I don't have the patience to hit each point individually, so lets just look at the most glaring contradictions.
Apparently you missed the word "elevated" (like almost all personal rail transportation proposals, which have found very little to no "siezure" required). And, as road traffic is reduced, land is *freed*, not siezed.
Maintainance on rails is lower than on roads, and is even further reduced when propulsion/deceleration is magnetic instead of traction based (traction tears up the surface)
Concrete for the pillars is about the same cost. Shaped tubular steel is more expensive, but you need much less of it.
So, let me just see if I understand. This is going to be roughly as expensive as a roadway, yet it shall be elevated above the road. Do I even need to begin point out the sheer insanity of that statement? An elevated system of anything, especially something that needs the ability to hold tens of thousands of kilograms between each post is not just expensive, it is horribly and inhumanly expensive. You don't want to elevate just overpasses, but every single road? Sure, you might even be able to cut out some roads that serve to ease congestion, but unless you feel like absolutely destroying the property value of residential and commercial property by removing access to transporation, they will need rails too. So, when you look at the sloppy road network that winds its way through your average rural area, you will need a raise track there too, or you will turn places that don't get one into a ghost town.
I am not sure about the rest of the world where property ownership is lower, but I know that in the US the entire economy hinges upon property having a relatively stable value and the fact that people can borrow against it. If suddenly you made large swaths of property drastically reduced in property value because it has no access to transportation, you would bankrupt the economy.
I can't even begin to imagine how much fun it would be to go to a quiet coastal town and tell the residence that you need to move in heavy construction equipment to build a raised rail through a residential district across scenic beach front property.
Then comes the maintenance. Let's just completely ignore the steel Vs pavement costs for a brief second. You are not suggesting just steel. You are suggesting RAISED hunks of steel. Raised and with enough strength to be able to handle constant traffic. The most expensive part of any road repair operation isn't slapping down a new coat of pavement or throwing some tar into a few pot holes. It is when you need to deal with a piece of road that is raised - and you want to make every single road raised? You think that this would be cost effective?
I am too bored to go on. The idea of raising every single road off the ground speaks for itself. If you can't see the massive problems with it, you are an idiot.
Cute idea, but I think "staggering capital costs" is the world largest understatement. First off, you are talking about what would be by far the largest government project ever even conceived. It would make the current combined spending of the US government look like pocket change. You couldn't even contemplate such a thing without turning your entire economy over to the effort. You would need greatest tax hike in American history to fund it. No, even disbanding the military wouldn't even begin to cover the cost.
Then, you would have the fun time period in-between the completion of this new magical rail system where you would still need roads. So, somehow you need to build this track system while still preserving the road system. This is an completely unthinkable task unless you commit yourself to some serious private land seizures. If you want to make a new rail system appear out of air and not destroy the existing road system until it is done, you are going to have to tell people to vacate their house while the government bulldozes it down to make way for the greatest piece of pork ever conceived.
If you are going to cover the entire nation in this thing in one life time, you also will need a massive amount of construction crews and equipment. I don't know about you, but I have no intention of quitting my day job to be a construction worker. That means that the US is going to import a massive number of people to work these jobs and pay them, straight out of the government's pocket. Further, some has to oversee and manage the entire project and keep it on budget.
So, now we have this magical rail system, we need to continue to pay for it. If you thought a layer of tar was expensive - imagine the joys of keeping a magnetic rail system intact. Certainly you could build safety into these things, but if cars are zipping around at a 100+ miles per hour, you better be ready to jump on any repairs that are needed. The materials all costs significantly more then tar does. Further, you need to completely rewire the US power grid. The power grid as its stands couldn't even begin to handle having to support every single personal and commercial vehicle.
So yeah, really cute idea. Alls you need to do is convince people initiate the biggest government project in history, raise taxes as far as they will go, seize millions of acres of private land, some how oversee and manage this project, then once it is done devote massive amounts of government budget to its continual upkeep. No, the "GDP boost alone" will NOT pay for it. This idea is at best a recipe for making an industrialized nation into a poor third world nation, and most likely a recipe for a violent anti-government revolution. Mods, please think before you label this crap interesting. I might as well throw up my "just drive to Mars idea in family mini-van". I mean, it would work perfectly with only the small hitch of a few million miles of vacuum between here and there.
A marine of error is tolerated because each time you recount, you are going to get a different number. If the two are basically tied, each time you will get a different winner. This is what is happening in Washington. No one will ever be satisfied because we simply lack of ability to count as accuratly as we need to in order to come up with the same winner each time.
No matter how careful or supervised the recount is, it will ALWAYS result in different numbers. When the race is as close as this one is, you basically just need follow the letter of the law and accept whatever the letter says. The position of Democracy is pretty clear in this case - they are tied. Half of the people who voted will feel represented by the person who wins, half wont. Give or take a few people isn't going to matter. Democracy can't offer up a better answer, so now we simply follow the law. The Republicans and Democrats will play their legal games because they both know that they have no idea who won.
Look on the bright side, while Democracy might be unable to pick a winner, the system IS working. The two are going to settle their dispute one way or another. A year from now the winner will be doing his job, and power will have transfered hands without any sort of violence or bloodshed. In a lot of nations such a dispute could only end in blood. In Washington state, it is going to end with a few court rulings and maybe a recount or two. The system isn't perfect, but it certainly works.
I don't think that people appreciate how fast the world is changing. The thing is that we are just so damn good at adapting these days that we tend to notice how quickly things change. I recall just five years ago cellphones were still relativly rare and most people didn't own one. Today, almost everyone I know owns one - and that is just a minor technology in the grand scheme of things.
If you want to talk about big worlder altering changes, then look at e-mail, the internet, and the PC. Those technologies have certainly dipped into the household. More then that, they have revolutionized all industries. As an engineer, I can't even contemplate what engineers did before spreadsheets, PCs, and e-mail. The massive boom in the 90's was a very direct result of the incredible technological advances we made and their dramatic effect upon industry.
I think that if you were to go back in time just 15 year you would notice a big change beween now and then. True, cars don't fly, but they do talk to you, store an almsot unlimited library of music, and if one crashes, inflate half of a dozen airbags. Things are changing, we just don't appreciate how much.
I have a better idea. How about rename it the RSS (Russian Space Station), or the WTFWISLAIINUSS (Whoever The Fuck Wants It So Long As It Is Not Us Space Station).
I think the Russians are perfectly justified in making the US cough up more change to help support ISS operations. Russia has an economy that is weak at best and more important things to worry about then toys like the ISS. If they are going to keep supporting the damn thing, I don't think it should come as a surprise that they don't want to continue to pump so much of their own badly needed money at it.
The bigger issue is that as an American, I don't want the fucking thing. I could think of a million other things that I would much rather be spending money on rather then that pork barrel.
The US signed a contract to help build, support, and fund this ugly beast that is currently wasting away doing absolutely ZERO science. I personally wish that the US would just pay off its debts and let the rest of the world have the damned thing. Get everyone to agree on a figure that would absolve the US from having to support the damn thing and shell over the cash. The rest of the world is happy because they have cash, and the US is happy because it isn't feeding a whale every year.
Half the point of the MMORPG is growing your character. That's half the point of any RP game. Throw out that part and what's the point, anyway? Imagine if in the Legend of Zelda you started out with all the items and heart containers! Wouldn't that be fun! No, wait, it would suck. Half the fun is watching Link grow and being able to take on larger and harder challenges.
Part of the paradigm shift that people are utterly unable to move away from is that an MMORPG (or RPG for that matter) needs to have levels and all of that other crap. That stuff is a crutch. Fallout would have been absolutely amazing RPG, even if there was not a single skill in the game, combat was FPS, and skills were puzzles. There has been a distinct fear (maybe terror is a better word) of trying to meld action and role playing. That is role playing spelled with an E, not roll playing with dice.
