Really? You need to understand the difference between an ethnic community and a ghetto. An ethnic community is a group of people who live together by choice in order to share a similar culture with like minded people. I live in Boston. In Boston we have the North End, which is an "Italian" district and a "China Town". The Italian district is down right nice and is a favorite spot for romantic couples to go to eat. It is Italian in that Italian immigrants used to collect there together to speak their common language and be around culturally similar people. It is a much nicer place to live then where I live. People who live in that district are more likely to be Italian in origin, but it certainly is not the rule.
China Town is primarily made up of Chinese, Koreans, and a few other Asian nations. The vast majority of the population in China town are immigrants. It should be noted though that very few of the people in China town were born in the US. Generally their children quickly move out. The major reason why people live in China town is to be around culturally similar people. I wouldn't call that a weakness by any stretch of the imagination. It eases people into the American culture which can be radically different then Chinese culture. Further, no one forces people to live in these districts. People often choose to simply out of convince. As for the case of China town, very few people actually live in China town, seeing as how it is only a few blocks big. It is more a collection of ethnically Asian store.
America's real problem is not immigration. The US has a very good track record of quickly integrating immigrant populations and bringing them to standard American conditions very quickly. Very few nations are as skilled as the US is an immigrating large numbers of radically culturally different people. The real problem is, as you point out, are ghettos. Ghettos are primarily NOT made up of immigrant populations. The reason for why ghettos exist is something not worth going into here because people's opinions very widely. What is true is that the ghettos that exist are not made up of immigrant populations. They are made up of Americans that generally have been here for a few generations and are poor. The only exception to this is on the southern border of the US with Mexico where you can find third world like conditions along the border where illegal Mexican immigrants live.
1) No doubt China has the advantage of having a massive population to pull from to find their minds. However, much of that billion is overlooked, and even if it was all recognized, that still is not enough.
2) Market liberalization might go a long way to help China keep some of their minds simply by offering money. That said, market liberalization alone can not offset there general lack of freedom compared to the US. The US has a population of poor, yet you never see them stuff themselves in a cargo container to make the journey to China risking life and limb, you do see the converse of this though. In order to be effective, China must communicate with the rest of the world, and in this communication they will be forced to see that other places in the world are more free.
3) 9/11 has not increased hostility towards most immigrants. Asian immigrants in particular are pretty immune. Even Middle Eastern immigrants still enjoy great prosperity and acceptance in the US. Further, you need to realize that many places in the world are still highly tribal and racist on levels that American's don't comprehend. For an antidotal story, when the US was trying to build the Iraqi army, they were surprised to find that the Iraqi recruits where extremely racist towards each other. To the American commanders they all looked like Iraqi. Among the Iraqis there was bitter resentment between various ethnic factions. The point is that intolerance is not a strictly American thing, and in the grand scheme of things, the US is very tolerant in this day and age. On my block there are two Middle Eastern businesses, and my apartment is owned by a handful of Middle Eastern men. All of them are doing very well for themselves.
The big problem with 9/11 is not the changing attitude of American's towards immigrants already in the nation. The real problem 9/11 presents is the stricter immigration controls. This absolutely is a serious problem and you could very well be correct in that it could lead to the decline of the US. The US has always relied very heavily on importing talented people, and its reliance on importing minds has only increased over the past few decades. If there is a real danger the US supremacy, it is the danger of declining immigration.
That said, I don't think it is all that bleak. From what I understand out immigration levels are slowly ramping back up, and hopefully the delays that have been created in getting in and out of the nation will be worked out.
The difference is that we are currently using fossil fuels and it does not take a massive land public works project to keep using it. Switch over to wind power in a meaningful way would require a massive investment. There are two very large problems with this. First is the environmental aspect which the original poster brings up. If wind power is just as damning to the environment as fossil fuels, then it seems pretty foolish to spend all that money only continue doing damage to the environment - and do it at a higher cost then what we pay now. The second issue is that technology might render all of this moot. You are going to feel very stupid if we balloon the deficit even more with a massive public works project, only to have the energy problem solved a couple of years later with technology.
Personally, I would rather let oil sort itself out. If we start to run out, no big deal. The price of gas will rise and people will naturally switch over to alternative sources of energy and money will naturally be pumped into R&D to find a replacement. The worse it gets, the more energy efficient we will become, and the more willing we will be to try alternative forms of power generation. If the oil does not run out any time soon, then hurray. Say what you will of capitalism, but system is designed perfectly to deal with this sort of problem. It will regulate itself. I would let the power companies that make their money off oil and those who are inefficent with their use of power be the ones to worry.
I can tell you why the US is the leader in technology and why China will never catch up. The US actively promotes immigration, especially the immigration of intelligent people. If you walk onto any University in the US, hell, any corporation in the US, you will find them awash with people who barely speak English, but speak math or whatever there profession is with great skill. The advantage the US has enjoyed in the world is because it culls the world for the greatest minds.
Now, that is not to say that China would not jump over the chance to snag up a few great minds of their own. Unfortunately for China though, the US has two advantages over China that it will keep it ahead, at least in the foreseeable future. First, the US is very multicultural, and very culturally tolerant. There is nothing you can do to raise eyebrows in New York City. Further, you can always find people from the same culture as yours with minimal effort. In other words, the US has the groundwork laid out to accept anyone, and has extensive experience in integrating such people. Further, US workers and businesses are so used to foreign works that it is norm, not the exception.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the US will always be a more desirable place to live because it ranks very high in its freedoms. For the foreseeable future, the US will outrank China in its freedoms by a massive margin. China can basically write off ever receiving the brightest minds from the US, Europe, and other liberal democracies, simply because very few people from these nations are going to take kindly to having their Internet access restricted and likely can not even contemplate keeping a lid on their political beliefs when in public. That goes ten times if you are talking about someone from the US. Asking an American to shut the hell up about their beliefs on the way the world should be run is about as productive as screaming at a rock.
I imagine China is going to hit very hard bump on the road to progress. Corporations are more then happy to dump goods and factories into China, but when it comes to intellectual power, China is always going to lag well behind the US. China can really only count on its own population to provide them with intellectual power, and even then China suffers from the fact that the US and Europe will continue to cull a great deal of their brightest minds.
I personally only see two options for China. Either they become a significantly freer society, or they accept the fact that they will never be the world's intellectual leader. Either option sounds good to me.
While the film is over the top and largely misleading... (insert reasons why despite this the film was okay here).
Something that is, in your own words, "largely misleading" should have no place in discussions on Democracy. Moore could have used his name to make a great movie as to why war was bad and Bush is a fuck off. He could have been slanted and biased about it, but could have at least attempted to let the other side offer a counter point and give himself the last rebuttal. Instead, we got this sickening film that should make any fair minded person sick to their stomach because it reeks of such blatant propaganda that it would give your average middle aged Russian citizen flash backs.
There is a difference between addressing both sides with a slant and pure propaganda. Fox news has an obvious slant. They are conservative. That doesn't mean that they don't invite liberals onto the show to at least let them have their say. Even Rush Limbaugh invites liberals onto his show. Hell, he occasionally GIVES his show over to a liberal host when he goes on vacation to give the other side a say in the belief that their beliefs speak for themselves. Michael Moore does not even pretend to give the other side a say and edits out anything that might make you at least understand where the other side comes from.
Criticism is needed in the media, but Moore does not offer criticism. He offers nothing but propaganda. I bet the average person can not even tell you what his argument around the Saudi family was. They just eat up the stupid propaganda and leave with a feeling that bush did 'something' wrong.
The problem is not a lack of criticism with the war or the president. The protests that wracked both Boston and New York during the convections, offer plenty of very vocal criticism. All comical media offers tones of criticism. You can't watch Comedy Central without watching criticism of Bush. Any that argues that there is no criticism of the president clearly has their eyes closed. The problem is perhaps a lack of intelligent and in-depth criticism and Moore is no fix to this problem.
Honestly, I think people need to step back and look at what crap that movie was. If you have to begin your defence of it with, "While the film is over the top and largely misleading..." you REALLY need to take a step back and examin what you are defending.
I won't vote for Bush in the upcoming election. I almost changed my mind after watching Fahrenheit 9/11.
I personally am always blown away that main stream Democrats support Fahrenheit 9/11. It is like a main stream Republican supporting a film put out by the KKK in more ways then one. Fahrenheit 9/11 was by far the absolute most racist movie I have ever seen, short of old World War II propaganda. I think the scene that captures that sickening level of racism in that movie is when it shows a solid minute of two of various Bush officials shaking hands with people who are obviously Arabs (all from Saudi Arabia), and then implies that this should piss you off because 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Audi Arabia. The movie tries to make it sound like the fact that Bush meet a Saudi official after 9/11 was a bad thing. The entire movie uses Saudi like a curse word.
