According to this page, the.22 Long Rifle round has about 1/8th the muzzle energy of the 9x19 parabellum. I have very little experience with firearms, but if I bought one, it would probably be a.22 rifle, since the ammo is cheap and relatively quiet. I have no interest in hunting, so I'd just be doing target practice. I've shot at cans with a friend's 7.62x39 rifles and his.22. The difference in noise and recoil is huge.
As proven by these morons, the.22 can kill, even in the hands of an amateur. A powerful air rifle can kill if it hits the right spot. I've read that air rifles were once used in Russia for hunting wolves because they are so quiet.
The gun doesn't come with instructions on what to shoot at. It doesn't have any preference for hitting a target, an animal, a person, or the dirt. The user has to have an idea of what he wants to hit.
On the other hand, the game rewards the player for shooting unarmed citizens. The police do come after the player, but they can be killed too. The game encourages and rewards theft, murder, destruction, and general lawlessness in its simulated world.
Rational, responsible people understand the difference between the real world and a simulated one. Young, impressionable kids with too little supervision and too much free time often aren't as able to make the distinction. The game didn't cause them to murder people on the highway, but the kids may have simply shot at cans if they hadn't played the game.
The blame doesn't belong in exactly one place. I think some blame belongs with the game designers and marketers, but far more lies with the kids and their parents. The parents should have realized that they weren't responsible enough to use deadly weapons unsupervised. They probably should have realized that the kids weren't responsible enough to play the game. Hopefully, the kids are being punished harshly enough that they'll consider potential consequences of their actions in the future.
People, especially impressionable kids, emulate what they see. The company should care about the effects their product has on their customers, but that doesn't mean the victims should be able to get tens of thousands of dollars out of them. I'm not even sure if the concept of punitive damages even makes sense. Why should a plaintiff receive money taken from the defendant for the purpose of punishment? Shouldn't it go to a disinterested third party?
If apes "exhibit better social structure" than humans, what makes you think we are a notch above them at all? Can you honestly say that human society is more advanced overall (not just in technology) than it was five hundred or a thousand years ago? Sure, some advances have been made. People are freer in some ways, but less free in others. We have better control over nature, but we damage it more. Power concentration has shifted from kingdoms, empires and corrupt religious institutions to superpowers, global corporations, and global diplomatic bodies. Instead of arbitrary prosecution by land owners, we now fear arbitrary prosecution by "intellectual property" owners.
Human civilization is not advancing. At best, it's staying at the same level. The basic problem is human nature: it's corrupt. That's why, 'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men' (Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887.)
Yeah, it was annoying to change disks, but the visual and aural quality were worth it. Exile couldn't even improve much on the environmental immersiveness. There was a DVD version of Riven with slightly better quality video, but that was before many people had DVD-ROM drives.
It's called Peacemakers. It sounds interesting; I'd give it a watch if I had cable. Interestingly, the article makes the same assessment that I did: Firefly failed because it combined two genres that people aren't looking for today.
I missed several episodes, then saw several. Since it takes several episodes to start really evaluating a show, I was just starting to get hooked. Then, they cancelled it.
Now, I've downloaded them all and watched them in order except for the last and it's clear there is great potential. We're just getting well acquainted with the characters (though they remain intriguing) and the major plot arcs (Blue Hands Men, Inara and Malcolm, Book's past, River's abilities) are just getting interesting.
Firefly is a Western. It's also SciFi. I've wondered if it was cancelled because the network PHBs thought that it was only appealing to the intersection of audiences of each of those genres. By the way, what's the Western that's on TV now?
I think you were trying to be funny, but NoeGNUd is the real Nethack (and SlashEM) with eye candy (floating eye corpses, that is). It's pretty cool and it doesn't get in the way of traditional Nethacking. There's also Falcon's Eye, but it deviates too much from plain Nethack for my taste. Angband, Zangband, Hack, Nethack, SlashEM, and Moria are properly called "Rogue-like games", since Rogue was their granddaddy.
Perl does seem to have more complex, feature-ful syntax than C, but that's not what "verbose" usually means in the context of programming languages. Perhaps "rich" or "bloated" might better terms to describe Perl syntax, depending on your feelings on the matter.
Free Software is about freedom. You are free to use Wine or not. You are free to support it or not. If you don't agree with the project, it probably won't do anybody any good for you to tell them about it; just use or develop Free alternatives to the proprietary Win32 programs. Even RMS doesn't knock the Wine project (there have been debates about the license, which were resolved), though its goals clear conflict with the FSF's.
