From what I've heard, it's less "larger slice of a smaller pie" and more that they didn't want 8% pay cuts and 20% health care cost increases while executive compensation skyrocketed, in a company with a recent history of contract violations, multiple bankruptcies and chain of six incompetent, looting CEOs in under a decade.
It seems to me that once the workers got fed up with the perpetual mismanagement and looting of a company being dragged down and called a strike, the executives saw the perfect opportunity to cash in one last time and blame the unions for it.
I thought I replied to this already, but maybe I forgot to hit submit. Anyways, I picked it up on the steam sale too. It took me a few levels to get into it, but now I fairly enjoy it and have put enough time to get up to the mid-20 level. It's a really good example of a game that can integrate solo and multiplayer almost seamlessly, and the developers really deserve some kudos for that.
Yes, I have played it. I've played, and own, all of the games that I mentioned.
Clearly our opinions on BS2 differ, and that's ok. I'm glad that you liked it more than me. I wasn't cynical about its release; I was really looking forward to it and hoping it would be more than I felt I got.
I personally felt that the solo game while technically as nice as the first didn't really bring anything that excited me terrifically. Some of the scenery was nice with more deep-sea pretty stuff going on, but otherwise it felt like the main character was just a re-skinned version of the first game.
It did have some pretty cool points - and it's not a bad game at all, don't get me wrong - but it just didn't bring the excitement that the first one did. Rapture just didn't have the same punch in round 2 for me, I guess.
I almost wish I'd bought the collector's edition just for the cool stuff that came with it. If I could've bought a pack in-store of just the posters and whatnot *without* the game I probably would've, even. (I'm sure I could ebay for it or something if I really felt like it, but I'm not going to.)
And the multiplayer, as I said, felt cheap to me like a blatant fan-service that didn't provide any depth to the experience, just... well, deathmatch, which I can play in a billion other games and have exactly the same experience - only better, because there are other games really built around that style of play rather than shoving that style of play into a world that in my opinion gained little to nothing from it.
But by all means don't let my opinions keep you from playing it - it's a game, and if you enjoy it keep rocking it. That's what it's there for!
Those phenomenon are far from the norm, though, and, in context, hardly worth mentioning to the OP. They're essentially technicalities that won't serve him practically, which is what it sounds like he's looking for.
Ducting is the only "real" exception to line of sight and is highly dependent on solar and geomagnetic conditions and is not at all reliable or regular communications. I've witnessed some incredible 2 meter ducting, though. A couple hundred miles on 5 watts out, though for a brief period of time during the summer in the midwest across the plains.
Otherwise, knife's edge is just an angular bending of the signal and reflection is like a mirror - both sides still have to be able to see the "mirror" to communicate, and the "mirror" in this case is entirely dependent on random circumstance of location.
These aren't really viable or applicable to this guy's needs. If he wanted to play with radio as a hobby and not as a tool then he could have a lot of fun experimenting, but that (sadly, in my opinion, but i'm a little biased, it being a hobby of mine!) isn't the case here.
that's true, and cooperative multiplayer is something I particularly like to see. I don't always want to play against people - sometimes it's just way more fun to be non competitive and help each other out.
Deathspank, a recent XBLA game, is mainly single player but someone else can pick up a second controller and run around killing stuff as a generic dopey wizard. No character choice, no inventory, you can't complete quests or interact with items, just use various attacks and healing spells. Just a helping hand.
It wasn't even a necessary feature, but definitely a nice one - my girlfriend (shhh, or i'll lose my gamer cred, right) had a lot of fun playing the main game and I'd occasionally join in and help out in some of the battles she had problems with, or we'd just hang out on the couch and run around level grinding. Limited multiplayer was a nice kick in a title like that, if the game mechanics allow it. And Deathspank = pretty much just kill everything, so it worked great.
Personally I like both qualities, depending on the game. A game that I can pick up any time and play solo is probably going to get more attention from me in general, but having the option of multiplayer is good, too. It really depends on the game - it definitely shouldn't be shoehorned in, but at the same time, it can be a fun bonus feature in an otherwise solo game.
Prototype comes to mind - a primarily solo game that game would've been a riot if i could bring in a buddy or two with all that superpowered and disembowel-ly fun to spread some chaos on the unsuspecting city, but it did hold up well as single player only - all the focus was on the solo campaign with no distractions of deathmatches or arenas or any junk like that shoehorned in. It just comes down to making a decision on the type of game you want to produce and to make sure that you do it right all around. I play Borderlands solo pretty regularly, for example, but I could be playing with friends any time and it would be a relatively seamless experience. Putting multiplayer into Bioshock 2, however, I thought was a horrific waste - it just doesn't "fit" the game, the environment, the atmosphere. It seems like it cheapens the experience. Gamers aren't right about what they want all the time, and this was one of those times. (I don't know what invisible horde it was that was clamoring for multi in bioshock 2, but thanks a lot guys. that's time and money they could've put into making the single player game actually better than the first.)
