wasting energy to create hydrogen.
Personally, I think we are much better off working on hybrid technology and maybe slapping a solar panel or two onto SUVs to give them a little more power. People have shown that they are willing to buy cleaner cars at a slightly increased price just for bragging rights. It might not be everyone, but it certainly is a start. Use traditional methods of cleaning up cars first, green up the power grid, THEN worry about making cars clean.
I wonder if the Soviet Union would still be here if the Communists kept telling their people that they lived in a "free nation".
They did. It didn't work. Something about being sent to Siberia to meet the quota for traitors in your township kind of makes it hard to believe though. Give me a call when you get sent to a slave labor camp in Alaska and I'll take you seriously.
Get a world view longer then a few minutes. You realize that the US once had sedition acts, right? There was a time in US history when there was a law that made it illegal to criticize politicians not once, but twice in US history. Believe me, we have a very long ways to go to reach the lows we have already achieved in history, much less be more oppressive then your average European nation. You realize that most European nations don't have any constitutional protections on speech? Do you realize that in England their search and seizure laws would violate the US constitution a dozen different ways? Fuck worrying about catch up with the Soviets, we still have not sunk as low as most of Europe - and last time I checked we didn't consider Europe to be a bastion of evil repressive governments.
Why is everyone so concerned about dictatorships abroad but so willing to ignore the insanity at home?
Because he is going to get the boot in less then four years. American presidents don't out stay their welcome. They never have and never will in my life time. The difference between one of those dictatorships is that the army is loyal to the leader. In the US, the army is loyal to the democratic institution. In the US, if GW decided he really wanted four more years, his own secret service would throw his ass out the front gate, and if they didn't do it, the army would.
There is no insanity at home. For fucks sake, you disagree with the guy in power. Just because you don't like him, doesn't make everyone else insane. Aren't you old enough to realize that this happens EVERY four years? One side loses and wonders what the fuck the rest of the nation is thinking. Bush is just the Republican's Carter. Imagine the crying that went on in Republican circles when Carter some how managed to get the reigns on this nation.
Look, Bush is a tool. I loath his social policies and think that we might as well of elected a socialist with the amount of money he is managing to spend. That said, I realize he is just one president who is going to pass his merry way through. At some point things are going to swing the other way. A democrat will get in office and suddenly Republicans will become fiscal conservatives again who bitch when Democrats spend money. The world is not ending, and if you manage to have an understand of American history that goes beyond the past 4 or so years, you would realize that the US is no where near reaching its own lows, much less the lows of other places in the world.
For fucks sake. Grow up. The US is a free nation. You can merrily walk up to the White House gates holding a sign that says "Bush dips babies in oil and eats them" and suffer no more consequence then have a few extra security guys watching you to make sure you are not a whack job with a gun.
This is all just Canadian Bacon syndrome. With the old USSR in the game to show people who to really fuck it up and brutalize your population, people latch onto anything to take its place. Seeing as how the US is 1/4 of the worlds economy, has a constant stream of people literally risking life and limb to get IN into the US (and not out), and has the heights median income in the world, I suppose that makes the US the next logical choice. People just love to see a Goliath fall, even if he isn't a bad guy.
People are just bored. Every other nation in the world goes ballistic when the US smites a dictator, but no one bats an eyelash as a few million people die in Rwanda. People just shrug at the genocide in the Sudan. People can complain about a few hundred people taken from a fucking battlefield and put in detention, but never seem to muster of the same rage when every other fucking nation in the world regularly impressions their own people by the hundreds of the thousands without trial or a judicial system to offer oversight. People's priorities are just fucked up. If you want to get enraged at something, take a look at the shit going on in the rest of the world and realize that unlike in some nations, you will never be arrested for posting such an asinine post in the US.
Try and taking the 'racist fuck' level down a little. Abdul Qader Khan is a Pakistani. Pakistan is a nation. I know the two are confusing, but just try and follow along. When a nation does something good, you can praise the nation. If a person does something good, you can praise the person. If a person does something bad, that doesn't suddenly make everyone who happens to be of the some nationality suddenly evil.
