What he meant is that most MMO betas delete all existing characters at the end of the beta. Hence, all of the money and equipment get deleted or go "poof" (as in when something disappears in classic cartoons). This happened at the end of the WoW beta, but not necessarily at the end of the LoTRO beta. In LoTRO, you could pre-order the game and your character and equipment rolled over to the production world. Hence, gold farming in that beta was productive, evil, but productive.
You actually called Michael Moore a documentary maker? WTH, have you never watched one of his "documentaries"? He is nothing more than a lobbyist with a camera. Calling his films documentaries is like calling Britney Spears a trained Opera singer.
Oh yeah, and universal healthcare FTW (yeah right, like that will ever happen in this country).
Contrary to what some Europeans and by extension Euro-philes seem to believe, the vast majority of Americans do realize that the US is not the only country in the world. In fact, we also realize that we're not the only economic power in the world. Furthermore, the majority of Americans (according to a poll that I saw in our newspaper recently and no I don't have the reference, but it was a national poll by one of the bigger US companies such as Gallup or somebody) believe that America is not the largest economy in the world, they usually picked Japan as the largest. Way to propogate untrue American stereotypes.
Microsoft is a multi-national conglomerate doing business in many nations around the world. As such, they are requires to obey the laws and accept the sanctions imposed by every country or, in the case of the EU, group of countries they do business in.
You're actually getting into grey area here. First of all as someone mentioned earlier, the EU is not a government, nor is it a nation. This is the exact same thing as if NAFTA decided to tell Siemens to change their cell phones or they would start fining them every day (this of course wouldn't happen with NAFTA for several reasons that are beyond the scope of my comments). Also there are hundreds of cases where a company has sold their product in a country and did not meet the standards of that country, although it's a little harder to get away with that when you're dealing with such a large number of countries.
Then the EU should simply impound all of MS's European assets, and strip them of all patent and copyright protection, thus allowing Europeans to install their new open source, free operating system quite legally under the laws of the EU.
And this of course is illegal in pretty much every country in the world. Seriously, did you not think this through? That is like saying that if Mercedes imports a car into the US that doesn't meet pollution requirements, the US then has the right to seize all of Mercede's assets in the US and give away Mercedes to average US citizens. This doesn't happen except in small countries run by dictators. The EU isn't stupid enough to actually consider such an action.
When you grow up you'll realize that there are other countries, legal systems, and ways of looking at things than the US's.
And when you grow up, YOU will realize that there are other countries, legal systems and guess what, for the most part they actually all do things the same way. While there are slight differences, for the most part these kinds of laws are pretty similar all over the world.
It's interesting to me how every Euro/Euro-phile on slashdot likes to paint the US government as being intrusive into other countries affairs, but I can't think of a single time that the US has prosecuted a foreign company for anti-trust violations. Yet, here we have the EU, which while meeting some of the definition of government is not really a government, going after a company from a country outside of it's borders. Strikes me as slightly hypocritical.
As an aside, just because someone doesn't want to type out Trade/Economic Union, or because they have a slip of the tongue (keyboard) or are making a sarcastic point (that the EU is acting more like a governmental body than any other Trade/Economic Union in the world), it does not make them ignorant. Just as when someone makes mulitple spelling mistakes it does not make them ignorant either (btw, your statement about "kick them out of the country" berely underscores your ignorance does not mean what you apparently think it means).
P.S. back to the topic, I hope that EU does start charging MS these fines. I still find it hard to believe that they basically got away with it over in this country (meaning the country that I reside in, not implying that the US is THE only country...have to qualify that so that the Euro/Euro-philes don't get all hot and bothered).
"If you're in a company with 27,000 employees, and you don't know anyone who doesn't despise Notes, then your company desperately needs som new Notes developers."
Double negatives are a bitch aren't they? You just said that it would be odd if a person did not know a hater of Notes. Following that reasoning, you are saying that a new Notes developer would make it even worse. Which of course is what everyone always says. It always amazes me how the only people that like Notes are developers of Notes applications and managers that were involved in the decision to install the system in the first place. If you think that I am exaggerating, then you need to get out of your office/cubicle more. Of course most people are too polite to tell a developer their true feelings about how bad an application is.
Have to mention this. Most DRM is illegal as it denies an end-consumer the perfectly legal right to make a personal backup copy of owned media. The DMCA did not remove that right, contrary to what the *IAA has stated.
That is definitely not a start. That's an inane idea.
This would literally give large corporations the ability to drive smaller businesses and individuals into the poorhouse. They could exploit tiny loopholes in the law to "win" a case that right now would carry no financial gain. But under your system, they just tack on 100-200 lawyers and legal aides (not uncommon) to their side of the case and voila, the small guy who just lost a silly case has to pay a large corporation millions of dollars. Companies could use the courts as a means to bankrupt competition.
