I don't normally respond to Anonymous Coward comments, especially when we steer this far afield of the original topic, but I'll make an exception in this case.
Regrdless of how you wish to interpret it today, the second amendment was intended to refer to the collective right of people to bear arms, so the states can form a "well regulated militia."
Incorrect. The "militia" is the armed populace themselves. Some would argue that the National Guard are the milita, but the Supreme Court said otherwise when they ruled that the NG could be called up by the Federal Government and attached to the regular armed forces even if the individual States said no.
Also, all of the other rights specifically mentioned to be those "of the people" (as opposed to the state) enumerated in the Bill of Rights are individual rights (speech, religion, search & seizure, etc..), why would this one not be an individual right?
Moreover, the government regulates the ability to, say, own nuclear warheads. That's clearly arms. Why does the NRA support people owning assault rifles but not nuclear warheads?
Now this is where you need to study history. Back in the late 1700's when this was written the average individual citizen possessed individual firearms such as pistols, shotguns and muskets. Artillery such as cannon were held at the local armory. To extrapolate to modern times I would say that personal firearms, including full-auto, should be permitted. Anything more potent (rockets, grenades, mines and on up) would be held where? The local armory.
Not to start an angry political argument here, but I thought that this neede to be said...
And refuted. Your arguments are common but founded on shaky ground.
And portraying a cracker-program as an "open-source effort" is a bit like calling the NRA a grass-roots civil rights campaign.
They're at least as grass roots as the ACLU.
Anyway, you say that as if the 2nd Amendment portion of the Bill of Rights wasn't a civil right.
Join the ACLU & EFF to support Amendments 1 and 3-9. Join the NRA and GOA to support Amendment 2. Amendment 10 gets ignored selectively by everyone, unfortunately.
Most of my coworkers are a mix of quite good to somewhat above average. There are a few who really can spoil it though - the ones who reinforce the "government employee" stereotype.
And the average % of that sentence actually served is 50% or so - so that is about 3yrs. Funnily enough pretty close to post you criticise...
65 months is the average actually SERVED, 117 months being the average time sentenced. 65 months = 5 years, 5 months, not 3 years.
Three months or five, either is too short. Rapists need to serve a very short sentence - about as long as it takes to stand them up in front of a firing squad.
Until just over 2 months ago I had a very stressful IT job. I won't go in to the details, let's just say it was getting worse and I didn't see it getting any better. I liked the job, I liked the people, I liked my boss and coworkers, but it was just getting ridiculous.
I went to work for my State Govt. In my case I was lucky enough that I have friends who work in IT there and a guy who used to be my boss went to work there so I had a foot in the door.
Old Job: 65+ hours per week salaried (overtime? yeah right), having to let vacation disappear because I don't have time to take it and it doesn't roll over year to year, travelling all over the place and being responsible for Everything IT. Constantly worried about the next reorg.
New Job: 37.5 hours per week (with comp time for more hours worked) vacation that accumulates year over year, just being responsible for my little corner of the world with people who can cover for me. Job security is pretty solid if you don't commit any of the Big Sins (get caught with porn, do something to embarrass the higher ups, etc..) I come in, I give good value for my time and I go home. I don't get an upset stomach on Sunday afternoon thinking about Mondays anymore.
Downsides? The bureaucracy is mind-numbing.
Conversations like this: "Why can't we just fix this?" "Politics. You'll step on the toes of the guy who's supposed to do this." "You mean he wouldn't be grateful we did it for him?" "Uh, no."
Meetings. Good God they love their meetings. We needed to relocate a bunch of servers from one of the state agencies to the server room right outside my door. So we have a meeting with the affected people. Fine. Then two days before the Big Move they call another meeting "just to make sure everybody's clear." Ooookay. Things that I would have handled in the past with a flurry of emails and a phone call now take 3 face-to-face meetings with 6-8 people.
Boredom. Seriously. My old job was much more challenging and interesting. There's plenty of work for me to do, but I think I actually miss the stress to some degree.
Coworkers. Don't get me wrong here. There are a lot of hardworking intelligent people here. One of the smartest bitheads I've ever had the pleasure to know is the main guy who helped me get this job. The guy who is my boss now is very good at his job. OTOH there are people who will reinforce every bad stereotype of a Govt. employee you ever heard. And it's almost impossible to get rid of them. You just work around them. On a brighter note, I can work at what I consider to be a leisurely pace and still out-perform a lot of people.
Raises have little or nothing to do with your job performance. You won't get rich working for the govt. Fortunately the only outstanding debt I have is my mortgage and my wife's student loans when she went back to school to get her RN, so while I don't make big money I make enough to pay the bills and buy a few toys.