Making blanket statements based off of the actions of a few is ignorant and stupid. Germany has neo-Nazis within its borders. I suppose we should declare all Germans facist?
Has chemical, biological, nuclear and conventional weaposn aimed at South Korea: Check
The US might very well merrily invade North Korea over nuclear weapons if it wasn't for the fact that the resulting war would make the casualties for Iraq (civilian and military) look like pocket change. Millions of South Koreans and Japanese civilians would be dead in the first hour of the war. Last time I checked, we were their allies and generally committed to not killing off large percentages of their populations with our actions.
The second a war is fought in the Koreas, you can pretty much expect to cause more casualties then all other wars put together. I am not saying that Iraq is a happy fun land, but comparing taking out Iraq to taking out North Korea, is the difference between beating the shit out of a 12 year old bully, and taking out a guy with dead man's switch to a chemical weapon strapped to his back capable of wiping out a city. The two are not even in the same league.
We hate Bush rhetoric aside, comparing the two is just stupid.
Don't be silly. Japan neither needs nor wants nuclear weapons. Nuking Tokyo would net you the same result as nuking New York or Washington. Namely, the US would promptly level of the offending nation in question with nuclear weapons and no questions asked. The defense ties the US has with Japan are very clear. If you attack Japan, you might as well have invaded California.
There isn't a reason in the world for Japan to have a nuclear weapon. A nuclear weapon in Japan would cause the population to riot as they are VERY anti nuclear, suck up pile of money, and piss too many people off. When it comes to defense, Japan might as well be sovereign US soil and can be expected to be defended just as tenaciously as you would expect the US to defend California.
Japan does have to worry about North Korea, but on the arms side, there is nothing more Japan can do except give a thumbs up to the US building a missile defense system and footing some of the bill. If North Korea launches nukes at Japan it means that they have gone insane and forfeited their nation, in which case all the nukes in the world won't be of any help.
Slashdot Mirror
"...he banned any weapons research that was expected to take more than two years to deliver a weapon (probably on the theory that he would control the world in less than two years). American research is falling into this second trap."
I agree. As an American, I think it is pragmatic to think it will take at least 5 years to take over the world. I put forward that we should all sign an online petition to congress to get them to fund weapons that will put out in at least 5 years, instead of the current two year limit.
This has many advantages, not the least of which are massive robotic mechs that we can build in conjunction with our allies in Japan.
I used to be annoyed that I started on a PvP server. I got grief all the time in contested territories. Not enough to really put me off, but enough to be annoying... then I hit about level 30.
Suddenly, I started running into alliance that, with a help of a frien dor two, we could take down. A level 40 might hurt you, but 3 level 30's can take him down no problem. The game suddenly became much more fun. Just the other day I spent a solid 4 hours fighting through an non-instance dungeon, alternating between fighting off alliance and NPCs. We had running battles, lone assassians, sniper mages, and the occasional uber level 60 blast through. It was all sorts of fun.
I wouldn't mind the honor system cutting the level range that people fight in a little to +/- 15 levels, but to be honest, even if it doesn't PvP is the way to go. Your first steps into PvP land might be rough, but it only last for a solid 10 levels or so before you realize that you have some teeth too.
Nothing is better then getting together with your guild and going on a raid for shits and giggles. PvP is the only way to go and keep the game interesting in the long term.
"Why should tracks I buy from an online music store be more restrictive in what I can do with them than ones that come on red book Audio CDs?"
They shoudln't. However, I have found an excellent solution. Don't buy them. I just fail to see the problem. Okay, so the big bad evil corporation wants to DRM everything. JUST STOP BUYING IT. Corporations are by far the easiest things in the world to strike down. It just takes people to stop giving them money. They are not going to steal the money from you. They are going to ask for it. If you give it to them, you are just another fool feeding the beast.