Yes, the legal system needs some work, but your idea is bad. Very bad.
What we really need is a way to protect 10-year old kids and their grandmothers from morons like the RIAA/MPAA
While your post is very umm-cute, it's very inaccurate. Batteries rarely go "boom", and the instance that you gave was of someone seriously modifying batteries way beyond what is supposed to be able to handle.
Also, a molotov cocktail is NOT a bomb and it does NOT go "boom". It's an incendiary device that spreads a flammable liquid over a surface that then BURNS. Nothing explodes unless the fire ignites something already existing that then explodes. The reason that people think it goes "boom" is because they watch too much TV/movies. It is true that the bottle shatters and sprays the propellant (which can be gasoline or a form of alcohol, hence the cocktail part of the name), but this shouldn't be mistaken for a true explosion.
As far as gasoline going "boom", again you watch too much TV/movies. Gasoline-powered cars are not prone to explosions and the majority of accidents do not involve an explosion. Add to this the fact the majority of cars (at least the ones sold in the US), do not have any true anti-explosion technology added to them and yet emergency workers are always more concerned about treating the victim of the crash than trying to get them away from the vehicle (for fear of fire or explosion). (someone help me out with citations/sources?)
And back to Hydrogen. I think that most people aren't concerned that hydrogen cars are inherently more likely to explode (except for the GP of course). I think what people are more concerned about is the fact that the car will potentially carry far more destructive power than a similar gas car (i.e. not risk of exploding, but the fact that a single car will leave a crater after it explodes - whether or not that is true is irrelevant).
Also, a set of modern http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues/2004-12-17/pro ject1/index.html experiments that recreates the fabric and coating materials contradicts the "flammable fabric" theory. These experiments conclude that it would have taken about 40 hours for the Hindenburg to have burned if the fire had been driven by a fabric fire. These experiments, as well as other industrial tests of the coating materials, conclude that the covering materials were combustible but nonflammable. Two additional scientific papers http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/LZ129fire.ht m also strongly reject the "flammable fabric theory".
Except, the Skywebexpress system barely fits 2 adults in each "pod" and it runs on tracks instead of roads(which means that everywhere it goes has to be on a line, which is a bad thing in the Western US where most companies are very spread out).
Actually, it's the Electoral Voters that elect the President, not the people (while the Electoral Voters usually vote the way that the populous decides, there are many instances in our history where they did not). Since there are currently only 538 Electoral Voters and the population is around 299 million (rounded up of course), that means that less than a thousandth of a percent vote for our President.
If you're going to insult our backwards legal/political system (which directly or indirectly contributed to so many other countries legal/political systems, I can't find a reference, so I won't throw out percentages) then at least get your facts straight.
P.S. I wish I could argue that the US isn't truly a Plutocracy, but I'm not that blind...err patriotic.
***The US military vs The XXaa mercenary squads***
In the year 2012 the MPAA and RIAA grew frustrating with the US government's soft-on-crime attitude towards online piracy and decided to do something about it. Moving their headquarters to opulently furnished and well defended artificial islands in the Pacific ocean, the new self-proclaimed XXaa government declared the United States to be a rogue state supporting hordes of vicious, smelly pirates.
The first volley of attacks came from the XXaa in the form of printed and electronic propaganda. The campaign started off with crude pamphlets and radio broadcasts that amounted to little more than name calling. The attacks very quickly became more and more sophisticated culminating in the now infamous poster dubbed "The Metallica hater". The poster depicted a 7-year old girl burning a non-licensed Metallica souvenir wall flag that she had purchased from a street vendor in the Little China district of San Francisco. In the poster, the young girl is also listening to a non-DRM MP3 player (obviously filled with pirated music). In the background, her 82-year grandmother can be seen wielding a sub-machine smart-gun, with the DRM clearly disabled.
Even this was not enough to provoke the American government into action, that would not happen until Dec 7, 2012. A day that will go in the history books as Red Friday. The XXaa, frustrated with their lack of success, turned to extremely desperate measures. They contracted a certain Nigerian civil servant to mass email every email address in existence with their challenge to the US government. By 2 PM UTC, the trillions of email messages clogged the internet and her routers and servers, hence the term Red to indicated error lights on computer hardware. While the emails themselves did not contain the new nations manifesto (it instead included a well known money scam), the subject of the emails drew the ire of the US Congress. It read "United States Congress=big poo poo heads, love XXaa". By 2:30 PM UTC, Congress had formally declared war on the XXaa (ironically giving them international status as a country, which had been denied by the UN in the previous months.
