Sure. But, do you recall all of the problems in the 2000 Florida election?
Sure I do. With hanging chads. Not written ballots. The other potential issues you mention have not been problems of any significance for countries like Canada or countries in Europe. They have less problems, not more.
No FM Tuner / Voice Recorder / Wireless Support (Only on the itouch with its HUMONGOUS capacity)
Yawn, yawn, yawn. 80% of the population simply does not give a shit about those features, as 80% of the population keeps buying iPods. Deal with it. Or, as I explained to another wanker:
Is a GT Mustang a piece of shit because it doesn't seat eight passengers? Is a Dodge minivan a piece of shit because it only has 2,000 lbs towing capacity? Is a F-150 a piece of shit because it doesn't get 50 mpg? Is a Prius a piece of shit because it wont do zero to sixty in less than six seconds? Or should you just STFU and get the product that has the features you want?
The moral of the story: Apple doesn't have voice recording or FM radio or voice recording or wireless on most of their players. This is not a secret. If this doesn't work for you, then. don't. fucking. buy. one.
Without the midichlorian story device, Vader would have continued to be as powerful after his battle with Obi-Wan as he was before it. Since the midichlorians in his bloodstream provided his link to the Force, once he became "more machine...than man" he could no longer control it as he once did, thus weakening him to the point where he was defeatable.
That could be covered by Yoda's explanation in ESB that the force flows from "all living things". Since Vader was "more machine than man" it could be explained that his ability to use the force was diminish along with his physical body. Or at least a much better explanation than that midiclorian BS. That, and I imagine all those cybernetic parts would make one a little vulnerable to Force Lighting. And who loves to use Force Lighting like flies on rice?
You can't use that without invoking one of the most powerful symbols in western culture, and doing it randomly, without any purpose or even any sense of the symbology you're riding is really stupid. If Lucas wanted to explore some "Christ turned evil" meme that would have been one thing, but to throw a symbolic bombshell like that out and then ignore it just shows... I'm not sure what. Clulessness? Arrogance? Some combination, I guess, but heavy on the gorm deficiency.
Darth Plagueis successfully created life in a slave woman in 42 BBY. Darth Sidious realizing the child was meant to be his replacement decided it was time to take action. The ritual use of the dark side severly drained Plagueis and he fell fast asleep that night. This would prove to be his biggest mistake. Sidious decided he would claim the child as his own as well as the title of dark lord. Sidious had already been secretly training his own Sith apprentice, Darth Maul for over ten years. He had grown quite tired of living under the rule of Plagueis and he bent the "rule of two" law and started training Maul.
Lord Plagueis had always commended Darth Sidious for his ability to cloak himself in the Force, he said it would be his greatest asset. The night of the ritual Sidious used all of his technique to sneak up on his sleeping master. Sidious stood before his master and then ignited his lightsaber deep into the black heart of Plagueis. His eyes burst open in pure anger and then he taught his apprentice his final lesson, the thought bomb. The last Sith technique, to kill your killer. Darth Plagueis tells Lord Sidious, "Could not face me in battle, apprentice? I'm not surprised. That is why the boy was to be your replacement. He will be the greatest Sith in history." Sidious replies, "Goodbye, Master. I've waited a long time for this." Darth Plagueis replies, "Final lesson, apprentice. Come closer." Sidious remains where he is and cuts his lightsaber through other vital organs. Darth Plagueis explodes in a blast of dark side energy that sends Sidious flying into the wall. When he recovers from the blast he finds no evidence of his master left in the room. He had vanished into the dark side.
Darth Sidious, now Dark Lord of the Sith, takes the child and his mother to Tatooine and sells them to the slave-owning Hutts. First he erased the mother's memory about the ritual and the events that followed. Knowing the child would be easier to corrupt growing up the angry life of a slave. Content that the boy would no doubt cross his path again one day, Darth Sidious flew to his hidden base of Coruscant and continued the training of his apprentice Darth Maul.
The "cloaked in the Force" bit also helps explain how Palpatine, the most powerful Sith Lord in a thousand years, is able to hob knob with Jedi Masters on a regular basis without them getting suspicious.