If people really wanted to take down the RIAA, they would just stop giving them money for a single year. Hell, a single month of zero revenue is more then enough to destroy most corporations. It is just the complacenecy of the public that is the problem. People who buy iTunes crap then break the DRM are just feeding the system and shovling more cash into the mouth of the beast.
Grow some balls and stop handing out money to things you don't like.
Psst.... Mars is a barren wasteland. If there was a magic portal to dump all waste products produce by humanity right onto the surface of Mars, hence making this planet a nicer place to live, I wouldn't think twice about doing it. The pseudo-religious-enviro-nuts need to get a grip. Mars is a friggen rock, and even if it wasn't, a few robots are not going to destroy the pristene wasteland. Long after a few square feet of robots are dead, Mars will still be there.
I think a lot has changed in 10 years, we are just so used to change that we don't even notice it. 4 years ago I was the only freak with a cell phone. Every other friend I had swore they would never use one of those damn thing. Now, I know exactly one person without a cell phone and every considers HIM the freak for not having one and bitch and moan endlessly about how hard it is to keep in contact with him.
5 years ago DvDs will still considered something glitzy that only rich people bothered to get. The DvD section of blockbuster took up a shelf. Now the VHS tapes are the things stuffed away in the back.
6 years ago P2P technology was just getting off the ground. No one back then had a thousand songs on their computer unless they were hardcore geeks or music nuts. Now, everyone and their dog can boast of a few gigabytes of music.
The list goes on and on. The real difference is that people don't seem to be suffering any future shock. It seems that a ramped up explosions in technology just results in people getting bored with technology quicker. Stuff that was new just a couple of years ago doesn't seem remarkable.
I think most people would be be dumb struck how much the world has changed if they were transported back to 1995. I think they would find the world a very different place when they realized they couldn't get ahold of friends who were not setting next to the phone, had to operate a phone book, or had to actually call the movie theater to get movie times. There is a lot we do today that we couldn't do 10 years ago. Granted, you might call a lot of that trivial shit, but I don't think the idea of constantly being networked and avaliable via a cell phone to be all that trivial in terms of social change.
The world is changing, and it is changing very fast. It is changing so fast that the challenge isn't so much dealing with the change, it is realziing that it is happening.
Please. How is it different then Iran? This is a stupid law that limits who can spend how much money where. The ill thought out law also, according to one judge, also affects blogs. I give the chances of it being enforced close to nothing, and I give the chance of it being over turned very high. When someone is arrested for blogging that Bush is a jack ass, then you can complain. The American legal system has checks and balances so that this stuff can be removed.
It is different from Iran in that you can not have your canadacy revoked because the ruling theocracy decides you are not in accordance from Islamic law and have half of one parties canidates thrown out. One nation makes bloggers disappear and get torched, the other had a judge rule that one law could be used to regulate in a way the makers of the law probably did not anticipate. Does that answer your question as to how it is different?
"In the time span between two such events the ozone can re-create itself. On the other hand, destruction of ozone by human made CFC's, freons, etc are spontaneous and hence causes permenant depletion."
I'm sorry, you lost me on that little logic leap. Natural stuff can be repaired... human stuff can't be... cause it is 'spontaneous'? Verse the sun throwing out a solar blast is not 'spontaneous'? Right... either you need to go back and look at your logic, or go back and look at your dictionary, because something is wrong with that statement.
The ozone hole has been shrinking over the last few years. Granted it could be coincidence, but it also corresponds to CFC reduction. Regardless if the ozone size shifts are natural or man made, I think the moral of the story is that ozone is actually pretty robust. You can rip a hole in it, and within a reasonable amount of time it will repair itself. Granted, that is not an invitation to dump super heated CFC gas into ozone, but it does mean that with a minimal amount of work you can get that good old natural barrier up and running again.