The building up of a character to near god hood is all well and good if you are playing D&D with your friends. It is even stomachable if it is a single player RPG. The problem comes in when you try and keep this concept into the multiplayer realm. Not everyone can be a god, but MMORPGs sure as hell try regardless. What they are missing is that you are not feeling a sense of being an awesome hero rising up in an MMORPG like you do in a game like Zelda. You just feel the compulsive urge to level up, knowing that with the exception of a few children who have 18 hours a day to spend on the computer, you will never be that awesome hero who looks at people and makes them die. So, you have a combat system built for heroes, but a game that crushes them with the reality that you need to be a complete loser in life or child to get there.
What these games need to do is get rid of the hero mentality and build a game around a world where everyone is mortal, and any idiot with a knife can kill you if you are caught off guard. More importantly though is the inverse, an idiot like you can kill the greatest player in the world if you catch him by surprise.
An MMORPG is a massively unbalanced game. A monkey with a level 50 character couldn't die to an expert with a level 1 character if he tried. All that I want is a game that puts balance first. This sort of world doesn't have to rule out progress or character development. The idea is to instead focus on balance and fun. If one guy is completely and utterly incapable of killing another guy even after he goes AFK for 10 minutes, chances are your game is massively unbalanced. Character development can certainly include things outside of a few numbers or a score card. Character development includes joining organizations, politics, exploration, team work, PvP, and a whole slew of other things that don't revolve around experience, levels, and a boring combat engine.
I know people have a hard time believing this, but MMORPGs (and RPGs in general) are NOT defined by having a worthless combat engine. Bad combat doesn't make a game a role playing game. Perhaps technical challenges are a valid excuse for lack of imagination in MMORPGs. That said, those technical challenges are quickly evaporating. Raw number crunching and data sending capabilities continue to increase at a rapid rate. If there is a barrier, it isn't going to be there for much longer. It is just going to take a few people to break out of the clone mentality. Right now the MMORPG world feels like déjà vu of the state of video gaming after Doom. Everyone and their dog wants to repeat what has already been done, and no one has the balls to step up and move forward.
The year might be considered 'diverse' next to previous years, but the truth is, only a few companies offered up anything new on the formula. You basically can cut MMORPGs between the Everquest arch type, the space arch type, and small time odd ball like puzzle pirates. Unfortunately, the only companies that have truly tried to innovate and change the generic MMORPG formula have been smaller companies that lack the resources to really go all out.
The major MMORPGs are defined by the leveling treadmill and dice roll based combat, pure and simple. WoW might have refined the treadmill, and AO might have thrown it in a new setting, but the core game play is the same. I don't know about anyone else, but I am burnt out and annoyed.
Gamers are thought of as kids under the age of 18. How you make a game for someone under the age of 18, and how you make a game for someone with a job and a wife are two very different thing. The thing that is being discovered is that the only reason why we have the misconception that games are for kids is because the first generation of video games was embraced by younger folks. Those people have grown up now, but they have certainly not out grown games. On the contrary, they are the best market out there. Not only do they love games, but they have a big fat wad of cash and consider 50 dollars spent on a video game to be nothing. They don't care if they shell out 20 a month for a subscription based game that they like. For some reason though, MMORPGs seem determined not to appeal to these people.
When I was young, I could afford to spend 8 hours a day on the computer. A game like Everquest was perfect. I had the time and the patience to blow large hunks of my day at some leveling treadmill when I can load of CS or Unreal and start kicking ass instantly. I am older and richer now. I can't afford to waste that much of my time, but I am willing to pay significantly more to be entertained.
I like MMORPGs. I like the social aspect of such games. I like the massive persistent worlds. I like that there are things to do besides killing. I just fucking hate having to 'level up', 'pay my do', 'work', or whatever the fuck you want to call it. My time is more valuable then the time of some 14 year old boy who can spend 18 hours a day on the damn computer every day, yet I have pay the same amount of time to get the same things that he gets. Rationalize the reasons why you should have to waste that much time on an MMORPG all you want, but me and people like me hate it. Period.
What I want is an MMORPG with all the basic ingredients of an MMORG, I just want the damned experience/leveling/skill/treadmill systems and the combat systems stripped. Gut the damn MMORPG and fill its innards with a Half Life 2/FarCry/Thief style engine. Imagine if your thief character really had to sneak around like you were Garret from Thief. Imagine if swordplay was fast paced like Jedi Knight. Imagine if your archer snuck around firing and running like in FarCry. Then imagine after a hard day of fighting you could go kick it back in a bar or craft Puzzle Pirates style. Maybe for the economically inclined there could be an economic game like Rail Road Tycoon (or whatever) underneath. Perhaps there is also a A Tail in the Desert style player senate and politics. Maybe there is even a little Command and Conquer style tactical commanding.
Whatever the case, there is a lot more out there then whack the mole RPGs. It is too bad no MMORPG makers have grown some balls to do something more creative then a leveling treadmill (WoW, Everquest, SWG) or tribes with a larger battlefield (PlanetSide). I suppose in the end it isn't all bad. With some many MMORPGs out there that I don't want, that leaves more money to go to games like Half Life 2.
I fully agree that we should be much more liberal about who we let in. That said, having to offer up a pledge of allegiance before getting citizenship is not exactly setting the bar too high for the tired and poor huddled masses yearnign to breathe free. If you really hate the nation so much that you can stomach a pledge, why in hell would you want to come here in the first place?
The US has a very liberal immigration policy next to most nations. That said, it is still selective. If someone wants to immigrate that has so much resentment towards the nation that giving an oath of allegiance is too much to ask, they know where the door is.
The point is not to make everyone in the US agree to the oath. The point is to be selective in the hopes that the people who are let in are productive citizens who one day make more productive citizens. If you were to ask to get let in and told them you really just want to live off welfare, they wouldn't let you in either. That certainly doesn't stop Americans already in from trying to do it, but if you are going to let only a selective number of people in, it doesn't hurt to set some standard to ensure that you get the best. Giving an oath of allegiance is one of those standards.
Like I said, if you don't like minimum standard you need to meet, you know where the door is.
Did it ever occure to you that perhaps your interview style or resume suck? I know you want to be the victim, but I know programs out of school that got jobs some how. Not every single CS major out of college is rattling a cup for change. If other people are getting jobs right out of school and you are not, I would take a long hard look at why. The answer isn't immigration.
The US is generally a friendlier nation to immigrants then most countries because we have such a history of it. Of course, compared to most countries, that doesn't say much. US gets hit with waves of immigration from specific locations. It used to be that having a 'Mc' or "O'" in your name caused you to get shit on during the flood of Irish immigration. Now Irish ancestry is something everyone and their dog seems to claim every St. Patrick's day (myself included) with pride.
I have a feeling that Indian immigration is the same sort of deal. The US is getting hit with a lot of Indian immigration, and so people bristle a little over stupid things. I personally think it is just a cycle that is going to quickly wear itself out. Give it 20 years and I bet no one thinks anything of it.
You can already see the trend in Asians that sent over a wave before the Indian immigration wave. The stereotypes are certainly still there, but fewer and fewer people automatically assume that anyone who looks Asian is going to speak with a broken accent. I am not saying the world is perfectly peachy, but you can see things slowly starting to even themselves out.
While in an ideal world it would be nice if we could all get along, in the real world quick integration is key. First wave immigrants from both East Asian and India have proven to be as compatible as everyone else to protestant work ethic, and the first generation born here have shown that they are as completely integrated as any other American. Hell, my two best friends are the first kids born in the US in their families which are Indian and Taiwanese. If you talked to them on the phone you would never know they were not decedents of some Irish family that has been cranking out kids for the past 100 years.