A lot of that was just bad storytelling. I believe Lucas has stated that Anakin had the most force potential of anyone that has ever lived in the SWU. Obviously his descendants are going to be very powerful, but how they'd match up to Marka Ragnos or Exar Kun is anyones guess.
Look here if you want to know more, but be warned that the Star Wars Expanded Universe is full of crap.
IIRC, after the Han Solo trilogy, Lucas wasn't interested in books set in the Star Wars universe. Then, after the Thrawn triology, it was like he said, "fuck it. anyone can write a Star Wars book now." There's still some good stuff here and there, but most of it is just shite.
Unfortunately I'm one of those people that once he has watched or read part of a story, has to read the rest of it. I did manage to skip the shitfest that was the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, but I made the mistake of buying the first of the Legacy of the Force books, and now I'm unfortunatly hooked on the series. The series has me saying, "that's bullshit, fucking bullshit" about every other chapter. A few plot devices and lame coincidences are tolerable, but Legacy of the Force is brimming with them.
My point, which has been modded "troll" every time it's been mentioned, is that not having replaceable batteries, in even one of their many models, is the most egregious example of planned obsolescence in history.
And your post is the most egregious example of hyperbole in history. Is a GT Mustang a piece of shit because it doesn't seat eight passengers? Is a Dodge minivan a piece of shit because it only has 2,000 lbs towing capacity? Is a F-150 a piece of shit because it doesn't get 50 mpg? Is a Prius a piece of shit because it wont do zero to sixty in less than six seconds? Or should you just STFU and get the product that has the features you want?
The moral of the story: Apple made a design decision to go with a more solid, smaller device with a non(easily) replaceable battery. This is not a secret. If this doesn't work for you, then. don't. fucking. buy. one. you. whiny. bitch.
I'll never, ever, ever get an iPod. I'll be damned if I support the Apple monopoly.
Is that so? Does that mean you refuse to buy an Accord/Camry/Mustang/Buick/Charger/S-Class/Elantra/M3 because you refuse to support the Honda/Toyota/Ford/GM/Dodge/Mercedes/Hyundai/BMW monopoly? Or that you refuse to buy a PS3/360/Wii because you refuse to support the Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo monopoly? Every company has a "monopoly" on the brands they make.
Replace Apple with Sony and now youre talking about the original xbox.
No, you're not. Apple typically releases an updated version of one of it's products once a year, with a refresh about six months later. So even if they produce a shit sandwich or a competitor comes out with a killer new feature, they can recover within six months to a year. We've seen this with Nvidia and ATI - each company occasionally releases a lackluster product or gets leapfrogged by the other, but since the product cycles are so short they recover.
Whereas if you put out a console, you're singing on for at least five years. If you make a shit sandwich, you can't just change course midstream because no one will want to buy your next offering. There are also vastly higher development costs to pay off - Microsoft lost billions on the first Xbox, and Sony might loose billions on the PS3. With incremental updates, mp3 players don't run that kind of risk.
Thanks for being such a tool. Microsoft has lobbyists, the BSA, thousands of programmers, a bushel of Ph.D's, an Office monopoly, and an OS monopoly. Just why, exactly, should a rag tag band of volunteer programmers be judged by the same standards as a company with more money than god?
The reason macs are typically more expensive than generic x86 clones is because there's less competition in their segment.
True, but they also have much higher resale value. If you like getting a new computer every couple of years, staying with a Mac can be more cost effective over the long run.
It's the most frustrating tech piece I've ever seen. It sure looks good, and when you have media on it, it "plays for sure", and it does it decently. BUT you need to convert everything to some weird format before you can even try to upload. You need twice as much storage at home. You need some special software to copy anything on it, and the output quality isn't half as good as what you get with other devices (take a look at IAudio's...). I still don't get all this hype!
Sure you're talking about the iPod and not one of Sony's players that require you to recode to ATRAC?
I think they are definitely stupid, its just that they have so much cash in the bank from their OS/Office monopolies that it doesn't matter much to them. Flops that would kill normal companies don't even give them pause - they just keep chugging because they have money to burn under the theory that eventually they might make something work.