Within hours, the Air Force and Navy of the US was attempting to fly scouting sorties over the newly constructed homelands of the XXaa. However, they were met with deadly resistance and the loss of American lives and equipment was staggering. During the previous decade, the XXaa had been aggressively purchasing top of the line military armament which was used with deadly accuracy on the Americans decades old aircraft (the GDP of the XXaa during the 6 months building up to the war was twice the GDP of the US in the previous fiscal year, and with little debt, they were free to spend more on state of the art weaponry).
In addition to the high tech equipment, the XXaa had acquired a vast army of mercenaries. The army of almost 1 billion was an interesting mix of professional soldiers and professional gold farmers of Asian descent (at least 2 South East Asian countries were completely stripped of population during the heaviest fighting period of the war).
I can't understand the US attitude to Cuba - can't trade with them but renting space for a naval base is OK.
I think you're trying to be funny (and it would be funny if it was true). Currently, Cuba has refused to accept the "rent" of $5000 since 1960, so the US is there for free. The US took up occupation of the area at the end of the Spanish-American war, at which time the US controlled the entire country. After the war, the Cuban people eventually set up their own country which was friendly to the US. It wasn't until the 50s that tensions between the US and Cuba got bad. As far as the continued presence, it only makes sense to keep occupying land that is yours and provides a strategic value.
As an aside, the Cuban government claims the US is violating the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which says that a treaty is void if it is procured by force or it's threatened use. However this is not true since the Vienna Convention was in 1969 and the US signed the treaty in 1898 and the Convention is not retroactive (explicitly stated, not a legal ambiguity). Also, the entire situation stems from the US actually giving back land to a hostile nation at the cessation of a war.
1. Having considerable monetary or material value for use or exchange: a valuable diamond. 2. Of great importance, use, or service: valuable information; valuable advice. 3. Having admirable or esteemed qualities or characteristics: a valuable friend.
85% of the people in America do NOT have health insurance! Where did you come up with such a false number? Some political whitewash propaganda pamphlet? The number of Americans with some form of health insurance is closer to 50% and possibly much lower (definitely much lower if you consider illegal aliens, who, while not being US citizens, meet your criteria of "people in America").
Re:Company details are very interesting
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Whats interesting here is the guy used to work at taldren
What's even more interesting is that the "guy" is actually a "girl".
That was a painful video to watch. The camera work was jerky and was obviously shot with a consumer quality camcorder. And since the interviewer was also the camera man and he was using the onboard mic, everytime that the image would switch from the interviewee's face the conversation became very hard to follow.
Also, it looked like he tried to launch a DVD using the touchscreen and the app crashed or didn't start, but since the screen was reflecting the lights and you couldn't hear the interviewee I can't be sure that's what they were doing.
Actually that's not right. The ratings on games don't match up exactly with movie ratings, but the comparisons that you gave are off. AO is the equivalent of NC-17 and X put together, M is closer to R and T is closest to PG-13 (actual descriptions are located here http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp).
I completely agree with you about parents/gparents buying T or M games for their little kids and then whining about the content. It's amazing how so many people put themselves in "harm's way" and then complain about it.
As an interesting note, last night I was out video game shopping and I was amazed at the ratio of the various rated games (I was looking at games for my nephew, the only reason that I pay attention to the ratings. My sister allows him to play any E game and some T's if she previews them first, Blockbuster really helps out there. Which pretty closely matches his age at 12). If you compare all the computer and console games, the ratio of the amount of games in each rating seem to pretty well reflect the movie industry. I didn't see any AO games, although that could be because the stores I went to didn't stock them. The majority of the games seem to fall into the T range, with a good chunk in the M range. I guess the biggest difference would be the amount of E games is a lot more percentage-wise than the number of PG movies, unless you count direct-to-dvd PG movies and then it pretty much averages out.
I worked at a bike shop right near the most dangerous intersection in town. During the 18 months that I worked there, there was not a single work day that went by that an accident did not happen directly in front of our store (we had running bets on what day would be our first non-accident day, no one ever collected). The person closest to the phone called 911 every time and we were never put on hold (although some days it did ring 7-10 times before someone picked up).
In case you're interested in the accidents, very few were cars getting rear ended. Our store was about a block away from the intersection and the heavy afternoon traffic was on our side of the street. The majority of the accidents involved someone using the left turn bay in front of us to make a U-turn into the heavy traffic. They would get hit by a car in one of the two most right lanes, usually due to gaps in traffic. The person doing the U-turn got the ticket every time of course.
This is a really weird discussion. Apparently none of you are aware that television shows air at different times on the eastern side of the US than on the western side. On the west side of the US, primetime is 7-10 PM. This means that when a show like Without A Trace comes on at 10 PM EST and CST, it comes on at 9 PM MST and PST. The FCC regulations are for any show that airs before 10 PM, counting the western side of the US, so this show falls into the timeframe that they regulate.