I'll leave you with a quote from the guy who used to be my boss to make you understand why I'm here.
"There are people here who think they're stressed out. They've got no idea what the fuck they're talking about. The only stress I have is what I put on myself. Y'know, I recently got an offer from [company we both worked for] to come back. They offered me a substantial raise over what I'm making here. I turned them down. They asked me why and I told them - I don't travel, I don't work nights, I don't work weekends, I get to see my family and the difference in the stress is indescribable. It's just not worth the money."
If my operating system company (or some really big software company) wants to bundle a Web Browser with the software, so what? If you don't want to use it you don't have to - go buy Netscape or code one for yourself or whatever flots your boat.
Uhm... wait a second.
That's pretty much exactly what I did. I was a Netscape user from 2.x (I forget which . version) through 7.1. Now I use Mozilla 1.6 at home. I use IE at work because of stupid internal web pages that only work properly in IE, but I use Firefox to access the web.
But hey, you're absolutely right. Companies shouldn't be allowed to offer new services to their customers just because someone else is already offering something similar. By God I say we call up the automobile companies and tell them to stop bundling stereo systems with their cars - we should all go buy them aftermarket. And what's with built-in seat belts and airbags? It's anticompetitive I tell ya.
If my cable company (or some satellite company) wants to bundle a DVR with the service, so what? If you don't want to use it you don't have to - go buy a Tivo or build yourself an HTPC or whatever floats your boat.
I love my ReplayTV 4500 with a 120GB hard drive upgrade and lifetime subscription. It has all the Tivo-esque features I want and some more that it doesn't.
One day I may built a home theater PC as a toy but for now my RPTV fills all my timeshifting and commercial skipping needs.
It was at a company I no longer work for and this happened 4 years ago, so I think I'm safe.:)
If I was really evil I'd post her email address just so you guys could have fun at her expense, but I left that company on good terms and I'd like to keep it that way. Heck, lunch with a guy who used to be my boss at that company led to my current position - you never know when good will might pay off.
Occasionally you may HAVE to tell someone your password. Keep that in mind selecting one. Consider this exchange I had with one of my users a while back:
Bryan: "What's your password on this system?"
Tammy: "Uh..." *blush* "Do I have to?"
Bryan: "No, you can always call the help desk like you're supposed to, but I can't reset your password on this system."
Tammy: "Um... it's... TPBP6969. It's my initials followed by my husband's initials. Please don't tell anyone!"
Bryan: "Considering your husband and I have the same initials I think I'll keep that one to myself. But in the future you might want to select a less... personal password."
Oh, wait. You wanted my REAL password? Well, that'll cost you another chocolate bar. Of course I'll give you my real password this time. Would I lie to you?
I'm old enough that TUI was all I had originally and for a lot of things I still find it faster to drop to a CLI. I admin a bunch of Novell and Windows servers using XP on my desktop - I don't get a choice. To map a drive I actually have to think about it in Windows. At the CMD prompt my fingers have the map command keyed in before my brain finishes thinking about where I'm going.
If I grew up using a GUI I suppose I'd find the CLI completely archaic and pointless.
Why bother? People stupid enough to believe that when they die killing the infidels they get a free ticket to Heaven with their own private Virgin Brigade are apparently not in short supply.
Unfortunately for these kids, theres also a good chance that they won't even make it to the system -- they'll get shot dead by a homeowner that owns a gun.
Unfortunately? "Kids?" 17 year old thugs on a B&E and assault? If they end up shot to death in self-defense by some law-abiding legally armed homeowner such as myself that will be a good thing for society as a whole.
Yeah, I'm getting crabby as I get older. Damned kids. *grump*
Free? Free to who? There are no such thing as "free" government services. They cost tax $. My tax $. Maybe I don't want to pay for your personal convenience. Maybe the guy next door doesn't care to pay for it either.
Owning the number would be more useful for a small-medium business. There is a service company in my area that has xxx-867-5309 and they can put it in their commercials knowing that people will remember it. For a business this is a very valuable thing.
. Taxing the actual peer-to-peer VoIP connections between individual computers is just impossible.
Never understimate the power of the United States Congress to figure out a way to levy yet another tax. If you want to see a tax revolution in this country, do two things -
1) Go back to the Pre-WWII payment method, that is do away with automatic withholding. Let everyone get all their money and then make them write a check to the US Govt.
2) Move election day to the first tuesday after April 15. Gee, Tax Day and Election Day are awfully close to being opposite on the calendar. What a cooincidence. ^_^
1) The big Telco's start revamping their systems so that they are giant VOIP systems. 2) Tax revenues plummet. 3) Congress says "I don't think so." 4) Tax laws are amended. 5) Tax revenues go back up (Govt. version of Profit!)