Actually, a neat theory I heard about depression is that it comes into existence because the world doesn't suck. The basic idea is this. In nature a human be under constant life and death adversity. You would always be hungry and always searching for food. Depression in such in instance would offer up a defense against a lack of food. If you ran out of food, you would become depressed, expend less energy, and spend your time worrying how to obtain more food. Hopefully, you would find more food and resume a normal life.
Fast forward to today. You are a 16 year old girl in America. You are never going to starve. Survival will never be an issue for you. You have a mechanism that is designed to deal with life and death situations, but there are none. Instead, it goes crazy. It picks something that has absolutely nothing to do with survival, like boys, school, grades, popularity, or whatever. Worse still, none of these problems are easily satisfied. You can find plentiful food and be totally full, but how do satisfy more abstract worries like relationships and school? These are problems that can never be totally solved.
That is one BS theory I heard anyways. I have also heard something similar about allergies. People's immune systems are used to looking for environmental containments in nature, but when you live in a sterile environment it goes nuts and over reacts.
Why is 160 million excessive? If you can make 160 million, why not? The whole idea behind making a pile of money is that you can never have too much. Forget making money just for the sake of making a profit. Just look at it from a business side. Sure, WoW is wildly successful right now, but guess what? Not everything Blizzard makes smells like roses and sells. They lose money all the time on other things. For all they know, the next MMORPG they might try will fail horribly and they will be down a few million. What happens of the economy suddenly goes belly up? A few million padding could get them through a hard time. A few extra million could let them expand if the economy takes off.
As far as cutting out the middle man, that is one of those things 160 million could do. They are already locked into a contract with their publisher right now, and so they couldn't cut him out now if they wanted to. That said, next time around when they make an MMORPG, they might very well decide to cut out their publisher and use all of that cash they have sitting around to build the infrastructure to be their own distributor.
There are a lot of reasons to have a pile of profit on hand, but I can't think of a reason NOT to have pile of profit on hand. You can't even make a moralistic argument. It is a fucking video game, not a life saving drug. It isn't like they have some moral duty to make sure that everyone can play WoW. The only duty they have is to make a big fat pile of money, and to set aside some of that pile for making the servers not suck and developing new games.
So, before you respond again, just answer, why not make 160 million in profit?
I think WoW made the wisest decision they have ever made by making the game quick to level up in. High school kids and people out of work just don't understand how much games like Everquest SUCKS for people who can't play all day long. If the game was any harder, I wouldn't be giving them my money. I want to put in a few hours a week and feel like I am actually moving somewhere. If that pisses off the kiddies with too much time on their hands, good.
If the people with 12 hours a day to blow on video games out number the people with jobs and wives who don't take kindly to spending 12 hours a day on video games, you would have a point. What you miss though is that the people who burn out because they got too high are the minority. Further, they are also the most likely people to be broke. Appealing to people with jobs and a pay check where $15 a month is considered pocket change and not life and death is the way to go.
You can try and disagree, but I think WoW's player numbers speak for themselves. The number of people that can get addicted to MMORPGs such that they treat it like a drug is miniscule compared to the number of people with a few hours a week that just want to blow off steam. Appealing to MMORPG addicts might make your message boards quiter, but it won't do anything good for your bottom line.
I know I could have another character, but I think the point you missed is that I want to have a character with my friends. If I wanted to play the game solo, I wouldn't waste my time with an MMORPG. In case you have not noticed, MMORPGs absolutely suck when it comes to the RPG part. The only thing that makes an MMORPG worth while is PvP and socializing. Seeing as how PvP in WoW is worthless, it seems pretty stupid to decapitate the last worth while piece of the game.
They need to fix the servers. Period.
"So that's $159,000,000 of pure profit!"
Err, is that a bad thing? I kinda thought the whole point of making the game was to rake in some money. It seems pretty clear that everyone is happy in the deal. Developers get a pile of cash, gamers get a game that they feel is worth a monthly fee (or else they wouldn't pay it), and interest is generated in the industry so that the next generation of MMORPGs will be bigger and more bad ass. Other then the 16 year old kid who can't get mom to give him a credit card and is too much of a bum to get a job and by a WoW game card, I don't see any loosers.