So, is the machine perfect? Nah. I think it is running pretty smoothly though. You have the usual tensions that associate immigration, but I really think the future is looking bright for these people, especially their kids. I think the US will be better off in the end for it too. I don't think it hurts at all to add a few more shapes and colors to the mix to help deaden racist impulses.
Pull your head out of the sand. People don't starve in the US under normal circumstances. Even in poorest parts of the US you never see rail thin kids dying of starvation. Even the bums on the street are well fed. A hungry American is a well fed person in most nations.
It is no coincidence that the US has one of the world's most liberal immigration policies (even post 9/11) AND just so happens to be the worlds largest super power. The US consumes the world's intellects and it is to the advantage of the US people that it does. Very few people born in the US leave the US to live somewhere else, but massive amounts of people from all over the world come to the US to live. The difference between the numbers of people we give away compared to the number of people we take in is massive.
For an antidotal example, look at what happened to Germany during World War II. Germany became a xenophobic nation that started to bleed off large portions of its non-native population. At the same time the US consumed a great many people from Germany, especially German intellects that for didn't meet the ethnic standards they were looking for. Without this development, the US would never have gotten the atomic bomb as quickly as it did, along with a while host of other technologies. Draining the worlds brain power is GOOD for the US.
As an American and descendent of immigrants (as most Americans are), I like it when the US imports intelligent people willing to work. It means the US just got more productive and more intelligent and somewhere else some nation just lost a good citizen. Once someone is a US citizen, they are an American as far as I am concerned. The chances that they will leave rapidly shrink the longer they stay, and such people tend to bred productive and intelligent children.
US immigration policy is the biggest asset this nation has. I personally am dumbfounded that another American could complain about the US drawing the world's intelligence and productivity to itself. Maybe you long for a nice homogeneous and stagnant nations, but I sure as shit don't. Perhaps if unemployment was high I would have a little more sympathy to tears over population growth, but at a paltry 5% unemployment, you can cry me a river.
Perhaps your memory is short, but it was the US that but an embargo on Iraq such that Iraq couldn't sell its oil. People, get a fucking grip. There is no nation in the world that doesn't want to trade with the US. That is how the US dominates. Take the most nations most hostile to the US in the world. What do they all have in common? They all want to trade with the US and they are pissed off because the US doesn't want to trade back. Trade is the weapon the US wields that is far more powerful then its military.
Whenever the US brings out its military it is based upon some national security threat and/or over and ideological battle. If you don't think Iraq is an ideological battle, you need to take NeoCon for dummies 101. Like or hate the neocon philosophy, it has nothing to do with oil. It is about ideology pure and simple. The US can always trade for what it wants. The second the guns come out it is because it wants something that it can't trade for. The US can't buy a successful democratic Muslim nation in its war on Islamic fundamentalism, hence it brings out guns.
Iraq just happened to be the poor dumb bastards that fit with the NeoCon's plans. They had a vaguely plausible excuse WMDs, the government was wildly unpopular by its own people, they were sitting on enough wealth where they could conceivably be a rich and successful nation, and they were smack dab in the middle of the ideological war zone.
Look, I am not saying you have to like the Iraq war or NeoCons. I sure as shit don't. Just don't confuse their intentions. If you think they are sitting around stroking their evil beards looking for more oil to steal, you have absolutely no understanding of what their intentions are. Ignorance is a sure fire way to give them power to do as they please because you will misread their intentions and be surprised when they do something outside of your distorted world view. NeoCons believe that they can make a free market democracy at the point of a gun, and that it is worthwhile to do so. Japan after World War II is what NeoCons strive to create. This is the core of their belief. The oil is inconsequential. They would be just as happy to do the same thing they did to Iraq as they did to North Korea despite its paltry resources if they thought North Korea was as ripe as Iraq was (which it isn't).
No, you misunderstand the argument. He is not arguing that you can do one or the other. He is arguing that the US overreacted to an overblown threat. For instance, if there are 15,000 alcohol related accidents, you don't just ban alcohol to make the problem go away. The same goes with terrorism. You don't strip away liberties because a few thousand people died. There are a lot of dangers out there, but I don't want the government to take the steps to end these dangers if the cost is too high.
So, I am sure the government could almost completely eliminate crime if we turned into a technocratic police state. That said; as much as I dislike getting murdered, I would rather take my risks with being killed by a criminal then have to live in a technocratic police state.
The same goes with terrorism. I would rather risk having something blow up then turn the nation into a police state. I would rather take my chances that a terrorist might kill me then surrender all of my liberties. The chances of me dying to a terrorist attack are infinitesimally small, so I would like to see it treated as the relative non-threat that it is. Want to set up radiation detectors and run cargo coming in a once over with a detector? Great. I am more then happy to pay for the price of it as the cost is relatively small and the pay back potentially large. Want to turn the nation into a police state to protect me from terrorist? I'll pass.
How in the hell did this get modded insightful? The idea behind killing GPS is so that if you think a terrorist is using it, you can kill it. It doesn't mean that if something happens they kill GPS for everyone. It means that if someone thinks killing GPS might throw a wrench in a terrorist's plans, you can do it. It could be something as simple as killing GPS for an area so that a crop duster going to spray chemicals on a city can no longer can navigate. Perhaps you kill it over the ocean because you believe a boat with a nuclear weapon on it is headed for a city. There are a lot of cases where the ability to kill GPS would come in handy. Only a fool would not want an extra tool. They don't have to use it, but it sure as shit is nice to have.
Do you get the symbolism at all? The opening scenes shows them putting on their makeup and getting primped for the cameras. The ending scene shows them taking off their mics as the cameras go off. The movie is bookended with scenes of them putting on their "game faces" so to speak, like actors going on stage. Get it yet?
The word you are looking for isn't symbolism. The word you are looking for is propaganda. The idea is to show them in compromising positions so that you think they are a bunch of dopes. You might almost have a point that it was just symbolism if it wasn't for the fact that not only did they take pictures of them putting on makeup, but they also took the worst moments of it. The images of Bush getting ready to address national TV was also doctored. The image was made grainy and the speed was slowed down. The volume was muted so that it looks like he is talking to himself when he is really just talking with people off camera. That isn't "symbolism", that is propaganda. You could have done the same thing for any president.
No, that says nothing about them being evil. The simple point was that it was all about business.
You know you are kidding yourself. You could have gotten images of Clinton or Carter officials doing the exact same thing. When you are president of the United States, at some point you are going to have officials meeting with other officials from an Arab country. When that happens, any idiot with a camera can put together a string of pictures showing your officials shaking hands with their officials and look like they are enjoying it.
The movie is filled with the most blatant and disgusting propaganda techniques I have ever seen as an American, and that is why it filled me with so much disgust. A movie made in that jack ass propaganda style could be made about anyone. You could have made it about black people or Jews if that tickled your fancy. Just go pull every single negative picture of a certain group of people, video edit and arrange those pictures to make them look even worse, then spew that racist filth all over the screen.
People focus on what he got wrong or distorted because the entire movie is wrong or distorted. It was propaganda, balls to bone. Further, it was the most blatant propaganda that most Americans who have not lived through World War II have ever seen in their life time. It is a travesty that the Democrats ate that shit up so willingly simply because they hate Bush. It was a complete betrayal of ideals on the part of the Democrats to embrace and cheer for crap that could have been aired Nazi Germany if Bush had only been a Jew.
The only worthwhile message of that entire movie was that 'war is ugly'. Guess what, you could have pulled just as horrific images of war being ugly from every single war in the history of the world. No shit war is ugly. Every single war is ugly and the Iraq war is no exception.
I can tell you why you felt the way you did after you saw that movie. You watched 2 hours of propaganda and lapped it up like a dog. You watched Moore make 'suggested' implications because he couldn't come out and lie directly without being skewered worse then he was. Your average die hard Democrat who will blindly follow the party to hell and would vote for Kerry even if he offered to bar code everyone's head might have eaten that crap up, but the rest of us saw the most disgusting use of propaganda we have ever seen and were utterly disgusted and revolted. The rest of us saw what a disgusting betrayal of the Democrats ideals that movie was and were revolted.