I, like you, prefer to use all Free Software. Since there is Free Software to fulfill almost every desire I have, I only use Wine for a couple of games. I have a friend that uses it to run Pegasus mail because that's what he likes. I think it's a little silly, but ultimately, he's exercising the freedom provided by a Free Software project, though it's allowing him to use a proprietary program.
No, it's not a great name, but it's more generic than a rip-off. It just stands for "Movie Player." Xine is more original, but I'm never sure how to pronounce it (Zine?, X-I-N-E?).
I don't think the problem is copyrights on the win32 libs, since they are free beer. The legal questions are DMCA and patent related. Also, some of live in the "home of the free," you insensitive clod.
I agree with your general sentiment, but your details are a little off. Are you seriously suggesting that it takes more characters of Perl than C to accomplish a certain task? While the earliest Lisp interpreters may have been "pure" textual interpreters, almost all modern implementations compile either to an intermediate form or to native code.
You're right about the line between "scripting" and "general purpose" languages being blurred.
Actually, the minimum wage is $5.15 per hour in the US. In a purely laissez-faire capitalist system, you could flip burgers for $0.01 per hour and your employer wouldn't be liable if it refused to pay to fix a leaky gas pipe which exploded and caused your untimely demise. The US is no more purely capitalist than Sweden is purely socialist or China is purely communist. They're all compromises.
I never said capitalism is a great system. It seems to work better than most others, but it does allow for plenty of abuses. I wouldn't want to live in any one of a purely capitalistic, socialist, or communist state. It's not as if you can find any "pure" examples anyway. Since governments are inevitably corrupt, I believe that government should be kept to a minimum.
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite." -John Kenneth Galbraith
There are less subversive uses than the ones you suggest. You forgot...
Either that's a failed attempt at irony or you have very a very different definition of subversive than I do. When was the last time you heard of a bushy-bearded loner secretly building home weather stations in his remote shack?
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Yeah, I did that at one point. The machine I was first playing it on wasn't mine and didn't have enough space.
According to this page, the .22 Long Rifle round has about 1/8th the muzzle energy of the 9x19 parabellum. I have very little experience with firearms, but if I bought one, it would probably be a .22 rifle, since the ammo is cheap and relatively quiet. I have no interest in hunting, so I'd just be doing target practice. I've shot at cans with a friend's 7.62x39 rifles and his .22. The difference in noise and recoil is huge.
.22 can kill, even in the hands of an amateur. A powerful air rifle can kill if it hits the right spot. I've read that air rifles were once used in Russia for hunting wolves because they are so quiet.
As proven by these morons, the
The gun doesn't come with instructions on what to shoot at. It doesn't have any preference for hitting a target, an animal, a person, or the dirt. The user has to have an idea of what he wants to hit.
On the other hand, the game rewards the player for shooting unarmed citizens. The police do come after the player, but they can be killed too. The game encourages and rewards theft, murder, destruction, and general lawlessness in its simulated world.
Rational, responsible people understand the difference between the real world and a simulated one. Young, impressionable kids with too little supervision and too much free time often aren't as able to make the distinction. The game didn't cause them to murder people on the highway, but the kids may have simply shot at cans if they hadn't played the game.
The blame doesn't belong in exactly one place. I think some blame belongs with the game designers and marketers, but far more lies with the kids and their parents. The parents should have realized that they weren't responsible enough to use deadly weapons unsupervised. They probably should have realized that the kids weren't responsible enough to play the game. Hopefully, the kids are being punished harshly enough that they'll consider potential consequences of their actions in the future.
People, especially impressionable kids, emulate what they see. The company should care about the effects their product has on their customers, but that doesn't mean the victims should be able to get tens of thousands of dollars out of them. I'm not even sure if the concept of punitive damages even makes sense. Why should a plaintiff receive money taken from the defendant for the purpose of punishment? Shouldn't it go to a disinterested third party?
Man, you're stuck in the '60s. The US doesn't invade countries for being communist any more. We can only understand one evil -ism at a time.
If apes "exhibit better social structure" than humans, what makes you think we are a notch above them at all? Can you honestly say that human society is more advanced overall (not just in technology) than it was five hundred or a thousand years ago? Sure, some advances have been made. People are freer in some ways, but less free in others. We have better control over nature, but we damage it more. Power concentration has shifted from kingdoms, empires and corrupt religious institutions to superpowers, global corporations, and global diplomatic bodies. Instead of arbitrary prosecution by land owners, we now fear arbitrary prosecution by "intellectual property" owners.