I'm not saying I agree with this, just setting the record straight.
Actually you are the one being pedantic. The GP was trying to make a point to the GGP. The GGP was indicating that they believed they should be able to have any weapon they wanted and that if they weren't allowed to they would use the democratic process to make sure that they could. The GP was making the point that the GGP could not use the democratic process to get his way since the US is not a "true" or "direct" democracy (as you put it). This of course means that if the GGP thought that everyone should be able to purchase and install a nice little SAM site in their backyard he can't just go out and get a simple majority of the people to agree and enact a new city/state/federal ordinance. As laws and even amendments to the constitution itself can only be initiated and passed by the various legislatures at either the federal or state level.
While the GP would have been better off explaining what they meant by the phrase "the US is not a democracy", most people that bothered to read his post and the previous one I'm sure understood the GP's meaning. This would of course make your post extremely pedantic.
Also, since you were correcting the GP, let me correct you. Those definitions that you threw out while being correct in and of themselves are not applied correctly. When you are speaking of governments, certain phrases describe a particular type of government regardless of the individual meanings of the words. This phenomena exists in other unrelated fields and disciplines also (I forget the proper name for it). What I'm getting at is this, while democracy and republic have very generic meanings, when you are speaking of a country and say that they are a "Democratic Republic" it actually means something unrelated to the individual generic terms. You can consider it more of a classification.
Speaking of the US in specifics, our type of government is described by several different terms. And lo an behold, one of those terms is actually "Democratic Republic", others include "Federal Republic", "Federalistic Democracy", "almost-pure Republic" and of course my favorite "Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition" which is how the CIA describes us.
As for your quote: "While it is not at all clear to me what point is being attempted by people who leap to point out the US is a Republic, not a Democracy, it is quite clear you are wrong" people that assert this are of course not wrong. The reason why people call the US a Republic is because, gasp, our government is based on the first Republic, Rome. That's right, the US government is based very strongly on the Roman government (by Roman, I'm obviously referring to the original Roman government and not to the current Italian or subsequent splinter nations that came about after the fall of the Roman empire). The framers of this country relied heavily on the structure of that government and attempted to remove some of the more obvious problems that they encountered, all the while trying to include the average person more into the equation than Rome did. Many people don't realize this since the term Republic has been applied to so many governments, modern and historical, that are very different than the Roman Republic. A few hundred years ago, if you were to say to someone that some country was a Republic, the image that would instantly jump to mind would be of the Roman Republic.
Actually if you had bothered to read that link you posted you would have known that he didn't develop the ideas of zero and positional notation. He introduced the west to these ideas. As far as who developed these ideas, that can get a little tricky, but it definitely was not al-Khwarizmi.
I'm not trying to make al-Khwarizmi to be any less of a brilliant mathematician than he was. But give him credit for what he did do. Which was to basically create algebra. And even then, he was really expounding on the work of others before him such as Diophantus and Brahmagupta.
"And all words in Arabic, Latin, Greek, and English are all ultimately derived from some Indo-European root language group. Languages don't grow in a petri dish son."
You really should've researched this before blathering on. While Latin, Greek and English are all derived from the Indo-European root language group, Arabic is not. It is of course a member of the Afro-Asiatic root language group, which of course is not related to the Indo-European group. While they may share some pre-historic parent language, most linguists are reluctant to accept this theory (as are most arabs interestingly enough).
The original term was camera obscura, which is of course latin in origin (obscura of course being entirely latin). This is easily explained as latin was already in use in the "scientific" fields as the language of choice. Which explains why an Arab man like Ibn al-Haitham would use latin to describe his invention.
Also the text in the article is completely ridiculous. It was not the common theory that eyes emitted light, that was a theory of 2 Greek scientists. And it was refuted by Aristotle, which became the common theory.
The article is an obvious Arab apologistic treatise. Several of the "inventions" mentioned are not inventions at all. And the vast majority are actually inventions from other lands and peoples.
The Atari 2600 launched with a MSRP of $199 in 1977 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600#Launch_and _runaway_success. My family picked one up for just $150 a week after the launch. You should really check your facts a bit. While $200 in the late 70s is probably pretty close to comparable to $400 now, you really shouldn't spout off utter trash.
Usage of terms such as "assassination" and "rape" in a context that does not involve their true meanings is amoral and trivializes the victims of these real crimes. Please look to your own morality before preaching about someone else's morality (or lack thereof).
Slashdot Mirror
What he meant is that most MMO betas delete all existing characters at the end of the beta. Hence, all of the money and equipment get deleted or go "poof" (as in when something disappears in classic cartoons). This happened at the end of the WoW beta, but not necessarily at the end of the LoTRO beta. In LoTRO, you could pre-order the game and your character and equipment rolled over to the production world. Hence, gold farming in that beta was productive, evil, but productive.