...is to some (usually large) degree based on morality. Fraud is illegal, because, well - people believe it is wrong. And so on.
Not really. Much of it is Golden Rule based - fraud is illegal because you don't want to be the victim of fraud, because it might affect you. Whereas laws based purely on morality are just sticking noses into other people's business - if someone is peacefully drinking or smoking pot in their own residence, it's not going to affect you.
At what age does a human/zygote make the cut so that it is no longer available for scientific research? Two months? Six months? Birth? Five years? When they are potty trained? What classifies a human as a human deserving human rights? What test must be passed before that clump of cells is human? Who are you to decide?
No, there is no single line we can draw that separates a potential human from an actual human, which is why those opposed to abortion and stem cell research like to bring up. What they don't mention is the obvious solution: draw two lines. Eight and a half months into a pregnancy, the baby is already capable of being delivered by c-section. At conception, it's a single cell with nothing whatsoever resembling thoughts, feelings, or autonomy. "Life begins at conception" is just as valid as "life begins at birth." Oh, and by "valid", I mean "asinine."
What if the government decided the age of liberty was your age +1? How would that make you feel?
It goes to the question of what is a human deserving of human rights. We consider it a unique being with DNA, post-fertilization.
Then you're as much of a tool as someone who gets an elective abortion at 8 months and three weeks into a pregnancy because they define life as beginning at birth. On one hand, you have an unborn baby that has been kicking for weeks and could have been delivered a month ago by c-section. On the other hand, you have a single cell or cluster of cells that cannot be seen without a high powered microscope. *Cells*. Your views are not reasonable, they are asinine.
And if the destruction of embryos is a crime, why is the right wing not out trying to close down fertility clinics? Because if these embryos are not used one way or another, they are simply thrown away as medical waste. Since their destruction is a foregone conclusion, the real ethics problem is in *not* using them to save the lives of others.
YES. At 18 they are legally responsible for their actions.
Depends on the state. In some places, kids as young as ten have been tried as adults. And yet they aren't responsible enough to drink alcohol until their age has more than doubled. Ridiculous.
Yah. Players might have to slow the speed of their movements, but that would help emphasize some technique vs flailing around. Made me think of the knife fighting in Dune*, where combatants would fight with shields that would block anything moving faster than 9m/s, to protect the wearer from ranged weapons, but the fighters wouldn't be able to strike too fast or they wouldn't be able to penetrate their opponents shield.
*It's been at least 10 years since I've read Dune, so don't sue me if I'm misunderrememberating.
Searching for what you want, slow connections, seeders that disconnect on you, dealing with poorly encoded, incomplete or fake files - P2P is only "free" if your time is worthless. To borrow the line about the economy: its about the convenience, stupid. If you make decent money and don't have a lot of debt, it is more convenient to buy from a legit source as long as the service is good and the price is reasonable. If you don't make decent money, you aren't going to be able to buy the stuff in the first place. There is no functional difference between someone who downloads something for "free" because he can't afford to pay for it and someone who never would have purchased it in the first place - the company sees no money in either case. And if you have a lot of debt, you're already a good little consumer to the maximum of your ability (and maybe beyond).
Thanks for helping me prove my point, along with a new one: you wingnuts are infallibly wrong any time you open your mouths. If someone were to ask you if water was wet, you'd get the answer wrong.
Yeah, remember when the Chinese shot down one of the US satellites with the missile technology that Clinton gave them?
See, you're so damn stupid you misspell "Hughes Electronics" as "Clinton". But on my first point: remember when Bush apologized to that same batch of communists when they kept our air crew hostage after a mid air crash clearly caused by their pilot?
Remember the Carnivore database that Gore was creating until the Republicans prevented it?
It wasn't a database dipshit, it was a packet sniffing program to be set up on a specific LAN. That the FBI would have used when they obtained a warrant. Yet in the minds of you wingnuts, a limited software program to be used under a warrant is somehow far worse than a vast program to tap communications with no warrant. Because you are that damn stupid.
The world "loves the dems" because they make sure the whole world can fuck the US in the ass any time it wants.