Certainly that movie affected me for days afterwards, but it wasn't Bush I was disgusted at. It was the people that stood up at the end of that movie and cheered. It was funny that Moore references 1982 in that movie, because watching a mass of people who supposedly hold Democratic ideals cheer for that propaganda was more then a little reminiscent of 1982.
Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine really made me think too. Before I went into the theater I thought that only in North Korea could someone shovel a ton of propaganda down your throat in a two hour period... then I watched Bush administration officials getting make up put on, a grainy image of Bush getting ready to speak before the entire nation, and Bush officials shaking hands with ARABS IN HEADRESSES (the headdress means they are 3vil). After watching that shit and the lack of outrage by democrats at someone airing the most blatant propaganda I have ever seen as an American, I was very happy to vote for neither of the fuckers. I had no intentions of voting for Bush, but after watching Kerry supports eat that shit up, I was pretty happy not to vote for him either.
Sure, I reacted by telling people my disgust at the layers and layers of propaganda heap on top of a 10 minute story of how bad war was (the only vaguely worthwhile part of the movie). But you know what? I would have also reacted if someone had shown me a KKK training video, the animated telling of Mein Kampf, or three hours of North Korean television - and then cheered after words.
Does the game appeal to anyone in this sense, the whole gloomy futuristic science-fiction style?
In a word? No. There are two reasons why this game has zero appeal to your average cyber-punk fan.
First, the game is not set in the city. The game is mostly set outside of the cities. You might hit a city now and then, but for the most part the envirnoment is that of a planet's wilderness. The cities are all relativly small when compared to the rest of the gaming world and they don't feel terribly alive. I don't know about anyone else, but when I think cyber punk, I think of cities, and AOs cities are worthless for anything other then looking at.
Second, the game is traditional MMORPG in every sense of the word. I don't know about you, but when I think of cyber punk, spawn camping or hunting down random critters for mad l00t is not what comes to my mind. At its core, AO is Everquest. Your goal is to go hunt shit for experience and loot, and when it comes down to it, that is the very core of the game play. Perhaps other disagree, but hunting shit for experience and loot is not what I think of when I think of cyber punk.
Take Everquest, throw in a few alterations to the generic hack and slash modle, replace all fantasy words with future words, and give everyone a gun. You now have AO. Yawn. There is nothing inovative to see in AO.
The oil industry has about as much say in how hydrogen is going to play as car companies have in the airline industry. The automakers might like to ban airplanes so everyone has to use a car, but it will never happen because public demand on the issue is just too damned strong. Hydrogen is the same way.
The problem with hydrogen is that it isn't cheaper then oil. Period. The day that changes is the day the oil industry is steam rolled. The energy market is deadly serious to all economies. Energy trumps everything, even the industries that supply it. Big mean oil might want to keep the world running on the black stuff until there is not a drop left, but they are the only ones, and they are only a whisper of a voice compared to all of the other industries and special interest groups that simply want cheap power. So, even if the system was so massively corrupt that an industry could snuff a competing industry with money, oil's paltry sum compared to the collective will of every single other industry still results in the cheaper energy source winning.
Power is the life blood of the economy. Automakers have a direct interest to see a fuel source that is cleaner and cheaper, thus avoiding having to build cars to meet stringent environmental standards, and in general encourage people to drive more cars. All other industries have a stake in this as well. If your industry uses any sort of transportation, then you want something cheaper then oil if it exists. Nothing has such a dramatic net effect on the economy like the price of oil.
My point is simple. Oil companies might not be clawing over each other to build a cheap and safe hydrogen economy, but everyone else is. When I say everyone, I mean EVERYONE. Any moderately sized corporation that has any technology that might be related hydrogen fuel cells and ever tries a few long shots has a hydrogen program of some sort in the works. Hell, I worked at a company that specialized in making the massive belts that go on a paper machine that was working on hydrogen fuel cells. Picture that: a company in a declining industry that specializes in making parts for paper machines had a project to try and improve hydrogen fuel cells, simply because they had a little expertise in fabric, and thought that perhaps a certain fabric could form the basis of a cell. They were not doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They just saw the massive amount of money that goes to first guy to replace oil and wanted a piece.
I personally wouldn't worry. If you know anything about hydrogen fuel cells, you know that there is a massive amount of work going into right now even as we speak. It might take a decade to get something that everyone agrees is good, but a decade is a very short amount of time.
I would like to be excited and think that things will change in NASA, but I can't help but be a little more the skeptical. NASA is utterly obsessed with safety and conservatism. What they don't seem to realize that there are plenty of people more then happy to throw safety to the wind and risk their life, and that obsessive conservative (not conservative in the political sense) policies lead to people getting bored and not bothering to shill out money. X-Prize like adventures is what leads to breakthroughs and advancement. Just imagine the sort of things that would have been accomplished if one of the X-Prize teams had been handed a billion dollars. It would be a lot more interesting then a handful of grounded behemoths and a massive bureaucracy shaking at the knees at the prospect that someone might have to risk their life to move forward.
I hope something changes, but I have a feeling that Russian saying is more likely to offer a better explanation of what is to come: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
You are correct in that roughly half of the population is against independence. The little fact you forgot to mention is that the half in favor of not declaring independence still don't want the PRC. They China to rejoin THEIR government or, in the very least, pretend to be one nations while making sure the People's Army never steps foot on Taiwanes soil.
First, Taiwan has NEVER been apart of the PRC. Taiwan has never declared independence from the PRC because it has never been apart of the PRC. The better analogy would be the US response if Hawaii had simply remained a territory of the US and never opted to join the states. The answer is that the US would do nothing.
Second, if Hawaii did declare independence because the US had become an autocratic state and had crushed a pro-democracy movement with tanks and made a few thousand people disappear, I imagine a pile of other states would also declare independence. The point is that a US state will never declare independence again because no matter how shitty the current president is, the government is more then tolerable enough to live with.
Third, the vast majority of Taiwanese want nothing to do with the PRC. Even those who are against declaring independence are dead set against letting the PRC set up shop in Taiwan. It isn't a few separatists or terrorist that run Taiwan, it is the vast majority of the population that can think of something more fun to do then be ruled by an autocratic government.
My girlfriend is ethnically Taiwanese but has only ever seen the place once when she was young. Her parents though are from Taiwan, visit often, and keep in good touch with their many relatives there. I have had the pleasure of talking to them on many occasions, and the simple fact of the matter is that Taiwan has no desire to be apart of China for good reason. Taiwan is scrapping out a relatively functional democracy. China on the other hand is far from democratic. These people have absolutely no desire to be apart of the PRC. They should be damn weary of the PRC for good reason. A simple look at Hong Kong makes the point abundantly clear. China has no desire to move towards democracy, and no desire to let formerly democratic territories keep their democracies in any meaningful way.
Granted, my evidence is antidotal, but from the relatives of my girlfriend that I talked to, they seem as fanatically opposed to joining the PRC as the US is to joining the USSR. So long as Taiwan is a democracy and China is not, the two will never reunite peacefully. Taiwan will defend itself (as they should) from violent reunification. Taiwan is a formidable foe thanks in part to that moat it has around itself (also known as the Pacific Ocean). Combine the fact that Taiwan could probably do a decent job defending itself with the fact that a thousand pound gorilla in the form of the US is sitting just behind it looking like it isn't going to let the fight go by unnoticed, and you can make a safe bet that the two are going to keep going their separate ways for the near future.
The difference is that I can watch O'Riely on Fox News, then switch over to CBS to watch Dan Rathers, go online and get a Libertarian news letter, and finish off the day at an ultra-left marxist website.