You actually called Michael Moore a documentary maker? WTH, have you never watched one of his "documentaries"? He is nothing more than a lobbyist with a camera. Calling his films documentaries is like calling Britney Spears a trained Opera singer.
Oh yeah, and universal healthcare FTW (yeah right, like that will ever happen in this country).
Haha, your username is so applicable!
Contrary to what some Europeans and by extension Euro-philes seem to believe, the vast majority of Americans do realize that the US is not the only country in the world. In fact, we also realize that we're not the only economic power in the world. Furthermore, the majority of Americans (according to a poll that I saw in our newspaper recently and no I don't have the reference, but it was a national poll by one of the bigger US companies such as Gallup or somebody) believe that America is not the largest economy in the world, they usually picked Japan as the largest. Way to propogate untrue American stereotypes.
Microsoft is a multi-national conglomerate doing business in many nations around the world. As such, they are requires to obey the laws and accept the sanctions imposed by every country or, in the case of the EU, group of countries they do business in.
You're actually getting into grey area here. First of all as someone mentioned earlier, the EU is not a government, nor is it a nation. This is the exact same thing as if NAFTA decided to tell Siemens to change their cell phones or they would start fining them every day (this of course wouldn't happen with NAFTA for several reasons that are beyond the scope of my comments). Also there are hundreds of cases where a company has sold their product in a country and did not meet the standards of that country, although it's a little harder to get away with that when you're dealing with such a large number of countries.
Then the EU should simply impound all of MS's European assets, and strip them of all patent and copyright protection, thus allowing Europeans to install their new open source, free operating system quite legally under the laws of the EU.
And this of course is illegal in pretty much every country in the world. Seriously, did you not think this through? That is like saying that if Mercedes imports a car into the US that doesn't meet pollution requirements, the US then has the right to seize all of Mercede's assets in the US and give away Mercedes to average US citizens. This doesn't happen except in small countries run by dictators. The EU isn't stupid enough to actually consider such an action.
When you grow up you'll realize that there are other countries, legal systems, and ways of looking at things than the US's.
And when you grow up, YOU will realize that there are other countries, legal systems and guess what, for the most part they actually all do things the same way. While there are slight differences, for the most part these kinds of laws are pretty similar all over the world.
It's interesting to me how every Euro/Euro-phile on slashdot likes to paint the US government as being intrusive into other countries affairs, but I can't think of a single time that the US has prosecuted a foreign company for anti-trust violations. Yet, here we have the EU, which while meeting some of the definition of government is not really a government, going after a company from a country outside of it's borders. Strikes me as slightly hypocritical.
As an aside, just because someone doesn't want to type out Trade/Economic Union, or because they have a slip of the tongue (keyboard) or are making a sarcastic point (that the EU is acting more like a governmental body than any other Trade/Economic Union in the world), it does not make them ignorant. Just as when someone makes mulitple spelling mistakes it does not make them ignorant either (btw, your statement about "kick them out of the country" berely underscores your ignorance does not mean what you apparently think it means).
P.S. back to the topic, I hope that EU does start charging MS these fines. I still find it hard to believe that they basically got away with it over in this country (meaning the country that I reside in, not implying that the US is THE only country...have to qualify that so that the Euro/Euro-philes don't get all hot and bothered).
"If you're in a company with 27,000 employees, and you don't know anyone who doesn't despise Notes, then your company desperately needs som new Notes developers."
Double negatives are a bitch aren't they? You just said that it would be odd if a person did not know a hater of Notes. Following that reasoning, you are saying that a new Notes developer would make it even worse. Which of course is what everyone always says. It always amazes me how the only people that like Notes are developers of Notes applications and managers that were involved in the decision to install the system in the first place. If you think that I am exaggerating, then you need to get out of your office/cubicle more. Of course most people are too polite to tell a developer their true feelings about how bad an application is.
Have to mention this. Most DRM is illegal as it denies an end-consumer the perfectly legal right to make a personal backup copy of owned media. The DMCA did not remove that right, contrary to what the *IAA has stated.
That is definitely not a start. That's an inane idea.
This would literally give large corporations the ability to drive smaller businesses and individuals into the poorhouse. They could exploit tiny loopholes in the law to "win" a case that right now would carry no financial gain. But under your system, they just tack on 100-200 lawyers and legal aides (not uncommon) to their side of the case and voila, the small guy who just lost a silly case has to pay a large corporation millions of dollars. Companies could use the courts as a means to bankrupt competition.
Yes, the legal system needs some work, but your idea is bad. Very bad.
What we really need is a way to protect 10-year old kids and their grandmothers from morons like the RIAA/MPAA
While your post is very umm-cute, it's very inaccurate. Batteries rarely go "boom", and the instance that you gave was of someone seriously modifying batteries way beyond what is supposed to be able to handle.