What more can be said? Multiplayer and single player both have their places. I played Fallout 3 and loved it, very much a solo game. On the other hand I play Team Fortress 2 like a maniac, and conceptually it's the very core of multiplayer.
"Line of sight" is not a myth. It is fact. You're talking about using a repeater. If there is a repeater, you need line of sight to hear and speak with it. That's how life above 30 MHz is. Period.
(Barring the exception of ~50Mhz when solar and ionospheric conditions are good, both of which are quite variable, and currently both pretty bad. Not reliable for emergency communications, but good enough for a hobbyist to play with.)
VHF/UHF do *not* work well in mountainous, densely forested regions, anyplace there are things between stations. That's physics, son. Even inside large skyscraper buildings, there can even be problems with law enforcement handheld radios on different floors and outside on the ground, not to mention between units outside with all those tall stone and metal structures around them. There are things in place to fix that, but the problem had to be taken into account.
So, essentially what you've suggested is that he rely on the potential existence of somebody else's hardware somewhere in the mountains with known bad terrain using a possibly inappropriate technology.
Nice one.
Otherwise, I say the OP should check this comment out: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1731206&cid=33015672 [slashdot.org] . Consider carrying a current repeater map/directory of the area and a quad-band handheld, recognize that he may have to climb to a high point to use it, hope that somebody is listening, and realise that if he breaks a leg at the bottom of a valley he'd better have that SPOT locator handy because that radio probably isn't getting out anywhere. And don't chuck out that cell phone, either - amateur radio is no replacement for it.
And yeah, I'm a licensed operator. I enjoy my hobby and encourage others to join in, but it does require a learning curve that's a bit more than buying a shiny thing from a guy in a turtleneck. Learning to implement the right technology for the right situation is part of that, I think.
Well, I think it works like this. If vendors as a group want to encourage more "responsible disclosure", they need to operate in such a way that they take potential vulnerabilities seriously, and I don't just mean in a "we're taking this very seriously" kind of way, but more of a "we have a dedicated, knowledgable staff member/team to look into situations like this" sort of thing. If they decide it's not an issue after all, then any responsibility you have to the vendor is over regarding that issue. If they're not willing to even consider it as an issue after you've made a good faith effort to let them know how much of a problem you think it is, any responsibility you have to the vendor is over regarding that issue.
In short, a gentleman's agreement only works if both parties are gentlemen.
I went on a little drive to see how bad it was: it took me, ohhhh, about... six hours total to get into san francisco via the golden gate, head south, get to and cross the san mateo bridge back east across the bay then back up north of the ggate where I started.
Four of those hours were spent in bridge traffic. I left home at about 1:30pm and got back around 7:30pm.
In short, the bay bridge is a really big deal. Not having it is a nightmare.
For what it's worth, I put eee-ubuntu (which has now been renamed to "EasyPeasy", I guess) on my asus 900 and it runs pretty well. From the other options I looked at, none really seemed any better; and EP had the advantage of having a very easy install.
This may have changed in the past 4-5 months but so far it's best option I've found, particularly for something that worked out of the box pretty much from the get-go (barring a one-line change to fstab to get the SDcard slot working, and that might be fixed now, I dunno).
Are we placing bets on if this "anonymous" is samzenpus trying to foist off another of his crappy book reviews?
Sorry, but they're awful - probably far worse than the books (which have, after all, survived some sort of actual editorial process) that're being skewered. Please stop. Don't even put them on idle. Just... stop. Thanks.
You can try again when you've levelled up a couple times.
whatever. I'm just calling it as I see it. if i'm wrong, correct me.
You're right, law enforcement should be at a local level. How about law -creation-? Where does local prerogative end and national begin? If at least some of the laws of the land aren't uniform, the real basic, gritty ones, what makes the Union a Union except in name, anyways?
it seems like what you proposed was unions making laws, and that strikes me as a terrible idea.
What would make a "Union" organization any different than a non-Democratic "Government" where special interests are wholly in charge: only those inside having a say, leaving the rest of the public to hang?