Al Queda determined to attack the U.S., maybe using planes. My Pet Goat. Dubai Ports. Spank spank nazi beyach.
We got the current moron because the US was so sick of the Clintons they wouldn't give Gore a chance.
You mean Al Gore, who won the popular election by 500,000 votes? That would have won Florida if a statewide recount had been completed?
It will ALMOST be worth it to watch you fuckers scratching your heads in wonder when Hillary, using the precedence of her predecessor, is goose-stepping and frog-marching everyone around.
Her aborted attempt to pass health care aside, you guys should love Hillary. A tool for lobbyists, a former Republican, on the board of Wal-Mart for 6 years, a military hawk, and her law firm worked for big business. And yet you hate her guts, because she has a D after her name instead of an R. Because you are that damn stupid.
You don't write out "Hillary Clinton" or "Rudy Giuliani" on your ballot, you put an X next to their names. You screw up, just ask for a new ballot, and your old one is shredded in front of you plus an election official from each party.
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I don't know, are you in the habit of missing the blatantly obvious?
Sure. But, do you recall all of the problems in the 2000 Florida election?
Sure I do. With hanging chads. Not written ballots. The other potential issues you mention have not been problems of any significance for countries like Canada or countries in Europe. They have less problems, not more.
That word does not mean what you think it means...and my prediction was correct. A twofer indeed.
No FM Tuner / Voice Recorder / Wireless Support (Only on the itouch with its HUMONGOUS capacity)
Yawn, yawn, yawn. 80% of the population simply does not give a shit about those features, as 80% of the population keeps buying iPods. Deal with it. Or, as I explained to another wanker:
Is a GT Mustang a piece of shit because it doesn't seat eight passengers? Is a Dodge minivan a piece of shit because it only has 2,000 lbs towing capacity? Is a F-150 a piece of shit because it doesn't get 50 mpg? Is a Prius a piece of shit because it wont do zero to sixty in less than six seconds? Or should you just STFU and get the product that has the features you want?
The moral of the story: Apple doesn't have voice recording or FM radio or voice recording or wireless on most of their players. This is not a secret. If this doesn't work for you, then. don't. fucking. buy. one.
Without the midichlorian story device, Vader would have continued to be as powerful after his battle with Obi-Wan as he was before it. Since the midichlorians in his bloodstream provided his link to the Force, once he became "more machine...than man" he could no longer control it as he once did, thus weakening him to the point where he was defeatable.
That could be covered by Yoda's explanation in ESB that the force flows from "all living things". Since Vader was "more machine than man" it could be explained that his ability to use the force was diminish along with his physical body. Or at least a much better explanation than that midiclorian BS. That, and I imagine all those cybernetic parts would make one a little vulnerable to Force Lighting. And who loves to use Force Lighting like flies on rice?
Some retconning helps a lot:The "cloaked in the Force" bit also helps explain how Palpatine, the most powerful Sith Lord in a thousand years, is able to hob knob with Jedi Masters on a regular basis without them getting suspicious.
A lot of that was just bad storytelling. I believe Lucas has stated that Anakin had the most force potential of anyone that has ever lived in the SWU. Obviously his descendants are going to be very powerful, but how they'd match up to Marka Ragnos or Exar Kun is anyones guess.
Look here if you want to know more, but be warned that the Star Wars Expanded Universe is full of crap.
IIRC, after the Han Solo trilogy, Lucas wasn't interested in books set in the Star Wars universe. Then, after the Thrawn triology, it was like he said, "fuck it. anyone can write a Star Wars book now." There's still some good stuff here and there, but most of it is just shite.
Unfortunately I'm one of those people that once he has watched or read part of a story, has to read the rest of it. I did manage to skip the shitfest that was the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, but I made the mistake of buying the first of the Legacy of the Force books, and now I'm unfortunatly hooked on the series. The series has me saying, "that's bullshit, fucking bullshit" about every other chapter. A few plot devices and lame coincidences are tolerable, but Legacy of the Force is brimming with them.
My point, which has been modded "troll" every time it's been mentioned, is that not having replaceable batteries, in even one of their many models, is the most egregious example of planned obsolescence in history.