Further, it is the most revolting display of propaganda that I have ever seen in my entire life. The movie spent a solid five minutes or so showing Bush administration officials putting on fucking make. What exactly was the point of that? To show that people like to cover up their blemishes before putting their face up in front of a few million people? The propaganda tactics it uses could fill a Soviet hand book. It slows down certain scenes, edits out the sound, it makes some pictures grainier then they were, it cuts and slices scenes, and uses just about every single trick in the book. Hell the entire structure of the movie is classic propaganda. Throw out facts to make an implied argument, but never exactly state what the argument is. Then, after you have thrown out your stupid strawman of an argument, bash the audience with something highly emotional that they can't help but agree. In this case, they emotional hook is 'war is ugly'.
I think airing Fahrenheit 9/11 could be a disaster for Democrats. Most of the people that saw Fahrenheit 9/11 were already dead set to vote against Bush and didn't need encouragement. Fahrenheit 9/11 could have been any anti-Bush movie and they would have cheered at the end, no matter how sickeningly thick the racism or propaganda in the movie was. I think Moore confuses this as popular support for the movie. I have a strong feeling that if a wider audience viewed the movie it would have the effect of turning them off and voting for Bush out of spite. It might help to charge the fanatical democrat base, but I think it would probably equally charge the conservative base.
Whatever the case, I think it is a moot argument. I highly doubt that any major network would air Fahrenheit 9/11. The fact that it is pure and naked racist propaganda being launched right before an election that no sponsor in his right mind would want to be associated with will likely decide the issue fairly quickly. I think the best Moore can hope for is to freely distribute the movie with no licensing agreements to prevent it being shown to mass audiences.
It is a cute idea, but the simple fact of that matter is that games are still very much technology driven. The Quake engine was wonderful in its day, but I would be very depressed if game developers were still using it. I don't doubt for a second that this would produce better plots, greater creativity in using the engine, and better game play, but it would still mean that the graphics would suck. Quake 1 will never be a beautiful is FarCry.
I think the biggest problem with open source in gaming is that making a game is a job. Sure, some people make some great mods, but making an actual engine is a job. It is a very long term project that will take many man hours and the hard work of many people. The best way to do this is to get all the people you need together in one place and pay them to stay there and work on it until it is done. Then, once you have the final product, sell the hell out of it and do everything in your power to keep the competition from copying what you just did. If they want the source, they can fork over some cash.
Personally, I don't think we will ever see much mainstream open source activity until one of two things come to pass. Either computers will stop getting faster (doubtful) or computers will be so powerful and intelligent that anyone could make a game simply by describing it. Either way, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that day.
I am fairly certain that they mean 20 times Earth's radius if they are calling it a Neptune like planet. Recall that the strength of gravity increases to the cube of the radius (assuming constant denisty). In other words, you can fully expect to be crush flat on this planet and for its surface to be rather toasty from the pressure of its own atmosphere. Clearly that doesn't mean that no life will exist, but certainly it won't be life as we know it.
You can complain all you want, but I think your point of view is lost of the rest of the world. Go anywhere in the world, tell them you are an American, and they are not going to assume you are from Costa Rica or Canada. You can squabble all you want about what you want the word to mean, but to the rest of the world, if you declare yourself an American, they are going to assume you can from that nation between Canada and Mexico. So, be my guest and declare yourself American, but don't be surprised when they ask you which state you are from.
"Canada 8 US 0 ( zero ) ( this happen to be the score between our two country at war ) , whant another loss ? be my guess , first strike us , will crush you in the end."
Hahahahaha! U st1k3 f33r int0 m3 wit y3r 7hr34ts of Canadian invasion.
So... requesting (and request is all it is) a search engine not to associate your site with certain key words along with a list of vetoed UN resolutions with extremely biased summaries is proof of... what? Err, a conspiracy to censor? You do recall that the topic was France trying to censor the Internet, right? Does your argument have even a little to do with the current topic? How do you sound in an argument?
"Mom! Billy hit me in the face with a baseball bat!"
"Yeah! But I saw Billy sneak a cookie from the cookie jar two years ago!"
So... if the Whitehouse requests search engines not associate their website with certain keywords, and the US's foreign policy on Israel is to your disliking, then France is okay censor speech on the Internet. That is your argument, right?
1) If the government banned the sale of a book, that would be a violation of free speech. Banning the sale of something with a swastika on IS inhibiting free speech.
2) I can spell it out if you want. North American generally refers to someone/something from the North American continent. Canadian generally refers to someone/something from Canada. American generally refers to someone/something from the United States of America because United States of American is a real mouthful, not to mention grammatically incorrect. What can I say, United States of Americans used their imperialist ways to steal the word America. Assholes.
ATITD is half a game. It is a crafter's utopia and little else. What ATITD is missing is any sort of excitement, adventure, exploration, or intrigue. It does an amazing job getting rid of 'levels'. Most of what it does right it does dead, on, it just isn't enough for most people. I swear, when I play ATITD I feel like someone made an amazing kick ass MMORPG, then stripped away everything but the economy, and ATITD is all that is left.
ATITD has the right idea, and I think it is an excellent example of how MMORPGs can progress past the stupider the fuck AD&D mentality. Now what we need is that takes what ATITD does right, and puts it in an interesting world with a little excitement and adventure. Bonus points if this hypothetical world can utterly ignore levels like the way that ATITD does.
ATITD is not for everyone. In fact, it is not for most people. What it is, is some original thinking that should jar the some creativity into the future generation of MMORPGs. Obviously the next generation of MMORPGs hasn't gotten a clue. World of War Craft, The Matrix, and the other up coming MMORPGs clearly are still stuck with a AD&D mentality, but hopefully the generation after the next round of Everquest and UO clones come out we will see some REAL innovation like what is show in ATITD. Here is hoping.
What a stupid comment. The point is not to enforce American laws but to not enforce French laws on the all of the internet. If France wants to set up their own Great Fire Wall, let them. There is no reason why the rest of the Internet needs to bend over backwards and kiss their asses. It isn't an American law being enforced, it is a stupid French law they are trying to shove down the throats of the rest of the Internet. In case it would be the French who are being the "OMFG imperialist!!!!111!!!!"
The Internet can not exactly bend to the lowest common denominator. It can not be subject to the law of EVERY nation. Maybe France just needs to come to grip with free speech. Even better, I would just rather see Yahoo pull out of France. If France wants to censor its citizen, let them. If France wants to cut themselves off from the world because they fear there citizens are too dumb to make informed decisions without the government regulating what they can and can not see, let them. No loss for me.
Alpha Centuari all the way. Hell, just thinking about it makes me want to go dig it out. Imagine Civ 3, now give each nation an actual personality, now make the game not suck. You have Alpha Centuari.
I actually bothered to go read the link. You seem to be under the impression that this was never tired. It actually was tried by most of the communist revolutions that have taken place. However, in the end, they all decided on the same thing. Money is needed. The idea of having no money and everyone just doing what they can and sacrificing what they can is warm and fuzzy feeling, but it ignores the fact that money conveys information that is desperately needed.
For instance, I once worked in the paper industry. My company made a highly specialized conveyer belt that you need in order to process pulp into paper. First off, the number of people that I can think of that would want to make a conveyer belts for a living when they could be engineers working on say nanotechnology is nil, but lets assume I am just altruistic and this makes me happy (and to an extent it did, you wouldn't believe how much goes into making these things). In order to do my job a I needed a lot of things, mostly chemicals, but also hordes various pieces of highly specialized mechanical equipment. All of that highly specialized mechanical equipment then also needs more highly specialized pieces to make it, and the tools to make it. All of THOSE tools need more specialized tools and specialized machines to make them... so on and so forth in an infinite cycle. There isn't even a beginning to the cycle because in order to dig up out of the ground the stuff you need, someone needs tools to dig it up, and those tools require tools to make those tools... so on and so forth.
Price, and more specifically money, is the only reason why I was able to do my job. Without money, there would not have been any way for anyone to know to produce a certain chemical or a certain piece of machinery. The fact that my company was willing to drop a million dollars on a certain type of coating machine was a clear indication that we badly needed that coating machine and that if we got it, we wouldn't waste it. The fact that we sold our belts at hundred thousand dollars a pop (some times more) told the customer that a lot of work and energy went into building them and that they shouldn't arbitrarily waste them. The price we attached to our belts spelt out to them the uses of the belt. If we had sold them for 1 dollar a piece, then they would have assumed that they were free to experiment with and ruin the belts at will. The fact that we sold them for so much told them to be careful with how they used the belts.
In a moneyless world the economy breaks down. More specifically, technology breaks down. Our technology is so complicated and advanced that only the 'unseen' (capitalist) hand has any hope to get to everyone what they need. Even the most ardent socialist and communist recognize this and so leave badly distorted versions of capitalism intact.
Personally, I wouldn't worry. Capitalism will willingly destroy itself in the end, though not in the way Marx described. Capitalism will simply out produce itself. Capitalism is based around the idea that human work has value. What if a machine could do everything you could better, faster, and using less energy? Your work would no longer have value, the capitalist system would crash, and you would likely end up in a world where humans do nothing but relax and do whatever it is that makes them happy.
If you truly are into self sacrifice, then I would suggest throwing yourself into capitalism whole heartedly. Your great grand kids (or kids if you believe Raymond Kurzweil) will live in your utopia world that has no money, and they can do it without having to destroy technology and revert to a hunter/gathered society.