And who is going to enforce those laws and see that lawsuits are managed in a fair and equitable way? Without a government, how exactly would China make and enforce those laws: round up a possie? You really want a possie deciding who's right and who's wrong? That's right back to that uncontrolled, feudal might-makes-right. Our government has a system of checks and balances that, though it looks like they need more work, seems to be essential. They've kept us going for quite a bit longer than many previous styles of government with relatively limited corruption and loss of liberties, at least until recently.
You want to assume that, when a dollar is involved, everyone is gonna play fair "in the name of liberty" - has that ever, in all of human history, worked, at any time? Even if it starts out idealistic, all it takes is one bad apple, one guy to make a bad move and undercut the competition using a dirty trick, and the gloves come off faster than you can blink. We're regulating the individual nature of greed for the betterment of everyone when we make and enforce corporate regulations, and I'm completely ok with that. When money and material gain is involved, I -want- people to be forced into playing fair or facing the consequences.
Yes, I know you're "for" liberty, just as much as I am. I know the angle. It's what we both want, it's what everyone wants.
i don't want to pick through the document you linked (which I've read before) and start pointing out where I see the doctrine relying on people being good "for goodness' sake", and crumbling the moment bad intentions occur, but that's a major issue for me with the whole Libertarian doctrine.
because, and i've said this again and again, corporate controls were put into place for many very good reasons over the past hundred years and more. in places where there -aren't- controls, even today, let's look at China for a great example: putting (poisonous; a plastic) melamine filler in pet feed to boost the tested protein content. Putting (poisonous; antifreeze) propylene glycol in toothpaste as a sweetener. Slightly more benign but still a lie, substituting red snapper (an expensive fish meat), with tilapia or other similar low-cost fish with a lie on the label, because most folks can't really tell the difference anyways. Or not so benignly, subsituting pufferfish for monkfish and killing a few people with puffer toxins.
Let's go back a few years, to the turn of the century here at home and in Britain. Black lung and textile lung in workers not provided with safety equipment, working long hours in toxic environments. Before minimum wages and before mandatory schooling or child labor laws, so you had to send the kids to work in the mines and factories, too. And before 40 hour work-week laws, so they're there as long as they can, lest they face homelessness, malnutrition, or starvation.
I won't disagree that the government is still bloated and sick, but letting corporations have the run of things is going right back to our darkest times of industrial history.
Let's take it back even further, back to the middle ages, where a few folks got together some Might and made themselves Right by it; throwing England (and France) into a black period of ultra-poor peasantry and super-rich lords. Folks with money, and lots of it. Folks who essentially had licenses to print the stuff with giant monopolies and vile market tactics, copying good ideas, slaughtering or slandering competition, sabotage... Stuff that goes on even today, though far more subtle.
Ahem, THAT is why I am against Libertarianism. Letting the reigns completely go is a trip right back to hell for anyone who isn't already in the elite. Hell, we're headed in that direction anyways, as all of the safeguards of the common people are chipped away, old loopholes in law found or new ones introduced. The safeguards that were put there by the founders, to prevent exactly that from happening.
Are you Libertarian just because you want a chance to be one of those elites? think you, maybe anyone, at least should get your fair shot at being on a pedestal over everyone else? that's not right, and that makes you no better than the ones up there now, or the ones that were up there 500 years ago, the ones who have always climbed up there. bloated and fat with the sweat of the everyday person who really just wants to get on with life, enjoy it while it's here, do good by themselves and their neighbors, and die honest and happy.
seems to be the case, anyways. you should mention that in your post if you're going to pimp your site. "full disclosure". without it, you must be new here.
yeah, it seems like a load of crap and goes contrary to my own medical and scientific training; but it's such a nice theory, and i'm slightly loathe to think ill of it just because it's completely f-king screwball nuts.:)
a quaintly victorian sounding theory, it is, if you ask me.
I personally hypothesize that the aqueous flow of the nerve-system be engaged by the power of steam, the liver being the primary motivator in the cog-mechanism that enables motive energy in the body; and the primary aerators being foremost upon one's topside in the cranio-facial region, while the extricator of gaseous substances, much like an inverse smoke-stack, being found in the lower dorsal region in the form of a blow-hole.
I was kind of noting that, myself. I've been playing Ghost Recon quite a bit lately, and discovered that indeed, you can mute people with the console. The game doesn't even have to let you pull up their gamertag; just hit the glowy X and find their tag from the list of people you're playing with or have seen recently, then mute them there. The other day some little rat bastard was singing and spouting crap into the mic constantly, so everybody started talking about how to mute players and muting him til the non-pubescent little shit left.