Human civilization is not advancing. At best, it's staying at the same level. The basic problem is human nature: it's corrupt. That's why, 'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men' (Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887.)
Yeah, it was annoying to change disks, but the visual and aural quality were worth it. Exile couldn't even improve much on the environmental immersiveness. There was a DVD version of Riven with slightly better quality video, but that was before many people had DVD-ROM drives.
It's called Peacemakers. It sounds interesting; I'd give it a watch if I had cable. Interestingly, the article makes the same assessment that I did: Firefly failed because it combined two genres that people aren't looking for today.
If you like both, I may take that as a recommendation for Cowboy Bebop. Now I just need to find it.
I missed several episodes, then saw several. Since it takes several episodes to start really evaluating a show, I was just starting to get hooked. Then, they cancelled it.
Now, I've downloaded them all and watched them in order except for the last and it's clear there is great potential. We're just getting well acquainted with the characters (though they remain intriguing) and the major plot arcs (Blue Hands Men, Inara and Malcolm, Book's past, River's abilities) are just getting interesting.
Firefly is a Western. It's also SciFi. I've wondered if it was cancelled because the network PHBs thought that it was only appealing to the intersection of audiences of each of those genres. By the way, what's the Western that's on TV now?
I think what you're trying to say is: "The more you tighten you grip, Bainwol, the more consumers will slip through your fingers."
I think you were trying to be funny, but NoeGNUd is the real Nethack (and SlashEM) with eye candy (floating eye corpses, that is). It's pretty cool and it doesn't get in the way of traditional Nethacking. There's also Falcon's Eye, but it deviates too much from plain Nethack for my taste. Angband, Zangband, Hack, Nethack, SlashEM, and Moria are properly called "Rogue-like games", since Rogue was their granddaddy.
Using libdvdcss or a derivative is probably illegal because of the DMCA, a most unnatural law. This affects almost all Free Software DVD players.
Perl does seem to have more complex, feature-ful syntax than C, but that's not what "verbose" usually means in the context of programming languages. Perhaps "rich" or "bloated" might better terms to describe Perl syntax, depending on your feelings on the matter.
Free Software is about freedom. You are free to use Wine or not. You are free to support it or not. If you don't agree with the project, it probably won't do anybody any good for you to tell them about it; just use or develop Free alternatives to the proprietary Win32 programs. Even RMS doesn't knock the Wine project (there have been debates about the license, which were resolved), though its goals clear conflict with the FSF's.
I, like you, prefer to use all Free Software. Since there is Free Software to fulfill almost every desire I have, I only use Wine for a couple of games. I have a friend that uses it to run Pegasus mail because that's what he likes. I think it's a little silly, but ultimately, he's exercising the freedom provided by a Free Software project, though it's allowing him to use a proprietary program.
I'm sorry to inform you that the Penguin has left the country.
On a more serious note, I was sure you were making up the Hungary/Finnish relationship, until I found this.
You had to think about it for a second? Just what kind of raving KDE/OSX/Windoze/IceWM/Enlightenment/GNUStep fanatic are you?
No, it's not a great name, but it's more generic than a rip-off. It just stands for "Movie Player." Xine is more original, but I'm never sure how to pronounce it (Zine?, X-I-N-E?).
I don't think the problem is copyrights on the win32 libs, since they are free beer. The legal questions are DMCA and patent related. Also, some of live in the "home of the free," you insensitive clod.
I agree with your general sentiment, but your details are a little off. Are you seriously suggesting that it takes more characters of Perl than C to accomplish a certain task? While the earliest Lisp interpreters may have been "pure" textual interpreters, almost all modern implementations compile either to an intermediate form or to native code.
You're right about the line between "scripting" and "general purpose" languages being blurred.
You're absolutely right of course. The exclamation that kept floating through my head as I read the article was, "Duh!"
Actually, the minimum wage is $5.15 per hour in the US. In a purely laissez-faire capitalist system, you could flip burgers for $0.01 per hour and your employer wouldn't be liable if it refused to pay to fix a leaky gas pipe which exploded and caused your untimely demise. The US is no more purely capitalist than Sweden is purely socialist or China is purely communist. They're all compromises.
I never said capitalism is a great system. It seems to work better than most others, but it does allow for plenty of abuses. I wouldn't want to live in any one of a purely capitalistic, socialist, or communist state. It's not as if you can find any "pure" examples anyway. Since governments are inevitably corrupt, I believe that government should be kept to a minimum.
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
-John Kenneth Galbraith