And your post is the most egregious example of hyperbole in history. Is a GT Mustang a piece of shit because it doesn't seat eight passengers? Is a Dodge minivan a piece of shit because it only has 2,000 lbs towing capacity? Is a F-150 a piece of shit because it doesn't get 50 mpg? Is a Prius a piece of shit because it wont do zero to sixty in less than six seconds? Or should you just STFU and get the product that has the features you want?
The moral of the story: Apple made a design decision to go with a more solid, smaller device with a non(easily) replaceable battery. This is not a secret. If this doesn't work for you, then. don't. fucking. buy. one. you. whiny. bitch.
I'll never, ever, ever get an iPod. I'll be damned if I support the Apple monopoly.
Is that so? Does that mean you refuse to buy an Accord/Camry/Mustang/Buick/Charger/S-Class/Elantra/M3 because you refuse to support the Honda/Toyota/Ford/GM/Dodge/Mercedes/Hyundai/BMW monopoly? Or that you refuse to buy a PS3/360/Wii because you refuse to support the Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo monopoly? Every company has a "monopoly" on the brands they make.
Replace Apple with Sony and now youre talking about the original xbox.
No, you're not. Apple typically releases an updated version of one of it's products once a year, with a refresh about six months later. So even if they produce a shit sandwich or a competitor comes out with a killer new feature, they can recover within six months to a year. We've seen this with Nvidia and ATI - each company occasionally releases a lackluster product or gets leapfrogged by the other, but since the product cycles are so short they recover.
Whereas if you put out a console, you're singing on for at least five years. If you make a shit sandwich, you can't just change course midstream because no one will want to buy your next offering. There are also vastly higher development costs to pay off - Microsoft lost billions on the first Xbox, and Sony might loose billions on the PS3. With incremental updates, mp3 players don't run that kind of risk.
Thanks for being such a stereotype.
Thanks for being such a tool. Microsoft has lobbyists, the BSA, thousands of programmers, a bushel of Ph.D's, an Office monopoly, and an OS monopoly. Just why, exactly, should a rag tag band of volunteer programmers be judged by the same standards as a company with more money than god?
The reason macs are typically more expensive than generic x86 clones is because there's less competition in their segment.
True, but they also have much higher resale value. If you like getting a new computer every couple of years, staying with a Mac can be more cost effective over the long run.
It's just that, hype.
Just like the Patriot's are "all hype", except they keep managing to beat their opponents...
It's the most frustrating tech piece I've ever seen. It sure looks good, and when you have media on it, it "plays for sure", and it does it decently.
BUT you need to convert everything to some weird format before you can even try to upload. You need twice as much storage at home. You need some special software to copy anything on it, and the output quality isn't half as good as what you get with other devices (take a look at IAudio's...). I still don't get all this hype!
Sure you're talking about the iPod and not one of Sony's players that require you to recode to ATRAC?
They're not stupid
I think they are definitely stupid, its just that they have so much cash in the bank from their OS/Office monopolies that it doesn't matter much to them. Flops that would kill normal companies don't even give them pause - they just keep chugging because they have money to burn under the theory that eventually they might make something work.
...is to some (usually large) degree based on morality. Fraud is illegal, because, well - people believe it is wrong. And so on.
Not really. Much of it is Golden Rule based - fraud is illegal because you don't want to be the victim of fraud, because it might affect you. Whereas laws based purely on morality are just sticking noses into other people's business - if someone is peacefully drinking or smoking pot in their own residence, it's not going to affect you.
At what age does a human/zygote make the cut so that it is no longer available for scientific research? Two months? Six months? Birth? Five years? When they are potty trained? What classifies a human as a human deserving human rights? What test must be passed before that clump of cells is human? Who are you to decide?
No, there is no single line we can draw that separates a potential human from an actual human, which is why those opposed to abortion and stem cell research like to bring up. What they don't mention is the obvious solution: draw two lines. Eight and a half months into a pregnancy, the baby is already capable of being delivered by c-section. At conception, it's a single cell with nothing whatsoever resembling thoughts, feelings, or autonomy. "Life begins at conception" is just as valid as "life begins at birth." Oh, and by "valid", I mean "asinine."