Blizzard isn't going for break even. They want a big fat pile of cash. If they keep on putting out good games, then they deserve it. I happily pay out my $13 a month. Hell, that is less then an hours worth of work for a whole month of video game goodness. What is there not to like?
Why is the monthly fee as high as it is? Because people will pay it. That, I think WoW tapped into "not living with my parents and have a job" market much better then any other MMORPG to date. When you are 15, $13 a month might be a big deal. When you have a real job it is less then an hours work. Would I pay less then one hour worth of wages to play a game all month long that I enjoy? Hell yeah and screw the kiddies.
I think WoW needs to get their priorities straight. I am browsing Slashdot because I am looking at a 30 minute line to get into my server. Just let people transfer servers, increase their capacity, just do SOMETHING. All of that great content and what not doesn't do me any good if I can't even log in.
I would like to watch electric formula 1 too, but then again, I am a sucker for blood sports. I am sure they could get electric cars to go as fast as current race cars, there is just one small little problem, they couldn't even begin to meet the safety requirements. They can either crawl around a track like what you would expect from a massively under powered car stuffed with safety equipment, or they could blitz around the track and disintegrate upon impact with the wall.
Electric car racing might be interesting, especially if you can replace the battery in the pit. Solar powered cars though will never happen. There is a very finite amount of energy you can get per square meter from the sun, and it doesn't even come close to being comparable to what you get form fossil fuels.
Solar cars could never reach the safety standards of a modern car. Period. Yes, the argument could be made that if we were all zipping around in our ultra light weight cars we would be less likely to be flattened by an SUV. However, that ignores the fundamental problem of the fact that if you are plowing along at 100 kph, your tire blows, and you end up eating a tree, guard rail, or anything else solid, you want to be in something with a nice big old engine and sturdy frame to absorb the impact.
Maybe for some people it is practical to get a light weight car that skimps on safety, but for someone like me who has to drive an hour each day, I want to know that if my tire blows and I eat a tree, I am likely going to be okay. The sturdy frame of my Honda Accord, a few air bags, and an engine to eat some kinetic energy as a tree goes through it makes me feel a lot safer.
I would say it is pretty safe to say that we have not hit the peak yet. Yes, prices have gone up, but you need to realize that oil prices do not fluctuate in a normal supply/demand fashion. OPEC is an oil cartel that manipulates oil prices higher. Politics, stability in oil producing nations, and economic fluctuations have a lot more to do with the price of oil then the actual supply.
Further, you also need to realize that right now oil is cheap. Sure, the news makes a big deal out of the price of a barrel of oil, and they like to declare it "the highest it has ever been", but this is really just scare mongering for ratings. Oil does cost more then it ever has... if you blatantly ignore inflation. If you include inflation, you would realize that the price of oil could double and it would still be cheaper then it has been in the past. If you just look at the price without inflation, bread is the most expensive it has ever been, yet that really is not much of a reason to panic.
Oil will eventually run out, but it is going to be a pretty slow and steady thing. Most oil never gets drilled. There is a lot of oil that oil companies simply don't remove from the ground because it is too expensive to remove it. I think I recall the figure as being only 3% of the oil is ever actually removed. The rest is simply left there because it would cost too much to remove it from the ground and process it into something usable. So, when the oil peak is hit, we are not going to suddenly see the price go through the roof. Instead, the price will slowly start to rise as companies get more and more expensive oil. We will never likely run out, the cost will simply get too high for anyone to want to pay.
We should be planning ahead and finding new technologies to deal with our energy needs, but fear mongering isn't the way to do it. There are plenty of good reasons to invest in new energy sources that we shouldn't have lie and make up untrue ones.
People of Lankehurst. Hydrogen is safe. Blimps with explosive skin are not. Unlike hydrogen, the skin on such a blimp burn and cook anyone blow it.