My question is why in the hell has someone not bought a small arena with thick mental walls out in the desert, filled it with cameras (no audience on site), then thrown two large robots in and let them really maul the shit out of each other with guns, explosives, acid, fire, and anything else they can legally get away with? Really, I just don't understand why all of the robot battles these days are so timid about doing something interesting. Robot Wars is nice and all, but I watching two 1000 lb robots go at it with machine guns, high powered battering rams, and explosives would be a whole hell of a lot nicer.
I want to see robots -destroy- each other, not push each into a pit or off the side of a platform. Hell, make it a team game and rack up the mass death and destruction. The only reason I can think of as to why no one has done it yet is safety issues, but I imagine putting a stadium out in the desert, armoring the hell out of it, disallowing explosives to a certain yield, then doing everything via remote control would be a simple enough work around.
I know watching robots fighting is a geeky thing to do, but believe me, when they start running around with explosives and machine guns, I could easily see it become a much more widely accepted sport with all the sponsors they could ever want. Imagine the Raytheon DeathMaster 2000 Vs Boeing SkullCrusher. For bonus points the military can keep an eye on it and maybe recruit some designs.
I don't know about you guys, but watching a five on five match between heavily armed robots sounds like the a good drunken time to me.
Exellent reading skills. Despite how good they are, I'll quoet myself again just in case you missed it.
If you want to use taxes on corporations realize what the taxes will really do. They will make whatever item that corporation sells more expensive. So, you should use taxes to attach consequence to selling certain products. IE, in the words of Nadar, tax what you don't like and there will be less of it. This differs form the Democrat's motto, "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, give it subsidies."
The point was that taxes bring about an increase in price, so you only bother to tax when you want an increase in price. If you tax all corporations, you will simply pay more for everything. Your argument is that taxes are good because they slow down large corporations. Excellent argument, please see the last paragraph which explained the idea of 'tax what you don't like' which you will notice is suspiciously much like the argument you present - big corporations are bad, tax them.
In economics, price is the most valuable piece of information you can have. It tells you how much it costs to produce something and how badly people need it. Taxes distort price. This isn't always a bad thing. Some times you want to attach a price to something that generally does not have a price for using up or polluting something (like air). Taxing corporations of a certain size also can be used as an instrument of increasing competition by making giving the guy with the most capital another expense. Taxing across the broad is simply stupid. Instead trying to use price to add cost to things we don't like, you simply raise the price of everything and end up making everyone pay. If you want evidence of this, make your merry way to Europe and observe that everything that isn't subsidized is more expensive then in the US.
As far as wanting an income tax over taxing corporations across the broad, I want this because then I know the effect. Most people have no idea what sort of taxes corporations pay. They know exactly how much they pay to uncle same though. When you tax a corporation I get to pay the price indirectly and often times will never know about it. Tax me directly and I can see how much I really am shelling out of pocket. I want the government to be accountable for the money it spends. If it has to tax me in a round about way that I can't observe, then it means I can't hold it accountable. If it has to come out tell me exactly how much I am going to loose, then at least I can hold it accountable.
There is the difference between a poor college person and a poor person. The poor college person generally gets the necessities and spends on luxury only what is left. Generally poor college students do this because they realize fucking up a $40,000 a year investment is a very bad idea. Even if you are not paying a cent and doing it all through scholarships, you still don't want to fuck it up.
The other half is the chronically poor. Some of those people are poor because they truly are victims and have a mental of physical ailment. We are a rich enough society where we can afford to take of these people and make their lives reasonably comfortable and find them a job to suit their abilities. The other people are people for on reason or another made and continue to make stupid decisions. These are the idiots with rims worth more then my car, speaker systems worth more then a months rent, and with sets of name brand clothes worth more then my interviewing clothes. These people should be given just enough to live, an education if they want it, and nothing else. I don't want to subsidize someone's car upgrades or 100 dollar sneaker fetish.
Taxing or not taxing corporations is silly because what you don't seem to realize is that YOU pay the tax regardless. The corporations don't grow money out of air. Whatever you tack on to their expenses is just passed down the line. If the price of raw iron ore goes up, steel makers don't suddenly just make less profit. They up the price and make the customer pay the difference to maintain their profit levels. The entire idea of taxing a corporation for revenue is flawed to begin with because it ignores the fact that the consumer will ALWAYS pay that tax. If you want to beat the elite with taxes, don't tax the corporation, tax their income. This is the only way to stop them from simply passing the buck. So, am I angry that the piss pot we call the 'corporate tax laws' are routinely examined by corporations to find any way out paying the maximum amount? No. It just means the stuff I buy is cheaper. If you want evidence of this, simply examine England's gas prices for the prices of gas in the US. More taxes doesn't mean less profit, it just means you pay out the ass for gas. So, would taxing corporations put more money in government coffers? Sure. Of course, it would also be taking money out of my pocket by making everything cost more. You might as well skip the foreplay and just tax me directly then.
If you want to use taxes on corporations realize what the taxes will really do. They will make whatever item that corporation sells more expensive. So, you should use taxes to attach consequence to selling certain products. IE, in the words of Nadar, tax what you don't like and there will be less of it. This differs form the Democrat's motto, "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, give it subsidies."
Now, as to what we should do with taxes, we should offer two thing to the capable poor. First, give them just enough food to live and nothing else. Second, they can get a high school education at any time regardless of age. The rest is up to them. Millions of poor Americans each year find a way to scrounge up the money to get into a state college. I don't have any desire to pay someone's way through a private college at $40,000 a year because they are too lazy to go out and take the free scholarship money and loans sitting there. I managed to do it with not a single cent to my name, so can everyone else.
I'll bite. My karma is high enough to take a few hits.
Such people need at best a training course as to how to save money, and at worst probably need to go hungry for a few days to knock some sense into them. I don't know what the problem is, but it needs to be fixed because it is an epidemic (in America at least).
I live in a poor neighborhood because, well, I am poor. I am getting through college and doing it on a tight budget. I don't worry for the future because I am getting out with a solid chemical engineering degree and have a fair padding of cash from working despite loan payments. I intend to stay where I am exactly long enough to get a job, then go live some place safe.
I live in a shit hole. My apartment is a piece of crap, but the rent is cheap (for Boston). Across the street from me is a massive block of beautiful apartments. These apartments all have rent much cheaper then mine because they are apart of a project. There are these beautiful apartments filled with 'poor' people. Now, the idea would be solid if it wasn't for the fact that they are living like kings while I work hard to make ends meat. My car is a POS rust bucket with no radio that barely runs and can get me to work and back. Half the cars across the street have fucking rims that literally cost more then my entire car. My car doesn't have rims, the wheel bolting is exposed.
Now, not even this would bother me if it wasn't for the fact that I fucking have had to fund the project with my tax dollar. The socialistic systems are flat out broken. I know it is a little cruel, but I wish the capitalist poke in the ass was harsher because these people are just bleeding the system.
Social programs should be reserved for exactly two types of people. People who were born with mental/physical disabilities that do not allow them to go take their share, and people who received mental/physical disabilities through no fault of their own. Everyone else should get just enough food and medical coverage to live, a basic education, and nothing else. Hell, through in a safety net of a year or two for people who get unemployed. If there is not anything wrong with you, you should get your ration of just enough food to not starve. Is that an uncomfortable life? Hell yeah. I have been there. Do something about it. The problem is a cultural problem. Maybe if people were uncomfortable enough the culture would change. Judging by the fucking base rocking my house from across the street right now (7 am BTW) the current method isn't working.
I think the parent is dead on. I will never ever be an athlete (naturally at least). My genes have pretty much already done a fine job selecting me out of most sports. It doesn't matter how much I dump into it, I will never be in the Olympics. It is just shitty genetics. There is nothing 'fair' about this. I don't understand the obsession with keeping it 'natural'. I am not saying don't regulate it, but if some guy figures out how to get his body to pump on some chemical someone else's already does, why not allow it? The only reason to disallow such alterations to what nature gave is to keep people from hurting themselves. In that case, simply open on the field and regulate it. Allow people to use performance enhancing gene therapy, just regulate it to make sure that the things people are doing are not overly harmful.
If nothing else, it could lead to some advances for the rest of the world. An athlete might use his 'enhanced coordination gene' to better do gymnastics or hit a ball. I could use it to be roller blade better and get neater hand writing. I think we shoot ourselves in the foot limiting what drugs we research. Personally, I think everything from recreational drugs to body enhancement drugs should be fair game. Make the drug run the regulatory gambit to prove it is safe, but if a drug company makes a drug that lets you trip for half an hour and isn't addictive, or they build a drug that lets you build muscle mass twice as fast, so long as it is safe why not use it?
The inane decisions game makers make when it comes to MMORPGs blow me away. The goal is to sell as many copies of your game as possible. The target audience is people with money. This goes double for MMORPGs that require a constant revenue stream through monthly billing. The target they pick for this audience... teenagers with no jobs. Great idea dumbass. Notice how just a few MMORPGs take the lions share of the money? It isn't because all of those other games are not great. It is there simply are not enough people who have both unlimited amounts of time and money.