Also, a molotov cocktail is NOT a bomb and it does NOT go "boom". It's an incendiary device that spreads a flammable liquid over a surface that then BURNS. Nothing explodes unless the fire ignites something already existing that then explodes. The reason that people think it goes "boom" is because they watch too much TV/movies. It is true that the bottle shatters and sprays the propellant (which can be gasoline or a form of alcohol, hence the cocktail part of the name), but this shouldn't be mistaken for a true explosion.
As far as gasoline going "boom", again you watch too much TV/movies. Gasoline-powered cars are not prone to explosions and the majority of accidents do not involve an explosion. Add to this the fact the majority of cars (at least the ones sold in the US), do not have any true anti-explosion technology added to them and yet emergency workers are always more concerned about treating the victim of the crash than trying to get them away from the vehicle (for fear of fire or explosion). (someone help me out with citations/sources?)
And back to Hydrogen. I think that most people aren't concerned that hydrogen cars are inherently more likely to explode (except for the GP of course). I think what people are more concerned about is the fact that the car will potentially carry far more destructive power than a similar gas car (i.e. not risk of exploding, but the fact that a single car will leave a crater after it explodes - whether or not that is true is irrelevant).
Was it caused by hydrogen? Probably not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_(airship)
o ject1/index.html experiments that recreates the fabric and coating materials contradicts the "flammable fabric" theory. These experiments conclude that it would have taken about 40 hours for the Hindenburg to have burned if the fire had been driven by a fabric fire. These experiments, as well as other industrial tests of the coating materials, conclude that the covering materials were combustible but nonflammable. Two additional scientific papers http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/LZ129fire.ht m also strongly reject the "flammable fabric theory".
Too bad you didn't actually read the article.
Also, a set of modern http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues/2004-12-17/pr
Except, the Skywebexpress system barely fits 2 adults in each "pod" and it runs on tracks instead of roads(which means that everywhere it goes has to be on a line, which is a bad thing in the Western US where most companies are very spread out).
And university is about learning
Apparently you didn't study for your English exams either (using "university" as if it it was an entity is slang).
Actually, it's the Electoral Voters that elect the President, not the people (while the Electoral Voters usually vote the way that the populous decides, there are many instances in our history where they did not). Since there are currently only 538 Electoral Voters and the population is around 299 million (rounded up of course), that means that less than a thousandth of a percent vote for our President.
If you're going to insult our backwards legal/political system (which directly or indirectly contributed to so many other countries legal/political systems, I can't find a reference, so I won't throw out percentages) then at least get your facts straight.
P.S. I wish I could argue that the US isn't truly a Plutocracy, but I'm not that blind...err patriotic.
That sounds like a good idea for a BF2 mod.
***The US military vs The XXaa mercenary squads***
In the year 2012 the MPAA and RIAA grew frustrating with the US government's soft-on-crime attitude towards online piracy and decided to do something about it. Moving their headquarters to opulently furnished and well defended artificial islands in the Pacific ocean, the new self-proclaimed XXaa government declared the United States to be a rogue state supporting hordes of vicious, smelly pirates.
The first volley of attacks came from the XXaa in the form of printed and electronic propaganda. The campaign started off with crude pamphlets and radio broadcasts that amounted to little more than name calling. The attacks very quickly became more and more sophisticated culminating in the now infamous poster dubbed "The Metallica hater". The poster depicted a 7-year old girl burning a non-licensed Metallica souvenir wall flag that she had purchased from a street vendor in the Little China district of San Francisco. In the poster, the young girl is also listening to a non-DRM MP3 player (obviously filled with pirated music). In the background, her 82-year grandmother can be seen wielding a sub-machine smart-gun, with the DRM clearly disabled.
Even this was not enough to provoke the American government into action, that would not happen until Dec 7, 2012. A day that will go in the history books as Red Friday. The XXaa, frustrated with their lack of success, turned to extremely desperate measures. They contracted a certain Nigerian civil servant to mass email every email address in existence with their challenge to the US government. By 2 PM UTC, the trillions of email messages clogged the internet and her routers and servers, hence the term Red to indicated error lights on computer hardware. While the emails themselves did not contain the new nations manifesto (it instead included a well known money scam), the subject of the emails drew the ire of the US Congress. It read "United States Congress=big poo poo heads, love XXaa". By 2:30 PM UTC, Congress had formally declared war on the XXaa (ironically giving them international status as a country, which had been denied by the UN in the previous months.