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I don't have the patience to hit each point individually, so lets just look at the most glaring contradictions.
Apparently you missed the word "elevated" (like almost all personal rail transportation proposals, which have found very little to no "siezure" required). And, as road traffic is reduced, land is *freed*, not siezed.
Maintainance on rails is lower than on roads, and is even further reduced when propulsion/deceleration is magnetic instead of traction based (traction tears up the surface)
Concrete for the pillars is about the same cost. Shaped tubular steel is more expensive, but you need much less of it.
So, let me just see if I understand. This is going to be roughly as expensive as a roadway, yet it shall be elevated above the road. Do I even need to begin point out the sheer insanity of that statement? An elevated system of anything, especially something that needs the ability to hold tens of thousands of kilograms between each post is not just expensive, it is horribly and inhumanly expensive. You don't want to elevate just overpasses, but every single road? Sure, you might even be able to cut out some roads that serve to ease congestion, but unless you feel like absolutely destroying the property value of residential and commercial property by removing access to transporation, they will need rails too. So, when you look at the sloppy road network that winds its way through your average rural area, you will need a raise track there too, or you will turn places that don't get one into a ghost town.
I am not sure about the rest of the world where property ownership is lower, but I know that in the US the entire economy hinges upon property having a relatively stable value and the fact that people can borrow against it. If suddenly you made large swaths of property drastically reduced in property value because it has no access to transportation, you would bankrupt the economy.
I can't even begin to imagine how much fun it would be to go to a quiet coastal town and tell the residence that you need to move in heavy construction equipment to build a raised rail through a residential district across scenic beach front property.
Then comes the maintenance. Let's just completely ignore the steel Vs pavement costs for a brief second. You are not suggesting just steel. You are suggesting RAISED hunks of steel. Raised and with enough strength to be able to handle constant traffic. The most expensive part of any road repair operation isn't slapping down a new coat of pavement or throwing some tar into a few pot holes. It is when you need to deal with a piece of road that is raised - and you want to make every single road raised? You think that this would be cost effective?
I am too bored to go on. The idea of raising every single road off the ground speaks for itself. If you can't see the massive problems with it, you are an idiot.
Cute idea, but I think "staggering capital costs" is the world largest understatement. First off, you are talking about what would be by far the largest government project ever even conceived. It would make the current combined spending of the US government look like pocket change. You couldn't even contemplate such a thing without turning your entire economy over to the effort. You would need greatest tax hike in American history to fund it. No, even disbanding the military wouldn't even begin to cover the cost.
Then, you would have the fun time period in-between the completion of this new magical rail system where you would still need roads. So, somehow you need to build this track system while still preserving the road system. This is an completely unthinkable task unless you commit yourself to some serious private land seizures. If you want to make a new rail system appear out of air and not destroy the existing road system until it is done, you are going to have to tell people to vacate their house while the government bulldozes it down to make way for the greatest piece of pork ever conceived.
If you are going to cover the entire nation in this thing in one life time, you also will need a massive amount of construction crews and equipment. I don't know about you, but I have no intention of quitting my day job to be a construction worker. That means that the US is going to import a massive number of people to work these jobs and pay them, straight out of the government's pocket. Further, some has to oversee and manage the entire project and keep it on budget.
So, now we have this magical rail system, we need to continue to pay for it. If you thought a layer of tar was expensive - imagine the joys of keeping a magnetic rail system intact. Certainly you could build safety into these things, but if cars are zipping around at a 100+ miles per hour, you better be ready to jump on any repairs that are needed. The materials all costs significantly more then tar does. Further, you need to completely rewire the US power grid. The power grid as its stands couldn't even begin to handle having to support every single personal and commercial vehicle.
So yeah, really cute idea. Alls you need to do is convince people initiate the biggest government project in history, raise taxes as far as they will go, seize millions of acres of private land, some how oversee and manage this project, then once it is done devote massive amounts of government budget to its continual upkeep. No, the "GDP boost alone" will NOT pay for it. This idea is at best a recipe for making an industrialized nation into a poor third world nation, and most likely a recipe for a violent anti-government revolution. Mods, please think before you label this crap interesting. I might as well throw up my "just drive to Mars idea in family mini-van". I mean, it would work perfectly with only the small hitch of a few million miles of vacuum between here and there.
A marine of error is tolerated because each time you recount, you are going to get a different number. If the two are basically tied, each time you will get a different winner. This is what is happening in Washington. No one will ever be satisfied because we simply lack of ability to count as accuratly as we need to in order to come up with the same winner each time.
No matter how careful or supervised the recount is, it will ALWAYS result in different numbers. When the race is as close as this one is, you basically just need follow the letter of the law and accept whatever the letter says. The position of Democracy is pretty clear in this case - they are tied. Half of the people who voted will feel represented by the person who wins, half wont. Give or take a few people isn't going to matter. Democracy can't offer up a better answer, so now we simply follow the law. The Republicans and Democrats will play their legal games because they both know that they have no idea who won.
Look on the bright side, while Democracy might be unable to pick a winner, the system IS working. The two are going to settle their dispute one way or another. A year from now the winner will be doing his job, and power will have transfered hands without any sort of violence or bloodshed. In a lot of nations such a dispute could only end in blood. In Washington state, it is going to end with a few court rulings and maybe a recount or two. The system isn't perfect, but it certainly works.
I don't think that people appreciate how fast the world is changing. The thing is that we are just so damn good at adapting these days that we tend to notice how quickly things change. I recall just five years ago cellphones were still relativly rare and most people didn't own one. Today, almost everyone I know owns one - and that is just a minor technology in the grand scheme of things.
If you want to talk about big worlder altering changes, then look at e-mail, the internet, and the PC. Those technologies have certainly dipped into the household. More then that, they have revolutionized all industries. As an engineer, I can't even contemplate what engineers did before spreadsheets, PCs, and e-mail. The massive boom in the 90's was a very direct result of the incredible technological advances we made and their dramatic effect upon industry.
I think that if you were to go back in time just 15 year you would notice a big change beween now and then. True, cars don't fly, but they do talk to you, store an almsot unlimited library of music, and if one crashes, inflate half of a dozen airbags. Things are changing, we just don't appreciate how much.
I have a better idea. How about rename it the RSS (Russian Space Station), or the WTFWISLAIINUSS (Whoever The Fuck Wants It So Long As It Is Not Us Space Station).
I think the Russians are perfectly justified in making the US cough up more change to help support ISS operations. Russia has an economy that is weak at best and more important things to worry about then toys like the ISS. If they are going to keep supporting the damn thing, I don't think it should come as a surprise that they don't want to continue to pump so much of their own badly needed money at it.
The bigger issue is that as an American, I don't want the fucking thing. I could think of a million other things that I would much rather be spending money on rather then that pork barrel.
The US signed a contract to help build, support, and fund this ugly beast that is currently wasting away doing absolutely ZERO science. I personally wish that the US would just pay off its debts and let the rest of the world have the damned thing. Get everyone to agree on a figure that would absolve the US from having to support the damn thing and shell over the cash. The rest of the world is happy because they have cash, and the US is happy because it isn't feeding a whale every year.
Half the point of the MMORPG is growing your character. That's half the point of any RP game. Throw out that part and what's the point, anyway? Imagine if in the Legend of Zelda you started out with all the items and heart containers! Wouldn't that be fun! No, wait, it would suck. Half the fun is watching Link grow and being able to take on larger and harder challenges.
Part of the paradigm shift that people are utterly unable to move away from is that an MMORPG (or RPG for that matter) needs to have levels and all of that other crap. That stuff is a crutch. Fallout would have been absolutely amazing RPG, even if there was not a single skill in the game, combat was FPS, and skills were puzzles. There has been a distinct fear (maybe terror is a better word) of trying to meld action and role playing. That is role playing spelled with an E, not roll playing with dice.