Make a game for people who have jobs. First, you need to kill level advancement. I am a long time gamer. I am apart of what should be the new target audience. Once a dumb teenager with too much time on his hands who rocks at video games - now an adult with not enough time on his hands but too much money. You don't need to coddle me into a game. I know how to play it already. Drop me into UT2004 for the first time in my life and within an hour of playing I will be kicking ass with the best of them. Build a game around the ideal gamer, one with a pay check.
Assume the gamer knows his head from his ass hole, but that he just doesn't have a pile of time to spend killing rats in a field. Further, assume that he has little desire to compete with teenaged kids or the unemployed who have unlimited time to spend killing rats in a field. They have their game, it is called Everquest. Now make a game for the neglected ones with pockets bulging with money. How would such a game look? First, time would not equal power. Skill would equal power. If you walk into the game with skill, you start out powerful. It is as simple as that. No 'paying your time' in any manner other then that how long you have to pay to understand the controls. Your average UT2004 or CS freak should be able to jump in and murder with the best of them after a quick learning curve.
Now, before anyone says PlanetSide, realize that this is not enough. A twitch based MMORPG is great, but it needs more. Why would I pick an MMORPG over UT2004 if the only thing the MMORPG can offer is dated graphics and more people on the same server? I won't of course. The next element is to incorporate role playing aspects to the game. In other words, you need socialization, a story, politics, maybe a few quests, and alternative types of game play. You need to be able to take your warrior who frags with the best of them on the killing fields and take him fishing on your friend's boat (occasionally stopping to slay serpents and raid merchant ships). You need to be able to take your wizard and get involved in politics if that suits your fancy. You need to be able to become a rich ass merchant who can buy and make all that latest outfits. You need to do all of this without ever once having skills or experience.
Now, outside the obvious twitch based game play, you could also easily have strategic game play (like chess) and puzzle based game play (like puzzle pirates) that would be used when crafting and doing other such activities. Even in combat you could add a new layer by creating tactical and strategic game play.
Will this lead to people who play all the time and rock because they have developed excellent player skills? Sure, but that isn't going to stop me from kicking their asses with my 10+ years of players skill in other twitch games when I log on for an hour on the weekends.
Simply put, make games for people with money. The kiddies have their games, now make a fucking game for the people who have wallets bulging with cash and will never complain about spending 10 dollars a month because they already make $50,000 to $100,000 a year. Make a game with every type of game play EXCEPT time = power game play. In MMORPGs, time might equal power. However, in the real world time equals money. Waste my time, see none of my money.
Have you been to DC recently? I was down in DC few weeks ago and there was a constant stream of protests, pickets, and booths doing exactly what you described - with picture. This stuff happens all the time down there. You could do any of the above and you will not get arrested. Certainly they will likely watch you like a hawk, but so long as you are not standing in the middle of the road obstructing traffic, or trying to use physical force on anyone, they will allow it. If you just want to sit there with a sign that says "Bush is a murdering fascist", no one will stop you.
A strong argument could be made that when it comes to freedom in IP, the US lags. In terms of actual individual speech, I can't possibly see how it could get much rosier. You can say anything you want. I think you would be damned hard pressed to find another nation that is so liberal in terms of what the laws protect for freedom individual of speech.
People need to get a grip and get things in perspective. I am not voting for Bush in the upcoming election and I all around think he is dumber then a pound of bricks. However, I don't let my dislike of his policies fabricate disillusions that I am living in a fascist police state or that he sits around all day figuring out ways to kill babies for shits and giggles. People don't disappear. No matter how nutty and vocal you are, no one is going send the corporate death squad run by Dick Chaney after you. Get a grip and realize how badly the media (and politicians in general) has you hyped up into a frothing mess to the point where you will believe anything so long as it sounds bad for Bush.
I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 and was utterly blown away at how many people in the audience ate up some of the most one sided and utterly racist propaganda I had ever seen in my entire life. If at any point you can't at least understand the other side's argument and rationally see why they would think that way, then I 99% of the time it is because you have turned fanatic and will eat up any bullshit that fits in line with your beliefs. Nothing is more destructive to the political process then when people become a frothing mess that isn't able to at least understand the others sides position. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing, but you need to at least understand it first. The worst thing about this election year is that both side's bases are so riled up that they are utterly blind to anything that lands outside their current pre-programmed views.
That is the stupidest title I have ever read. If you think this is 'only in America', you need to open your eyes and take a look around. When it comes to free speech, the US is pretty damned liberal. I can still fly a confederate flag and wear a white hood if that tickles my fancy, but in free thinking places like Germany you can be arrested for doing a stiff armed salute or displaying a Nazi symbol - and it isn't like Germany is the most toltalitarian of places in the world.
The US is a super power, and super powers will always fuck it up. During the Cold War, I think the US had the best intentions and in the end the world was a better place because the US was there, but they certainly fucked up from time to time. The US is run by humans. The system might do a pretty solid job at weeding out truly corrupt and stupid people, but like with any human institution, they tend to creep in no matter how hard you try. I guess my point is that you can never expect the US to be perfect because it never was and never will be. I do think that on the whole though the US has good intentions and generally decent implementation. Just look at the conflicts the US has been in for the past 20 years and the record speaks of generally decent intentions with a couple of horrible mistakes.
To name a few: Somalia - Best of intentions, feed a starving nation. I have yet to hear a good conspiracy theory as to how this was a plot for US domination. The result though was a cluster fuck that lead to a handful of US and other nationalities getting killed. In the end no one ended up fed (for very long at least) and only more carnage was achieved.
Hattie - Good intentions, restore a democracy. Result? Restored a guy who everyone thought was a saint who (arguably) turned into villain who snatch away democracy. Now there is Hattie 2 where an attempt was made to fix the mistake. If it was worth anyone's time is still yet to be seen.
Serbia - Good intentions, stop a mass genocide. The operation was preformed despite widespread protest both in the US and abroad. After the fact though, you don't hear anyone complaining about the outcome these days. The genocide is over and Serbia is well on its way towards democracy.
Iraq - At the risk of -1 flamebait, I'll just say that in my opinion, it was done with the best intentions. I think the US was genuinely surprised when no chemical weapons were used and the people didn't come out in the street with flowers. Offing an evil dictator isn't a bad thing in it of itself. It is the fact that you need to kill a pile of other people in the process is what makes it bad. I think the jury is still out on this. I look at Iraq like Serbia. At the time it seemed like a dumb idea to a lot of people, but today we recognize it as the right move that ended a genocide. If 10 years from now Iraq looks like Iran, it was probably a failure. If 10 years from now Iraq looks Japan, I think history will forgive the US.
The US is aggressive at time, but I think the world needs a little bit of that. Some times a nation is needed that will crack a few skulls to do what is right. Personally, I like the balance we have today. Europe does an excellent job offering restraint and diplomacy, while the US is generally willing to jump the gun if it thinks those things are taking too long. Diplomacy is not always the answer. I think Rwanda makes it pretty clear that you can't always give the other side more time before you take action. Europe restrains the US from crusading any time they see something wrong, and the US keeps Europe from sitting on its haunches while evil people do their work.
Also something to think about is the fact that the US was NOT 'protecting' Europe out of altruistic feelings, it simply saw that a Soviet occupied Europe would pose a huge and imminent threat to the US if the Soviets ever decided to attack.
It was the US hatred of the Soviet way of life that fueled the cold war. Fair enough, Soviet Russia may not have been a non evil country, but the arms race was born more out of the US view of the Soviet thinking than of Soviet aggression.
That is a complete and utter contradiction. First, you say that US acted purely out of self interest. Then you go on to say that it was hatred of the Soviet way of life that caused them to act as they did, and further the US just made it worse because they aggressively went after the Soviet Union. I think you have it completely right in your second statement. The motivation for the Cold War was not self interest, but hatred of such an evil empire that had consumed a quarter of the world. The US was very much fanatical about stopping the Soviet Union. They DID make things worse and create an arms race that never needed to happen. The US was overtly hostile to the Soviet Union and spent half of a centaury doing everything in its power to take it down.
The US created the Cold War. They spent the Soviet Empire into the ground. That was a good thing though. Without the arms race the Soviet Empire would still be around today. The Soviet Union crumbled under half of a centaury of constant non-stop conflict. Inciting conflict with such a massive enemy, then very resolutely telling them that should they ever make any real gains in taking the rest of the world that nuclear Armageddon would come to everyone is not a sign of a nation acting out of any sort of self interest. That is a nation of fanatics acting out of fanaticism, and seeing as how a massive swath of the world is now free from Soviet control (including Russia), I would say that the world is certainly a better place. It isn't a perfect place, and the things done to get to this point where not always good, nor were they always right, but in the end the world is a better place.