Seriously, though, I played eve for about 6 months. Prettiest space game ever - and also the worst and most boring space game ever. I stopped playing because without backing from a major corp, which I didn't want to join, advancement was near hopeless; particularly if I wanted to, say, hold down a real job and was unable to play 14 hours a day. Also, crap like major newbie areas linked by unpatrolled space, that was near constantly gate-camped by people playing "pirate" in HUGE ships, just gunning at anything that passed by. I saw that more times than I care to, and when you're fresh playing that game every ship counts.
It was sort of a Libertarian utopia. Everyone could do whatever they wanted, but all the big established guys had the power, and crushed the little folks. That combined with the other little folks who went marauding to try and emulate the big folks effectively just helped oppress the new players even further. Even the small corp I ended up joining (~25 members) didn't have much of a chance.
Let's not even start talking about the economy. Man was that thing hosed.
Eve just isn't any fun if you want to be independent!
first person tactical shooter tactical shooter first person tactical shooter tactical shooter first person tactical shooter
am I seeing a trend here?:)
I'm tired of tactical shooters, first person or not. there's more to life, and gaming, than that. They're fun, don't get me wrong, and I like playing a good one, but how about something else for a change? If I wanted to be a weekend warrior -that- badly, I'd join the National Guard.
I hope Fable 2 is fun. Alan Wake could be exciting if it's done right. Bioshock, fuck yeah. Lost Planet, and Ghost Recon 2 maybe even, and a few others, too. It's just that many of the cool-sounding games are yet to come if you don't wanna play the tactical shooting things.
You're right in part about the online play. Battlefield 2 is crappy single-player, but playing online is fairly fun. I'm not very competitive though and I don't always want to interact with other folks, even if it's just to shoot them; which is why the tactical stuff gets old. It doesn't help that sometimes I feel like I just can't compete with these eight hour a day, trigger reflex folks who are obsessively playing while I'm, say, off reading books or cleaning the house or god forbid, working. I don't play games to be cannon fodder all the time, I play them to be teh winnar. It's like asking why I didn't try out for the high school football team or get picked(or care to get picked) for dodgeball.
Ah, good post. I just got a 360 and have been kind of staring at it. I've bought a few games already, but so far the best thing I've played is Hexic, the built-in live arcade game. I've had it since Tuesday, and already I'm kinda wondering what the point is. The software library is crap so far. Backwards compatibility is "well, kinda". I bought 360 titles Dead Rising, Just Cause, and Battlefield 2, as well as burger king's "Sneak King" and Xbox's Fable. Fable and Sneak King are the most fun, sadly.
The guys at the game store raved on Dead Rising. It's not a bad game, as such. The violence is fun. It's also got the most retarded AI I have ever seen - not what I expect on a next-gen system. Saving survivors is 0 fun, taking pictures is kind of interesting, and limited use melee weapons are such a contrivance it makes my stomach turn. I'll keep playing it to see if it gets any more fun, but so far bleah. I can only smash so many zombie skulls before it gets old. I think I reached that point on Wednesday.
Battlefield 2's campaign mode is fairly obnoxious, but multiplayer is fun. I gave it a whirl this afternoon, and had a fairly good time running around shooting other folks.
Just Cause? First, remember GTA 3, 4, or 5. Now put it in the jungle. Make everyone talk with the most insulting taco bell accents ever, and take the rest of the fun of GTA out of it. Yep. Viva la revolucion indeed. It's also -so- free-roaming that it's boring to get to anyplace, and the jungle terrain is so obnoxious that you pretty much have to stick to the roads if you want to get anywhere in this lifetime. Side missions consist of "go and steal something" "go kill someone" or "carry thing from point A to B". Driving the speedboats is fun, though. Particularly the one with guns and missiles. Nice water, too. But crappy game.
Sneak King is, well... Yeah. It's funny. Simple and dumb. But funny. I like it, at least in concept.
And Fable, an original XBox title, is fun so far. I like it.
Will 360 prove to be worth it? We'll see. So far, it's a $400 system that has $60, not-very-fun games and a monthly service fee that lets me get online and spend more money. Hmmmmmmmmm.
oh yes, i'm an animal crossing:wild world addict on DS. That's definitely a great game.:) I haven't played any Pikmin titles yet. I don't think that there's a Pikmin DS out yet, but I'll keep an eye out for the GCN games.
Slashdot Mirror
From what I've heard, it's less "larger slice of a smaller pie" and more that they didn't want 8% pay cuts and 20% health care cost increases while executive compensation skyrocketed, in a company with a recent history of contract violations, multiple bankruptcies and chain of six incompetent, looting CEOs in under a decade.