What if the government decided the age of liberty was your age +1? How would that make you feel?
Yawn.
It goes to the question of what is a human deserving of human rights. We consider it a unique being with DNA, post-fertilization.
Then you're as much of a tool as someone who gets an elective abortion at 8 months and three weeks into a pregnancy because they define life as beginning at birth. On one hand, you have an unborn baby that has been kicking for weeks and could have been delivered a month ago by c-section. On the other hand, you have a single cell or cluster of cells that cannot be seen without a high powered microscope. *Cells*. Your views are not reasonable, they are asinine.
And if the destruction of embryos is a crime, why is the right wing not out trying to close down fertility clinics? Because if these embryos are not used one way or another, they are simply thrown away as medical waste. Since their destruction is a foregone conclusion, the real ethics problem is in *not* using them to save the lives of others.
YES. At 18 they are legally responsible for their actions.
Depends on the state. In some places, kids as young as ten have been tried as adults. And yet they aren't responsible enough to drink alcohol until their age has more than doubled. Ridiculous.
Yah. Players might have to slow the speed of their movements, but that would help emphasize some technique vs flailing around. Made me think of the knife fighting in Dune*, where combatants would fight with shields that would block anything moving faster than 9m/s, to protect the wearer from ranged weapons, but the fighters wouldn't be able to strike too fast or they wouldn't be able to penetrate their opponents shield.
*It's been at least 10 years since I've read Dune, so don't sue me if I'm misunderrememberating.
Searching for what you want, slow connections, seeders that disconnect on you, dealing with poorly encoded, incomplete or fake files - P2P is only "free" if your time is worthless. To borrow the line about the economy: its about the convenience, stupid. If you make decent money and don't have a lot of debt, it is more convenient to buy from a legit source as long as the service is good and the price is reasonable. If you don't make decent money, you aren't going to be able to buy the stuff in the first place. There is no functional difference between someone who downloads something for "free" because he can't afford to pay for it and someone who never would have purchased it in the first place - the company sees no money in either case. And if you have a lot of debt, you're already a good little consumer to the maximum of your ability (and maybe beyond).
End of Story.
Thanks for helping me prove my point, along with a new one: you wingnuts are infallibly wrong any time you open your mouths. If someone were to ask you if water was wet, you'd get the answer wrong.
Yeah, remember when the Chinese shot down one of the US satellites with the missile technology that Clinton gave them?
See, you're so damn stupid you misspell "Hughes Electronics" as "Clinton". But on my first point: remember when Bush apologized to that same batch of communists when they kept our air crew hostage after a mid air crash clearly caused by their pilot?
Remember the Carnivore database that Gore was creating until the Republicans prevented it?
It wasn't a database dipshit, it was a packet sniffing program to be set up on a specific LAN. That the FBI would have used when they obtained a warrant. Yet in the minds of you wingnuts, a limited software program to be used under a warrant is somehow far worse than a vast program to tap communications with no warrant. Because you are that damn stupid.
The world "loves the dems" because they make sure the whole world can fuck the US in the ass any time it wants.
Al Queda determined to attack the U.S., maybe using planes. My Pet Goat. Dubai Ports. Spank spank nazi beyach.
We got the current moron because the US was so sick of the Clintons they wouldn't give Gore a chance.
You mean Al Gore, who won the popular election by 500,000 votes? That would have won Florida if a statewide recount had been completed?
It will ALMOST be worth it to watch you fuckers scratching your heads in wonder when Hillary, using the precedence of her predecessor, is goose-stepping and frog-marching everyone around.
Her aborted attempt to pass health care aside, you guys should love Hillary. A tool for lobbyists, a former Republican, on the board of Wal-Mart for 6 years, a military hawk, and her law firm worked for big business. And yet you hate her guts, because she has a D after her name instead of an R. Because you are that damn stupid.
That only applies to trademarks, not copyrights or patents.
You don't write out "Hillary Clinton" or "Rudy Giuliani" on your ballot, you put an X next to their names. You screw up, just ask for a new ballot, and your old one is shredded in front of you plus an election official from each party.