So I agree, the US did act out of the hatred of how the Soviet Empire treated its people, and as a result spent the better part of the last half centuary making the problem worse by aggressivly seeking to keep the rest of world ending up with the same fate and freeing the people already under Soviet control. Fucking evil self serving Americans. Always threatening to blow themselves up out of evil self serving, self interest.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? You need to understand the difference between an ethnic community and a ghetto. An ethnic community is a group of people who live together by choice in order to share a similar culture with like minded people. I live in Boston. In Boston we have the North End, which is an "Italian" district and a "China Town". The Italian district is down right nice and is a favorite spot for romantic couples to go to eat. It is Italian in that Italian immigrants used to collect there together to speak their common language and be around culturally similar people. It is a much nicer place to live then where I live. People who live in that district are more likely to be Italian in origin, but it certainly is not the rule.
China Town is primarily made up of Chinese, Koreans, and a few other Asian nations. The vast majority of the population in China town are immigrants. It should be noted though that very few of the people in China town were born in the US. Generally their children quickly move out. The major reason why people live in China town is to be around culturally similar people. I wouldn't call that a weakness by any stretch of the imagination. It eases people into the American culture which can be radically different then Chinese culture. Further, no one forces people to live in these districts. People often choose to simply out of convince. As for the case of China town, very few people actually live in China town, seeing as how it is only a few blocks big. It is more a collection of ethnically Asian store.
America's real problem is not immigration. The US has a very good track record of quickly integrating immigrant populations and bringing them to standard American conditions very quickly. Very few nations are as skilled as the US is an immigrating large numbers of radically culturally different people. The real problem is, as you point out, are ghettos. Ghettos are primarily NOT made up of immigrant populations. The reason for why ghettos exist is something not worth going into here because people's opinions very widely. What is true is that the ghettos that exist are not made up of immigrant populations. They are made up of Americans that generally have been here for a few generations and are poor. The only exception to this is on the southern border of the US with Mexico where you can find third world like conditions along the border where illegal Mexican immigrants live.
1) No doubt China has the advantage of having a massive population to pull from to find their minds. However, much of that billion is overlooked, and even if it was all recognized, that still is not enough.
2) Market liberalization might go a long way to help China keep some of their minds simply by offering money. That said, market liberalization alone can not offset there general lack of freedom compared to the US. The US has a population of poor, yet you never see them stuff themselves in a cargo container to make the journey to China risking life and limb, you do see the converse of this though. In order to be effective, China must communicate with the rest of the world, and in this communication they will be forced to see that other places in the world are more free.
3) 9/11 has not increased hostility towards most immigrants. Asian immigrants in particular are pretty immune. Even Middle Eastern immigrants still enjoy great prosperity and acceptance in the US. Further, you need to realize that many places in the world are still highly tribal and racist on levels that American's don't comprehend. For an antidotal story, when the US was trying to build the Iraqi army, they were surprised to find that the Iraqi recruits where extremely racist towards each other. To the American commanders they all looked like Iraqi. Among the Iraqis there was bitter resentment between various ethnic factions. The point is that intolerance is not a strictly American thing, and in the grand scheme of things, the US is very tolerant in this day and age. On my block there are two Middle Eastern businesses, and my apartment is owned by a handful of Middle Eastern men. All of them are doing very well for themselves.
The big problem with 9/11 is not the changing attitude of American's towards immigrants already in the nation. The real problem 9/11 presents is the stricter immigration controls. This absolutely is a serious problem and you could very well be correct in that it could lead to the decline of the US. The US has always relied very heavily on importing talented people, and its reliance on importing minds has only increased over the past few decades. If there is a real danger the US supremacy, it is the danger of declining immigration.
That said, I don't think it is all that bleak. From what I understand out immigration levels are slowly ramping back up, and hopefully the delays that have been created in getting in and out of the nation will be worked out.
The difference is that we are currently using fossil fuels and it does not take a massive land public works project to keep using it. Switch over to wind power in a meaningful way would require a massive investment. There are two very large problems with this. First is the environmental aspect which the original poster brings up. If wind power is just as damning to the environment as fossil fuels, then it seems pretty foolish to spend all that money only continue doing damage to the environment - and do it at a higher cost then what we pay now. The second issue is that technology might render all of this moot. You are going to feel very stupid if we balloon the deficit even more with a massive public works project, only to have the energy problem solved a couple of years later with technology.
Personally, I would rather let oil sort itself out. If we start to run out, no big deal. The price of gas will rise and people will naturally switch over to alternative sources of energy and money will naturally be pumped into R&D to find a replacement. The worse it gets, the more energy efficient we will become, and the more willing we will be to try alternative forms of power generation. If the oil does not run out any time soon, then hurray. Say what you will of capitalism, but system is designed perfectly to deal with this sort of problem. It will regulate itself. I would let the power companies that make their money off oil and those who are inefficent with their use of power be the ones to worry.
I can tell you why the US is the leader in technology and why China will never catch up. The US actively promotes immigration, especially the immigration of intelligent people. If you walk onto any University in the US, hell, any corporation in the US, you will find them awash with people who barely speak English, but speak math or whatever there profession is with great skill. The advantage the US has enjoyed in the world is because it culls the world for the greatest minds.
Now, that is not to say that China would not jump over the chance to snag up a few great minds of their own. Unfortunately for China though, the US has two advantages over China that it will keep it ahead, at least in the foreseeable future. First, the US is very multicultural, and very culturally tolerant. There is nothing you can do to raise eyebrows in New York City. Further, you can always find people from the same culture as yours with minimal effort. In other words, the US has the groundwork laid out to accept anyone, and has extensive experience in integrating such people. Further, US workers and businesses are so used to foreign works that it is norm, not the exception.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the US will always be a more desirable place to live because it ranks very high in its freedoms. For the foreseeable future, the US will outrank China in its freedoms by a massive margin. China can basically write off ever receiving the brightest minds from the US, Europe, and other liberal democracies, simply because very few people from these nations are going to take kindly to having their Internet access restricted and likely can not even contemplate keeping a lid on their political beliefs when in public. That goes ten times if you are talking about someone from the US. Asking an American to shut the hell up about their beliefs on the way the world should be run is about as productive as screaming at a rock.
I imagine China is going to hit very hard bump on the road to progress. Corporations are more then happy to dump goods and factories into China, but when it comes to intellectual power, China is always going to lag well behind the US. China can really only count on its own population to provide them with intellectual power, and even then China suffers from the fact that the US and Europe will continue to cull a great deal of their brightest minds.
I personally only see two options for China. Either they become a significantly freer society, or they accept the fact that they will never be the world's intellectual leader. Either option sounds good to me.
While the film is over the top and largely misleading... (insert reasons why despite this the film was okay here).
Something that is, in your own words, "largely misleading" should have no place in discussions on Democracy. Moore could have used his name to make a great movie as to why war was bad and Bush is a fuck off. He could have been slanted and biased about it, but could have at least attempted to let the other side offer a counter point and give himself the last rebuttal. Instead, we got this sickening film that should make any fair minded person sick to their stomach because it reeks of such blatant propaganda that it would give your average middle aged Russian citizen flash backs.
There is a difference between addressing both sides with a slant and pure propaganda. Fox news has an obvious slant. They are conservative. That doesn't mean that they don't invite liberals onto the show to at least let them have their say. Even Rush Limbaugh invites liberals onto his show. Hell, he occasionally GIVES his show over to a liberal host when he goes on vacation to give the other side a say in the belief that their beliefs speak for themselves. Michael Moore does not even pretend to give the other side a say and edits out anything that might make you at least understand where the other side comes from.
Criticism is needed in the media, but Moore does not offer criticism. He offers nothing but propaganda. I bet the average person can not even tell you what his argument around the Saudi family was. They just eat up the stupid propaganda and leave with a feeling that bush did 'something' wrong.
The problem is not a lack of criticism with the war or the president. The protests that wracked both Boston and New York during the convections, offer plenty of very vocal criticism. All comical media offers tones of criticism. You can't watch Comedy Central without watching criticism of Bush. Any that argues that there is no criticism of the president clearly has their eyes closed. The problem is perhaps a lack of intelligent and in-depth criticism and Moore is no fix to this problem.
Honestly, I think people need to step back and look at what crap that movie was. If you have to begin your defence of it with, "While the film is over the top and largely misleading..." you REALLY need to take a step back and examin what you are defending.
I won't vote for Bush in the upcoming election. I almost changed my mind after watching Fahrenheit 9/11.
I personally am always blown away that main stream Democrats support Fahrenheit 9/11. It is like a main stream Republican supporting a film put out by the KKK in more ways then one. Fahrenheit 9/11 was by far the absolute most racist movie I have ever seen, short of old World War II propaganda. I think the scene that captures that sickening level of racism in that movie is when it shows a solid minute of two of various Bush officials shaking hands with people who are obviously Arabs (all from Saudi Arabia), and then implies that this should piss you off because 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Audi Arabia. The movie tries to make it sound like the fact that Bush meet a Saudi official after 9/11 was a bad thing. The entire movie uses Saudi like a curse word.