It seems to me that once the workers got fed up with the perpetual mismanagement and looting of a company being dragged down and called a strike, the executives saw the perfect opportunity to cash in one last time and blame the unions for it.
I thought I replied to this already, but maybe I forgot to hit submit. Anyways, I picked it up on the steam sale too. It took me a few levels to get into it, but now I fairly enjoy it and have put enough time to get up to the mid-20 level. It's a really good example of a game that can integrate solo and multiplayer almost seamlessly, and the developers really deserve some kudos for that.
Yes, I have played it. I've played, and own, all of the games that I mentioned.
Clearly our opinions on BS2 differ, and that's ok. I'm glad that you liked it more than me. I wasn't cynical about its release; I was really looking forward to it and hoping it would be more than I felt I got.
I personally felt that the solo game while technically as nice as the first didn't really bring anything that excited me terrifically. Some of the scenery was nice with more deep-sea pretty stuff going on, but otherwise it felt like the main character was just a re-skinned version of the first game.
It did have some pretty cool points - and it's not a bad game at all, don't get me wrong - but it just didn't bring the excitement that the first one did. Rapture just didn't have the same punch in round 2 for me, I guess.
I almost wish I'd bought the collector's edition just for the cool stuff that came with it. If I could've bought a pack in-store of just the posters and whatnot *without* the game I probably would've, even. (I'm sure I could ebay for it or something if I really felt like it, but I'm not going to.)
And the multiplayer, as I said, felt cheap to me like a blatant fan-service that didn't provide any depth to the experience, just... well, deathmatch, which I can play in a billion other games and have exactly the same experience - only better, because there are other games really built around that style of play rather than shoving that style of play into a world that in my opinion gained little to nothing from it.
But by all means don't let my opinions keep you from playing it - it's a game, and if you enjoy it keep rocking it. That's what it's there for!
Those phenomenon are far from the norm, though, and, in context, hardly worth mentioning to the OP. They're essentially technicalities that won't serve him practically, which is what it sounds like he's looking for.
Ducting is the only "real" exception to line of sight and is highly dependent on solar and geomagnetic conditions and is not at all reliable or regular communications. I've witnessed some incredible 2 meter ducting, though. A couple hundred miles on 5 watts out, though for a brief period of time during the summer in the midwest across the plains.
Otherwise, knife's edge is just an angular bending of the signal and reflection is like a mirror - both sides still have to be able to see the "mirror" to communicate, and the "mirror" in this case is entirely dependent on random circumstance of location.
These aren't really viable or applicable to this guy's needs. If he wanted to play with radio as a hobby and not as a tool then he could have a lot of fun experimenting, but that (sadly, in my opinion, but i'm a little biased, it being a hobby of mine!) isn't the case here.
that's true, and cooperative multiplayer is something I particularly like to see. I don't always want to play against people - sometimes it's just way more fun to be non competitive and help each other out.
Deathspank, a recent XBLA game, is mainly single player but someone else can pick up a second controller and run around killing stuff as a generic dopey wizard. No character choice, no inventory, you can't complete quests or interact with items, just use various attacks and healing spells. Just a helping hand.
It wasn't even a necessary feature, but definitely a nice one - my girlfriend (shhh, or i'll lose my gamer cred, right) had a lot of fun playing the main game and I'd occasionally join in and help out in some of the battles she had problems with, or we'd just hang out on the couch and run around level grinding. Limited multiplayer was a nice kick in a title like that, if the game mechanics allow it. And Deathspank = pretty much just kill everything, so it worked great.
Personally I like both qualities, depending on the game. A game that I can pick up any time and play solo is probably going to get more attention from me in general, but having the option of multiplayer is good, too. It really depends on the game - it definitely shouldn't be shoehorned in, but at the same time, it can be a fun bonus feature in an otherwise solo game.
Prototype comes to mind - a primarily solo game that game would've been a riot if i could bring in a buddy or two with all that superpowered and disembowel-ly fun to spread some chaos on the unsuspecting city, but it did hold up well as single player only - all the focus was on the solo campaign with no distractions of deathmatches or arenas or any junk like that shoehorned in. It just comes down to making a decision on the type of game you want to produce and to make sure that you do it right all around. I play Borderlands solo pretty regularly, for example, but I could be playing with friends any time and it would be a relatively seamless experience. Putting multiplayer into Bioshock 2, however, I thought was a horrific waste - it just doesn't "fit" the game, the environment, the atmosphere. It seems like it cheapens the experience. Gamers aren't right about what they want all the time, and this was one of those times. (I don't know what invisible horde it was that was clamoring for multi in bioshock 2, but thanks a lot guys. that's time and money they could've put into making the single player game actually better than the first.)