Within hours, the Air Force and Navy of the US was attempting to fly scouting sorties over the newly constructed homelands of the XXaa. However, they were met with deadly resistance and the loss of American lives and equipment was staggering. During the previous decade, the XXaa had been aggressively purchasing top of the line military armament which was used with deadly accuracy on the Americans decades old aircraft (the GDP of the XXaa during the 6 months building up to the war was twice the GDP of the US in the previous fiscal year, and with little debt, they were free to spend more on state of the art weaponry).
In addition to the high tech equipment, the XXaa had acquired a vast army of mercenaries. The army of almost 1 billion was an interesting mix of professional soldiers and professional gold farmers of Asian descent (at least 2 South East Asian countries were completely stripped of population during the heaviest fighting period of the war).
I can't understand the US attitude to Cuba - can't trade with them but renting space for a naval base is OK.
I think you're trying to be funny (and it would be funny if it was true). Currently, Cuba has refused to accept the "rent" of $5000 since 1960, so the US is there for free. The US took up occupation of the area at the end of the Spanish-American war, at which time the US controlled the entire country. After the war, the Cuban people eventually set up their own country which was friendly to the US. It wasn't until the 50s that tensions between the US and Cuba got bad. As far as the continued presence, it only makes sense to keep occupying land that is yours and provides a strategic value.
As an aside, the Cuban government claims the US is violating the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which says that a treaty is void if it is procured by force or it's threatened use. However this is not true since the Vienna Convention was in 1969 and the US signed the treaty in 1898 and the Convention is not retroactive (explicitly stated, not a legal ambiguity). Also, the entire situation stems from the US actually giving back land to a hostile nation at the cessation of a war.
Valuable means the same thing as invaluable? What a silly language!
Valuable and invaluable do not have the same meaning.
valuable (vl'y--bl, vl'y-) http://www.answers.com/topic/valuable
adj.
1. Having considerable monetary or material value for use or exchange: a valuable diamond.
2. Of great importance, use, or service: valuable information; valuable advice.
3. Having admirable or esteemed qualities or characteristics: a valuable friend.
invaluable (n-vl'y--bl) http://www.answers.com/topic/invaluable
adj.
Of inestimable value
I think you meant flammable http://www.answers.com/topic/flammable and inflammable http://www.answers.com/topic/inflammable, which have the same meaning.
But yes, English can be a very silly language.
85% of the people in America do NOT have health insurance! Where did you come up with such a false number? Some political whitewash propaganda pamphlet? The number of Americans with some form of health insurance is closer to 50% and possibly much lower (definitely much lower if you consider illegal aliens, who, while not being US citizens, meet your criteria of "people in America").
Whats interesting here is the guy used to work at taldren
What's even more interesting is that the "guy" is actually a "girl".
That was a painful video to watch. The camera work was jerky and was obviously shot with a consumer quality camcorder. And since the interviewer was also the camera man and he was using the onboard mic, everytime that the image would switch from the interviewee's face the conversation became very hard to follow.
Also, it looked like he tried to launch a DVD using the touchscreen and the app crashed or didn't start, but since the screen was reflecting the lights and you couldn't hear the interviewee I can't be sure that's what they were doing.
Actually that's not right. The ratings on games don't match up exactly with movie ratings, but the comparisons that you gave are off. AO is the equivalent of NC-17 and X put together, M is closer to R and T is closest to PG-13 (actual descriptions are located here http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp).
I completely agree with you about parents/gparents buying T or M games for their little kids and then whining about the content. It's amazing how so many people put themselves in "harm's way" and then complain about it.
As an interesting note, last night I was out video game shopping and I was amazed at the ratio of the various rated games (I was looking at games for my nephew, the only reason that I pay attention to the ratings. My sister allows him to play any E game and some T's if she previews them first, Blockbuster really helps out there. Which pretty closely matches his age at 12). If you compare all the computer and console games, the ratio of the amount of games in each rating seem to pretty well reflect the movie industry. I didn't see any AO games, although that could be because the stores I went to didn't stock them. The majority of the games seem to fall into the T range, with a good chunk in the M range. I guess the biggest difference would be the amount of E games is a lot more percentage-wise than the number of PG movies, unless you count direct-to-dvd PG movies and then it pretty much averages out.
I worked at a bike shop right near the most dangerous intersection in town. During the 18 months that I worked there, there was not a single work day that went by that an accident did not happen directly in front of our store (we had running bets on what day would be our first non-accident day, no one ever collected). The person closest to the phone called 911 every time and we were never put on hold (although some days it did ring 7-10 times before someone picked up).
In case you're interested in the accidents, very few were cars getting rear ended. Our store was about a block away from the intersection and the heavy afternoon traffic was on our side of the street. The majority of the accidents involved someone using the left turn bay in front of us to make a U-turn into the heavy traffic. They would get hit by a car in one of the two most right lanes, usually due to gaps in traffic. The person doing the U-turn got the ticket every time of course.