Hydrogen is actually not that unsafe. The thing about hydrogen is that when it leaks, it goes straight up, REALLY fast. This makes it much safer then what we currently use today in many ways.
An antidotal story is that about a month or two back at National Semiconductor in South Portland Maine, they had a hydrogen explosion. Basically, a guy with a hydrogen truck pulled up to the building and got ready to pump the hydrogen into the tanks. When he went to go ground himself, he created a spark and this caused an explosion. Now, this truck isn't your average car, we are talking a freaking tank of liquid hydrogen under massive pressure.
So, what happened? The explosion was loud enough that people inside the building thought an airplane had crashed (they are right next to an air port). The operator of the truck was totally unharmed. The explosion went straight up. It made a lot of noise, but did no damage. The high pressure of the tank meant that instead of the explosion running into the tank and, well, exploding, it acted like a blow torch. No one got hurt, and in the end the only thing that happened was that they just left the truck slowly burning its fuel until away until it was empty.
In a properly designed car, safety is not a problem. You just need to make sure that your gas tank is well ventilated. So long as it can't build up and has a place to go, a hydrogen explosion is really not that bad. They are quick, loud, and straight up. It is an engineering probably easily solved.
That said, I am not a fan of hydrogen. Hydrogen is cleaner the gas to be sure, but his a low energy density (IE, you need a bigger tank or you are not going to go as far), and more importantly, it is just a method of power translation. Hydrogen is like a power cable to your house, not the actual power plant. Hydrogen just takes dirty power (coal) or expensive power (nuclear, green) that we already blows some of the energy to the wind, and then stuffs it in your car.
What we REALLY need to do is solve the power problems with the grid that we have right now first, THEN start worrying about cars. Once we can get some sort of green energy that is cost effective and reliable to replace our dirty and expensive methods of generating power, then you talk about wasting energy to create hydrogen.
Personally, I think we are much better off working on hybrid technology and maybe slapping a solar panel or two onto SUVs to give them a little more power. People have shown that they are willing to buy cleaner cars at a slightly increased price just for bragging rights. It might not be everyone, but it certainly is a start. Use traditional methods of cleaning up cars first, green up the power grid, THEN worry about making cars clean.
I wonder if the Soviet Union would still be here if the Communists kept telling their people that they lived in a "free nation".
They did. It didn't work. Something about being sent to Siberia to meet the quota for traitors in your township kind of makes it hard to believe though. Give me a call when you get sent to a slave labor camp in Alaska and I'll take you seriously.
Get a world view longer then a few minutes. You realize that the US once had sedition acts, right? There was a time in US history when there was a law that made it illegal to criticize politicians not once, but twice in US history. Believe me, we have a very long ways to go to reach the lows we have already achieved in history, much less be more oppressive then your average European nation. You realize that most European nations don't have any constitutional protections on speech? Do you realize that in England their search and seizure laws would violate the US constitution a dozen different ways? Fuck worrying about catch up with the Soviets, we still have not sunk as low as most of Europe - and last time I checked we didn't consider Europe to be a bastion of evil repressive governments.
Why is everyone so concerned about dictatorships abroad but so willing to ignore the insanity at home?
Because he is going to get the boot in less then four years. American presidents don't out stay their welcome. They never have and never will in my life time. The difference between one of those dictatorships is that the army is loyal to the leader. In the US, the army is loyal to the democratic institution. In the US, if GW decided he really wanted four more years, his own secret service would throw his ass out the front gate, and if they didn't do it, the army would.
There is no insanity at home. For fucks sake, you disagree with the guy in power. Just because you don't like him, doesn't make everyone else insane. Aren't you old enough to realize that this happens EVERY four years? One side loses and wonders what the fuck the rest of the nation is thinking. Bush is just the Republican's Carter. Imagine the crying that went on in Republican circles when Carter some how managed to get the reigns on this nation.