What more can be said? Multiplayer and single player both have their places. I played Fallout 3 and loved it, very much a solo game. On the other hand I play Team Fortress 2 like a maniac, and conceptually it's the very core of multiplayer.
"Line of sight" is not a myth. It is fact. You're talking about using a repeater. If there is a repeater, you need line of sight to hear and speak with it. That's how life above 30 MHz is. Period.
(Barring the exception of ~50Mhz when solar and ionospheric conditions are good, both of which are quite variable, and currently both pretty bad. Not reliable for emergency communications, but good enough for a hobbyist to play with.)
VHF/UHF do *not* work well in mountainous, densely forested regions, anyplace there are things between stations. That's physics, son.
Even inside large skyscraper buildings, there can even be problems with law enforcement handheld radios on different floors and outside on the ground, not to mention between units outside with all those tall stone and metal structures around them. There are things in place to fix that, but the problem had to be taken into account.
So, essentially what you've suggested is that he rely on the potential existence of somebody else's hardware somewhere in the mountains with known bad terrain using a possibly inappropriate technology.
Nice one.
Otherwise, I say the OP should check this comment out: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1731206&cid=33015672 [slashdot.org] . Consider carrying a current repeater map/directory of the area and a quad-band handheld, recognize that he may have to climb to a high point to use it, hope that somebody is listening, and realise that if he breaks a leg at the bottom of a valley he'd better have that SPOT locator handy because that radio probably isn't getting out anywhere. And don't chuck out that cell phone, either - amateur radio is no replacement for it.
And yeah, I'm a licensed operator. I enjoy my hobby and encourage others to join in, but it does require a learning curve that's a bit more than buying a shiny thing from a guy in a turtleneck. Learning to implement the right technology for the right situation is part of that, I think.
if that's the worst you've seen, you must be new here.
the internet is a terrifying place sometimes.
Well, I think it works like this. If vendors as a group want to encourage more "responsible disclosure", they need to operate in such a way that they take potential vulnerabilities seriously, and I don't just mean in a "we're taking this very seriously" kind of way, but more of a "we have a dedicated, knowledgable staff member/team to look into situations like this" sort of thing. If they decide it's not an issue after all, then any responsibility you have to the vendor is over regarding that issue. If they're not willing to even consider it as an issue after you've made a good faith effort to let them know how much of a problem you think it is, any responsibility you have to the vendor is over regarding that issue.
In short, a gentleman's agreement only works if both parties are gentlemen.
Yeah, there are other routes, sure.
I went on a little drive to see how bad it was: it took me, ohhhh, about... six hours total to get into san francisco via the golden gate, head south, get to and cross the san mateo bridge back east across the bay then back up north of the ggate where I started.
Four of those hours were spent in bridge traffic. I left home at about 1:30pm and got back around 7:30pm.
In short, the bay bridge is a really big deal. Not having it is a nightmare.
For what it's worth, I put eee-ubuntu (which has now been renamed to "EasyPeasy", I guess) on my asus 900 and it runs pretty well. From the other options I looked at, none really seemed any better; and EP had the advantage of having a very easy install.
This may have changed in the past 4-5 months but so far it's best option I've found, particularly for something that worked out of the box pretty much from the get-go (barring a one-line change to fstab to get the SDcard slot working, and that might be fixed now, I dunno).
Are we placing bets on if this "anonymous" is samzenpus trying to foist off another of his crappy book reviews?
Sorry, but they're awful - probably far worse than the books (which have, after all, survived some sort of actual editorial process) that're being skewered. Please stop. Don't even put them on idle. Just... stop. Thanks.
You can try again when you've levelled up a couple times.
whatever. I'm just calling it as I see it. if i'm wrong, correct me.
You're right, law enforcement should be at a local level. How about law -creation-? Where does local prerogative end and national begin? If at least some of the laws of the land aren't uniform, the real basic, gritty ones, what makes the Union a Union except in name, anyways?
it seems like what you proposed was unions making laws, and that strikes me as a terrible idea.
What would make a "Union" organization any different than a non-Democratic "Government" where special interests are wholly in charge: only those inside having a say, leaving the rest of the public to hang?