The building up of a character to near god hood is all well and good if you are playing D&D with your friends. It is even stomachable if it is a single player RPG. The problem comes in when you try and keep this concept into the multiplayer realm. Not everyone can be a god, but MMORPGs sure as hell try regardless. What they are missing is that you are not feeling a sense of being an awesome hero rising up in an MMORPG like you do in a game like Zelda. You just feel the compulsive urge to level up, knowing that with the exception of a few children who have 18 hours a day to spend on the computer, you will never be that awesome hero who looks at people and makes them die. So, you have a combat system built for heroes, but a game that crushes them with the reality that you need to be a complete loser in life or child to get there.
What these games need to do is get rid of the hero mentality and build a game around a world where everyone is mortal, and any idiot with a knife can kill you if you are caught off guard. More importantly though is the inverse, an idiot like you can kill the greatest player in the world if you catch him by surprise.
An MMORPG is a massively unbalanced game. A monkey with a level 50 character couldn't die to an expert with a level 1 character if he tried. All that I want is a game that puts balance first. This sort of world doesn't have to rule out progress or character development. The idea is to instead focus on balance and fun. If one guy is completely and utterly incapable of killing another guy even after he goes AFK for 10 minutes, chances are your game is massively unbalanced. Character development can certainly include things outside of a few numbers or a score card. Character development includes joining organizations, politics, exploration, team work, PvP, and a whole slew of other things that don't revolve around experience, levels, and a boring combat engine.
I know people have a hard time believing this, but MMORPGs (and RPGs in general) are NOT defined by having a worthless combat engine. Bad combat doesn't make a game a role playing game. Perhaps technical challenges are a valid excuse for lack of imagination in MMORPGs. That said, those technical challenges are quickly evaporating. Raw number crunching and data sending capabilities continue to increase at a rapid rate. If there is a barrier, it isn't going to be there for much longer. It is just going to take a few people to break out of the clone mentality. Right now the MMORPG world feels like déjà vu of the state of video gaming after Doom. Everyone and their dog wants to repeat what has already been done, and no one has the balls to step up and move forward.
The year might be considered 'diverse' next to previous years, but the truth is, only a few companies offered up anything new on the formula. You basically can cut MMORPGs between the Everquest arch type, the space arch type, and small time odd ball like puzzle pirates. Unfortunately, the only companies that have truly tried to innovate and change the generic MMORPG formula have been smaller companies that lack the resources to really go all out.
The major MMORPGs are defined by the leveling treadmill and dice roll based combat, pure and simple. WoW might have refined the treadmill, and AO might have thrown it in a new setting, but the core game play is the same. I don't know about anyone else, but I am burnt out and annoyed.
Gamers are thought of as kids under the age of 18. How you make a game for someone under the age of 18, and how you make a game for someone with a job and a wife are two very different thing. The thing that is being discovered is that the only reason why we have the misconception that games are for kids is because the first generation of video games was embraced by younger folks. Those people have grown up now, but they have certainly not out grown games. On the contrary, they are the best market out there. Not only do they love games, but they have a big fat wad of cash and consider 50 dollars spent on a video game to be nothing. They don't care if they shell out 20 a month for a subscription based game that they like. For some reason though, MMORPGs seem determined not to appeal to these people.
When I was young, I could afford to spend 8 hours a day on the computer. A game like Everquest was perfect. I had the time and the patience to blow large hunks of my day at some leveling treadmill when I can load of CS or Unreal and start kicking ass instantly. I am older and richer now. I can't afford to waste that much of my time, but I am willing to pay significantly more to be entertained.
I like MMORPGs. I like the social aspect of such games. I like the massive persistent worlds. I like that there are things to do besides killing. I just fucking hate having to 'level up', 'pay my do', 'work', or whatever the fuck you want to call it. My time is more valuable then the time of some 14 year old boy who can spend 18 hours a day on the damn computer every day, yet I have pay the same amount of time to get the same things that he gets. Rationalize the reasons why you should have to waste that much time on an MMORPG all you want, but me and people like me hate it. Period.
What I want is an MMORPG with all the basic ingredients of an MMORG, I just want the damned experience/leveling/skill/treadmill systems and the combat systems stripped. Gut the damn MMORPG and fill its innards with a Half Life 2/FarCry/Thief style engine. Imagine if your thief character really had to sneak around like you were Garret from Thief. Imagine if swordplay was fast paced like Jedi Knight. Imagine if your archer snuck around firing and running like in FarCry. Then imagine after a hard day of fighting you could go kick it back in a bar or craft Puzzle Pirates style. Maybe for the economically inclined there could be an economic game like Rail Road Tycoon (or whatever) underneath. Perhaps there is also a A Tail in the Desert style player senate and politics. Maybe there is even a little Command and Conquer style tactical commanding.
Whatever the case, there is a lot more out there then whack the mole RPGs. It is too bad no MMORPG makers have grown some balls to do something more creative then a leveling treadmill (WoW, Everquest, SWG) or tribes with a larger battlefield (PlanetSide). I suppose in the end it isn't all bad. With some many MMORPGs out there that I don't want, that leaves more money to go to games like Half Life 2.
I fully agree that we should be much more liberal about who we let in. That said, having to offer up a pledge of allegiance before getting citizenship is not exactly setting the bar too high for the tired and poor huddled masses yearnign to breathe free. If you really hate the nation so much that you can stomach a pledge, why in hell would you want to come here in the first place?
The US has a very liberal immigration policy next to most nations. That said, it is still selective. If someone wants to immigrate that has so much resentment towards the nation that giving an oath of allegiance is too much to ask, they know where the door is.
The point is not to make everyone in the US agree to the oath. The point is to be selective in the hopes that the people who are let in are productive citizens who one day make more productive citizens. If you were to ask to get let in and told them you really just want to live off welfare, they wouldn't let you in either. That certainly doesn't stop Americans already in from trying to do it, but if you are going to let only a selective number of people in, it doesn't hurt to set some standard to ensure that you get the best. Giving an oath of allegiance is one of those standards.
Like I said, if you don't like minimum standard you need to meet, you know where the door is.
Did it ever occure to you that perhaps your interview style or resume suck? I know you want to be the victim, but I know programs out of school that got jobs some how. Not every single CS major out of college is rattling a cup for change. If other people are getting jobs right out of school and you are not, I would take a long hard look at why. The answer isn't immigration.
The US is generally a friendlier nation to immigrants then most countries because we have such a history of it. Of course, compared to most countries, that doesn't say much. US gets hit with waves of immigration from specific locations. It used to be that having a 'Mc' or "O'" in your name caused you to get shit on during the flood of Irish immigration. Now Irish ancestry is something everyone and their dog seems to claim every St. Patrick's day (myself included) with pride.
I have a feeling that Indian immigration is the same sort of deal. The US is getting hit with a lot of Indian immigration, and so people bristle a little over stupid things. I personally think it is just a cycle that is going to quickly wear itself out. Give it 20 years and I bet no one thinks anything of it.
You can already see the trend in Asians that sent over a wave before the Indian immigration wave. The stereotypes are certainly still there, but fewer and fewer people automatically assume that anyone who looks Asian is going to speak with a broken accent. I am not saying the world is perfectly peachy, but you can see things slowly starting to even themselves out.
While in an ideal world it would be nice if we could all get along, in the real world quick integration is key. First wave immigrants from both East Asian and India have proven to be as compatible as everyone else to protestant work ethic, and the first generation born here have shown that they are as completely integrated as any other American. Hell, my two best friends are the first kids born in the US in their families which are Indian and Taiwanese. If you talked to them on the phone you would never know they were not decedents of some Irish family that has been cranking out kids for the past 100 years.
So, is the machine perfect? Nah. I think it is running pretty smoothly though. You have the usual tensions that associate immigration, but I really think the future is looking bright for these people, especially their kids. I think the US will be better off in the end for it too. I don't think it hurts at all to add a few more shapes and colors to the mix to help deaden racist impulses.