Look, Bush is a tool. I loath his social policies and think that we might as well of elected a socialist with the amount of money he is managing to spend. That said, I realize he is just one president who is going to pass his merry way through. At some point things are going to swing the other way. A democrat will get in office and suddenly Republicans will become fiscal conservatives again who bitch when Democrats spend money. The world is not ending, and if you manage to have an understand of American history that goes beyond the past 4 or so years, you would realize that the US is no where near reaching its own lows, much less the lows of other places in the world.
And you wonder why people oppose GM?
Because they don't like profit?
I cower in fear of that day.
For fucks sake. Grow up. The US is a free nation. You can merrily walk up to the White House gates holding a sign that says "Bush dips babies in oil and eats them" and suffer no more consequence then have a few extra security guys watching you to make sure you are not a whack job with a gun.
This is all just Canadian Bacon syndrome. With the old USSR in the game to show people who to really fuck it up and brutalize your population, people latch onto anything to take its place. Seeing as how the US is 1/4 of the worlds economy, has a constant stream of people literally risking life and limb to get IN into the US (and not out), and has the heights median income in the world, I suppose that makes the US the next logical choice. People just love to see a Goliath fall, even if he isn't a bad guy.
People are just bored. Every other nation in the world goes ballistic when the US smites a dictator, but no one bats an eyelash as a few million people die in Rwanda. People just shrug at the genocide in the Sudan. People can complain about a few hundred people taken from a fucking battlefield and put in detention, but never seem to muster of the same rage when every other fucking nation in the world regularly impressions their own people by the hundreds of the thousands without trial or a judicial system to offer oversight. People's priorities are just fucked up. If you want to get enraged at something, take a look at the shit going on in the rest of the world and realize that unlike in some nations, you will never be arrested for posting such an asinine post in the US.
Try and taking the 'racist fuck' level down a little. Abdul Qader Khan is a Pakistani. Pakistan is a nation. I know the two are confusing, but just try and follow along. When a nation does something good, you can praise the nation. If a person does something good, you can praise the person. If a person does something bad, that doesn't suddenly make everyone who happens to be of the some nationality suddenly evil.
Making blanket statements based off of the actions of a few is ignorant and stupid. Germany has neo-Nazis within its borders. I suppose we should declare all Germans facist?
I think you forgot something on your list.
Has chemical, biological, nuclear and conventional weaposn aimed at South Korea: Check
The US might very well merrily invade North Korea over nuclear weapons if it wasn't for the fact that the resulting war would make the casualties for Iraq (civilian and military) look like pocket change. Millions of South Koreans and Japanese civilians would be dead in the first hour of the war. Last time I checked, we were their allies and generally committed to not killing off large percentages of their populations with our actions.
The second a war is fought in the Koreas, you can pretty much expect to cause more casualties then all other wars put together. I am not saying that Iraq is a happy fun land, but comparing taking out Iraq to taking out North Korea, is the difference between beating the shit out of a 12 year old bully, and taking out a guy with dead man's switch to a chemical weapon strapped to his back capable of wiping out a city. The two are not even in the same league.
We hate Bush rhetoric aside, comparing the two is just stupid.
Don't be silly. Japan neither needs nor wants nuclear weapons. Nuking Tokyo would net you the same result as nuking New York or Washington. Namely, the US would promptly level of the offending nation in question with nuclear weapons and no questions asked. The defense ties the US has with Japan are very clear. If you attack Japan, you might as well have invaded California.
There isn't a reason in the world for Japan to have a nuclear weapon. A nuclear weapon in Japan would cause the population to riot as they are VERY anti nuclear, suck up pile of money, and piss too many people off. When it comes to defense, Japan might as well be sovereign US soil and can be expected to be defended just as tenaciously as you would expect the US to defend California.
Japan does have to worry about North Korea, but on the arms side, there is nothing more Japan can do except give a thumbs up to the US building a missile defense system and footing some of the bill. If North Korea launches nukes at Japan it means that they have gone insane and forfeited their nation, in which case all the nukes in the world won't be of any help.