I mean really. You end up spending $50+ on a game that sucks and may cost $15 a year later. I look at the year+ old games. Games that are over a year old and still cost over $30 due to demand are probably worth buying.
As to your original question, did the game box say anywhere that it was a multi-player version or that one was "soon to be available?"
Was there ever anything but the company saying "We're working on it"? That's not a committment, legal or otherwise.
No? Forget it. Pay your Stupid Tax and move on. (Stupid Tax = $ spent that you regret spending on something that wasn't worth it. I've done it, you've done it, we all have. It's part of life.)
As has already been mentioned, dual inputs for DVI and D-SUB are becoming common on the better LCD panels. In many cases having D-SUB as an option allows for solutions to problems that are good enough and a lot less expensive.
Whenever I get around to buying an LCD monitor it will definitely have both, but that won't be until I can buy an LCD that is larger than my 19" CRT for less than I paid (about $400 at the time).
Dunno where yours is. My 93 Escort ran for 228,000 miles before the transmission started slipping and I decided it wasn't worth getting fixed. My replacement car, a 94 Chevy Corsica purchased used with 89,000 miles is now at 223,000 miles and still running beautifully. Yes, I put a lot of miles on my car as part of my job. And no, I don't drive nice new cars. I don't believe in car payments. If I can't write a check for it I won't buy it.
Guns mount on cars is a cop magnet (better than Dunkin' Donuts).
I love it. It goes with a running joke I've got with a fellow Southerner (ayup, down here below that there Manson-Nixon line...) We talked about the fun of mounting machine guns on a truck. "Hey Clem, why's yer step bars got box magazines?" "Heh. Watch this."
Oh crap, I can hear the TSA changing my rating to "yellow" as I speak for this joke...
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I don't normally respond to Anonymous Coward comments, especially when we steer this far afield of the original topic, but I'll make an exception in this case.
Regrdless of how you wish to interpret it today, the second amendment was intended to refer to the collective right of people to bear arms, so the states can form a "well regulated militia."
Incorrect. The "militia" is the armed populace themselves. Some would argue that the National Guard are the milita, but the Supreme Court said otherwise when they ruled that the NG could be called up by the Federal Government and attached to the regular armed forces even if the individual States said no.
Also, all of the other rights specifically mentioned to be those "of the people" (as opposed to the state) enumerated in the Bill of Rights are individual rights (speech, religion, search & seizure, etc..), why would this one not be an individual right?
Moreover, the government regulates the ability to, say, own nuclear warheads. That's clearly arms. Why does the NRA support people owning assault rifles but not nuclear warheads?
Now this is where you need to study history. Back in the late 1700's when this was written the average individual citizen possessed individual firearms such as pistols, shotguns and muskets. Artillery such as cannon were held at the local armory. To extrapolate to modern times I would say that personal firearms, including full-auto, should be permitted. Anything more potent (rockets, grenades, mines and on up) would be held where? The local armory.
Not to start an angry political argument here, but I thought that this neede to be said...
And refuted. Your arguments are common but founded on shaky ground.
And portraying a cracker-program as an "open-source effort" is a bit like calling the NRA a grass-roots civil rights campaign.
They're at least as grass roots as the ACLU.
Anyway, you say that as if the 2nd Amendment portion of the Bill of Rights wasn't a civil right.
Join the ACLU & EFF to support Amendments 1 and 3-9. Join the NRA and GOA to support Amendment 2. Amendment 10 gets ignored selectively by everyone, unfortunately.
Most of my coworkers are a mix of quite good to somewhat above average. There are a few who really can spoil it though - the ones who reinforce the "government employee" stereotype.
Gee, I've never made a mistake like that before. ^_^
No big deal.
And the average % of that sentence actually served is 50% or so - so that is about 3yrs. Funnily enough pretty close to post you criticise...
65 months is the average actually SERVED, 117 months being the average time sentenced. 65 months = 5 years, 5 months, not 3 years.
Three months or five, either is too short. Rapists need to serve a very short sentence - about as long as it takes to stand them up in front of a firing squad.
Average time in prison for rape: 3 years
Average time for copying games without selling: 4 years Does anyone else see something wrong here?
If it's true, yes. Where did you get the statistic?
but it's not a joke.
I took a job with the Govt. (state, not federal)
Until just over 2 months ago I had a very stressful IT job. I won't go in to the details, let's just say it was getting worse and I didn't see it getting any better. I liked the job, I liked the people, I liked my boss and coworkers, but it was just getting ridiculous.