Pull your head out of the sand. People don't starve in the US under normal circumstances. Even in poorest parts of the US you never see rail thin kids dying of starvation. Even the bums on the street are well fed. A hungry American is a well fed person in most nations.
It is no coincidence that the US has one of the world's most liberal immigration policies (even post 9/11) AND just so happens to be the worlds largest super power. The US consumes the world's intellects and it is to the advantage of the US people that it does. Very few people born in the US leave the US to live somewhere else, but massive amounts of people from all over the world come to the US to live. The difference between the numbers of people we give away compared to the number of people we take in is massive.
For an antidotal example, look at what happened to Germany during World War II. Germany became a xenophobic nation that started to bleed off large portions of its non-native population. At the same time the US consumed a great many people from Germany, especially German intellects that for didn't meet the ethnic standards they were looking for. Without this development, the US would never have gotten the atomic bomb as quickly as it did, along with a while host of other technologies. Draining the worlds brain power is GOOD for the US.
As an American and descendent of immigrants (as most Americans are), I like it when the US imports intelligent people willing to work. It means the US just got more productive and more intelligent and somewhere else some nation just lost a good citizen. Once someone is a US citizen, they are an American as far as I am concerned. The chances that they will leave rapidly shrink the longer they stay, and such people tend to bred productive and intelligent children.
US immigration policy is the biggest asset this nation has. I personally am dumbfounded that another American could complain about the US drawing the world's intelligence and productivity to itself. Maybe you long for a nice homogeneous and stagnant nations, but I sure as shit don't. Perhaps if unemployment was high I would have a little more sympathy to tears over population growth, but at a paltry 5% unemployment, you can cry me a river.
Perhaps your memory is short, but it was the US that but an embargo on Iraq such that Iraq couldn't sell its oil. People, get a fucking grip. There is no nation in the world that doesn't want to trade with the US. That is how the US dominates. Take the most nations most hostile to the US in the world. What do they all have in common? They all want to trade with the US and they are pissed off because the US doesn't want to trade back. Trade is the weapon the US wields that is far more powerful then its military.
Whenever the US brings out its military it is based upon some national security threat and/or over and ideological battle. If you don't think Iraq is an ideological battle, you need to take NeoCon for dummies 101. Like or hate the neocon philosophy, it has nothing to do with oil. It is about ideology pure and simple. The US can always trade for what it wants. The second the guns come out it is because it wants something that it can't trade for. The US can't buy a successful democratic Muslim nation in its war on Islamic fundamentalism, hence it brings out guns.
Iraq just happened to be the poor dumb bastards that fit with the NeoCon's plans. They had a vaguely plausible excuse WMDs, the government was wildly unpopular by its own people, they were sitting on enough wealth where they could conceivably be a rich and successful nation, and they were smack dab in the middle of the ideological war zone.
Look, I am not saying you have to like the Iraq war or NeoCons. I sure as shit don't. Just don't confuse their intentions. If you think they are sitting around stroking their evil beards looking for more oil to steal, you have absolutely no understanding of what their intentions are. Ignorance is a sure fire way to give them power to do as they please because you will misread their intentions and be surprised when they do something outside of your distorted world view. NeoCons believe that they can make a free market democracy at the point of a gun, and that it is worthwhile to do so. Japan after World War II is what NeoCons strive to create. This is the core of their belief. The oil is inconsequential. They would be just as happy to do the same thing they did to Iraq as they did to North Korea despite its paltry resources if they thought North Korea was as ripe as Iraq was (which it isn't).
No, you misunderstand the argument. He is not arguing that you can do one or the other. He is arguing that the US overreacted to an overblown threat. For instance, if there are 15,000 alcohol related accidents, you don't just ban alcohol to make the problem go away. The same goes with terrorism. You don't strip away liberties because a few thousand people died. There are a lot of dangers out there, but I don't want the government to take the steps to end these dangers if the cost is too high.
So, I am sure the government could almost completely eliminate crime if we turned into a technocratic police state. That said; as much as I dislike getting murdered, I would rather take my risks with being killed by a criminal then have to live in a technocratic police state.
The same goes with terrorism. I would rather risk having something blow up then turn the nation into a police state. I would rather take my chances that a terrorist might kill me then surrender all of my liberties. The chances of me dying to a terrorist attack are infinitesimally small, so I would like to see it treated as the relative non-threat that it is. Want to set up radiation detectors and run cargo coming in a once over with a detector? Great. I am more then happy to pay for the price of it as the cost is relatively small and the pay back potentially large. Want to turn the nation into a police state to protect me from terrorist? I'll pass.
How in the hell did this get modded insightful? The idea behind killing GPS is so that if you think a terrorist is using it, you can kill it. It doesn't mean that if something happens they kill GPS for everyone. It means that if someone thinks killing GPS might throw a wrench in a terrorist's plans, you can do it. It could be something as simple as killing GPS for an area so that a crop duster going to spray chemicals on a city can no longer can navigate. Perhaps you kill it over the ocean because you believe a boat with a nuclear weapon on it is headed for a city. There are a lot of cases where the ability to kill GPS would come in handy. Only a fool would not want an extra tool. They don't have to use it, but it sure as shit is nice to have.
Do you get the symbolism at all? The opening scenes shows them putting on their makeup and getting primped for the cameras. The ending scene shows them taking off their mics as the cameras go off. The movie is bookended with scenes of them putting on their "game faces" so to speak, like actors going on stage. Get it yet?
The word you are looking for isn't symbolism. The word you are looking for is propaganda. The idea is to show them in compromising positions so that you think they are a bunch of dopes. You might almost have a point that it was just symbolism if it wasn't for the fact that not only did they take pictures of them putting on makeup, but they also took the worst moments of it. The images of Bush getting ready to address national TV was also doctored. The image was made grainy and the speed was slowed down. The volume was muted so that it looks like he is talking to himself when he is really just talking with people off camera. That isn't "symbolism", that is propaganda. You could have done the same thing for any president.
No, that says nothing about them being evil. The simple point was that it was all about business.
You know you are kidding yourself. You could have gotten images of Clinton or Carter officials doing the exact same thing. When you are president of the United States, at some point you are going to have officials meeting with other officials from an Arab country. When that happens, any idiot with a camera can put together a string of pictures showing your officials shaking hands with their officials and look like they are enjoying it.
The movie is filled with the most blatant and disgusting propaganda techniques I have ever seen as an American, and that is why it filled me with so much disgust. A movie made in that jack ass propaganda style could be made about anyone. You could have made it about black people or Jews if that tickled your fancy. Just go pull every single negative picture of a certain group of people, video edit and arrange those pictures to make them look even worse, then spew that racist filth all over the screen.
People focus on what he got wrong or distorted because the entire movie is wrong or distorted. It was propaganda, balls to bone. Further, it was the most blatant propaganda that most Americans who have not lived through World War II have ever seen in their life time. It is a travesty that the Democrats ate that shit up so willingly simply because they hate Bush. It was a complete betrayal of ideals on the part of the Democrats to embrace and cheer for crap that could have been aired Nazi Germany if Bush had only been a Jew.
The only worthwhile message of that entire movie was that 'war is ugly'. Guess what, you could have pulled just as horrific images of war being ugly from every single war in the history of the world. No shit war is ugly. Every single war is ugly and the Iraq war is no exception.
I can tell you why you felt the way you did after you saw that movie. You watched 2 hours of propaganda and lapped it up like a dog. You watched Moore make 'suggested' implications because he couldn't come out and lie directly without being skewered worse then he was. Your average die hard Democrat who will blindly follow the party to hell and would vote for Kerry even if he offered to bar code everyone's head might have eaten that crap up, but the rest of us saw the most disgusting use of propaganda we have ever seen and were utterly disgusted and revolted. The rest of us saw what a disgusting betrayal of the Democrats ideals that movie was and were revolted.