Further, it is the most revolting display of propaganda that I have ever seen in my entire life. The movie spent a solid five minutes or so showing Bush administration officials putting on fucking make. What exactly was the point of that? To show that people like to cover up their blemishes before putting their face up in front of a few million people? The propaganda tactics it uses could fill a Soviet hand book. It slows down certain scenes, edits out the sound, it makes some pictures grainier then they were, it cuts and slices scenes, and uses just about every single trick in the book. Hell the entire structure of the movie is classic propaganda. Throw out facts to make an implied argument, but never exactly state what the argument is. Then, after you have thrown out your stupid strawman of an argument, bash the audience with something highly emotional that they can't help but agree. In this case, they emotional hook is 'war is ugly'.
I think airing Fahrenheit 9/11 could be a disaster for Democrats. Most of the people that saw Fahrenheit 9/11 were already dead set to vote against Bush and didn't need encouragement. Fahrenheit 9/11 could have been any anti-Bush movie and they would have cheered at the end, no matter how sickeningly thick the racism or propaganda in the movie was. I think Moore confuses this as popular support for the movie. I have a strong feeling that if a wider audience viewed the movie it would have the effect of turning them off and voting for Bush out of spite. It might help to charge the fanatical democrat base, but I think it would probably equally charge the conservative base.
Whatever the case, I think it is a moot argument. I highly doubt that any major network would air Fahrenheit 9/11. The fact that it is pure and naked racist propaganda being launched right before an election that no sponsor in his right mind would want to be associated with will likely decide the issue fairly quickly. I think the best Moore can hope for is to freely distribute the movie with no licensing agreements to prevent it being shown to mass audiences.
It is a cute idea, but the simple fact of that matter is that games are still very much technology driven. The Quake engine was wonderful in its day, but I would be very depressed if game developers were still using it. I don't doubt for a second that this would produce better plots, greater creativity in using the engine, and better game play, but it would still mean that the graphics would suck. Quake 1 will never be a beautiful is FarCry.
I think the biggest problem with open source in gaming is that making a game is a job. Sure, some people make some great mods, but making an actual engine is a job. It is a very long term project that will take many man hours and the hard work of many people. The best way to do this is to get all the people you need together in one place and pay them to stay there and work on it until it is done. Then, once you have the final product, sell the hell out of it and do everything in your power to keep the competition from copying what you just did. If they want the source, they can fork over some cash.
Personally, I don't think we will ever see much mainstream open source activity until one of two things come to pass. Either computers will stop getting faster (doubtful) or computers will be so powerful and intelligent that anyone could make a game simply by describing it. Either way, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that day.
I am fairly certain that they mean 20 times Earth's radius if they are calling it a Neptune like planet. Recall that the strength of gravity increases to the cube of the radius (assuming constant denisty). In other words, you can fully expect to be crush flat on this planet and for its surface to be rather toasty from the pressure of its own atmosphere. Clearly that doesn't mean that no life will exist, but certainly it won't be life as we know it.
You can complain all you want, but I think your point of view is lost of the rest of the world. Go anywhere in the world, tell them you are an American, and they are not going to assume you are from Costa Rica or Canada. You can squabble all you want about what you want the word to mean, but to the rest of the world, if you declare yourself an American, they are going to assume you can from that nation between Canada and Mexico. So, be my guest and declare yourself American, but don't be surprised when they ask you which state you are from.
"Canada 8 US 0 ( zero ) ( this happen to be the score between our two country at war ) , whant another loss ? be my guess , first strike us , will crush you in the end."
Hahahahaha! U st1k3 f33r int0 m3 wit y3r 7hr34ts of Canadian invasion.
So... requesting (and request is all it is) a search engine not to associate your site with certain key words along with a list of vetoed UN resolutions with extremely biased summaries is proof of... what? Err, a conspiracy to censor? You do recall that the topic was France trying to censor the Internet, right? Does your argument have even a little to do with the current topic? How do you sound in an argument?
"Mom! Billy hit me in the face with a baseball bat!"
"Yeah! But I saw Billy sneak a cookie from the cookie jar two years ago!"
So... if the Whitehouse requests search engines not associate their website with certain keywords, and the US's foreign policy on Israel is to your disliking, then France is okay censor speech on the Internet. That is your argument, right?
1) If the government banned the sale of a book, that would be a violation of free speech. Banning the sale of something with a swastika on IS inhibiting free speech.
2) I can spell it out if you want. North American generally refers to someone/something from the North American continent. Canadian generally refers to someone/something from Canada. American generally refers to someone/something from the United States of America because United States of American is a real mouthful, not to mention grammatically incorrect. What can I say, United States of Americans used their imperialist ways to steal the word America. Assholes.
ATITD is half a game. It is a crafter's utopia and little else. What ATITD is missing is any sort of excitement, adventure, exploration, or intrigue. It does an amazing job getting rid of 'levels'. Most of what it does right it does dead, on, it just isn't enough for most people. I swear, when I play ATITD I feel like someone made an amazing kick ass MMORPG, then stripped away everything but the economy, and ATITD is all that is left.
ATITD has the right idea, and I think it is an excellent example of how MMORPGs can progress past the stupider the fuck AD&D mentality. Now what we need is that takes what ATITD does right, and puts it in an interesting world with a little excitement and adventure. Bonus points if this hypothetical world can utterly ignore levels like the way that ATITD does.
ATITD is not for everyone. In fact, it is not for most people. What it is, is some original thinking that should jar the some creativity into the future generation of MMORPGs. Obviously the next generation of MMORPGs hasn't gotten a clue. World of War Craft, The Matrix, and the other up coming MMORPGs clearly are still stuck with a AD&D mentality, but hopefully the generation after the next round of Everquest and UO clones come out we will see some REAL innovation like what is show in ATITD. Here is hoping.
What a stupid comment. The point is not to enforce American laws but to not enforce French laws on the all of the internet. If France wants to set up their own Great Fire Wall, let them. There is no reason why the rest of the Internet needs to bend over backwards and kiss their asses. It isn't an American law being enforced, it is a stupid French law they are trying to shove down the throats of the rest of the Internet. In case it would be the French who are being the "OMFG imperialist!!!!111!!!!"
The Internet can not exactly bend to the lowest common denominator. It can not be subject to the law of EVERY nation. Maybe France just needs to come to grip with free speech. Even better, I would just rather see Yahoo pull out of France. If France wants to censor its citizen, let them. If France wants to cut themselves off from the world because they fear there citizens are too dumb to make informed decisions without the government regulating what they can and can not see, let them. No loss for me.
Alpha Centuari all the way. Hell, just thinking about it makes me want to go dig it out. Imagine Civ 3, now give each nation an actual personality, now make the game not suck. You have Alpha Centuari.
I actually bothered to go read the link. You seem to be under the impression that this was never tired. It actually was tried by most of the communist revolutions that have taken place. However, in the end, they all decided on the same thing. Money is needed. The idea of having no money and everyone just doing what they can and sacrificing what they can is warm and fuzzy feeling, but it ignores the fact that money conveys information that is desperately needed.
For instance, I once worked in the paper industry. My company made a highly specialized conveyer belt that you need in order to process pulp into paper. First off, the number of people that I can think of that would want to make a conveyer belts for a living when they could be engineers working on say nanotechnology is nil, but lets assume I am just altruistic and this makes me happy (and to an extent it did, you wouldn't believe how much goes into making these things). In order to do my job a I needed a lot of things, mostly chemicals, but also hordes various pieces of highly specialized mechanical equipment. All of that highly specialized mechanical equipment then also needs more highly specialized pieces to make it, and the tools to make it. All of THOSE tools need more specialized tools and specialized machines to make them... so on and so forth in an infinite cycle. There isn't even a beginning to the cycle because in order to dig up out of the ground the stuff you need, someone needs tools to dig it up, and those tools require tools to make those tools... so on and so forth.
Price, and more specifically money, is the only reason why I was able to do my job. Without money, there would not have been any way for anyone to know to produce a certain chemical or a certain piece of machinery. The fact that my company was willing to drop a million dollars on a certain type of coating machine was a clear indication that we badly needed that coating machine and that if we got it, we wouldn't waste it. The fact that we sold our belts at hundred thousand dollars a pop (some times more) told the customer that a lot of work and energy went into building them and that they shouldn't arbitrarily waste them. The price we attached to our belts spelt out to them the uses of the belt. If we had sold them for 1 dollar a piece, then they would have assumed that they were free to experiment with and ruin the belts at will. The fact that we sold them for so much told them to be careful with how they used the belts.
In a moneyless world the economy breaks down. More specifically, technology breaks down. Our technology is so complicated and advanced that only the 'unseen' (capitalist) hand has any hope to get to everyone what they need. Even the most ardent socialist and communist recognize this and so leave badly distorted versions of capitalism intact.
Personally, I wouldn't worry. Capitalism will willingly destroy itself in the end, though not in the way Marx described. Capitalism will simply out produce itself. Capitalism is based around the idea that human work has value. What if a machine could do everything you could better, faster, and using less energy? Your work would no longer have value, the capitalist system would crash, and you would likely end up in a world where humans do nothing but relax and do whatever it is that makes them happy.
If you truly are into self sacrifice, then I would suggest throwing yourself into capitalism whole heartedly. Your great grand kids (or kids if you believe Raymond Kurzweil) will live in your utopia world that has no money, and they can do it without having to destroy technology and revert to a hunter/gathered society.