I went to work for my State Govt. In my case I was lucky enough that I have friends who work in IT there and a guy who used to be my boss went to work there so I had a foot in the door.
Old Job: 65+ hours per week salaried (overtime? yeah right), having to let vacation disappear because I don't have time to take it and it doesn't roll over year to year, travelling all over the place and being responsible for Everything IT. Constantly worried about the next reorg.
New Job: 37.5 hours per week (with comp time for more hours worked) vacation that accumulates year over year, just being responsible for my little corner of the world with people who can cover for me. Job security is pretty solid if you don't commit any of the Big Sins (get caught with porn, do something to embarrass the higher ups, etc..) I come in, I give good value for my time and I go home. I don't get an upset stomach on Sunday afternoon thinking about Mondays anymore.
Downsides? The bureaucracy is mind-numbing.
Conversations like this:
"Why can't we just fix this?"
"Politics. You'll step on the toes of the guy who's supposed to do this."
"You mean he wouldn't be grateful we did it for him?"
"Uh, no."
Meetings. Good God they love their meetings. We needed to relocate a bunch of servers from one of the state agencies to the server room right outside my door. So we have a meeting with the affected people. Fine. Then two days before the Big Move they call another meeting "just to make sure everybody's clear." Ooookay. Things that I would have handled in the past with a flurry of emails and a phone call now take 3 face-to-face meetings with 6-8 people.
Boredom. Seriously. My old job was much more challenging and interesting. There's plenty of work for me to do, but I think I actually miss the stress to some degree.
Coworkers. Don't get me wrong here. There are a lot of hardworking intelligent people here. One of the smartest bitheads I've ever had the pleasure to know is the main guy who helped me get this job. The guy who is my boss now is very good at his job. OTOH there are people who will reinforce every bad stereotype of a Govt. employee you ever heard. And it's almost impossible to get rid of them. You just work around them. On a brighter note, I can work at what I consider to be a leisurely pace and still out-perform a lot of people.
Raises have little or nothing to do with your job performance. You won't get rich working for the govt. Fortunately the only outstanding debt I have is my mortgage and my wife's student loans when she went back to school to get her RN, so while I don't make big money I make enough to pay the bills and buy a few toys.
I'll leave you with a quote from the guy who used to be my boss to make you understand why I'm here.
"There are people here who think they're stressed out. They've got no idea what the fuck they're talking about. The only stress I have is what I put on myself. Y'know, I recently got an offer from [company we both worked for] to come back. They offered me a substantial raise over what I'm making here. I turned them down. They asked me why and I told them - I don't travel, I don't work nights, I don't work weekends, I get to see my family and the difference in the stress is indescribable. It's just not worth the money."
If my operating system company (or some really big software company) wants to bundle a Web Browser with the software, so what? If you don't want to use it you don't have to - go buy Netscape or code one for yourself or whatever flots your boat.
Uhm... wait a second.
That's pretty much exactly what I did. I was a Netscape user from 2.x (I forget which . version) through 7.1. Now I use Mozilla 1.6 at home. I use IE at work because of stupid internal web pages that only work properly in IE, but I use Firefox to access the web.
But hey, you're absolutely right. Companies shouldn't be allowed to offer new services to their customers just because someone else is already offering something similar. By God I say we call up the automobile companies and tell them to stop bundling stereo systems with their cars - we should all go buy them aftermarket. And what's with built-in seat belts and airbags? It's anticompetitive I tell ya.
What's wrong with that?
If my cable company (or some satellite company) wants to bundle a DVR with the service, so what? If you don't want to use it you don't have to - go buy a Tivo or build yourself an HTPC or whatever floats your boat.
I love my ReplayTV 4500 with a 120GB hard drive upgrade and lifetime subscription. It has all the Tivo-esque features I want and some more that it doesn't.
One day I may built a home theater PC as a toy but for now my RPTV fills all my timeshifting and commercial skipping needs.
It was at a company I no longer work for and this happened 4 years ago, so I think I'm safe. :)
If I was really evil I'd post her email address just so you guys could have fun at her expense, but I left that company on good terms and I'd like to keep it that way. Heck, lunch with a guy who used to be my boss at that company led to my current position - you never know when good will might pay off.
Occasionally you may HAVE to tell someone your password. Keep that in mind selecting one. Consider this exchange I had with one of my users a while back:
..." *blush* "Do I have to?"
... it's ... TPBP6969. It's my initials followed by my husband's initials. Please don't tell anyone!"
... personal password."
Bryan: "What's your password on this system?"
Tammy: "Uh
Bryan: "No, you can always call the help desk like you're supposed to, but I can't reset your password on this system."