And who is going to enforce those laws and see that lawsuits are managed in a fair and equitable way? Without a government, how exactly would China make and enforce those laws: round up a possie? You really want a possie deciding who's right and who's wrong? That's right back to that uncontrolled, feudal might-makes-right. Our government has a system of checks and balances that, though it looks like they need more work, seems to be essential. They've kept us going for quite a bit longer than many previous styles of government with relatively limited corruption and loss of liberties, at least until recently.
You want to assume that, when a dollar is involved, everyone is gonna play fair "in the name of liberty" - has that ever, in all of human history, worked, at any time? Even if it starts out idealistic, all it takes is one bad apple, one guy to make a bad move and undercut the competition using a dirty trick, and the gloves come off faster than you can blink. We're regulating the individual nature of greed for the betterment of everyone when we make and enforce corporate regulations, and I'm completely ok with that. When money and material gain is involved, I -want- people to be forced into playing fair or facing the consequences.
Yes, I know you're "for" liberty, just as much as I am. I know the angle. It's what we both want, it's what everyone wants.
i don't want to pick through the document you linked (which I've read before) and start pointing out where I see the doctrine relying on people being good "for goodness' sake", and crumbling the moment bad intentions occur, but that's a major issue for me with the whole Libertarian doctrine.
humorous impact of my previous post aside...
because, and i've said this again and again, corporate controls were put into place for many very good reasons over the past hundred years and more. in places where there -aren't- controls, even today, let's look at China for a great example: putting (poisonous; a plastic) melamine filler in pet feed to boost the tested protein content. Putting (poisonous; antifreeze) propylene glycol in toothpaste as a sweetener. Slightly more benign but still a lie, substituting red snapper (an expensive fish meat), with tilapia or other similar low-cost fish with a lie on the label, because most folks can't really tell the difference anyways. Or not so benignly, subsituting pufferfish for monkfish and killing a few people with puffer toxins.
Let's go back a few years, to the turn of the century here at home and in Britain. Black lung and textile lung in workers not provided with safety equipment, working long hours in toxic environments. Before minimum wages and before mandatory schooling or child labor laws, so you had to send the kids to work in the mines and factories, too. And before 40 hour work-week laws, so they're there as long as they can, lest they face homelessness, malnutrition, or starvation.
I won't disagree that the government is still bloated and sick, but letting corporations have the run of things is going right back to our darkest times of industrial history.
Let's take it back even further, back to the middle ages, where a few folks got together some Might and made themselves Right by it; throwing England (and France) into a black period of ultra-poor peasantry and super-rich lords. Folks with money, and lots of it. Folks who essentially had licenses to print the stuff with giant monopolies and vile market tactics, copying good ideas, slaughtering or slandering competition, sabotage... Stuff that goes on even today, though far more subtle.
Ahem, THAT is why I am against Libertarianism. Letting the reigns completely go is a trip right back to hell for anyone who isn't already in the elite. Hell, we're headed in that direction anyways, as all of the safeguards of the common people are chipped away, old loopholes in law found or new ones introduced. The safeguards that were put there by the founders, to prevent exactly that from happening.
Are you Libertarian just because you want a chance to be one of those elites? think you, maybe anyone, at least should get your fair shot at being on a pedestal over everyone else? that's not right, and that makes you no better than the ones up there now, or the ones that were up there 500 years ago, the ones who have always climbed up there. bloated and fat with the sweat of the everyday person who really just wants to get on with life, enjoy it while it's here, do good by themselves and their neighbors, and die honest and happy.
People will do anything for a buck.
I am Libertarian AND poor and I advocate liberty for all, not just the rich
Then you're doing it wrong.
seems to be the case, anyways. you should mention that in your post if you're going to pimp your site. "full disclosure". without it, you must be new here.
yeah, it seems like a load of crap and goes contrary to my own medical and scientific training; but it's such a nice theory, and i'm slightly loathe to think ill of it just because it's completely f-king screwball nuts. :)
a quaintly victorian sounding theory, it is, if you ask me.
I personally hypothesize that the aqueous flow of the nerve-system be engaged by the power of steam, the liver being the primary motivator in the cog-mechanism that enables motive energy in the body; and the primary aerators being foremost upon one's topside in the cranio-facial region, while the extricator of gaseous substances, much like an inverse smoke-stack, being found in the lower dorsal region in the form of a blow-hole.
but maybe that's just me.
I was kind of noting that, myself. I've been playing Ghost Recon quite a bit lately, and discovered that indeed, you can mute people with the console. The game doesn't even have to let you pull up their gamertag; just hit the glowy X and find their tag from the list of people you're playing with or have seen recently, then mute them there. The other day some little rat bastard was singing and spouting crap into the mic constantly, so everybody started talking about how to mute players and muting him til the non-pubescent little shit left.