My question is why in the hell has someone not bought a small arena with thick mental walls out in the desert, filled it with cameras (no audience on site), then thrown two large robots in and let them really maul the shit out of each other with guns, explosives, acid, fire, and anything else they can legally get away with? Really, I just don't understand why all of the robot battles these days are so timid about doing something interesting. Robot Wars is nice and all, but I watching two 1000 lb robots go at it with machine guns, high powered battering rams, and explosives would be a whole hell of a lot nicer.
I want to see robots -destroy- each other, not push each into a pit or off the side of a platform. Hell, make it a team game and rack up the mass death and destruction. The only reason I can think of as to why no one has done it yet is safety issues, but I imagine putting a stadium out in the desert, armoring the hell out of it, disallowing explosives to a certain yield, then doing everything via remote control would be a simple enough work around.
I know watching robots fighting is a geeky thing to do, but believe me, when they start running around with explosives and machine guns, I could easily see it become a much more widely accepted sport with all the sponsors they could ever want. Imagine the Raytheon DeathMaster 2000 Vs Boeing SkullCrusher. For bonus points the military can keep an eye on it and maybe recruit some designs.
I don't know about you guys, but watching a five on five match between heavily armed robots sounds like the a good drunken time to me.
Exellent reading skills. Despite how good they are, I'll quoet myself again just in case you missed it.
If you want to use taxes on corporations realize what the taxes will really do. They will make whatever item that corporation sells more expensive. So, you should use taxes to attach consequence to selling certain products. IE, in the words of Nadar, tax what you don't like and there will be less of it. This differs form the Democrat's motto, "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, give it subsidies."
The point was that taxes bring about an increase in price, so you only bother to tax when you want an increase in price. If you tax all corporations, you will simply pay more for everything. Your argument is that taxes are good because they slow down large corporations. Excellent argument, please see the last paragraph which explained the idea of 'tax what you don't like' which you will notice is suspiciously much like the argument you present - big corporations are bad, tax them.
In economics, price is the most valuable piece of information you can have. It tells you how much it costs to produce something and how badly people need it. Taxes distort price. This isn't always a bad thing. Some times you want to attach a price to something that generally does not have a price for using up or polluting something (like air). Taxing corporations of a certain size also can be used as an instrument of increasing competition by making giving the guy with the most capital another expense. Taxing across the broad is simply stupid. Instead trying to use price to add cost to things we don't like, you simply raise the price of everything and end up making everyone pay. If you want evidence of this, make your merry way to Europe and observe that everything that isn't subsidized is more expensive then in the US.
As far as wanting an income tax over taxing corporations across the broad, I want this because then I know the effect. Most people have no idea what sort of taxes corporations pay. They know exactly how much they pay to uncle same though. When you tax a corporation I get to pay the price indirectly and often times will never know about it. Tax me directly and I can see how much I really am shelling out of pocket. I want the government to be accountable for the money it spends. If it has to tax me in a round about way that I can't observe, then it means I can't hold it accountable. If it has to come out tell me exactly how much I am going to loose, then at least I can hold it accountable.
There is the difference between a poor college person and a poor person. The poor college person generally gets the necessities and spends on luxury only what is left. Generally poor college students do this because they realize fucking up a $40,000 a year investment is a very bad idea. Even if you are not paying a cent and doing it all through scholarships, you still don't want to fuck it up.
The other half is the chronically poor. Some of those people are poor because they truly are victims and have a mental of physical ailment. We are a rich enough society where we can afford to take of these people and make their lives reasonably comfortable and find them a job to suit their abilities. The other people are people for on reason or another made and continue to make stupid decisions. These are the idiots with rims worth more then my car, speaker systems worth more then a months rent, and with sets of name brand clothes worth more then my interviewing clothes. These people should be given just enough to live, an education if they want it, and nothing else. I don't want to subsidize someone's car upgrades or 100 dollar sneaker fetish.
Taxing or not taxing corporations is silly because what you don't seem to realize is that YOU pay the tax regardless. The corporations don't grow money out of air. Whatever you tack on to their expenses is just passed down the line. If the price of raw iron ore goes up, steel makers don't suddenly just make less profit. They up the price and make the customer pay the difference to maintain their profit levels. The entire idea of taxing a corporation for revenue is flawed to begin with because it ignores the fact that the consumer will ALWAYS pay that tax. If you want to beat the elite with taxes, don't tax the corporation, tax their income. This is the only way to stop them from simply passing the buck. So, am I angry that the piss pot we call the 'corporate tax laws' are routinely examined by corporations to find any way out paying the maximum amount? No. It just means the stuff I buy is cheaper. If you want evidence of this, simply examine England's gas prices for the prices of gas in the US. More taxes doesn't mean less profit, it just means you pay out the ass for gas. So, would taxing corporations put more money in government coffers? Sure. Of course, it would also be taking money out of my pocket by making everything cost more. You might as well skip the foreplay and just tax me directly then.
If you want to use taxes on corporations realize what the taxes will really do. They will make whatever item that corporation sells more expensive. So, you should use taxes to attach consequence to selling certain products. IE, in the words of Nadar, tax what you don't like and there will be less of it. This differs form the Democrat's motto, "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, give it subsidies."
Now, as to what we should do with taxes, we should offer two thing to the capable poor. First, give them just enough food to live and nothing else. Second, they can get a high school education at any time regardless of age. The rest is up to them. Millions of poor Americans each year find a way to scrounge up the money to get into a state college. I don't have any desire to pay someone's way through a private college at $40,000 a year because they are too lazy to go out and take the free scholarship money and loans sitting there. I managed to do it with not a single cent to my name, so can everyone else.
I'll bite. My karma is high enough to take a few hits.
Such people need at best a training course as to how to save money, and at worst probably need to go hungry for a few days to knock some sense into them. I don't know what the problem is, but it needs to be fixed because it is an epidemic (in America at least).
I live in a poor neighborhood because, well, I am poor. I am getting through college and doing it on a tight budget. I don't worry for the future because I am getting out with a solid chemical engineering degree and have a fair padding of cash from working despite loan payments. I intend to stay where I am exactly long enough to get a job, then go live some place safe.
I live in a shit hole. My apartment is a piece of crap, but the rent is cheap (for Boston). Across the street from me is a massive block of beautiful apartments. These apartments all have rent much cheaper then mine because they are apart of a project. There are these beautiful apartments filled with 'poor' people. Now, the idea would be solid if it wasn't for the fact that they are living like kings while I work hard to make ends meat. My car is a POS rust bucket with no radio that barely runs and can get me to work and back. Half the cars across the street have fucking rims that literally cost more then my entire car. My car doesn't have rims, the wheel bolting is exposed.
Now, not even this would bother me if it wasn't for the fact that I fucking have had to fund the project with my tax dollar. The socialistic systems are flat out broken. I know it is a little cruel, but I wish the capitalist poke in the ass was harsher because these people are just bleeding the system.
Social programs should be reserved for exactly two types of people. People who were born with mental/physical disabilities that do not allow them to go take their share, and people who received mental/physical disabilities through no fault of their own. Everyone else should get just enough food and medical coverage to live, a basic education, and nothing else. Hell, through in a safety net of a year or two for people who get unemployed. If there is not anything wrong with you, you should get your ration of just enough food to not starve. Is that an uncomfortable life? Hell yeah. I have been there. Do something about it. The problem is a cultural problem. Maybe if people were uncomfortable enough the culture would change. Judging by the fucking base rocking my house from across the street right now (7 am BTW) the current method isn't working.
I think the parent is dead on. I will never ever be an athlete (naturally at least). My genes have pretty much already done a fine job selecting me out of most sports. It doesn't matter how much I dump into it, I will never be in the Olympics. It is just shitty genetics. There is nothing 'fair' about this. I don't understand the obsession with keeping it 'natural'. I am not saying don't regulate it, but if some guy figures out how to get his body to pump on some chemical someone else's already does, why not allow it? The only reason to disallow such alterations to what nature gave is to keep people from hurting themselves. In that case, simply open on the field and regulate it. Allow people to use performance enhancing gene therapy, just regulate it to make sure that the things people are doing are not overly harmful.
If nothing else, it could lead to some advances for the rest of the world. An athlete might use his 'enhanced coordination gene' to better do gymnastics or hit a ball. I could use it to be roller blade better and get neater hand writing. I think we shoot ourselves in the foot limiting what drugs we research. Personally, I think everything from recreational drugs to body enhancement drugs should be fair game. Make the drug run the regulatory gambit to prove it is safe, but if a drug company makes a drug that lets you trip for half an hour and isn't addictive, or they build a drug that lets you build muscle mass twice as fast, so long as it is safe why not use it?
The inane decisions game makers make when it comes to MMORPGs blow me away. The goal is to sell as many copies of your game as possible. The target audience is people with money. This goes double for MMORPGs that require a constant revenue stream through monthly billing. The target they pick for this audience... teenagers with no jobs. Great idea dumbass. Notice how just a few MMORPGs take the lions share of the money? It isn't because all of those other games are not great. It is there simply are not enough people who have both unlimited amounts of time and money.