This is a really weird discussion. Apparently none of you are aware that television shows air at different times on the eastern side of the US than on the western side. On the west side of the US, primetime is 7-10 PM. This means that when a show like Without A Trace comes on at 10 PM EST and CST, it comes on at 9 PM MST and PST. The FCC regulations are for any show that airs before 10 PM, counting the western side of the US, so this show falls into the timeframe that they regulate.
I'm not saying I agree with this, just setting the record straight.
Actually you are the one being pedantic. The GP was trying to make a point to the GGP. The GGP was indicating that they believed they should be able to have any weapon they wanted and that if they weren't allowed to they would use the democratic process to make sure that they could. The GP was making the point that the GGP could not use the democratic process to get his way since the US is not a "true" or "direct" democracy (as you put it). This of course means that if the GGP thought that everyone should be able to purchase and install a nice little SAM site in their backyard he can't just go out and get a simple majority of the people to agree and enact a new city/state/federal ordinance. As laws and even amendments to the constitution itself can only be initiated and passed by the various legislatures at either the federal or state level.
While the GP would have been better off explaining what they meant by the phrase "the US is not a democracy", most people that bothered to read his post and the previous one I'm sure understood the GP's meaning. This would of course make your post extremely pedantic.
Also, since you were correcting the GP, let me correct you. Those definitions that you threw out while being correct in and of themselves are not applied correctly. When you are speaking of governments, certain phrases describe a particular type of government regardless of the individual meanings of the words. This phenomena exists in other unrelated fields and disciplines also (I forget the proper name for it). What I'm getting at is this, while democracy and republic have very generic meanings, when you are speaking of a country and say that they are a "Democratic Republic" it actually means something unrelated to the individual generic terms. You can consider it more of a classification.
Speaking of the US in specifics, our type of government is described by several different terms. And lo an behold, one of those terms is actually "Democratic Republic", others include "Federal Republic", "Federalistic Democracy", "almost-pure Republic" and of course my favorite "Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition" which is how the CIA describes us.
As for your quote: "While it is not at all clear to me what point is being attempted by people who leap to point out the US is a Republic, not a Democracy, it is quite clear you are wrong" people that assert this are of course not wrong. The reason why people call the US a Republic is because, gasp, our government is based on the first Republic, Rome. That's right, the US government is based very strongly on the Roman government (by Roman, I'm obviously referring to the original Roman government and not to the current Italian or subsequent splinter nations that came about after the fall of the Roman empire). The framers of this country relied heavily on the structure of that government and attempted to remove some of the more obvious problems that they encountered, all the while trying to include the average person more into the equation than Rome did. Many people don't realize this since the term Republic has been applied to so many governments, modern and historical, that are very different than the Roman Republic. A few hundred years ago, if you were to say to someone that some country was a Republic, the image that would instantly jump to mind would be of the Roman Republic.
Actually if you had bothered to read that link you posted you would have known that he didn't develop the ideas of zero and positional notation. He introduced the west to these ideas. As far as who developed these ideas, that can get a little tricky, but it definitely was not al-Khwarizmi. I'm not trying to make al-Khwarizmi to be any less of a brilliant mathematician than he was. But give him credit for what he did do. Which was to basically create algebra. And even then, he was really expounding on the work of others before him such as Diophantus and Brahmagupta.
"And all words in Arabic, Latin, Greek, and English are all ultimately derived from some Indo-European root language group. Languages don't grow in a petri dish son."
You really should've researched this before blathering on. While Latin, Greek and English are all derived from the Indo-European root language group, Arabic is not. It is of course a member of the Afro-Asiatic root language group, which of course is not related to the Indo-European group. While they may share some pre-historic parent language, most linguists are reluctant to accept this theory (as are most arabs interestingly enough).
The original term was camera obscura, which is of course latin in origin (obscura of course being entirely latin). This is easily explained as latin was already in use in the "scientific" fields as the language of choice. Which explains why an Arab man like Ibn al-Haitham would use latin to describe his invention.
Also the text in the article is completely ridiculous. It was not the common theory that eyes emitted light, that was a theory of 2 Greek scientists. And it was refuted by Aristotle, which became the common theory.
The article is an obvious Arab apologistic treatise. Several of the "inventions" mentioned are not inventions at all. And the vast majority are actually inventions from other lands and peoples.
The Atari 2600 launched with a MSRP of $199 in 1977 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600#Launch_and _runaway_success. My family picked one up for just $150 a week after the launch. You should really check your facts a bit. While $200 in the late 70s is probably pretty close to comparable to $400 now, you really shouldn't spout off utter trash.
Usage of terms such as "assassination" and "rape" in a context that does not involve their true meanings is amoral and trivializes the victims of these real crimes. Please look to your own morality before preaching about someone else's morality (or lack thereof).