Nobody cares about Eve. :)
Seriously, though, I played eve for about 6 months. Prettiest space game ever - and also the worst and most boring space game ever. I stopped playing because without backing from a major corp, which I didn't want to join, advancement was near hopeless; particularly if I wanted to, say, hold down a real job and was unable to play 14 hours a day. Also, crap like major newbie areas linked by unpatrolled space, that was near constantly gate-camped by people playing "pirate" in HUGE ships, just gunning at anything that passed by. I saw that more times than I care to, and when you're fresh playing that game every ship counts.
It was sort of a Libertarian utopia. Everyone could do whatever they wanted, but all the big established guys had the power, and crushed the little folks. That combined with the other little folks who went marauding to try and emulate the big folks effectively just helped oppress the new players even further. Even the small corp I ended up joining (~25 members) didn't have much of a chance.
Let's not even start talking about the economy. Man was that thing hosed.
Eve just isn't any fun if you want to be independent!
first person tactical shooter
:)
tactical shooter
first person tactical shooter
tactical shooter
first person tactical shooter
am I seeing a trend here?
I'm tired of tactical shooters, first person or not. there's more to life, and gaming, than that. They're fun, don't get me wrong, and I like playing a good one, but how about something else for a change? If I wanted to be a weekend warrior -that- badly, I'd join the National Guard.
I hope Fable 2 is fun. Alan Wake could be exciting if it's done right. Bioshock, fuck yeah. Lost Planet, and Ghost Recon 2 maybe even, and a few others, too. It's just that many of the cool-sounding games are yet to come if you don't wanna play the tactical shooting things.
You're right in part about the online play. Battlefield 2 is crappy single-player, but playing online is fairly fun. I'm not very competitive though and I don't always want to interact with other folks, even if it's just to shoot them; which is why the tactical stuff gets old. It doesn't help that sometimes I feel like I just can't compete with these eight hour a day, trigger reflex folks who are obsessively playing while I'm, say, off reading books or cleaning the house or god forbid, working. I don't play games to be cannon fodder all the time, I play them to be teh winnar. It's like asking why I didn't try out for the high school football team or get picked(or care to get picked) for dodgeball.
Ah, good post. I just got a 360 and have been kind of staring at it. I've bought a few games already, but so far the best thing I've played is Hexic, the built-in live arcade game. I've had it since Tuesday, and already I'm kinda wondering what the point is. The software library is crap so far. Backwards compatibility is "well, kinda". I bought 360 titles Dead Rising, Just Cause, and Battlefield 2, as well as burger king's "Sneak King" and Xbox's Fable. Fable and Sneak King are the most fun, sadly.
The guys at the game store raved on Dead Rising. It's not a bad game, as such. The violence is fun. It's also got the most retarded AI I have ever seen - not what I expect on a next-gen system. Saving survivors is 0 fun, taking pictures is kind of interesting, and limited use melee weapons are such a contrivance it makes my stomach turn. I'll keep playing it to see if it gets any more fun, but so far bleah. I can only smash so many zombie skulls before it gets old. I think I reached that point on Wednesday.
Battlefield 2's campaign mode is fairly obnoxious, but multiplayer is fun. I gave it a whirl this afternoon, and had a fairly good time running around shooting other folks.
Just Cause? First, remember GTA 3, 4, or 5. Now put it in the jungle. Make everyone talk with the most insulting taco bell accents ever, and take the rest of the fun of GTA out of it. Yep. Viva la revolucion indeed. It's also -so- free-roaming that it's boring to get to anyplace, and the jungle terrain is so obnoxious that you pretty much have to stick to the roads if you want to get anywhere in this lifetime. Side missions consist of "go and steal something" "go kill someone" or "carry thing from point A to B". Driving the speedboats is fun, though. Particularly the one with guns and missiles. Nice water, too. But crappy game.
Sneak King is, well... Yeah. It's funny. Simple and dumb. But funny. I like it, at least in concept.
And Fable, an original XBox title, is fun so far. I like it.
Will 360 prove to be worth it? We'll see. So far, it's a $400 system that has $60, not-very-fun games and a monthly service fee that lets me get online and spend more money. Hmmmmmmmmm.
well, ok, you got me there. :)
oh yes, i'm an animal crossing:wild world addict on DS. That's definitely a great game. :) I haven't played any Pikmin titles yet. I don't think that there's a Pikmin DS out yet, but I'll keep an eye out for the GCN games.