Certainly that movie affected me for days afterwards, but it wasn't Bush I was disgusted at. It was the people that stood up at the end of that movie and cheered. It was funny that Moore references 1982 in that movie, because watching a mass of people who supposedly hold Democratic ideals cheer for that propaganda was more then a little reminiscent of 1982.
Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine really made me think too. Before I went into the theater I thought that only in North Korea could someone shovel a ton of propaganda down your throat in a two hour period... then I watched Bush administration officials getting make up put on, a grainy image of Bush getting ready to speak before the entire nation, and Bush officials shaking hands with ARABS IN HEADRESSES (the headdress means they are 3vil). After watching that shit and the lack of outrage by democrats at someone airing the most blatant propaganda I have ever seen as an American, I was very happy to vote for neither of the fuckers. I had no intentions of voting for Bush, but after watching Kerry supports eat that shit up, I was pretty happy not to vote for him either.
Sure, I reacted by telling people my disgust at the layers and layers of propaganda heap on top of a 10 minute story of how bad war was (the only vaguely worthwhile part of the movie). But you know what? I would have also reacted if someone had shown me a KKK training video, the animated telling of Mein Kampf, or three hours of North Korean television - and then cheered after words.
Does the game appeal to anyone in this sense, the whole gloomy futuristic science-fiction style?
In a word? No. There are two reasons why this game has zero appeal to your average cyber-punk fan.
First, the game is not set in the city. The game is mostly set outside of the cities. You might hit a city now and then, but for the most part the envirnoment is that of a planet's wilderness. The cities are all relativly small when compared to the rest of the gaming world and they don't feel terribly alive. I don't know about anyone else, but when I think cyber punk, I think of cities, and AOs cities are worthless for anything other then looking at.
Second, the game is traditional MMORPG in every sense of the word. I don't know about you, but when I think of cyber punk, spawn camping or hunting down random critters for mad l00t is not what comes to my mind. At its core, AO is Everquest. Your goal is to go hunt shit for experience and loot, and when it comes down to it, that is the very core of the game play. Perhaps other disagree, but hunting shit for experience and loot is not what I think of when I think of cyber punk.
Take Everquest, throw in a few alterations to the generic hack and slash modle, replace all fantasy words with future words, and give everyone a gun. You now have AO. Yawn. There is nothing inovative to see in AO.
I don't know if I should mod this insightful of funny.
The oil industry has about as much say in how hydrogen is going to play as car companies have in the airline industry. The automakers might like to ban airplanes so everyone has to use a car, but it will never happen because public demand on the issue is just too damned strong. Hydrogen is the same way.
The problem with hydrogen is that it isn't cheaper then oil. Period. The day that changes is the day the oil industry is steam rolled. The energy market is deadly serious to all economies. Energy trumps everything, even the industries that supply it. Big mean oil might want to keep the world running on the black stuff until there is not a drop left, but they are the only ones, and they are only a whisper of a voice compared to all of the other industries and special interest groups that simply want cheap power. So, even if the system was so massively corrupt that an industry could snuff a competing industry with money, oil's paltry sum compared to the collective will of every single other industry still results in the cheaper energy source winning.
Power is the life blood of the economy. Automakers have a direct interest to see a fuel source that is cleaner and cheaper, thus avoiding having to build cars to meet stringent environmental standards, and in general encourage people to drive more cars. All other industries have a stake in this as well. If your industry uses any sort of transportation, then you want something cheaper then oil if it exists. Nothing has such a dramatic net effect on the economy like the price of oil.
My point is simple. Oil companies might not be clawing over each other to build a cheap and safe hydrogen economy, but everyone else is. When I say everyone, I mean EVERYONE. Any moderately sized corporation that has any technology that might be related hydrogen fuel cells and ever tries a few long shots has a hydrogen program of some sort in the works. Hell, I worked at a company that specialized in making the massive belts that go on a paper machine that was working on hydrogen fuel cells. Picture that: a company in a declining industry that specializes in making parts for paper machines had a project to try and improve hydrogen fuel cells, simply because they had a little expertise in fabric, and thought that perhaps a certain fabric could form the basis of a cell. They were not doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They just saw the massive amount of money that goes to first guy to replace oil and wanted a piece.
I personally wouldn't worry. If you know anything about hydrogen fuel cells, you know that there is a massive amount of work going into right now even as we speak. It might take a decade to get something that everyone agrees is good, but a decade is a very short amount of time.
I would like to be excited and think that things will change in NASA, but I can't help but be a little more the skeptical. NASA is utterly obsessed with safety and conservatism. What they don't seem to realize that there are plenty of people more then happy to throw safety to the wind and risk their life, and that obsessive conservative (not conservative in the political sense) policies lead to people getting bored and not bothering to shill out money. X-Prize like adventures is what leads to breakthroughs and advancement. Just imagine the sort of things that would have been accomplished if one of the X-Prize teams had been handed a billion dollars. It would be a lot more interesting then a handful of grounded behemoths and a massive bureaucracy shaking at the knees at the prospect that someone might have to risk their life to move forward.
I hope something changes, but I have a feeling that Russian saying is more likely to offer a better explanation of what is to come:
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
You are correct in that roughly half of the population is against independence. The little fact you forgot to mention is that the half in favor of not declaring independence still don't want the PRC. They China to rejoin THEIR government or, in the very least, pretend to be one nations while making sure the People's Army never steps foot on Taiwanes soil.
First, Taiwan has NEVER been apart of the PRC. Taiwan has never declared independence from the PRC because it has never been apart of the PRC. The better analogy would be the US response if Hawaii had simply remained a territory of the US and never opted to join the states. The answer is that the US would do nothing.
Second, if Hawaii did declare independence because the US had become an autocratic state and had crushed a pro-democracy movement with tanks and made a few thousand people disappear, I imagine a pile of other states would also declare independence. The point is that a US state will never declare independence again because no matter how shitty the current president is, the government is more then tolerable enough to live with.
Third, the vast majority of Taiwanese want nothing to do with the PRC. Even those who are against declaring independence are dead set against letting the PRC set up shop in Taiwan. It isn't a few separatists or terrorist that run Taiwan, it is the vast majority of the population that can think of something more fun to do then be ruled by an autocratic government.
My girlfriend is ethnically Taiwanese but has only ever seen the place once when she was young. Her parents though are from Taiwan, visit often, and keep in good touch with their many relatives there. I have had the pleasure of talking to them on many occasions, and the simple fact of the matter is that Taiwan has no desire to be apart of China for good reason. Taiwan is scrapping out a relatively functional democracy. China on the other hand is far from democratic. These people have absolutely no desire to be apart of the PRC. They should be damn weary of the PRC for good reason. A simple look at Hong Kong makes the point abundantly clear. China has no desire to move towards democracy, and no desire to let formerly democratic territories keep their democracies in any meaningful way.
Granted, my evidence is antidotal, but from the relatives of my girlfriend that I talked to, they seem as fanatically opposed to joining the PRC as the US is to joining the USSR. So long as Taiwan is a democracy and China is not, the two will never reunite peacefully. Taiwan will defend itself (as they should) from violent reunification. Taiwan is a formidable foe thanks in part to that moat it has around itself (also known as the Pacific Ocean). Combine the fact that Taiwan could probably do a decent job defending itself with the fact that a thousand pound gorilla in the form of the US is sitting just behind it looking like it isn't going to let the fight go by unnoticed, and you can make a safe bet that the two are going to keep going their separate ways for the near future.
The difference is that I can watch O'Riely on Fox News, then switch over to CBS to watch Dan Rathers, go online and get a Libertarian news letter, and finish off the day at an ultra-left marxist website.