Make a game for people who have jobs. First, you need to kill level advancement. I am a long time gamer. I am apart of what should be the new target audience. Once a dumb teenager with too much time on his hands who rocks at video games - now an adult with not enough time on his hands but too much money. You don't need to coddle me into a game. I know how to play it already. Drop me into UT2004 for the first time in my life and within an hour of playing I will be kicking ass with the best of them. Build a game around the ideal gamer, one with a pay check.
Assume the gamer knows his head from his ass hole, but that he just doesn't have a pile of time to spend killing rats in a field. Further, assume that he has little desire to compete with teenaged kids or the unemployed who have unlimited time to spend killing rats in a field. They have their game, it is called Everquest. Now make a game for the neglected ones with pockets bulging with money. How would such a game look? First, time would not equal power. Skill would equal power. If you walk into the game with skill, you start out powerful. It is as simple as that. No 'paying your time' in any manner other then that how long you have to pay to understand the controls. Your average UT2004 or CS freak should be able to jump in and murder with the best of them after a quick learning curve.
Now, before anyone says PlanetSide, realize that this is not enough. A twitch based MMORPG is great, but it needs more. Why would I pick an MMORPG over UT2004 if the only thing the MMORPG can offer is dated graphics and more people on the same server? I won't of course. The next element is to incorporate role playing aspects to the game. In other words, you need socialization, a story, politics, maybe a few quests, and alternative types of game play. You need to be able to take your warrior who frags with the best of them on the killing fields and take him fishing on your friend's boat (occasionally stopping to slay serpents and raid merchant ships). You need to be able to take your wizard and get involved in politics if that suits your fancy. You need to be able to become a rich ass merchant who can buy and make all that latest outfits. You need to do all of this without ever once having skills or experience.
Now, outside the obvious twitch based game play, you could also easily have strategic game play (like chess) and puzzle based game play (like puzzle pirates) that would be used when crafting and doing other such activities. Even in combat you could add a new layer by creating tactical and strategic game play.
Will this lead to people who play all the time and rock because they have developed excellent player skills? Sure, but that isn't going to stop me from kicking their asses with my 10+ years of players skill in other twitch games when I log on for an hour on the weekends.
Simply put, make games for people with money. The kiddies have their games, now make a fucking game for the people who have wallets bulging with cash and will never complain about spending 10 dollars a month because they already make $50,000 to $100,000 a year. Make a game with every type of game play EXCEPT time = power game play. In MMORPGs, time might equal power. However, in the real world time equals money. Waste my time, see none of my money.
Have you been to DC recently? I was down in DC few weeks ago and there was a constant stream of protests, pickets, and booths doing exactly what you described - with picture. This stuff happens all the time down there. You could do any of the above and you will not get arrested. Certainly they will likely watch you like a hawk, but so long as you are not standing in the middle of the road obstructing traffic, or trying to use physical force on anyone, they will allow it. If you just want to sit there with a sign that says "Bush is a murdering fascist", no one will stop you.
A strong argument could be made that when it comes to freedom in IP, the US lags. In terms of actual individual speech, I can't possibly see how it could get much rosier. You can say anything you want. I think you would be damned hard pressed to find another nation that is so liberal in terms of what the laws protect for freedom individual of speech.
People need to get a grip and get things in perspective. I am not voting for Bush in the upcoming election and I all around think he is dumber then a pound of bricks. However, I don't let my dislike of his policies fabricate disillusions that I am living in a fascist police state or that he sits around all day figuring out ways to kill babies for shits and giggles. People don't disappear. No matter how nutty and vocal you are, no one is going send the corporate death squad run by Dick Chaney after you. Get a grip and realize how badly the media (and politicians in general) has you hyped up into a frothing mess to the point where you will believe anything so long as it sounds bad for Bush.
I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 and was utterly blown away at how many people in the audience ate up some of the most one sided and utterly racist propaganda I had ever seen in my entire life. If at any point you can't at least understand the other side's argument and rationally see why they would think that way, then I 99% of the time it is because you have turned fanatic and will eat up any bullshit that fits in line with your beliefs. Nothing is more destructive to the political process then when people become a frothing mess that isn't able to at least understand the others sides position. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing, but you need to at least understand it first. The worst thing about this election year is that both side's bases are so riled up that they are utterly blind to anything that lands outside their current pre-programmed views.
That is the stupidest title I have ever read. If you think this is 'only in America', you need to open your eyes and take a look around. When it comes to free speech, the US is pretty damned liberal. I can still fly a confederate flag and wear a white hood if that tickles my fancy, but in free thinking places like Germany you can be arrested for doing a stiff armed salute or displaying a Nazi symbol - and it isn't like Germany is the most toltalitarian of places in the world.
Catchy phrase, but pure bullshit karma whoring.
The US is a super power, and super powers will always fuck it up. During the Cold War, I think the US had the best intentions and in the end the world was a better place because the US was there, but they certainly fucked up from time to time. The US is run by humans. The system might do a pretty solid job at weeding out truly corrupt and stupid people, but like with any human institution, they tend to creep in no matter how hard you try. I guess my point is that you can never expect the US to be perfect because it never was and never will be. I do think that on the whole though the US has good intentions and generally decent implementation. Just look at the conflicts the US has been in for the past 20 years and the record speaks of generally decent intentions with a couple of horrible mistakes.
To name a few:
Somalia - Best of intentions, feed a starving nation. I have yet to hear a good conspiracy theory as to how this was a plot for US domination. The result though was a cluster fuck that lead to a handful of US and other nationalities getting killed. In the end no one ended up fed (for very long at least) and only more carnage was achieved.
Hattie - Good intentions, restore a democracy. Result? Restored a guy who everyone thought was a saint who (arguably) turned into villain who snatch away democracy. Now there is Hattie 2 where an attempt was made to fix the mistake. If it was worth anyone's time is still yet to be seen.
Serbia - Good intentions, stop a mass genocide. The operation was preformed despite widespread protest both in the US and abroad. After the fact though, you don't hear anyone complaining about the outcome these days. The genocide is over and Serbia is well on its way towards democracy.
Iraq - At the risk of -1 flamebait, I'll just say that in my opinion, it was done with the best intentions. I think the US was genuinely surprised when no chemical weapons were used and the people didn't come out in the street with flowers. Offing an evil dictator isn't a bad thing in it of itself. It is the fact that you need to kill a pile of other people in the process is what makes it bad. I think the jury is still out on this. I look at Iraq like Serbia. At the time it seemed like a dumb idea to a lot of people, but today we recognize it as the right move that ended a genocide. If 10 years from now Iraq looks like Iran, it was probably a failure. If 10 years from now Iraq looks Japan, I think history will forgive the US.
The US is aggressive at time, but I think the world needs a little bit of that. Some times a nation is needed that will crack a few skulls to do what is right. Personally, I like the balance we have today. Europe does an excellent job offering restraint and diplomacy, while the US is generally willing to jump the gun if it thinks those things are taking too long. Diplomacy is not always the answer. I think Rwanda makes it pretty clear that you can't always give the other side more time before you take action. Europe restrains the US from crusading any time they see something wrong, and the US keeps Europe from sitting on its haunches while evil people do their work.
Also something to think about is the fact that the US was NOT 'protecting' Europe out of altruistic feelings, it simply saw that a Soviet occupied Europe would pose a huge and imminent threat to the US if the Soviets ever decided to attack.
It was the US hatred of the Soviet way of life that fueled the cold war. Fair enough, Soviet Russia may not have been a non evil country, but the arms race was born more out of the US view of the Soviet thinking than of Soviet aggression.
That is a complete and utter contradiction. First, you say that US acted purely out of self interest. Then you go on to say that it was hatred of the Soviet way of life that caused them to act as they did, and further the US just made it worse because they aggressively went after the Soviet Union. I think you have it completely right in your second statement. The motivation for the Cold War was not self interest, but hatred of such an evil empire that had consumed a quarter of the world. The US was very much fanatical about stopping the Soviet Union. They DID make things worse and create an arms race that never needed to happen. The US was overtly hostile to the Soviet Union and spent half of a centaury doing everything in its power to take it down.
The US created the Cold War. They spent the Soviet Empire into the ground. That was a good thing though. Without the arms race the Soviet Empire would still be around today. The Soviet Union crumbled under half of a centaury of constant non-stop conflict. Inciting conflict with such a massive enemy, then very resolutely telling them that should they ever make any real gains in taking the rest of the world that nuclear Armageddon would come to everyone is not a sign of a nation acting out of any sort of self interest. That is a nation of fanatics acting out of fanaticism, and seeing as how a massive swath of the world is now free from Soviet control (including Russia), I would say that the world is certainly a better place. It isn't a perfect place, and the things done to get to this point where not always good, nor were they always right, but in the end the world is a better place.
So I agree, the US did act out of the hatred of how the Soviet Empire treated its people, and as a result spent the better part of the last half centuary making the problem worse by aggressivly seeking to keep the rest of world ending up with the same fate and freeing the people already under Soviet control. Fucking evil self serving Americans. Always threatening to blow themselves up out of evil self serving, self interest.