Tammy: "Um
Bryan: "Considering your husband and I have the same initials I think I'll keep that one to myself. But in the future you might want to select a less
It's YERAWANKER. Now where's my chocolate?
Oh, wait. You wanted my REAL password? Well, that'll cost you another chocolate bar. Of course I'll give you my real password this time. Would I lie to you?
I'm old enough that TUI was all I had originally and for a lot of things I still find it faster to drop to a CLI. I admin a bunch of Novell and Windows servers using XP on my desktop - I don't get a choice. To map a drive I actually have to think about it in Windows. At the CMD prompt my fingers have the map command keyed in before my brain finishes thinking about where I'm going.
If I grew up using a GUI I suppose I'd find the CLI completely archaic and pointless.
In closing I'll just say "Bah! Kid's these days!"
[I] However, they're quite clearly trying to use Project Gutenberg's good name to sell their material. [/I]
"They" in this case includes the holder of the trademark to the name "Project Gutenberg." Whether we like it or not, he has the right to use the name.
Why bother? People stupid enough to believe that when they die killing the infidels they get a free ticket to Heaven with their own private Virgin Brigade are apparently not in short supply.
Unfortunately for these kids, theres also a good chance that they won't even make it to the system -- they'll get shot dead by a homeowner that owns a gun.
Unfortunately? "Kids?" 17 year old thugs on a B&E and assault? If they end up shot to death in self-defense by some law-abiding legally armed homeowner such as myself that will be a good thing for society as a whole.
Yeah, I'm getting crabby as I get older. Damned kids. *grump*
Hell, just make it a free government service
Free? Free to who? There are no such thing as "free" government services. They cost tax $. My tax $. Maybe I don't want to pay for your personal convenience. Maybe the guy next door doesn't care to pay for it either.
Odd. I would say that it is proof positive that you should not, in any circumstances, commit a crime against an entire police department.
Owning the number would be more useful for a small-medium business. There is a service company in my area that has xxx-867-5309 and they can put it in their commercials knowing that people will remember it. For a business this is a very valuable thing.
. Taxing the actual peer-to-peer VoIP connections between individual computers is just impossible.
Never understimate the power of the United States Congress to figure out a way to levy yet another tax. If you want to see a tax revolution in this country, do two things -
1) Go back to the Pre-WWII payment method, that is do away with automatic withholding. Let everyone get all their money and then make them write a check to the US Govt.
2) Move election day to the first tuesday after April 15. Gee, Tax Day and Election Day are awfully close to being opposite on the calendar. What a cooincidence. ^_^
1) The big Telco's start revamping their systems so that they are giant VOIP systems.
2) Tax revenues plummet.
3) Congress says "I don't think so."
4) Tax laws are amended.
5) Tax revenues go back up (Govt. version of Profit!)
No, no ??? line in this one. It's too obvious.
I mean really. You end up spending $50+ on a game that sucks and may cost $15 a year later. I look at the year+ old games. Games that are over a year old and still cost over $30 due to demand are probably worth buying.
As to your original question, did the game box say anywhere that it was a multi-player version or that one was "soon to be available?"
Was there ever anything but the company saying "We're working on it"? That's not a committment, legal or otherwise.
No? Forget it. Pay your Stupid Tax and move on. (Stupid Tax = $ spent that you regret spending on something that wasn't worth it. I've done it, you've done it, we all have. It's part of life.)
As has already been mentioned, dual inputs for DVI and D-SUB are becoming common on the better LCD panels. In many cases having D-SUB as an option allows for solutions to problems that are good enough and a lot less expensive.
Whenever I get around to buying an LCD monitor it will definitely have both, but that won't be until I can buy an LCD that is larger than my 19" CRT for less than I paid (about $400 at the time).
Dunno where yours is. My 93 Escort ran for 228,000 miles before the transmission started slipping and I decided it wasn't worth getting fixed. My replacement car, a 94 Chevy Corsica purchased used with 89,000 miles is now at 223,000 miles and still running beautifully. Yes, I put a lot of miles on my car as part of my job. And no, I don't drive nice new cars. I don't believe in car payments. If I can't write a check for it I won't buy it.
Guns mount on cars is a cop magnet (better than Dunkin' Donuts).
...) We talked about the fun of mounting machine guns on a truck. "Hey Clem, why's yer step bars got box magazines?" "Heh. Watch this."
...
/. posters?
I love it. It goes with a running joke I've got with a fellow Southerner (ayup, down here below that there Manson-Nixon line
Oh crap, I can hear the TSA changing my rating to "yellow" as I speak for this joke
I thought that was automatic for all